The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Last time, I began to reflect here on the course of human development in the post-Atlantean era, which can, in a sense, serve as a key to understanding the immediate present, that immediate present, which, however, must contain a great deal that is mysterious for those who do not attempt to understand this present with concepts, ideas, and notions that are not drawn from the wellspring of imagination and the realms of imagination of our materialistically minded age. The present needs new concepts; this should already have become clear to us from various considerations. The old concepts are not sufficient to grasp life, which has become so complex. What I once stated repeatedly in various lectures years ago is, I believe, of great significance in relation to the present. I said on repeated occasions in various places at that time: When we survey the scope of the concepts we possess—the concepts through which we seek to understand reality—the most valuable concepts humanity has for peering a little behind the scenes of external sensory reality are, in essence, those from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which began in 1413, has not, in essence, produced any new concepts. It has certainly produced new facts and new syntheses of facts in a magnificent, admirable way; but to understand these things, it was precisely the old concepts that were used. Let us try to clarify this with an example. What Darwin and his successors sought to compile regarding the interrelationship of organisms was organized through the concept of evolution; but the concept of evolution itself is not new. The concept of evolution itself dates back to the fourth post-Atlantean period. And so, if one takes the concept seriously—if one takes the essence of the concept seriously—one can demonstrate this through all our modes of perception and our ways of viewing the world.

[ 2 ] A certain step forward was essentially taken only when Goethe made the old concepts fluid; when, in doing so, he introduced something entirely new—which is still not appreciated today—namely, that he applied the concept of metamorphosis, the capacity for transformation, to the concept itself, so that for him the concept of the leaf, in its transformation, could simultaneously become the concept of the flower, the fruit, and so on. This making of the concept flexible, this making of the idea flexible—so that one can transform the same idea within the soul and, with it, track the manifold phenomena of nature (which are themselves flexible) using a concept that is flexible in itself, an idea that is flexible in itself—this is, in a certain sense, something new, and this is what I called, many years ago, Goethe’s central discovery. It is something truly new. But it has only found its continuation in what we call here spiritual science, and only this spiritual science can in turn bring humanity new conceptions and new concepts through which it becomes possible to enter into reality and immerse oneself in it.

[ 3 ] Above all, the concept of the historical itself must be expanded, and indeed, in our recent reflections, we have always—I would say—approached the matter in such a way that we have been working with a concept of history that has actually been expanded. We have expanded the concept of history in such a way that, above all, we have come to understand how the inner life of human beings—even if we do not go very far back in the centuries—was, in fact, thoroughly different in its overall constitution and overall mood from the inner life as it must be today, in accordance with the necessities of human development. Last time, I pointed out that the people of the first cultural period—the people of the Proto-Indian culture—remained capable of development up to an age that can be defined as ranging from 56 to 48 years. I tried to illustrate this by saying: Just as today only children and young people show a parallelism between their soul-spiritual life and their physical-bodily life, so it was in that ancient cultural epoch of humanity up into one’s fifties. Today, once a person passes the age of 30, they no longer perceive anything from within their body. They perceive soul-related phenomena through their body only as they grow stronger in their muscles from childhood onward and undergo various developments in their nerves. They then notice how, as the muscles grow stronger, as the structure of the nerves changes, and as the blood is transformed within the organism, the soul-spiritual phenomena run parallel to these changes in the physical organism. But then this dependence of the spiritual-soul aspects on the physical organism ceases. It did, however, remain present in that ancient time, about which we shall now say a few words.

[ 4 ] Certainly, even back then, as people grew from childhood onward, they perceived—with a more or less clear awareness (and even today this occurs only with a more or less clear awareness)—how they grew stronger physically, and how, with that, the will changes, how feeling changes, and how imagination also changes. Thus, in childhood and adolescence, they noticed their dependence on growth, on blossoming, on flourishing, on the rising life within their organism. Then came middle age, which falls in one’s thirties; the age of 35 is, after all, the midpoint of life. Today, people do not recognize their dependence on midlife in the same way that they recognize their dependence, for example, on the period from age 12 to 16, when they reach sexual maturity. Back then, however, people recognized their dependence on this phase because they sensed it within themselves, as it were: Before that, life was on the rise, it was increasing, it reached a peak; from this peak, it begins to decline again—one no longer grows further, one no longer gets taller, one’s nervous system has essentially completed its development, and one begins to remain as one is. Indeed, if one had a more subtle sensitivity to this, one could also sense how life becomes rigid, how it declines, how a sort of ossification begins, how the human being begins—if we may use the expression—to mineralize. Then came the forties, with life beginning to decline decisively, when one feels: Life within the physical organism is receding. But in those days, people had something that people today can no longer have: they had the soul experience in its interdependence with the waning of the physical bodily experience. In those olden days, people went through, so to speak, three stages; today, people go through at most one stage. How, then, was what they went through in those three stages expressed? Well, let us look very clearly at the interdependence with growth, blossoming, and flourishing in the upward-striving life, and let us first assume that a person truly felt healthy within themselves—which very few people do today—truly felt this healthy, upward-striving, growing, and flourishing life, and felt how this upward-striving, growing, and flourishing life is sustained by the spirit. For the purely physical substances that one ingests, for example through food, do not actually grow. That which brings about growth, increase, and upward development is the spiritual aspect of the forces that underlie it. One could look back to one’s human origins and say: I have emerged from the hereditary substances; I have my origin there as a physical human being; the spiritual has united with the body, and it carries me upward. — In this healthy interdependence of the spiritual-soul aspect on the physical, in this sense of the spiritual-soul aspect being embedded within the physical, people in those days perceived the working of God—specifically, the Father-God—within themselves. For they said to themselves: “I have been placed into the world with the power of ascent, with the power of flourishing.” — And if one is not indifferent in thought and feeling to what rises within, then one perceives in the soul the very act of growing and flourishing as the working of the Father-God within oneself. One feels connected to nature. Just as plants and animals grow and flourish, so does one grow and flourish oneself; one feels akin to natural existence and senses the Father-God within oneself. What I have described as occurring today in certain encounters was simply felt in those ancient times as part of normal life, in the way I have now portrayed it.

[ 5 ] And now began the period in an individual’s life when middle age had been passed, when one moved from a life of growth, increase, and flourishing—through its culmination, its peak—to a life of decline. Just as the growing, flourishing life instills in the spiritual-soul aspect—which knows itself to be dependent on it when all is healthy within the human being—the feeling of *ex deo nascimur*—I am born of God, I have my origin in God, who allows me to continue growing and flourishing—so this passing beyond the culmination this surpassing of the culmination brings about the fact that the human being, when he feels as people did in those ancient times—when they still sensed this flourishing in ordinary waking life, in part because they remembered the spiritual-soul’s former dependence on the physical-bodily and because they could observe the same growth and flourishing out in nature— But when they were in that twilight state in those ancient times, when atavism still existed, then the descending life was at work—this descending life is actually left behind; one has stepped out of it with the astral body and the I, yet they remain connected to the physical body; one is particularly dependent on one’s waning forces when one sleeps—it was then that people perceived the divine-spiritual in natural existence within this descending life. In the descending life—which appears to you particularly in dreams, in sleep, and in the ancient atavistic clairvoyance, where the physical recedes and begins to sclerotize—the soul begins to settle into the spiritual that is present throughout the entire cosmic environment.

[ 6 ] Just imagine what an experience that is: You can feel the transition. Nature, imbued with spirit or divinity, alternates with the perception of the spirit from the cosmos, and you know: one is soaring upward, the other is descending. The union of the cosmic spirit with the natural spirit became an immediate experience. One knew: In the earthly environment is the cosmic spirit; here on Earth is the natural spirit; but the two are connected, they flow into one another; and as a person lives, they pass from one to the other. As they emerge from growing life and pass the culminating point, they are permeated by the cosmic spirit, who was later recognized as Christ.

[ 7 ] As people grew older, past the age of forty—because up to that point they had been aware of their dependence in their soul-spiritual life on their waning physical life, especially in dreamlike, sleep-filled, or twilight states—they became aware of the Spirit as such, which is now no longer bound to matter but lives as Spirit. From their forties onward, they truly perceived the Spirit—the Spirit that is no longer bound to nature, the Holy Spirit. So that when we go back to those ancient times, we find in these people a direct perception, throughout their lives, of God the Father, God the Christ—who had not yet descended into earthly existence—and the Holy Spirit. It is upon this direct life experience that the appearance of the divine Trinity in ancient religious traditions is founded; wherever you look, you find this divine Trinity—Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. The ancient traditions are, in fact, entirely based on genuine human experience. If one were only to consider what must indeed be considered in spiritual science—namely, the way in which one truth supports another—one would already come to recognize spiritual science as something that is entirely self-sustaining. This should be understood more and more clearly; otherwise, we will indeed end up in the situation described recently by an outsider to a member: “Yes, what is presented there as spiritual science is very beautiful, but it has no foundation; it stands there without a foundation.” — This statement is just as clever—or, I might say, just as foolish—as if, at the very moment when Copernicus had to establish that the Earth revolves around the Sun and thus does not rest on a foundation, someone had said: “Yes, the Earth lacks a foundation! What about the planets and stars—they must rest on something somewhere! They simply support themselves physically there. And spiritual science is a structure of which one simply has to know, realize, and understand that the individual parts support themselves.

[ 8 ] Then came the Proto-Persian epoch, during which human beings, as I have described, remained capable of development well into their forties—from the age of 48 to 42. You will now recognize what was lost during that time. In particular, the perception of the spirit as such was lost, but it was still possible to recognize it. Those who reached the age of 48 to 42 could still perceive the Spirit in its purity—that is, the Holy Spirit—and could still know something of it.

[ 9 ] But then came the Chaldean-Egyptian epoch. Humanity’s lifespan decreased to between the ages of 42 and 35. The pure perception of the spirit became clouded, and by the end of this Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, only those who had been initiated into the mysteries could truly know anything of the pure spirit; for, of course, in the mysteries the mystery of the Trinity could be taught vividly everywhere. But in ordinary life, understanding of the spirit declined. In contrast, during this third post-Atlantean epoch—the Egyptian-Chaldean period—the awareness that a spirit lives in the cosmic-heavenly realm, rising and ebbing, was still very much present. Awareness of the cosmic Christ was still quite widespread. One could say that the connection between human beings and the heavens was present in their consciousness.

[ 10 ] This changed when the fourth post-Atlantean epoch began, as the average human lifespan in the fourth epoch declined to between the ages of 35 and 28. In the earliest times—this fourth age began in 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha and ended in 1413—in the earliest times, it was still the case that when a person reached the age of 35 in the general human lifespan, the imaginative perception of the Christ Spirit was still present. But by the time the first third had passed—namely, when Greek civilization had gone through the first third, around the beginning of our era—the average human lifespan was approximately 33 years. At that time, people no longer experienced the culmination point; instead, they experienced only a state of dependence—albeit more clearly than later in the fifth epoch—a dependence on the blossoming, ascending, flourishing life. They certainly included God the Father in their consciousness; the cosmic Christ gradually disappeared from their consciousness. And then came what might be described as a substitute for him, just as humanity was crossing this 33rd year of life, the Cosmic Christ descended to Earth into the body of Jesus of Nazareth to spread His power on Earth and to give humanity, from a different perspective, what they had previously received through direct human experience in the interdependence of the spiritual-soul aspect upon the physical-bodily aspect. This is the great significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. It also explains the significance of that promise known as the promise of the Holy Spirit. The time had now to begin in which the Holy Spirit must be attained from within, through the impulse kindled by Christ, without the normal human experience. You can see how the connection with the spiritual worlds—purely through the physical organization of the human being in relation to the soul organization—is changing, and how what was present in human consciousness through normal development has gradually faded away.

[ 11 ] Then came the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The average human lifespan used to be 28 years, and during the fifth epoch it will decrease to 21 years. As I explained last time, we are now living in an era when the average human lifespan is approximately 27 years. Therefore—and this must be emphasized again and again—it is now necessary for certain forces to be kindled within the soul; these forces no longer arise from the body’s energies flowing into the soul, but rather from spiritual impulses that are independently built upon the soul and can take root within it, propelling the soul forward in this independence, no longer dependent on the body. But only up to around the age of 30—as long as a person still possesses within themselves some capacity for growth and development, even if it is merely the growth of muscles—do they feel, through a healthy life, healthy sensibility, and healthy experience, a dependence on God the Father. So, as you can easily see, with the progression of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, what must occur is that even the healthy sense of the divine-spiritual living within one’s own growth gradually recedes. This was still active—absolutely active—in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. To a high degree, something of this was still present in the fifteenth century. Today, humanity is already one year short of the stage of life that lasts from the 35th to the 28th year and represents midlife. And it is in this lack of one year that humanity’s natural predisposition toward materialism and atheism lies. Atheism will spread through the organization of human beings, and if the counterbalance—the spiritual counterbalance—is not created through the development of a purely soul-based impulse that proceeds independently of the body, atheism will spread because human beings can no longer experience themselves as healthy, whole human beings; something will be taken away from them in their experience of growing, blossoming, and flourishing life. That is why I was able to say—as I mentioned here some time ago—that one can truly be an atheist only if one does not, in full health, perceive the connection between the soul-spiritual and the bodily-physical in the whole of ascending life. Atheism is actually a disease for spiritual science, but this disease is on the rise in humanity in terms of purely natural existence. More and more, that support for the comprehension of the entirety of reality—which human beings possess through their constitution—will be lacking.

[ 12 ] I described denying or failing to recognize Christ as a misfortune of fate, because Christ must graciously approach human beings from the outside. And I described failing to recognize the Spirit as a blindness of the soul. One must make this distinction. Atheism is an illness—of course, I mean the concept of illness in the broadest sense. The denial or failure to recognize Christ is a misfortune of fate. The denial or failure to recognize the Spirit is a blindness of the soul. You can already see here that one must have a completely new concept of evolution if one wants to understand the evolution of the human race correctly. For the concept of evolution, as it prevails in Darwinism, is terribly abstract, and the moment the very gross reality is no longer available to Darwinism, Darwinism actually no longer knows what to do with the concept of evolution. For evolution has an ascending and a descending branch, as we have seen, whereas today we so easily think in materialistic terms: Well, evolution is the starting point of one form of existence; the next form is reached, then the next, and so on, and one believes that this process continues ever onward toward greater perfection.

[ 13 ] Human development in the post-Atlantean era is such that, while the independence of the soul-spiritual from the physical does indeed become greater and greater, in the earlier stages of development the understanding of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit surges upward from the physical into the soul-spiritual. The understanding of the Spirit diminishes first, the understanding of the Son then fades, and now we are on the path where the understanding of God the Father will fade for ordinary external life—the emotional understanding! For as I said: There is a more or less clear awareness of this connection between the soul-spiritual and the physical-material.

[ 14 ] But this is also connected to something else. Do you think that the physical constitution is becoming less and less capable of providing what is needed, so that if a person wants to draw closer to the spirit, they must resort to paths on which the physical constitution does not support them? That is why, for those who are able to observe these things, there is a clear decline in the scope of ideas in general. The ideas that were available to human beings in ancient times—I would say—were distilled by the body as it yielded from within itself the spiritual element that is, after all, inherent in all material things. But now the body extracts fewer and fewer ideas and concepts, so that—to put it bluntly—the time must increasingly come when a person will rack his brain—or, if he is too complacent, will not even do that—but he will not find concepts, because the brain does not yield them of its own accord. He must turn to spiritual science, which provides him with concepts that can be understood only through the etheric body, no longer through the physical body—flexible concepts, not those rigid, lifeless concepts that the physical body yields. Thus, the natural development of the human being leads to his becoming ever poorer in concepts; this natural organization prevents him from immersing himself in reality unless he chooses the paths of spiritual cognition.

[ 15 ] This also leads to an understanding of the present; it leads to an understanding of what really needs to be said—not as a form of criticism, but simply as an observation: that humanity is becoming increasingly dull-witted through its natural existence if it does not choose paths of spiritual knowledge. One must face such things with the utmost seriousness. The mineralized brain—and it will become more and more mineralized—becomes dull and can no longer form concepts that can truly penetrate reality. Only those who make no effort to look into the workings of the present, and who feel no need to understand what is actually happening in the present, can pass these things by. But it is truly urgent that we try to understand this properly.

[ 16 ] And it is remarkable what kinds of phenomena one encounters there. One must simply not sleep through this time! Most people are currently sleeping through this time by failing to see what are actually the active impulses, but instead seeing only the outward appearances of what is happening. One need only pay attention to what is happening, and one will soon realize that there is an infinite amount of mystery in the present. To understand it, one needs the concepts that come from spiritual science; otherwise, one simply feels helpless, for these concepts must come from somewhere. Take an example. It is, after all, not a bad example that I wish to cite here. For decades, an aspiring individual in Austria has been seeking to spark what he calls a cultural-political movement. The man’s name is Scheu. What is he attempting to do? He describes the circumstances that have already been characterized here on several occasions. He is trying to bring together intellectuals in order to find, together with them, new forms of political life through which the spirit might be assured greater power over the destinies of nations.

[ 17 ] A very commendable endeavor, if it were possible to ensure that the intellect gained greater power over the fate of nations by uniting intellectuals. Why did this man begin working on these matters as early as the 1890s? He began because he felt a kind of dark impulse—that things could not continue as they were, that something was beginning to be missing, something lacking that needed to be introduced into humanity. Of course, he has not yet been able to find what is necessary to bring into humanity, for spiritual science is, of course, for such people—even if they already sense more or less clearly what is lacking—nothing but a fantasy, superstitious backwoods nonsense. They are too clever for that; they do not want to get involved in it, do they? Well, he actually senses quite clearly what is lacking in the present, and he expresses it this way:

[ 18 ] “I would like to reiterate my basic idea here. In terms of knowledge and thought, our era is far ahead of its time.”

[ 19 ] A strange statement. What did the man want, anyway? He doesn’t suggest that people’s minds have grown dull; he simply knows this: Today’s intellectuals—they’re wonderfully skilled at forming abstract thoughts! Everything runs like clockwork for them; they’re convinced because they can understand everything so clearly. So:

[ 20 ] “In terms of knowledge and thought, our era is far ahead of its time.”

[ 21 ] In other words: People are capable of thinking well, but their thoughts are of the kind I have described. “Our time is far behind our time.” The same idea, just in a different form.

[ 22 ] “As those who perceive, as those who know, we are overripe and refined to the point of the impermissible.”

[ 23 ] That’s us, too—we people of the present. You only have to look around in literature or elsewhere in life. Just think of the subtle ideas people come up with! But these ideas aren’t suited to grasping reality, to immersing themselves in reality. So:

[ 24 ] “As perceivers and knowers, we are overripe and refined and enlightened to the point of the impermissible; in real life, however, the Middle Ages still reign. The cause lies in the fact that the blast furnace, in which thoughts are to be remelted into reality, is not functioning.”

[ 25 ] He expresses the matter in a strangely accurate way, emotionally speaking. The blast furnace isn’t working, which means that the thoughts wandering around in the abstract and nebulous cannot be strengthened internally enough to truly connect with reality. He sensed this. And he actually did something that, from his point of view, isn’t bad at all. He told himself something like this: People are fed up with abstract ideas; there’s a whole group of people who have these abstract ideas of socialism and social democracy, and they’re spinning them out of proportion. — One can truly say that this abstract idea of social democracy has actually been carried out with marvelous logical consistency, particularly in Marxism; there is the abstract idea of social democracy, and there is the abstract idea of liberalism carried out. One can then also carry out combined ideas in the abstract: national liberalism, even social liberalism. The abstract idea of conservatism is there. Based on these abstract ideas—which remain abstract because they lack the crucible through which they can take hold in reality—one develops parliamentarism, the representative system, and all the ideas of liberalism, social liberalism, social democracy, conservatism, and nationalism. Robert Scheu simply attempts, with the means at his disposal, to replace these abstractions with reality by substituting the inquiry for the abstract idea. He says: Those who understand the matters at hand should be the ones to decide on them. After all, whether someone is liberal or conservative doesn’t matter much when it comes to organizing the petroleum trade or establishing art institutions, because what matters is that they understand something about art. And so, in fact, Robert Scheu has organized surveys in a wide variety of fields to let the people who understand these matters have their say. That was a very nice start.

[ 26 ] “What is this blast furnace?” he says. “The representative system and Parliament. Where is reality? In the administration. — Who upholds the representative system? The parties. — These are abstract constructs with principled programs that encompass conflicting real-world interests. The issues of real life are not grasped by the parties, which approach reality solely through deductive reasoning. They are interested in the real issues of life only to the extent that they expect to gain power from them.”

[ 27 ] Here, one even senses at times that this refinement of thought—we might also call it a dulling of thought, because the thoughts are no longer grounded in reality—has immediate significance for life. For the man links these questions to the issue of the further development of public life—whether a representative system or something else—though he is naturally not thinking of a return to old forms, but is genuinely reflecting on how one might find, based on reality, something that can put the structure of social life in order. In this regard, he has achieved quite a bit over time. But now it’s interesting: now he is once again taking a kind of retrospective look at what he has achieved. He asks himself: What have I actually been trying to do? — He has tried to penetrate reality; as people say today in blunt terms: I have replaced deduction with induction. — Well, that’s how people express it today in those blunt terms. You can read that everywhere. But the man does not feel satisfied—truly not. And that is why, at the end of the essay where he recounts the whole story, he says:

[ 28 ] “I have, however, come to realize that my inductive cultural policy does indeed need to be supplemented by a deductive program; that one must drill into the tunnel from both sides in order to achieve a breakthrough. The intellectual work required for this would have to be carried out jointly by all good Europeans.”

[ 29 ] You see, the man himself goes so far as to imagine that one must drill into the tunnel from both sides; yet he cannot access the source from which concepts grounded in reality can be drawn today. So he stops there for the time being; he probably wouldn’t even believe that his so-called inductive approach—based on all kinds of investigations—is, after all, merely one way of breaking through the tunnel; the other is the search for spiritual entities, where spiritual science encompasses the other side of reality.

[ 30 ] The immediate practice of life demands what spiritual science actually means. And it is not some abstruse idea when we say: Spiritual science is what life needs! — Rather, it arises entirely from life, but from life as we grasp it at the very moment it stands in the present epoch of human development. Just think how fruitful this spiritual science would become if people could remove the blinders that still cover their eyes so thickly today. For that is, in fact, what needs to be drilled through from the other side of the tunnel. Without it, one will inevitably arrive only at absurdities. That all sorts of charming little things then happen in the details—one naturally notices this right away when one lives within the flexible concepts of spiritual science. Robert Scheu conducts surveys—that is, he has people who understand the various aspects of life speak about them. Among the things that are to be changed through such surveys, he cites, for example, the registration system. Just imagine if the registration system were to be decided upon through a survey right now!

[ 31 ] Here you have a perfect example of how people begin to feel that something is missing, but cannot bring themselves to turn to what is truly necessary to carry the matter forward. It is very curious what kinds of experiences one has in this particular area. From the very beginning, it was truly my aim not to steer spiritual science down those abstruse paths toward which a sectarian mindset would like to lead it, but rather to introduce it into people’s lives in accordance with their needs. I tried to give each person—if they were willing to hear advice—guidance tailored to their individuality. Let’s take an example. Today it is, of course, incredibly difficult—I would even say nearly impossible—to apply such advice to materialistic everyday life. For factory managers will find it strange when one says that spiritual science could help run their operations better than their so-called “practical methods.” But one could hope that it might work at least in some respects.

[ 32 ] Years ago, a man approached me and said he wanted to enrich his scientific work through spiritual science. We then spoke about his scientific work. He was a wonderful scholar; he had a truly profound mastery of Babylonian and Egyptian archaeology. Together with him, I tried to explore how the threads could be drawn, how what spiritual science offers could have a fertilizing effect—at least on this particular field of study—so that at least a part, I would say, of science as it is practiced today could be enriched. He knew what science can offer today in his own field; he found spiritual science with us. On the one hand there was the Babylonian and Egyptian traditions, and on the other, spiritual science; he had both, but the will to truly penetrate them in relation to one another, to connect them—he could not muster it! But if one does not develop this will, one will never understand what spiritual science actually means. One will increasingly tend to turn spiritual science into that dubious mysticism that people—who have no use for it in life—would like to make of it, under the impression that life is worthless, that one must ascend to a higher life, that one must rise from this world of sensory perception into reverie, whereupon the higher realm will then reveal itself. Why bother raising one’s children properly here, when it’s better to reflect on one’s past incarnations! That is what takes one to the higher realms, and so on. — That is not the point; rather, the point is to make spiritual science fruitful in the very realm in which one currently stands. It can be made fruitful everywhere; life demands it.

[ 33 ] This is precisely what, I would say, requires more than just words to make it comprehensible today. For words have truly become rather worn-out currency. Who today actually still feels, when hearing these words, what lies within them? Who truly immerses themselves in the words? Feeling with words—that is something humanity has almost entirely lost, at least in the part of humanity to which we belong. Think about it: if someone says today—let me use this example—“Well, you did your task pretty well,” who feels much more from these words than: “You did your task almost well”? That is what people feel today. “Pretty” is “almost” good. We say one instead of the other. Be honest with yourself: when you hear the phrase “pretty good,” don’t you feel “almost good,” and use one in place of the other? And yet: “pretty” is a word that belongs to the same family as “to be fitting, to be proper.” When I do something pretty well, I do it in such a way that I accomplish it properly and with ease; I don’t just do it well, but in a way that my actions encounter no difficulties and are fitting; I have it under control. Who still senses the “becoming” within the word “pretty”? Or who senses in the word “doubt” that it contains the “two,” that one is faced with something that splits into two? Who even senses this “zw,” this “z-w”? Yet wherever “zu” appears, you have the same sensation as with “Doubt” (Zweifel), when the matter splits in two. “Zwischen” (between)—there you have the same thing! “Zweck” (purpose), “Zweifel” (doubt)—try to feel it! Feeling can lie within all sound combinations. But words today are simply worthless coins. That is why one would like to have something other than language to make forceful clear what is necessary today and what spiritual science could provide. This language, as it is used today, is such that—even more than is already the case through natural development—it dulls thinking, and dull thinking comes to the fore in a jumble of writings and printed matter.

[ 34 ] One could almost break out in a cold sweat, as I nearly did this morning when I picked up a book that purports to highlight the great significance of the difference between the ideas of 1789 and 1914, by Dr. Johann Plenge, full professor of political science at the University of Münster in Westphalia. The man claims to be able to distill from recent developments the great contrast that exists between the ideas of 1789 and 1914. He claims, in fact, to have actually invented the idea of 1914. He considers himself a truly great man. But we won’t go into that now. On page 61 of the book, I read the sentence—I’ll be pedantic here, but this pedantry implies something more subtle, and those who can sense it will surely feel it—so on page 61, the sentence struck me like a slap in the face—pardon the expression: “Where one knows one thing, one must seek the other. Let’s put ourselves in the mind of a future historian who one day hears about the global catastrophe of 1914.”—What are we supposed to make of this sentence? The man imagines a future historian who suddenly hears about the global catastrophe of 1914. So he heard nothing about it during his entire youth, but only as a future historian does he suddenly hear about it! One really no longer needs to live within the realm of vivid imagination to be able to come up with such nonsense. Then he seeks to speak of the significance of ideas, seeks to speak of the fact that there are ideas in history, that ideas can rise and fall, and in this way he seeks to get to the heart of the character and nature of ideas. And while he is doing this, while he is attempting this, he goes so far as to say the following at one point: He attempts to show how, among primitive tribes, ideas dawn unconsciously at first and then become more conscious. He says: “A people in the process of becoming a cultured nation lives according to the model of an imagined, ennobled humanity. The finest example of such a formation of ideas is Homer’s position in antiquity.”

[ 35 ] So you think: Homer’s status in antiquity is an example of the formation of ideas! Which is roughly the same as saying: If someone is a court councilor, that is an example of the formation of ideas. It’s impossible to make sense of something like that if you want to link your thoughts to vivid mental images. If, however, you’ve been accustomed to this from childhood, you really feel a slap in the face when you hear such sentences, which are nothing but verbal gymnastics. They remind me very vividly of that professor who began a lecture by posing 25 questions—a professor who became very, very famous, a professor of literature. I won’t say who it is, otherwise you might not even believe me. He posed 25 questions, then said: “Gentlemen! I have led you into a forest of question marks!”—I had to imagine a forest of question marks lined up one after another. Just think what kind of thinking that is—not bringing one’s thoughts to life, not living within one’s thoughts, but merely twisting words with one’s thoughts.

[ 36 ] This, however, manifests itself in a strange way in the mindset of such a person. One then comes across something highly peculiar; the man says: The true historian, like the astronomer, actually seeks to predict events. And now this good man endeavors to show how economic conditions have developed leading up to this current catastrophe of war. He says: “The true historian, like the astronomer, can predict such a catastrophe.” — Well, on the one hand, he considers himself such a great historian that he ought to be able to do this, but he hasn’t been able to, even though he has written many books on economic life. That bothers him. That’s why he explains how he actually went about it. How did he do it? He says: “Well, on the one hand, I showed that economic development is such that one should actually strive for peace with all one’s might; and then I showed, on the other hand, that it is also such that only war could result. — Well, that is undoubtedly a correct prophecy, isn’t it; it’s as if I had two coats and said: If I don’t put on one of them tomorrow, then I’ll put on the other. But don’t think that such an inner frivolity in concepts would have no consequences, for when he speaks of how he wavered between whether to prophesy the blue coat or—no, peace or war—he says—yes, he quotes himself—quotations are a curious thing in this book in general—he says: “But it is necessary for the imagination to play with this war.” Now just imagine that mindset! He considered it necessary not to speak with greater seriousness, but rather for the imagination to play with the war, in the years leading up to this catastrophe.

[ 37 ] I said that the way citations are handled in this book is rather peculiar. The entire book is, in fact, based on an article that appeared in the daily newspaper. This article is an innocent piece; it’s simply an unknown journalist rebelling against the idea of 1914, which Plenge, of course, “invented.” This is peculiar in the way the book is put together. For on the first page, you read the article—as far as Plenge chooses to include it—in order to build on it. Then he discusses the article; then, on page 21, he quotes it again, so that the article from the daily newspaper appears twice. Then he continues his discussion. Then he quotes individual passages from the article; so you read it a third time. And at the end, since he’s already quoted it three times, he includes it once more, so that in this book, an article from the daily newspaper has been quoted four times.

[ 38 ] I must use such concrete examples to clarify the state of affairs, in order to show what is necessary and also to demonstrate how spiritual science is truly the instrument that must intervene in the present. These things, which may seem trivial, are thoroughly connected to the broader perspectives from which we began. I ask you to bear this in mind as you reflect on these observations.