The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] In addition to the content of what I wish to illustrate through these reflections, I am also concerned with making it clear—precisely through these reflections—that, in the spiritual-scientific sense, truth is something living. And it seems particularly necessary in the present day to develop a sense of what this actually means: that truth is something living. For you see, a living being is one thing at one time and another at another time. Indeed, a living being may not even exist in a particular form at a certain time, yet at another time it does have a specific form. A living being—a human being, for example—is not yet an old person when it is a child. A living being is in a state of constant change. And the human being who will perhaps unfold his or her activity in the last decades of the twentieth century is such that we cannot yet speak of him or her as a being on the physical plane. All of this is trivial and self-evident. But they cease to be trivial truisms when one truly learns to cherish within oneself the sense of truth as something living.

[ 2 ] Last time I spoke to you here about the character of a certain contemporary statesman, Lloyd George. If someone had wanted to recount the same things in England in 1890—with the exception of the biographical details, with the exception of the purely external, factual aspects that could not have been recounted at that time because they had only just begun to unfold— that is, back when Lloyd George was 27 years old—if he had wanted to speak then of the full significance of that age of twenty-seven, as we did here eight days ago, it would have been an absurdity in the spiritual-scientific sense. It could not and should not have been done.

[ 3 ] For most people, truth is something they believe can be expressed in the same way at all times. But this is not the case when it comes to certain higher truths. The entire concept of the age of the individual in relation to the age of humanity has, in a sense, only now, in this era, reached the point where it is ready to be articulated. For truth in this sense must also be something that takes effect. You need only consider the outward aspect, which consists in the fact that if, in 1890, someone had spoken of Lloyd George as the twenty-seven-year-old with a complete life plan—as one could have done within certain limits, had one only done so— it would have been like planting a certain plant in the ground during winter, when it is meant to be planted only at another time of year. With such truths, it is not a matter of them reaching our soul merely in abstract form, but rather of them reaching our soul at the time when they can be effective. This is something that applies not only to historical truths—truths relating to the great development of the world—but is also something that can certainly be applied to the truth as it takes effect upon the individual human soul. I already made some remarks to this effect last time.

[ 4 ] I must mention this again and again because we are truly in a transitional phase regarding the concept of truth at the present time. A certain state of understanding truth is to be brought about by spiritual science. In a sense, humanity’s relationship to truth must change in a certain respect; it must undergo a certain development.

[ 5 ] Last time, I pointed out how the individual human soul can easily come to feel—especially in our present age—that it is unsatisfied. And for now, let us concern ourselves only with the human soul’s sense of dissatisfaction arising from certain ideas. We know, of course, that the human soul needs certain ideas about the world, about its own nature, about such fundamental questions as the question of immortality, and about the question of the world’s development. The human soul needs concepts with which it can, so to speak, live. If it cannot develop such concepts, or if it can develop only unsatisfactory ones, then it remains in a state of dissatisfaction—in a sense, in a diseased state. For many souls today are in such a diseased state—more than they are willing to admit. And the near future will see far more such souls than we can conceive of today, unless people are willing to turn toward the kind of spiritual fulfillment that can be attained through spiritual science.

[ 6 ] Nature, in its workings and essence, is in many respects a reflection of the highest, most mysterious processes; one must simply understand the concept of “reflection” correctly and not allow it to develop into a materialistic concept. This will become clear to us in what follows. People are very quick to seek out a certain set of ideas about which they can say: “These satisfy my soul; they give my soul something to live by.” — People prefer ready-made ideas. If one is asked to advise someone who carries unsatisfying ideas within their soul—and thus an unsatisfied soul within themselves—that person often has the feeling that one should recommend this or that—a book or the like—which can be worked through in a relatively short time, so that they then have something that satisfies their soul, with which they can go through the rest of their life content. For someone who recognizes even a little of the essence of living truth within themselves, such a demand is just like if someone were to come with the desire that, as a living human being, they be given a meal that they can eat and that will then sustain their body for the rest of their life. One is supposed to advise him on something he can eat so that from then on he will no longer need to eat. That is, of course, an absurdity. Here you have a natural analogy for what can actually only be given spiritually. Spiritual science cannot offer a person something that he can simply accept once and then be satisfied with for the rest of his life. I have often said: There is no worldview that fits in a pocket; there is no brief outline of a worldview. Instead, spiritual science replaces ready-made concepts and ready-made ideas with something that must be processed by the soul in ever-new ways—something with which the soul must continually engage anew. External truths, such as those provided by the natural sciences—if we have a good memory—we receive them and then possess them. It cannot be that way with spiritual-scientific truths. For natural-scientific truths are presented in concepts that are, so to speak, dead. The laws of nature, as concepts, are dead. Truths of the spiritual sciences must be presented in living concepts. But if we reduce the truths of the spiritual sciences to dead concepts—that is, if we seek to accept them in the same way we accept natural truths—then they are no nourishment for the soul; they are stones for the soul that cannot be processed.

[ 7 ] It is remarkable how, in a certain sense, the spiritual development of the nineteenth century did, in fact, contribute to what spiritual science is supposed to be and become in our time. But the last few decades have buried and caused much of what was thus achieved to be forgotten. I would like to begin today by pointing out one thing: what has been widely misunderstood in the second half of the nineteenth century is what has been called, for example, “Eduard von Hartmann’s pessimism.” And yet Eduard von Hartmann’s pessimism was not actually intended in the way it has usually been understood, for this interpretation was based on a fixed conceptual template: pessimism is the view that the things of the world are not entirely good, that they are unsatisfactory—in other words, that the world is essentially bad. And so, based on this concept of pessimism that people had formed for themselves, they then also judged Hartmann’s philosophy with its concept of pessimism. From that perspective, it was never possible to do it justice. Even today, it is actually still difficult to make clear what this is all about, for in this very area—I would say—it concerns something quite radical, but a radicalism that must take place in the depths of the human soul.

[ 8 ] Every schoolboy and schoolgirl today learns the concept of the impenetrability of bodies in physics. Children must learn this in such a way that, when the teacher asks, “What is impenetrability?”—they then say: “Impenetrability means that where one body is, another cannot be at the same time.”—Physical impenetrability! It is impossible to imagine today that we might one day have to learn to rethink such things. I just want to briefly mention what this is all about. In the future, people will no longer say: “Impenetrability means that where one body is, another cannot be at the same time”—but rather they will say: Bodies that possess the property that, at the place where one is, another cannot be at the same time, are physical bodies, physical entities; entities that possess such properties that, when they occupy a certain space, they exclude another entity of the same kind from that space—these are physical bodies. The fundamental concept of the definition will already change. In the future, one will no longer proceed from the dogmatic concept, but will have to proceed from immediate life. Today, of course, there is much talk of having overcome the old dogmatic faith and the like. The future will show that, with regard to the refinement of conceptual formation, no era was as steeped in dogmatism as our own. We are completely steeped in dogmatism—especially our sciences and, even more so, our public thinking; nothing more so than, for example, our political thinking.

[ 9 ] If we interpret the concept of pessimism in such a vivid way—and here I am referring only to Hartmann’s concept of pessimism—the following emerges. Eduard von Hartmann says: There are many people who strive for happiness; they strive for immediate satisfaction in their souls and call this happiness. But this can never, in the highest sense, constitute a dignified human existence, for the mere striving for the satisfaction of one’s own being would lead to nothing other than a closing off of one’s own being from the outside world. This would lead to a form of egoism that is more or less crude or subtle. It cannot be humanity’s task to strive merely for the satisfaction of its own being; rather, humanity’s task must be to place its living being within the entire process of the world, to surrender to that process, and to cooperate and participate in it. He would be deterred from this if, at any moment in his life, he could be fully satisfied with his external existence or inner harmony. We strive to continue working with the world’s creative process only when we are dissatisfied with any given state of affairs. But this is pessimism in its essence. If we did not have this pessimism—according to Eduard von Hartmann—of being dissatisfied with any present state, we would lack the impulse to participate in evolution. Thus, in his time, Eduard von Hartmann still had to express himself quite philosophically and say that he advocated empirical evolutionism in order thereby to justify teleological evolutionism. But one can see that here, pessimism becomes, in a sense, something different than when one starts from the dogmatic concept of pessimism and draws conclusions from it. With this concept of pessimism—which I do not wish to elaborate on further here—Eduard von Hartmann is, however, already, in a certain sense, on the path that spiritual science must take.

[ 10 ] For this spiritual science shows us much more than that! This spiritual science shows us what a truly satisfying concept for our inner life would actually be. A concept that is completely satisfying to us is, for our inner life, exactly the same as an external food—one cannot even call it food—that we would eat, but which we would have no way of digesting, and which we would carry within us undigested. It is truly the case that anyone who picks up a book by Trine or Johannes Müller and wants to be satisfied with it has exactly the same aspiration as someone who wants to consume a food that they could then carry around in their body. Yes, but if one does not carry it within, it is digested; and in doing so, it disappears, dissolving into its essence. Yet this is not the case with any idea that fully satisfies us. An idea that fully satisfies us always remains, if I may put it that way, in the stomach of the soul. And the more we believe we have of an idea at any given moment—the more we believe we can, as it were, suck the satisfaction from an idea into our spiritual pleasure—the more we will see that, if we merely wish to live with this idea for a while, it can no longer satisfy us, but rather develops within us in such a way that it bores us, that it makes us weary of it, and so on. |

[ 11 ] This is connected to what is often criticized about spiritual science as we represent it here. This spiritual science, as we represent it here, is always seeking new and fresh perspectives, even in the concepts it develops about the world. We could, so to speak, talk on and on, and we would always find new and fresh perspectives. Certain people then call these contradictions. In truth, they are transformations that point to the vitality of these spiritual scientific truths. This spiritual science cannot possibly provide the kind of rigid concepts to which people are accustomed today. It can present individual spiritual-scientific facts in an unambiguous way, but what is meant to satisfy us as the content of a worldview, it presents in living concepts that we can continually take in anew. The person who takes in these concepts will find that, once he allows them to flow through his soul, they tell him one thing; then, when he lets them flow through his soul again at another time, the same concepts will tell him something entirely different. And once more, they will tell him something entirely different when he lets them flow through his soul in a state of joy or happiness, and when he lets them flow through his soul in a state of sadness or suffering. But once he has truly grasped them in their liveliness, they always tell him something. Because these spiritual-scientific concepts are not merely meant to provide a reflection, but are meant to establish a living connection between the human soul and the entire infinite world—and because the world is infinite—they can never be fully exhausted; they are infinite. They are always meant, in every single case, to establish a connection between the soul and the world. But we must also, in a sense, preserve our free receptivity to everything that can approach us from the world, and above all, we must accustom ourselves in our thinking to the fact that certain principled, fundamental concepts—which seem self-evident to humanity today—will no longer be of any use to us in the future. Consider the countless philosophies: in these countless philosophies, you will almost always find one question emerging again and again—the question of Being. Being, unified Being—this is something that emerges time and again. And from this very question, as it is posed, spring countless impossibilities for the living human soul. Through these lectures, I would like to evoke in you a sense that everything we designate as “being,” or what we ascribe as “being” to things and beings, stands in a living relationship to becoming—and indeed in a peculiar relationship to becoming. In truth, neither Parmenides’s ancient proposition about rigid being nor Heraclitus’s proposition about becoming is true. There is Being and Becoming in the world, but only this: Becoming is alive, Being is always dead; and every Being is a corpse of Becoming. If you find a Being anywhere—for example, in the nature that surrounds us—then spiritual science answers you: This Being—read about it in *The Secret Science*—came into being because there was once a Becoming, and this Becoming left behind its corpse, that which currently surrounds us as Being. Being is the dead, Becoming is the living!

[ 12 ] The remarkable thing is that this significant principle finds application in the life of the soul. If we wish to find satisfaction in the soul through a specific, self-contained idea or series of ideas, then we are seeking satisfaction through a form of being. We cannot do that! We can only find satisfaction through a process of becoming; we can only find satisfaction through that which affects our soul in such a way that, as we take it into our soul, it becomes unconscious again, yet—by uniting with our soul—it inspires us anew to pose these questions to the ever-continuing process of becoming. This is certainly something that leaves many people dissatisfied with spiritual science, because they would like to have something ready-made. While spiritual science can only provide guidance on “eating the spiritual”—you will understand me—people would like to have ready-made nourishment. This is something our time must reckon with, because it is full of the opposite sentiment.

[ 13 ] What is our age full of? Our age is full of the exact opposite sentiment—the feeling that one must simply absorb some ready-made worldview as quickly as possible. Much of what I would call the pathological elements living in our souls can only be healed by developing an interest in a living relationship with the truth, not by cultivating a craving for ready-made truths. Clearly defined truths, however—that which is expressed in ready-made concepts—always refer to the past. In one way or another, that which is cast into ready-made concepts always relates to the past. We can take into ourselves that which is true and which the past has, so to speak, set aside; it then lives within us; and as it lives within us, we live with the truth.

[ 14 ] But our era is currently in the midst of a process of transformation in this regard, and this process of transformation manifests itself to us in a striking polar contrast—the contrast between the West and the East in Europe; and we in Central Europe find ourselves placed right in the middle of this polar contrast. That which constitutes one pole—the West—has, in a sense, already reached a state of hypertrophy, of overripeness; that which the East represents has not even begun to emerge, being barely embryonic. Let us be clear about this: what we see in this peculiar East—which seems so chaotic to us today—is poorly understood in Central Europe, and least of all in Western Europe. How many different debates are there now about the nature of the Russian people, about what is asserting itself in Eastern Europe—let us focus on that. For example, I recently read how a gentleman—in a manner he himself, of course, believes to be very witty—argues that the Russian people are, in a sense, now going through the same conditions that Central and Western Europe went through in the Middle Ages. Back then, in the Middle Ages, there was more faith among the peoples of Central and Western Europe, more of a certain mystical drowsiness prevailing; the same is true in the East now. So the East is going through the Middle Ages. But here, since then, intellectualism—the culture of reason with its scientific appendage—has emerged; the people in the East must now catch up.

[ 15 ] None of that is reality! The truth is rather this: that the Russian people do indeed have a mystical disposition, but that this mysticism simultaneously has an intellectual effect—intellectualistic mysticism—and the intellect has a mystical effect—mystical intellectualism, which did not exist at all in Central Europe. Something entirely different, something new, is emerging, just as a child grows up and becomes something other than the old man standing next to him, who may be his grandfather. But people today cannot afford to pass by these things while asleep and dreaming. And we in Central Europe, in particular, have an urgent need to seek an understanding of these things. And if we do not try to seek an understanding of this polar opposition, we will truly not be able to move beyond the chaos of the present.

[ 16 ] It is, however, very difficult to fully grasp this contrast between East and West, for what exists in the West has, in a sense, already passed the stage of maturity; what exists in the East, as I have said, is barely in its embryonic stage; and yet we must gain an understanding of it. In the West, and also in Central Europe, we have a very specific—let’s call it superstition—that does not exist in the East, and where it does exist, it has been learned from the West. We have a very specific superstition in the West and in Central Europe. Well, to put it in the most grotesque terms, I would say it is the superstition regarding the book, regarding what is written in the book. That is just a somewhat grotesque way of putting it, but it encompasses a whole complex of cultural realities. We in the West cling to what can be put into a book—what can, so to speak, be written down and fixed—what, in other words, can be detached from the human and objectified, and that is what we value above all else. We value it not only in the fact that our libraries have truly grown into gigantic behemoths—and these libraries mean the world to us, especially when we wish to engage in scholarly work—but we also value it in another respect: We value it, for example, in the fact that we possess a certain body of concepts that people have conceived and that have become detached from humanity. We call this body of concepts “liberalism,” and when a number of people—a group of people—adhere to it, we call that group a liberal party. Such a liberal party is, in reality, nothing other than what emerges when something like a liberal “theory”—that is, something that can be written in a book—spreads over a number of people like a spider’s web. And so it is with other things as well. And we are increasingly falling prey to the superstition of this theory—that everything is defined in this way so that one knows what one is dealing with.

[ 17 ] In the West, we have seen emerge in rapid succession not only a whole host of ordinary theories—such as liberalism, conservatism, and so on—but we have also found comprehensive, universal theories set forth in books: Proudhonian and Bellamyan visions of the world; a vast array of utopias, and the further west one goes, the more there are. Central Europe has produced relatively few—indeed, upon closer examination, not a single utopia; these utopias are all the products of the Anglo-Saxon and Romance races. They have appeared in Central Europe only occasionally, simply because things also appear in a displaced manner there. This detachment from what actually lives within human beings—turning it into something external that can be fixed—and living according to that which is fixed: that is what belongs to the superstition of the West, and what Central Europe has, to a certain degree, adopted from the West. In certain movements—particularly mystical ones and various other currents—this has even taken on a rather harmful character, in that great importance has been attached to avoiding anything that is currently alive, preferring instead something ancient that can be drawn from old books or ancient traditions—in short, something that is otherwise detached from human beings, even though it must once have lived within them. Some people are not at all interested when one presents this or that concept of spiritual worlds to them in a direct form. But when one tells them: “This is what the ancient Rosicrucians believed; this is Rosicrucian wisdom”—or when one wants to found a certain sect, that is to say, a society, based on “ancient temples, mystical temples,” “mystical Oriental temples,” and so on—and point out how ancient these things are, that is, when they were established and codified—then some people feel extraordinarily satisfied.

[ 18 ] This is, I would say, the general trend, but it has truly become exaggerated in the West and will increasingly take on extreme forms. For this is intimately connected with a certain despotism of the spiritual—detached from humanity—over humanity itself. Ultimately, the dominion of the spiritual—which has been cast out—over the immediate, elemental human nature will emerge. Humanity is then to be sidelined, and that which it has cast out is to become dominant in some form. But that which is cast out into the world strives toward materialization—not merely toward conception in the materialistic sense, but toward materialization itself. And in this regard, the Western world has indeed already gone very, very far. People usually do not seek the inner laws in such matters, but these inner laws do exist, and in the near future, humanity will suffer greatly for not seeking them.

[ 19 ] There is a man living today who, having once borne a common name, now goes by the name of Lord Northcliffe; he is the great newspaper magnate of England and, little by little, of America as well. Some time ago, this man began to ponder the following idea: How can one make social life—the coexistence of people—independent of human beings themselves? How can one, so to speak, establish the rule of something detached from human beings over human beings? — He began, so to speak, with theories, saying: Every province has its own newspaper; individual people always write in these newspapers, and as a result, the newspaper of each province is different from that of another province. How wonderful it would be if, little by little, we could arrive at a point where a uniform template were applied to the various provincial newspapers, so that a central office would collect all the good chemistry articles written by famous chemists, all the good physics articles written by good physicists, all the good biology articles written by famous biologists, and so on. These would then be distributed to the individual newspapers, and they would all publish the same content. And even if they are supposed to be different, the central office would already dictate the differences. Of course, one cannot apply the same content everywhere—if only because the language would be different—but everything can be centralized.

[ 20 ] And lo and behold: that man has come a long way in this direction, and today he is, so to speak, the invisible ruler of a large part of the British, French, and American press in general, in that nothing appears in certain sections of the press in England, France, and America that does not originate from this central office. And the other press—which is still independent of him—has a very hard time surviving alongside what flows through his channels. But his ideal is to eliminate everything that does not flow from a single such source. Just think of the possibilities, given the prevailing belief today in that which, though separated from humanity, nevertheless approaches people in this way! Just think of the possibilities for an immense tyranny to be exerted from this direction over each individual human being!

[ 21 ] To restore the individual human being to his full validity, to place the individual human being once again entirely on his own feet—this is indeed the inclination of the people of the East: to transcend the book, to transcend the fixed, and to put the human being in its place. The ideal state to which the East aspires is one in which people will read less and allow the fixed to influence them less, but instead will focus on everything connected to the immediate, individual human being. The individual will once again listen to others; the individual will know that there is a difference between a word coming from the person themselves and one that has become detached and taken a detour through ink and the like. Certainly, in some areas, only the first steps have been taken in this regard—but very, very significant, terrifying first steps. I mean: in the West, the first steps have been taken in these matters regarding separation—but they are terrifying first steps.

[ 22 ] The fact that there is a separation from humanity has led us, in many fields—especially art—to reproductive processes that are truly capable of driving out the sense of artistry. In many cases, this has caused us to lose the ability to still see the individual in a work of art—especially in works of art intended for everyday use—and it is difficult to understand the resistance to the nonsense of the times. Perhaps you have noticed that some of our ladies are once again wearing rings or similar items, but each one is different, because importance is placed on there being something individual within them—something that represents a direct, individual, or ideal connection between the individual object and the person who made it. There is no longer much understanding for such things in an age when everything is mass-produced—that is, objectified and detached from the human being. Our creations very often embody intentions that are truly connected to the development of our times—intentions that might be dismissed as mere hobbies, but which are in fact deliberately rooted in such contexts. But what is taking shape in the East—the emphasis on the individual, the elevation of the intrinsic value of the human being—is still in its very earliest, embryonic stages. What, then, is taking shape there? In the West, what has now emerged is, let’s say, Marxism. What is Marxism? — I could just as well name something else — what is Marxism? A theory that conceptualizes reality in such a way that, under this conception of reality, all human beings can live together harmoniously in social relations.

[ 23 ] In the East, a spiritual movement is emerging that regards it as utter nonsense to even conceive of a universally valid theory of human coexistence; this will appear to be utter nonsense to the worldview taking shape in the East. For people will say: You cannot possibly prescribe the way people should live together; that is something each individual must decide for themselves, something each individual must demonstrate, something that must develop within human coexistence itself. A certain—if I may once again use a term that represents a stereotypical concept—I do so reluctantly, but one must use certain terms—a certain individualism, but a truly creative individualism, is taking shape in the East.

[ 24 ] One must be able to grasp these things, must be able to understand them, for they represent the forces that are currently shaping the world. We stand right in the midst of this shaping of the world. One cannot arrive at a fruitful conception of how the world is shaped without taking these things into account. Otherwise, one fails to see how others are getting ahead of us. For Lord Northcliffe has not only bought British, American, and French newspapers, but he has also, for example, bought Russian newspapers. *Novoye Vremya* is entirely in his possession, and with it he is casting his nets toward the East; he is weaving—likely under the guidance of people who, in a certain sense, already know what lies ahead—the future into the web of his past. And this lies, as something far deeper than we suspect today, at the heart of the East-West alliance into which we have been wedged. A great deal of thorough work has been done on these matters—and in other areas as well—more than people today can imagine, and far more systematically than is often realized today. For it is a terrible idea to inoculate the dying West with the embryonic essence of the East. But who today assesses—as some do, though not in the right way—that suddenly, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a whole series of pseudonyms appeared in the English press: Ignotus, Argus, Spectator, and so on; who assesses it from a certain higher perspective that, on the one hand, *Novoye Vremya* is being bought, but the representative of *Novoye Vremya* writes in London under such a name, so that a complete exchange takes place between what prevails in the West as hypertrophy and the embryonic, germinal essence of the East. This is what lies behind the scenes of our present-day life, and it is connected to the laws of human evolution; it is connected to the laws of Earth’s development.

[ 25 ] Anyone who thinks I am fantasizing when I go so far as to assert: At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Eastern European spirit was linked with the Western European spirit, and systematic efforts were made to foster the emergence of public opinion—first in the newsrooms, then in the parliaments, and from there through underground channels, but initially in entirely different spheres— anyone who believes I am fantasizing should read those letters published by Mrs. Novikoff, the wife of the Russian ambassador in Vienna, at the beginning of the twentieth century—letters Mrs. Novikoff wrote to Mrs. Campbell-Bannerman, with whom she had become acquainted in England—and try to truly bring to mind what he can learn from these letters. One will see that I am not fantasizing, but one will then find an explanation for many things that today seem inexplicable, especially to the people of Central Europe.

[ 26 ] We need concepts other than those handed down to us from time immemorial if we truly wish to grasp the significant upheavals of our time. And most importantly: we are capable of educating ourselves to form such concepts. We must not, after all, sleep through the events unfolding today. We could cite hundreds and hundreds of such events, such as this one: In the summer of 1911, there was a large gathering in Oxford. All the dignitaries and professors of the University of Oxford were present in their official robes, in a magnificent procession. For Haldane—Lord Haldane—was giving a speech. And what was the content of this speech? Well, the Minister of War in the British government gave a speech, and the content of this speech was strictly scientific; he focused on explaining the tremendous progress that human development had made through the essence of the German spirit; as Lord Haldane explained to the audience that this was, first and foremost, an example demonstrating that human culture is advanced not by brute force, but by the moral forces at work within culture. The entire speech was a panegyric on the reliability and inner integrity of German intellectual life. When the war broke out, Lord Haldane was among those who fully concurred with the view that the German character was essentially expressed through its militarism, and that German militarism was hell for the world. He emphasized this strongly. The same Lord Haldane who, as a young man, appeared in Göttingen and sat reverently at the feet of the philosopher Lotze, who wrote the beautiful books on “Education and the State” and the beautiful book “A Path to Reality”; the same Lord Haldane who spoke those beautiful words about the difference between Hegel and Goethe: that Goethe stood higher because Hegel said, roughly, that nature would utter the highest mysteries if only one could hear her, whereas Goethe takes as the foundation of his entire worldview the higher word that, if nature truly had everything that man needs to say, she would be able to speak. This is a profound statement, an immensely profound statement, for it says nothing less than this: Goethe professes true spiritualism. If nature contained everything that exists in the world, it would tell us so; if it does not tell us so, it is proof that there is something else—namely, the spiritual—beyond natural existence. Haldane spoke all this out of his connection with German intellectual life. Nevertheless—and we could cite hundreds upon hundreds of examples—we suddenly see him change his tune.

[ 27 ] These phenomena are not the kind that can be brushed aside with the trivial explanation: “Once we make peace, everything will be fine again; it will all balance itself out!” — That is what so many people believe. It will not be so! We need something fundamentally different. But we do not need to acquire it, for we already possess it deep down; we are capable of it, if only we are willing. For we in Central Europe have within us the very nature that enables us to truly understand both the West and the East, if we so choose. We can understand if we want to. But we must break ourselves of a certain habit, and it is this breaking of the habit that spiritual science gives us through true understanding. But one must then immerse oneself in spiritual science with one’s heart, with one’s whole soul—not merely with a theoretical mind.

[ 28 ] Please forgive me if I say something personal here, but this is something we can all relate to now, since we know each other so well. I have written about Nietzsche, and as you can see from the book, I greatly admire him and hold him in the highest regard. Well, just recently I spoke in various places about how much I value and admire the Swabian aesthetician, “V” Vischer, and how he was among the first people I turned to when, more than thirty years ago, I laid the initial foundations for what I now call the science of the spirit—how he was the first at that time to reach out to me by saying: “Your conception of the concept of time is truly something that is fruitful for the foundation of the science of the spirit.” — So, I revere Nietzsche; I tried to portray him in my book *Friedrich Nietzsche, a Fighter Against His Time*; I revere V-Vischer. But let’s now consider these two. There’s an interesting passage we find in Nietzsche about V-Vischer. As you know, Nietzsche coined the term “Bildungsphilister” (educational philistine)—a term that has since been widely used—by applying it to David Friedrich Strauss, the author of *The Life of Jesus* and *The Old and the New Faith*. V-Vischer was a great admirer of David Friedrich Strauss. I mention this only to set the context. But Nietzsche made the following beautiful remark about V-Vischer:

[ 29 ] ". .. Recently, an idiotic judgment in *historicis*—a statement by the fortunately deceased “aesthetic Swabian” Vischer—made the rounds in German newspapers as a “truth” to which every German must say “yes”: “The Renaissance and the Reformation, together, form a whole—the aesthetic rebirth and the moral rebirth.” — Statements like these are the last straw for my patience, and I feel the urge—indeed, I feel it is my duty—to tell the Germans once and for all what they already have on their conscience. They have all the great cultural crimes of four centuries on their conscience! .. .»

[ 30 ] So it is possible to find oneself revering one person and revering another, to hold both systems of thought in equal esteem, while at the same time one calls the other an idiot. But that does not change my judgment of either of them, because when I acknowledge what one says and what the other says, I do not feel compelled to swear by one or the other, nor do I feel compelled to make my own the same judgment that one has of the other, but rather to understand it as his own. Just as I know full well that when I look at this stack of books here, it appears different to me than it does to the gentleman who is looking at it from over there.

[ 31 ] We are predisposed to this; we see only that, up to now, many souls who have fully expressed this predisposition within themselves have, in a sense, failed spiritually because of it. But we must embrace and develop this predisposition with complete spiritual health.

[ 32 ] It is interesting—since Hölderlin, in a certain sense, identified with his “Hyperion in Greece”—to note what Hölderlin has his Hyperion say about the Germans. And anyone familiar with Hölderlin knows that this is not merely Hyperion’s view, but—albeit expressed much more strongly—Hölderlin’s own. He characterizes the Germans as follows:

[ 33 ] “Barbarians from time immemorial, made even more barbaric by diligence, science, and even religion; utterly incapable of any divine feeling; corrupted to the very marrow, much to the delight of the holy graces; offensive to every good-natured soul in every degree of exaggeration and wretchedness; dull and devoid of harmony, like the shards of a discarded vessel—that, my Bellarmin, were my solace. — It is a harsh word, and yet I say it because it is the truth: I cannot imagine a people more torn apart than the Germans. Artisans, you see, but not human beings; thinkers, but not human beings; priests, but not human beings; masters and servants, young and old, but not human beings, and so on.”

[ 34 ] The Entente writers might well have copied such things, couldn’t they? But the issue is something else: the very same Hölderlin, whose conviction this most certainly was, the very same Hölderlin called Germany “the heart of Europe.” That is to say: it was possible for him to hold both judgments. And we must recognize this possibility again and again as being connected to our innermost nature. We must recognize that abstract clinging to contradictions as a clinging to one-sidedness. For what is seeking to develop in the East will no longer be able to understand at all the very things under which Western Europe has grown great. The idea that one cannot hold both one judgment and its opposite will no longer be comprehensible in the East in the future, because versatility will develop there, and people will come to understand that one can only truly know any given thing by circling around it and being able to describe it in many different forms. |

[ 35 ] But this is connected to what I began with today: the necessary understanding that we must develop a new relationship to truth. We will not achieve this unless we understand that life in ideas and concepts is already a life in the spirit. We must rid ourselves of this non-scientific—for it is not scientific—but this materialistic or monistic prejudice, which holds that: when I think, I need my brain, so thinking originates from my brain!—this is just as sensible as if someone were to say: Here is a road, there are footprints—where on earth could these footprints come from? Well, of course there must be forces down in the earth that made these footprints. Now I study the footprints and formulate a theory about what forces are down there, which push down and up, so that the earth, when it is soft, moves in such a way that these footprints appear. — These people would be just as clever as the one who looks for the forces that constitute thought in the structure and movements of the brain. Just as footprints are something found in the earth but originate from the person who walked over it, so too is the structure of the brain, of course, exactly as biology and physiology describe it, but thinking has imprinted it, and thinking is already a spiritual phenomenon.

[ 36 ] Yes, but the brain has to be there, doesn’t it? — Of course, the ground has to be there, too, if I want to walk on it! The brain must be there as a foundation as long as I live between birth and death; that which lives within me—that which lives spiritually—must be reflected back onto something according to the conditions of existence between birth and death. This apparatus of reflection is the brain, except that—the reflection is a living one, just as when in a mirror it is not merely a smooth surface that reflects the light, but as if everything were imprinted upon it, and one could still see in the structure what has been reflected; this is how it is reflected from the brain. One will have to understand that thinking as such is already something spiritual, that we are already within the spiritual world when we think. Full awareness of this, however, will only come when thinking frees itself, when thinking is able, so to speak, to capture itself within itself, so that it can proceed as I described the last two times, where the human being seeks finer connections, where he attempts to incorporate into his finer thinking that which exists not only on the surface but beneath the surface in finer connections.

[ 37 ] For it is only through thinking that frees itself in this way from matter that one will become aware of what thinking, as a spiritual process, actually is. Only then, however, will we arrive at a form of thinking that can also be creative in the world. For you see, nature can at best be grasped by a form of thinking that takes in what natural phenomena themselves express; but if we are to find ideas that take root in social life—ideas that are, so to speak, meant to govern humanity—then these ideas must truly arise from free thinking itself. That is why our age is so infinitely barren, so sterile, politically speaking: because our age lacks free thinking—thinking detached from matter—which alone is capable of being a force in social life. We simply lack, to a great extent, the ability to rise above our dependence on what appears to us from the outside and to rise to the living, self-woven fabric of thought. And this is, in essence, the next—if we wish to call it that—mystical need, not that obscure mystical stuff that is so often pursued today, over and over again: the experience of the self within divine inner being and the like—as beautiful as those things may sound; for every being experiences God within itself. If one simply says: mysticism, theosophy—that is the inner experience of one’s connection with the unity of the world, with God within oneself—even the May beetle experiences this, but in its own way. The point is that we must first begin by experiencing precisely this living weaving of thought, which expresses itself in concrete concepts. Then these concepts will also become concrete and will be able to take root in the social structure of existence.

[ 38 ] As I said at the beginning of today’s reflection, it is very important that we not only view humanity’s relationship to a new truth from a spiritual-scientific perspective, but that we come to realize that this relationship of humanity to truth itself must become something different—namely, a living, vital connection with reality. This is of immense value for our understanding of the great phenomena of the world, for our understanding of historical development, for our understanding of the social present and future, and also for the life of the individual human soul. We will simply have to begin to continue the major lines and currents that were started but have not been carried forward. There are good reasons—and we will speak of these as well—why so much was forgotten and buried in the second half of the nineteenth century. When I publish a new edition of my book *The Mystery of Man*, I will once again have to point out many phenomena that still belong to these forgotten echoes of spiritual life. One discovers an extraordinary amount there of which one can say that our spiritual science directly builds upon what was already present in the first half of the nineteenth century and has been completely forgotten. Had it persisted—which is, of course, merely a hypothesis, for things could not have developed any differently than they did—but had it persisted, then people today would face the strange, painful events they are confronted with quite differently, not so helplessly. For in a certain sense, they do indeed face them helplessly.

[ 39 ] It is strange—as I have said repeatedly—how the West, particularly the British, has calculated the balance of power in Europe in a self-serving, British manner, and how this has led to the gathering of storm clouds whose effects we are now experiencing. I have also discussed here on previous occasions many of the events that have led to our present, such a sad state of affairs. But from much of what I have said again recently, you will see that it is truly not enough to merely look at those events and their interconnections that are so frequently described today, but rather to dig deeper, to truly delve into many things of such immense significance that have taken place beneath the surface of outward events, and which are now erupting in the grave events of the present that are flooding over humanity so terribly. Some things are such that they truly cannot yet be called by their proper names today, because people would not yet be willing to accept them; but if light is to be shed on human evolution, it must become possible to approach and touch upon even such deeper mysteries connected with the unfolding of the present. But this will only be possible if people become more and more sincere in their commitment to what is actually meant here by “spiritual science.”

[ 40 ] Then, however, one must no longer confuse this spiritual science with all the foolish nonsense that today often presents itself as mystical movements, mystical foundations, and the like. And I must emphasize again and again: Events are unfolding in such a way that in the future I will have to draw an ever clearer line of demarcation between what is intended and practiced in this spiritual science—this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—and everything that would so readily like to be associated with it. What is intended in this spiritual science certainly seeks to build upon the finest impulses that have been given in the West, but it aims to be a further development!

[ 41 ] To conclude, I ask you to consider the East. Certainly, in ancient times, when spiritual development was at an extraordinarily high level, the East held the belief in repeated earthly lives. This belief in repeated earthly lives was certainly derived from a certain stage of human inner development. And from a certain point of view, there can be no deeper exploration of the connection between the individual human soul and the universe than, for example, the Bhagavad Gita. But we have different tasks. And take the task inaugurated by Lessing in his *The Education of the Human Race*, in which the idea of repeated earthly lives reappears in the West. How vividly it springs forth from Lessing’s thinking! Certainly, he, too, recalls that it was a doctrine held by primitive peoples, but he considers the successive epochs of human development, he observes how a later epoch of human development has emerged from the earlier one, and he attempts to discern how this process would always be cut short were it not for the human soul itself, which carries over from epoch A to epoch B, to epoch C, the powers it has acquired. Think of it this way: if we lived as human souls in the earliest antiquity of the Earth, and then again and again thereafter, then it is we ourselves who carry over from earlier times into the present what is spun as threads that can be carried through the entire course of historical development. Then it is human beings themselves who create this epoch. From this historical perspective—that history gains meaning when human beings return again and again, for it is human beings who carry the impulses from one epoch into the next—from this broad historical view, not from the individual human soul as in the East, but from a historical overview of human development, the idea of repeated earthly lives emerges in Lessing’s thought.

[ 42 ] Historical thinking, history—in the highest sense—that is the task of the West. But then we must be able to understand it at every moment. History—and history does indeed come to meet us when individual facts present themselves to us, for example, in our understanding of the various stages of life—it is history, after all, when here stands the child, here the man, and here the old man. What is historical can also exist side by side, but it can only be grasped in the sense of history by knowing how the elderly man was once a child, and how he was once a man, and how that which lives in succession also stands side by side. Eastern, Western, and Central Europe may indeed exist side by side, but they can only be understood if we can also conceive of them in a historical sense as a sequence—but then in the proper sense.

[ 43 ] These are tasks that each of us is called upon to undertake, and we will find satisfaction for our souls in the living connection with the world around us as we broaden our horizons to include such things.