The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Humanity and the World

[ 1 ] Today we want to consider some aspects of what I would like to call the relationship that can develop between the individual human soul and what we mean by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Today, wherever one hears about this spiritual science, people often do not yet grasp sufficiently how different this relationship between the human soul and spiritual science is supposed to be from the relationship of any other kind of knowledge or insight to the human soul. Spiritual science, as it is understood here, is indeed of such a nature that it speaks to a completely different aspect of the human soul than any other kind of knowledge. Through any other form of knowledge, one learns about this or that; one gains insight into one thing or another in the world; one then knows more than one knew before. Spiritual science does not relate to the human soul in such a way that it merely conveys something that one subsequently knows. Spiritual science appeals to much deeper impulses of the human soul than mere knowledge or mere thinking. Spiritual science touches—or at least seeks to touch—the deepest essence within us, that which, coming from the spiritual worlds, enters our human earthly being at birth and which then leaves this human earthly being at death to pass over into the spiritual worlds for other tasks. One will only be able to grasp spiritual science in its full significance for the human soul when one also fully appreciates, on an emotional level, its true relationship to the external world and to human life.

[ 2 ] One does not view the human being in its entirety unless one realizes: that which lives within me as a human being—that which takes shape within me as a human being through my having taken on a physical body at birth, that which accompanies me throughout my life as I am at first, as a child, inexperienced and clumsy, then become increasingly experienced and skilled—that which unfolds within me as destiny, everything that is present in my body and in my life— is actually the transformation of a spiritual-soul being that lived in the spiritual-soul realm before the human being was conceived or born. And it is to this spiritual-soul being, which dwells within the body, that what is meant by spiritual science actually turns.

[ 3 ] One might perhaps believe that it is not necessary for a person to concern themselves with this spiritual-soul nature of theirs, since this spiritual-soul nature will, after all, find its own way in the world. But that is not the case. That which is spiritual and soul-like within us takes hold of us and is embedded in us; it envelops itself, as it were, partly in our body, partly in our abilities, and partly in our destiny. And one could say: Precisely in the present cycle of human development—the one humanity has now entered and in the spirit of which it will continue to develop toward the future—it is precisely in the spirit of this present and this future that human beings, in a sense, redeem that which takes root within them as the spiritual principle of their body, as the spiritual principle of their life course and their abilities, and as the spiritual principle of their destiny. We cannot escape the spirit. Once the spirit lives within us, it remains there. We may choose to ignore it, but it lives within us nonetheless. We can look at the laziest, the most complacent, the most carefree person—who has never in his life made an effort to develop anything that lies within his soul as religious or spiritual inclinations, who has, so to speak, remained completely dull—we can look at him: he is not spiritless. To speak of people as spiritless is simply an incorrect term. There are no spiritless people; nor is it possible to be spiritless in life. For the spiritual and the soul are our endowment as we enter the physical world from the spiritual worlds; they are bestowed upon us in accordance with what we have experienced before descending to this present earthly life. We cannot be spiritless, but we can disregard the spirit within us. We can, so to speak, sin against it; we can refuse to redeem it. We can choose to let it merely slip into us, to remain veiled within us: then it is present within us, but we have not liberated it, we have not redeemed it.

[ 4 ] Even so, we must learn to gradually turn our gaze toward people’s lives. And our view of life will become entirely different—and it must, over time, become entirely different. We may encounter people in life who have become dull and listless. We will not say that they are spiritless, but we will say: They have committed the sin of burying the spirit during their lifetime, of leaving the spirit in its enchantment, of allowing the spirit to slip into the flesh, into the merely external course of life, of letting the spirit degenerate into fate. When we are born, we can become human beings only through the descent of the spiritual-soul individuality from the spiritual-soul worlds. And as the child appears in its initial physical form, it is still an imperfect image of the spiritual individuality. That individuality lies within it. One can ignore it, or one can dispel its enchantment, or gradually draw it out of the flesh, out of the course of life, out of fate. But this is humanity’s task—and will increasingly become humanity’s task in the future—to ensure that the spirit does not degenerate. We cannot kill the spirit, but we can allow it to degenerate by forcing it to take a different path than the one it would take if we were to bring it forth.

[ 5 ] If, from a certain day onward, we strive to learn something about the spiritual worlds, to sense something about the spiritual worlds: we actually draw it from within ourselves. The outside influence is merely a stimulus. We draw it from within ourselves. Whatever you have ever said to yourself about spiritual science, you have drawn it from within yourself, for it lies deep within you, and it wants to come out. And it is destined to come out; it is a transgression against the order of the worlds to keep the spirit confined within mere flesh, for there it strays; there we abandon it to a fate it is not meant to follow. We liberate the spirit by drawing it out of the flesh. And by consciously permeating ourselves with the spirit, we redeem that which seeks redemption from the depths of existence. People will come to realize this more and more. They will increasingly understand that materialism does not consist in simply [other] theory, or that it allows a false theory to emerge, but rather that materialism consists in allowing that which seeks to enter into the knowledge and perception of the human soul to flow down into gross matter and to proliferate there. This is what humanity must decide in the near future: whether it will allow the spirit to proliferate within matter—thereby causing the spirit to become a deformity, thereby leading it into diabolical, devilish, Ahrimanic delusion—or whether humanity will seek to transform the spirit into thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will: then the spirit will live among human beings and achieve what it seeks to achieve by entering into the life of the Earth through human beings. For this is indeed what the spirit desires: to enter into the life of the Earth through human beings. We must not hold it back. And every time we resist getting to know the Spirit, we hold it back: it must, so to speak, plunge down into matter, must make matter worse than it is. For the Spirit has its assigned task: it is to enter into earthly life through the development of the human soul; there it then works for the good. If it is pushed back into matter, then it has a devastating effect on matter; then it has a harmful effect.

[ 6 ] If you take this as the essence of spiritual scientific knowledge, you will see that it has a great deal to do with our human life. Spiritual science does not seek to be a theory like other theories; rather, it seeks precisely to give human beings the opportunity to redeem and liberate the spirit that is enchanted within human nature, so that what the spiritual worlds intend to bring about in the world may come to pass. This, however, is also the reason why many people still very vigorously reject spiritual science today. People readily accept other sciences, for these other sciences flatter human pride and vanity; but they do not claim to be anything real, but merely claim to provide thoughts, to train the intellect, and perhaps also to teach people some useful moral concepts; it does not claim to reach the core of the human being, to have been drawn itself from worlds in which the spirit is assigned a task. I would like to say: It is only through spiritual science that human knowledge becomes truly serious, and people shy away from this. They would also like spiritual science to be merely something that splashes about on the surface of existence. People fear that it touches upon the core and essence of the human being. That is why they do not want to accept spiritual science. If they were to accept spiritual science, then many things in social life and in historical life would have to change in the very near future; people would have to think differently even in their most everyday lives. And that is what matters. That is also why it is the case that one can take up other sciences, yet remain the same person throughout one’s entire life—one merely becomes richer in knowledge. One should not take up spiritual science without it transforming one, and one cannot take it up without it transforming one. It slowly and gradually turns one into a different person. One must have patience, but it transforms one into a different person, for it appeals to entirely different human tasks, and it appeals to something entirely different within human nature.

[ 7 ] Let us take a look at human nature; let us see how multifaceted human life is. Human beings express themselves through three streams: as thinking beings, as feeling beings, and as willing beings. Thinking, feeling, and willing actually encompass everything we are capable of experiencing. Now, all three impulses of the human soul—imagination, feeling, and will—stand in a very specific relationship to what spiritual science actually seeks to address in the human soul, in the core of the human soul.

[ 8 ] Let us first consider imagination. Imagination is certainly shaped by conventional science and by what is increasingly being incorporated from this conventional science into children’s education today—and is therefore so significant for the entire development of human destiny, as well as for practical life, because it is meant to permeate the child; imagination is [not] shaped by conventional science. It has not been long—just a few centuries—since this has been the case in the most pronounced way, which is why people do not notice it today. But it will not be long before what I am saying now can be observed in a truly comprehensive way. One can absorb scientific concepts—such as those currently taught to the youngest among us, the children—throughout one’s entire life without, through the absorption of so many concepts in the sense of modern science, having to change in terms of one’s imagination. One remains the same. Indeed, not only do you remain the same, but it cannot be denied that, through the ordinary scientific concepts that are increasingly becoming part of general education, you actually become more and more limited, even intellectually. The mind, insofar as it is a thinking mind, loses the flexibility to find its way into the circumstances of life, which are far more complicated than what a person can grasp through ordinary knowledge.

[ 9 ] You see, it touches one deeply when one has the opportunity to gain some insight into life today. Anyone who has become completely accustomed to the concepts that the natural sciences can offer today will become increasingly incapable of understanding the vibrant social interconnections and social demands. They are virtually pushed aside by real life. And that is why I have said these past few days, both here and in various other places: Fill parliaments and state assemblies with people who are educated in the spirit of today’s worldview. You will see what these scholars, who think in terms of the natural sciences, decide! This is certainly bound to ruin people completely when it comes to social institutions, for in this realm of social life, thinking based on scientific concepts can only lead to barren results. — This is true in many, many respects. One loses a certain agility of mind through this purely intellectual knowledge. That changes as soon as one engages with the concepts of spiritual science. Try to make this clear to yourself: how differently you must attune your mind if you wish to grasp what is offered in the humanities, and if you wish to grasp what is offered in the outer world today in the name of education. Certainly, the humanities encounter so much resistance because they require greater mental agility and fluidity to engage with them. People can navigate with extraordinary ease through what is offered today in popular educational literature—or even its offshoots, which flow through the channels into journalism, where people then absorb their education from their Sunday papers. And when they even attend today’s lectures, where what is presented to them—so that they do not have to think at all—is shoved right into their eyes and mouths through all manner of slides, so that they themselves do not have to think, do not have to set the mind in motion, they find in all of this nothing that frees the mind to think and imagine. They lose their open-mindedness. The mind becomes narrow-minded and limited. Our intellectual education is the path to spiritual narrowness. Certainly, our intellectual education has made tremendous progress in the fields of natural science and technology, but it is the path to narrowness; it constricts thinking and imagination. And one must appeal to something entirely different in the imagination if one wishes to understand spiritual science. Consequently, when people approach spiritual science today, they already fear the very first step! After reading just a few pages, some say: “I’m getting lost here; I can’t get any further; this is veering into fantasy!” — It doesn’t go into the realm of fantasy at all; rather, the person in question has simply lost the ability to set their thoughts truly free, to immerse themselves in reality with their thoughts, when those thoughts are not led by the nose by the external sensory world.

[ 10 ] This is one thing: that spiritual science appeals to that power within human nature which frees us from our limitations, enabling our thinking and our imagination to comprehend not just a little, but a great deal. I was truly very serious when I said in a public lecture in Stuttgart a few days ago: It makes no difference to the spiritual researcher whether someone is a materialist or a spiritualist; that is not what matters—it is irrelevant. What matters is developing sufficient spiritual power to move forward correctly. Whoever possesses this power—this spiritual power—may well be a materialist; he will find the spirit in matter and its processes, provided he is consistent. And the spiritualist, too, does not stop at saying, “Spirit, spirit, spirit…!” but rather delves into material life, into practical life as well, allowing his thinking to bear fruit even in the most practical of actions. Versatility—as today’s life demands it, and the life of the future will demand it even more—is what first and foremost comes to people through spiritual science. And this is what humanity, as it works toward the future, needs. Anyone who understands life today and looks at the catastrophic events surrounding us knows that one of the deeper causes of today’s catastrophe is that people have become one-sided, despite all their advanced scientific education; they lack the ability to approach things from multiple perspectives. They lack the mental agility to immerse themselves in reality. Versatility—that is what spiritual science brings to the imagination.

[ 11 ] Spiritual science also brings something to our sense of feeling. For whoever wishes to think in the way that spiritual science requires—who must accustom themselves to this far more dynamic world—unleashes something that otherwise lives only [hidden] within the human being, so that it unfolds from within the person. The rhythm of the world lives within our feelings, just as we brought them with us at birth. More than one might think, the entire rhythm of the world lives within us. This can even be demonstrated numerically, yet very few people know anything about these mysteries of existence. Do not hesitate to join me in these reflections on how the entire rhythm of the world lives within our own organism, in what takes place within us. You know: the sunrise shifts a little further each year. If we go back to ancient times, the so-called vernal equinox was in Taurus; then it moved into Aries, but shifted further within Aries each year; now it is in Pisces. The sun does not rise at the same point every year on March 21; in doing so, it completes its entire orbital path. And after approximately 25,920 years, the sun completes a full cycle, seemingly naturally, tracing the entire ellipse. If it rises today at a specific point in Pisces, it will return to that same point in 25,920 years. The curious thing is this: If you consider these approximately 25,920 years to be the great cosmic year, as the ancient Greeks did, and you now seek to determine a single day within this cosmic year, you must divide by 365. What, then, is a day of this great cosmic year? It is approximately 70 to 71 years. That is, on average, a human lifetime, assuming a person lives to old age. If you think of human life, as it is lived here on Earth, as one day, and take the entire Platonic year, that is 365 times as long. That is how long it takes the sun to complete one orbit around the world: 365 days, of which a person experiences one in a single earthly lifetime. It is a beautiful rhythm, but this rhythm extends much further. Consider that we take about 18 breaths in a minute. These 18 breaths, multiplied by 60, give the number of breaths in an hour; this, multiplied by 24, gives the number of breaths in a day and a night. If you calculate 18 times 60 times 24, you get: 25,920. That means you take as many breaths in a day as it takes the sun [in Earth years] to complete its own year. The same rhythm that exists externally in the sun’s course is present internally in your breathing. And again, the remarkable thing is this: you get through a day by breathing 25,920 times in a single day. Consider a day in such a way that you treat it as a single breath: in a certain sense, a day is a breath, for in the morning our physical body and our etheric body inhale our I and the astral body, and in the evening, as we fall asleep, we exhale our I and the astral body; this is an inhalation and an exhalation. How often do we do this in a solar day—in about 70 to 71 years? We perform this breathing—that is, life—in a single day; calculate it—almost exactly 25,920 times. That is, in fact, how many days we live in 71 years. The single breath thus stands in the same relationship to the breaths of the entire twenty-four-hour day as the advance of the vernal equinox in one year does to the Sun’s advance over 25,920 years. A single human life on Earth, in relation to the great solar year of 25,920, is like a day; one day of our life—a twenty-four-hour day—occurs just as many times in our 71-year lifespan as one year does in the sun’s orbit. Just imagine what this actually means—that we are so deeply embedded in the wondrous rhythm of the sun-drenched cosmos that our life, insofar as it is inner human life, expresses—purely mathematically—the great music of the spheres of the cosmos!

[ 12 ] When a person begins to immerse themselves emotionally in these things, they first perceive themselves as a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm. Only then do they sense how this entire vast, infinite world of God has created its image within their human nature. But this is precisely something to be sensed, to be felt. This sensing, this feeling, this sense of being part of the universe, this sense of being part of the entire spiritual realm of the world—this is something that ultimately comes to us through spiritual science! We open ourselves up to the world, whereas otherwise we shut ourselves off within our narrowly defined “I.” We are an image of God, but we are otherwise unaware of it; we begin to feel ourselves as the image of God’s world, as the microcosm within the macrocosm. We learn to recognize ourselves through feeling. This happens bit by bit, slowly. I would like to say: Just as we pass through this slow succession of days throughout our lives, so does the feeling cultivated through spiritual science bring forth this sense of the world within us. But human beings must acquire this sense of the world. For this sense of the world will in turn inspire them to undertake the great tasks that humanity faces in the future. As strange as it may sound today: Not fifty years will pass before people will no longer be able to build factories or cultivate fields according to the demands that will be placed upon humanity if they do not possess this sense! This catastrophe in which we currently find ourselves is merely an expression of the dead end into which humanity has strayed. The world has already moved on, but people have not yet progressed far enough with their thoughts and feelings; therefore, their thoughts and feelings are insufficient to truly penetrate this world and bring humanity’s work into harmonious alignment. Humanity will be doomed to develop ever-increasing disharmony in social life and to sow ever more seeds of war across the world if it does not find its way into harmony with the cosmos in its feelings, so as to carry this harmony into everything it does, even the most mundane of daily activities. Spiritual science is therefore intrinsically linked to what must directly intervene in the course of the most advanced civilization; otherwise, humanity will not be able to escape this dead end. It will not be possible to maintain factories or schools in the future unless concepts are developed based on the great tasks of the universe. These were already tasks today, but people have not taken them into account; that is why this catastrophe has come about. The deeper causes already lie in what has just been said. These signs from God, which manifest themselves in these catastrophic events, must be taken into account by humanity. People must learn to enter into a conscious relationship with the cosmos, because there is no other way forward.

[ 13 ] Let me give you an example that many today will still consider foolish, and that some will denounce as madness: Great progress has certainly been made—let’s say in the field of chemistry—but it has been made without the kind of sense of the world that I have just described. In the future, we will have to develop this sense of the universe: the laboratory bench will have to become an altar. The service to nature that we cultivate—even in a chemical experiment—will have to be conscious of the fact that the great law of the universe operates through the laboratory bench whenever we dissolve one substance in another to obtain a precipitate or the like. We will have to feel ourselves to be within the entire universe; then we will set to work differently, and then we will discover things quite different from what people have discovered today—things that are great but will not be able to bear the right fruit, because they are discovered without reverence, without the feeling that is permeated by the harmony of the universe. How many people have abstracted what Pythagoras called “sphere music”! Here you have a sense of sphere music in the experience of the rhythm that flows through the cosmos. One should not imagine anything abstract by this, but rather something that enters into the living feeling (see note).

[ 14 ] Do you know what would happen if this open-heartedness of the soul did not take hold in our feelings? We have just said: flexibility of thought, versatility of thought and imagination—that is what takes hold in thinking and in imagination. For feeling, what must arise is open-heartedness, a sense of openness toward the world. The opposite—you can already see it approaching if you look at the world with just a little courage—is philistinism. What, then, has the great culture of modern times—which many materialistic thinkers consider “blessed”—brought to humanity? At the very core of the soul lies philistinism. Philistinism can only be overcome by that openness, that generosity of spirit, which feels itself to be a microcosm within the macrocosm, and which is capable of reverence for all that, as the divine-spiritual, hovers through and pulses through the world. Just as intellectual narrowness in the life of the imagination must be overcome by spiritual science, so too must vulgarity and philistinism be overcome by spiritual science in the realm of feeling.

[ 15 ] And a third aspect presents itself to us when we look at the will. After all, many things have their origin in the will. Only the psychologist, the expert on the soul, sees what is in the making—but it will surely come! Admittedly, people today often believe otherwise, but anyone who is able to discern the deeper course of human development can already see that nothing is as widespread in ordinary human life in the realm of volition—much more so in recent times than in earlier times—as clumsiness. Clumsiness is something that threatens to degenerate into a terrible evil for human development as we look toward the future. I mean, you can already see it quite clearly today: People today are being guided to do this or that in a one-sided way. If they are to set about doing something they haven’t learned the practical steps for, they can’t get the hang of it. How few people today are capable—if I may be permitted to mention such things—of sewing on a pants button when necessary in certain situations. Few people are capable of carrying out anything else that is not directly related to what they have learned in the strictest sense. This is something that must not be allowed to befall humanity. People would allow that which was their spiritual heritage when they descended from the spiritual world into existence through birth to wither away if they became as one-sided as the “blessed” culture often demands. Anyone who views the matter only theoretically fails to see the connections. But whoever truly makes spiritual science a living part of their being is an inner enemy of one-sidedness; for spiritual science evokes a mood in the human soul that also tends toward versatility. You will—if you do not merely take in spiritual science with your head, but if you immerse yourself in it to such an extent that this spiritual science pulsates in your soul like blood in the body—you will certainly also gain a certain versatility in adapting to your surroundings. You will gain the ability to do things that you would otherwise simply not be skilled at doing. Skill in willing develops; the human being becomes adaptable to their surroundings. Of course, you might say—if you wish to say so—that when it comes to the anthroposophists united in this Society, we do not exactly notice that they have become terribly more skilled or that they have become more capable of coping with life. Many say this. I am not the one saying it, but it is said. Yes, this stems from something else. Things have not yet reached the point where the anthroposophical life pulsates in people’s souls the way blood pulsates in the body; rather, the bad habit of taking everything in only through the mind, through the intellect, has been brought in from the outside. For many, spiritual science, too, becomes merely a theory; it becomes just something they think about, but that is not their very being. If you merely think about spiritual science, it makes no difference whether you read a book on spiritual science or a cookbook. In that case, a cookbook might even be more useful. Spiritual science must become so serious that it truly grips the whole human being in the entirety of their soul. Then it flows into the limbs; then the limbs become supple, and the person becomes better equipped for life. What is at stake here, however, is gaining an inner conviction in these matters—not being content with outward conviction, but gaining an inner conviction.

[ 16 ] Anyone who understands the intrinsic value of the spiritual sciences knows that, when embraced with a fresh and vibrant spirit, they are indeed capable of prolonging a person’s physical life as well. Of course, people may come along and say: “Well, here’s someone who only lived to be forty-five, or even twenty-seven!” — Yes, but ask yourself this: How old would the person who lived to be forty-five through spiritual science have become if he hadn’t embraced it in his twenties? Ask yourself that question! External forms of proof do not apply to these inner matters. Statistics and the like have no value when one wishes to take the inner aspect into account. Statistics has great value in external life, but even there it is limited to the external and does not grasp at all what the principle of life is. You can see this quite easily: it is entirely justified that insurance companies are organized according to statistics and arithmetic; they are based on the expected lifespan of a person, and that is how they insure people. But it would never occur to you that you have to die when, according to probability calculations, the year of your death as predicted by the insurance company arrives! So in reality, you do not regard as decisive what is in fact decisive for external life. All the value that statistics and probability calculations hold for external life ceases to have any significance when the value of conviction for the spiritual realm begins. But you will only gain that conviction if you take up spiritual science itself as a living elixir of life. Then it becomes an elixir of life in such a way that the human being fits into the circumstances.

[ 17 ] Then the opposite will happen. I was once extremely saddened—one might say: what a strange person to be saddened by that! —when I was once dining at someone’s home and the host had to use a scale to weigh out exactly how much meat and how much vegetables he was to eat. He had to weigh out every single dish! Just imagine the loss of instinctive certainty that would befall humanity if everyone wanted to weigh out their rice and cabbage at every meal. This loss of instinct would stem from purely intellectual science, for it can only statistically demonstrate the external aspects. But the point is not that we lose our instinct—and through intellectual education we do lose it—but that we spiritualize it; that we become as certain as instinct otherwise is, but in a spiritual sense.

[ 18 ] This is what I must characterize as particularly significant, taking the will into account. Spiritual science creeps into the will, preparing it so that the human being becomes attuned to the environment without even noticing how he is actually growing into what is in his surroundings. As he grows together with the spirit, he grows into the environment.

[ 19 ] You see, one must learn to experience the spirit. But this is achieved through spiritual science. And as we look to the future, humanity will find it increasingly necessary to experience the spirit.

[ 20 ] For how does a person experience what is given to them through conception or birth? Imagine this: A cannon is fired some distance away from you. You hear the bang. You see the flash a little earlier. But now imagine that the situation were this: You were standing next to the cannon, and due to some event, you were suddenly propelled forward at the same speed as sound. You would be flying through the air with the sound, just as fast as sound travels: then you would not hear the sound; at the very moment you cease to hear the sound is the moment you continue moving at the speed of sound. That is why human beings do not perceive the spirit—because from birth to death they move at the same speed as the spirit operates. The moment you take in spiritual scientific truths, you shift into a different speed than that of the body. That is why you begin to perceive the world in a different light. Just as you perceive sound because you are not moving at the same speed, so you perceive the spirit in the course of life by shifting to a different pace and establishing inner peace, as you can read in my book How Does One Gain Insights into the Higher Worlds?. Do not live in step with the body, but establish a different pace! But this is something that humanity must learn to do—something of immense importance.

[ 21 ] People today don’t give any thought to what life was actually like in earlier times. History is, after all, really a kind of “fable convenue,” but that’s not what we’re concerned with today. People were educated differently in earlier times. In the education of the past, much more consideration was given to the life of the soul. This purely intellectual life has actually only emerged in the last four to five centuries. Yet this fails to take into account that human beings are multifaceted beings. The human intellect is highly capable of development; it can evolve, but unfortunately it is not capable of development throughout the entire human lifespan, and especially not in our current epoch. It is bound to the human head, and the head remains capable of development only up to the age of twenty-eight at most. Human beings need to spend three times as long on Earth as the period during which their head is capable of development. Certainly, we are intellectually capable of development in our youth, but we remain so only until about the age of twenty-eight. The rest of our organism remains capable of development throughout the rest of our lives; it also demands something from us throughout our entire lives. What people are given today is merely intellectual knowledge; it is not knowledge of the heart. I call “knowledge of the heart” that which speaks to the whole organism, and “intellectual knowledge” that which is purely intellectual and speaks only to the head. Now, the head must be in a constant interplay with the heart—morally and spiritually as well. This cannot happen today because we give our children so little for the heart—for the rest of the organism, so to speak—and focus only on the head. A person reaches the age of thirty-five. By then, they have at most intellectual knowledge; at best, they retain a memory of the intellectual knowledge they have absorbed. They recall, purely intellectually, what they have acquired. But ask yourself whether today’s education is capable of achieving this: that later in life, one does not merely recall by memory what one has learned, but that one is lovingly transported back, through feeling, to what one absorbed in one’s youth; that one truly still possesses something of what was taught to one then, so that one can refresh it anew. But this must become the ideal of spiritual science in education—so that one does not merely recall the past. Well, today people don’t even do that. They take their exams and then forget what they’ve learned. But let’s suppose people do remember: Is what they experienced in school really a paradise to which they would gladly return? Transport yourself back in such a way that you say: As I think back, the dawn of life shines upon me, and now that I have grown older, this is transformed within me into something new through the process of aging; it has become so much a part of me that I can transform it—I do not merely remember it, I transform it, and it becomes new to me.

[ 22 ] The inner life of human beings will become vibrant when the principles of spiritual science renew our entire educational system and our entire spiritual culture. And the effects of premature aging among humanity will then become increasingly rare. Anyone who follows the development of humanity knows this: Before the 15th century, the oldest people were not as old as the youngest people are today. Senility is increasing at an alarming rate. This senility can only be countered by fostering precisely this attitude: that in our youth we receive what can be transformed in old age, what can become new to us—not merely something we remember, but something we transform, because we look back on it as if it were a paradise. Spiritual science will also bring this into everyday life as a true elixir of life. School will become something entirely different. School will become a place where one is conscious of the fact that one must care for the whole of a person’s life. For what is offered to the child emerges in a completely different way in old age. Certain things are offered to the child in such a way that, let us say, the child learns to look up to something with admiration and reverence. This reappears in old age. It remains more in the background during middle age, but in old age it emerges, giving us the power to have a positive influence on children. Or as I once said in a public lecture: “Whoever has not learned to fold their hands in childhood cannot bless others in old age.” The inner feeling associated with folding one’s hands reappears within us, as it were transformed, in later life in the ability to bless. Today, if we follow only the current educational system, we have no idea what we are actually giving children—specifically for their later years, from the ages of seven to fourteen and even earlier, and especially beyond the age of fourteen—through what is offered to today’s youth. This is a matter of the utmost gravity, for it lays the foundation for all the megalomania that is instilled in today’s youth, for all the conceit and prejudice, as if one could somehow already have a “point of view”! You hear it today from the youngest people: “But that’s not my point of view.” — Everyone has a point of view. Of course, it’s not possible to have a point of view at the age of twenty. This awareness is precisely what is not being fostered today.

[ 23 ] All of these are things that can be summed up by saying: What lives within the human being will in turn be brought back into contact with reality. Reality is placed in a healthy relationship with the human soul. This is what the ideal of spiritual science must become with regard to the relationship of the human soul to reality. It is precisely on the grand scale of life that people today speak without any connection to reality. Anyone who understands what kind of relationship to reality must live within the human soul can sometimes endure torment simply because of the form that contemporary thinking takes. When a teacher thinks this way, the child unconsciously endures this torment. An example: A very famous professor of literature gave an inaugural lecture that I attended. He began: “We can ask this, we can ask that.”—He posed a series of questions, all of which were to be answered over the course of the semester; then he said: “Gentlemen! I have led you into a forest of question marks.”—I had to imagine this forest made up entirely of question marks! Just think what it means to visualize—to truly imagine—a person standing before a forest of question marks without first painting that image in one’s mind! This is something that is often underestimated. What we must strive for is a vibrant relationship with reality.

[ 24 ] Recently, a statesman said: “Our relationship with the neighboring monarchy is the point that must become the political direction for our entire future life.” — So imagine this: the relationship between one country and another is a point, and that point becomes the direction. One cannot think in a more unreal way! But imagine what kind of configuration the entire inner life must have, one so far removed from reality, to concoct such empty conceptual shells! Yet such an inner life is just as far removed from external social life; it does not immerse itself in social life. What it conceives does not become reality. In spiritual science, it is impossible to think as unrealistically as the empty conceptual shells to which we have gradually arrived in recent times. The present age is so conceited that it imagines itself to have become particularly practical. But it has merely become pedantic, alienated from life. And a future age will characterize our age by the fact that, strangely enough, the “schoolmaster of the world” made a profound impression on so many people: Woodrow Wilson, whose thinking is not even tenuously connected to reality, but whose every word corresponds to unreality. Yet they are admired by those who are only slightly hindered by the fact that they are at war with him. But even among the members of the Central Powers, there are many today who admire Woodrow Wilson! In the future, it will be particularly difficult to comprehend how political programs, divorced from reality, could be devised in which the wild ideas of world treaties and peace treaties among nations and so on are laid down. If only it had been that easy to achieve! The abstract thinkers since the Stoics have, after all, been pondering these very things! What emerges today as “Wilsonian ideas”: for those who understand these matters, this has existed ever since humans first appeared. Sound reasoning naturally concludes: Since this has always existed and could never be realized, it is unsound! Contemporary thinking has become alienated from reality; that is why it takes such pleasure in such unrealistic notions.

[ 25 ] These things are indeed connected to the deepest principles and impulses of life. And the fact that there is so much confusion today, so much chaos, stems from the fact that humanity has arrived at a way of thinking which, although it believes it masters the practical aspects of life, is in fact quite far removed from true reality. A union with true reality through energetic thinking—which develops such powerful forces that it can penetrate reality—is the ideal that must come to humanity from spiritual science. To achieve this, however, we must begin with the small things. We must develop in the child a sense not for the abstract concept, but for the real, the imaginable; we ourselves must first have a connection to it. Anyone who wants to teach the child the idea of immortality through the image of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, but who does not believe in this immortality themselves, teaches the child nothing. But anyone who stands on the ground of spiritual science knows that the butterfly is the true image of immortality, created by the world spirit. We ourselves believe in this image, and we choose nothing other than what we ourselves believe in, because we know it—or strive to know it. In this way, we seek to immerse ourselves in reality and to overcome the egoism that still seeks something abstract in thought. We seek to penetrate the spirit of reality, and through this we will find the paths that are necessary for modern humanity—paths that are all the more necessary because they have been most neglected by those who call themselves practical people. They are not the practical ones, but rather those who have become impoverished, and who, through brutality, impose their impoverishment on humanity. Help in this difficult situation will come only if humanity seeks the spirit and, through the spirit, reality.

[ 26 ] This is what I wanted to speak to you about today—something we must internalize as a feeling regarding the relationship of the human soul to the world, as it emerges as the soul’s fundamental mood through spiritual science. And more important than the individual truths of spiritual science is this fundamental attitude with which we then go through life once it has been kindled within us by spiritual science.