The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Humanity's Rebellion Against the Spirit

[ 1 ] We have, after all, often addressed the question that must be of interest to us all: Why is it, in fact, that relatively few people today are able to gain access to a spiritual understanding of the order of the worlds? This question can be answered from a wide variety of perspectives. Today we want to consider one perspective that can help us grasp certain ideas which may be particularly important for us to take to heart at this very moment.

[ 2 ] When we consider the human being’s relationship to the spiritual world, we are naturally interested in various aspects of this field. One aspect that interests us most of all is the relationship that a human being can have with those human souls who, from his circle—from the circle with which he is karmically connected—have passed through the gates of death and thus already dwell in the spiritual realm. The relationship to the so-called dead will always be of the utmost interest when it comes to the human being’s relationship to the spiritual world. It is precisely in this relationship that it becomes particularly evident how fundamentally different the spiritual world’s perspective on human beings is from that of the physical-sensory world. As I have often mentioned: When a person confronts the spiritual world, it very often happens that they must make a radical break with the ideas they have formed about physical existence; a radical break, because the things and processes of the spiritual world often have to be grasped through concepts that are the exact opposites of those used for the physical world. But one must not believe that one can gain an understanding of the spiritual world simply by imagining that one need only turn the physical world upside down, reversing everything. That is not the case. Each individual aspect must be experienced and examined separately. But precisely when it comes to the relationship between human beings and the so-called dead, the situation—at least at first glance—is indeed such that we must adopt concepts that are opposite to the ordinary, physical ones.

[ 3 ] At first, the spiritual researcher can only describe how things are. What he has to say in particular about the relationship to the so-called dead is, in reality, present to a greater or lesser extent in every human being; it simply remains in the subconscious if the person is not a spiritual researcher. So I will describe things that are present in all of you. I will speak of relationships with the so-called dead in which you are all involved. However, this involvement is initially in the unconscious. Spiritual science has the task of bringing these things into consciousness.

[ 4 ] Suppose that a person to whom the spiritual world has revealed itself is facing a specific deceased person. It becomes clear that when we address the deceased in speech, we naturally do not do so with physical words, but in thought. When we turn to the deceased through thought-speech, if the relationship with the deceased is a real, genuine one, a certain feeling arises: what we ourselves ask of the deceased, or what we communicate to the deceased, comes from them. — Isn’t it true that in physical life we are accustomed to imagining things this way: When we ask someone something or tell them something, we hear ourselves speaking; we direct the words toward them. It is exactly the opposite when we enter into a relationship with the deceased. There, when we want to communicate something to them and the relationship is to be a genuine one, we have the feeling that we ourselves are inwardly at peace. For if what we have to ask or communicate truly reaches them, then it seems to us, as we perceive it, as though the words—that is, the thoughts—were coming from them to us. There they are speaking to us. And what they say to us rises up from the depths of our own soul as an answer or a message. The relationship I have just described—which is the exact opposite of the relationship we have with a person on the physical plane—is, of course, something that people do not easily notice in ordinary life, precisely because it is so different from what they are accustomed to. If it were not so extraordinarily difficult for people to get used to the unfamiliar, many more people would be able to speak of their relationship with the dead.

[ 5 ] Consider a specific case. You are, after all, always in a relationship with certain deceased individuals who are karmically connected to you. If you wish to make this relationship particularly intimate, particularly real, then you would do well to keep one important rule in mind for the time being: namely, that abstract thoughts and abstract ideas have the least significance for the spiritual world. Anything that remains abstract does not reach into the spiritual world. So if you think of the deceased only in the abstract—let’s say—or if you—to put it another way—love the deceased in an abstract sense, not much gets through. On the other hand, if you anchor this relationship firmly in the concrete, then it does get through. What I mean is this: You recall, for example, a specific situation in which you were with the deceased while he was still alive. You visualize it very precisely and concretely: this is how he stood or sat across from you, this is how you went for a walk with him. You picture him in very concrete situations, imagine what it was like, what he said, what you said to him, picture the tone of his voice, and try—which is, of course, the hardest part—to bring the feelings you had for him back to life in your soul. You draw on specific experiences you shared with him. And then, starting from there, you try—let’s say—to say something to the deceased that you would have said in a particular situation had he still been alive—what you want to ask him, what you want to tell him. And you do this as if he were still there, again in very concrete terms. That reaches across. At the moment when you feel: “Now I am communicating something to the deceased”—or: “Now I am asking the deceased something”—the connection will not, of course, be established immediately. One must allow for time in this regard. Time is truly something that has a completely different significance for spiritual life than it does here in physical existence.

[ 6 ] Even if you are not a spiritual researcher yourself, you can still—and this is a reality—establish a connection with the deceased through what I have just described. But, in a sense, time itself must run its course so that what you wish to send to the deceased actually reaches them. For the most part, for those who are not consciously initiated—who do not consciously have a relationship with the spiritual world—there is one moment that is particularly important for establishing this connection with the deceased: the moment of falling asleep. The moment of transition from wakefulness to sleep is also the moment that, in most cases, carries to the deceased whatever you have directed toward them during the course of the day, as I have described. The path that leads you yourself into the spiritual world as you fall asleep also carries what you have directed toward the deceased into the realm of the deceased. Therefore, you must be careful in interpreting dreams. Dreams are very often merely reminiscences, memories of daily life, but they need not be so; they can certainly be reflections of reality. And in particular—not always, but very often—those dreams in which the dead appear do in fact stem from a connection with actual deceased persons. But people usually believe that what appears to them in a dream, what the deceased communicates to them, is as immediately real as it appears in the dream. That is not the case; rather, what you intended to communicate to the deceased as you fell asleep is received by the deceased, and what appears in the dream is how the deceased receives it. So precisely when the deceased communicates something to you in a dream, it is meant to indicate to you that you were able to communicate something to them. There you have what I have described: Much sooner than you might think—rather than the deceased appearing to you in a dream and telling you something—you can say: “I dreamed of the deceased, so what I said to the deceased has truly reached him; by my dreaming of him, he is showing me that what I wanted to convey to him has reached him.”

[ 7 ] The moment of waking is, in turn, of particular importance for the return of a message from the deceased—let’s say a reply or something similar. What the deceased has to communicate to us, the living—as we say—is conveyed from the spiritual realms at the moment of waking. And then it rises up from the depths of one’s own soul. It is characteristic of human beings that they do not like to pay attention to what rises up from the depths of their own soul. In our time, people have very little sense of paying attention to what rises up from the depths of the soul. People prefer to let themselves be influenced only by the outside world; they want to take in only what belongs to the outside world; they would most like to numb themselves to what rises from the depths of the soul. But when someone actually becomes aware that something is rising from the depths of the soul—a thought, an idea—they regard it as their own inspiration. That satisfies their vanity more. We all regard things that rise up from the depths in this way as our own inspiration. They may be that, but most of the time they are not. Most often, the things that rise up from our soul as inspiration are the answers given to us by the dead. For the dead certainly live among us. So what seems to speak from within you is actually what the dead are saying. It is only important that we interpret the experience in the right way. I have often mentioned what can be said in detail regarding communication with the dead: reading aloud and so on. The more vividly, the more emotionally, and the more vividly one lives these things, the more meaningful the connection with the dead will become.

[ 8 ] It is not without significance that we bring precisely these circumstances clearly to mind. For our time has a very great need to allow the truths that relate specifically to such matters as I have just described to come closer to us. We live in an age in which, for many long ages now, the human organism has actually been in decline. We are all already much more spiritual, much wiser, than is apparent—due to the decline of our physical bodies. The Greek bodies were still better able to reflect what the human being was in spirit. In fact, ever since the middle of the Atlantean epoch, the human being has been in decline with regard to the body, and in our age it has become particularly evident that the body can no longer reflect what the human being actually is in spirit. Thus it happens with extraordinary frequency in our age that when we die—I would like to put it this way—we are not yet finished with our development. If only people could truly grasp this! We develop throughout our entire lives, but we can only become consciously aware of this development to the extent that the body reflects it. At times, when we die, we are already so wise as human beings—only our body, which is in the process of decay, is unable to bring these things to light for us—that we could still render very important services to the Earth; we could render great services not only to the spiritual realm but also to the Earth through our insights, if they could be applied. These services could then be put to use if people, as I have indicated, were to establish a relationship with the dead. The dead still wish to influence physical life, but they can do so only indirectly through human souls, when human souls open themselves to them in the appropriate way.

[ 9 ] I believe I have already mentioned here that, on this very point, I can indeed speak from personal experience: I have never believed that I am merely processing, from a literary-historical or historical perspective, those aspects of worldview that tie in with Goethe; rather, I have always been of the opinion that I am dealing not only with the Goethe of 1832, but with the Goethe of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: with the living Goethe. With the Goethe who, in 1832, carried much out of the physical world—things that can still have an effect on us, if only we are willing to perceive them. Therefore, what I have written has not merely been literary-historical research, but a communication of what he has told me. Our so-called contemporary culture, however, our modern education, works radically against what I have just explained.

[ 10 ] It is actually essential that the humanities always connect with life and be made fruitful for life. In our time, I would say, there is a prevailing ideal that runs completely counter to what I have just described as a characteristic of our time. This ideal can be characterized something like this: People are striving more and more to believe as little as possible in life. They really only believe in life up until their twenties. This is already evident in the practical goals people set for themselves. Even when we look at Greece, we see that people there believed that as they grew older, they were wiser than when they were young. An older person may have a better understanding of state and municipal institutions than a young person. This belief has been completely cast aside, for the ideal of most people today is to reach the age at which one can be elected to municipal or state parliaments as early as possible, because people now believe in life only up to the early twenties. But life actually demands of us precisely that we believe in it as a whole, that we believe in the development of life as a whole. Just think for a moment how our social coexistence would be transformed by moral impulses if we were once again aware that life as a whole allows human beings to develop—how the young would relate to the old if this were deeply rooted in the human soul! Think of what a different kind of consciousness there is when one tells oneself again and again: Right now I am just a young badger of thirty or thirty-five years, but I, too, will grow older one day, and growing older means hope and anticipation for me: something will come to pass as I grow older that cannot come to pass as long as I am young. — Just imagine how much joy and vitality a person lives with when they maintain this awareness throughout their entire life until death, and even before death say to themselves: “Yes, I cannot possibly take in everything that life offers me and reflect it in my consciousness; I will carry something with me through death; then there will come people who believe in the dead and allow the dead to be their advisors. — Just imagine how ridiculous one would be regarded if one were to voice this—which, however, must become a practical principle today—as such. I mean it quite seriously when I say: Our parliaments all over the world would truly come up with wiser ideas than they do today if the dead were consulted, if we were to ask today: What do not only the young badgers of thirty or thirty-five years of age have to say about this? — but rather: What does Goethe, for example, have to say, or what do other dead people who are a hundred and so many years old have to say about this? — This is something that must become an immediate practical reality as we look toward the future.

[ 11 ] Today there are certain—well, let’s call them secret societies—that cultivate all sorts of ancient symbols. They would do better to understand their times and become places where the counsel of the dead is sought. This is so infinitely important! For humanity cannot move forward unless it is imbued with the awareness that the divine-spiritual works in the development of our entire lives; we are not finished by the time we reach our twenties.

[ 12 ] I have already pointed this out to you here: In earlier stages of human development, people experienced spiritual and mental growth throughout their entire lives simply through their physical development. Just as people today only feel their soul-spiritual life accompanying their physical-bodily life during puberty or, at most, into their twenties, so in ancient times people felt their soul-spiritual life to be dependent on their physical-bodily life well into their forties and fifties. But from the age of thirty-five onward, if one remains capable of development, it is precisely the spiritual powers—which a person cannot attain unless they allow them to spring forth through spiritual science—that develop, because the body then begins to decline. In the past, people revered the elderly because they knew that something was revealed in them that could not yet be revealed to the young. I have pointed out that humanity is becoming younger and younger. If we go back to the ancient Indian culture, people there remained capable of further development well into their fifties. In the ancient Persian culture, they remained capable of development into their forties; in the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, into the second half of their thirties; and in the Greco-Latin culture, up to the age of thirty-five. When the Greco-Latin culture came to an end in the 15th century, people were only capable of further development up to the age of twenty-eight; today, that limit is the age of twenty-seven. What kind of person, then, is particularly characteristic of the present day, of this current age of materialistic development? You see, it would be a person who completely refuses to allow his soul to be inspired toward spiritual development, who absorbs only what flows into him from the outside, what the present itself provides.

[ 13 ] Let us imagine, I would say, a figure who is particularly characteristic of the present. It would be a personality who does not go through our intellectual high schools—for there one absorbs the old, there one already stirs the soul—but who absorbs only what comes to people from the outside. A self-made man, a person who shapes himself, who also takes in whatever feelings, sensations, and emotions one experiences in reality today. In other words, someone who, from the age of seven, eight, or nine, grows up with a certain social aversion to the privileged classes, who does not tip his hat to anyone who holds a title, power, or the like, who does not attend a school focused on Greek and Latin, but learns solely through life experience. Who then takes up a profession similar to that of a lawyer—not by studying law, but by gaining practical experience in a law firm and working his way through the process; to whom, by the age of twenty-seven, everything comes—not in an extraordinary way through the repetition of ancient culture, but through what the present can offer him. At the age of twenty-seven, he should be elected to Parliament. Then he steps before his contemporaries, and just as he has developed on his own up to that point, he presents himself to the people, believing in no further development. One can become a minister from within Parliament. Further development is no longer considered good in the eyes of our contemporaries; otherwise, people say one is contradicting oneself, that one said something entirely different before and is now contradicting oneself. Once elected to Parliament, one can no longer say anything else. — Is there such a person in the present day? Do you know of a particularly characteristic person who is the most concentrated embodiment of this present age? That is Lloyd George. Today, one cannot get to the bottom of the peculiarity of certain contemporaries unless one takes these things into account—unless one truly considers the peculiarity of human beings in this way. Lloyd George is a self-made man. Until the age of twenty-seven, he absorbed only what the present offered of its own accord; but because he lacks any inner drive of the soul, it all comes to a halt at the age of twenty-seven. He is then elected to Parliament. Lloyd George is in Parliament, sitting there with his arms crossed, his eyes turned slightly inward toward his temples, speaking aptly on every subject, paying close attention to his opponents’ weaknesses. Then came the Campbell-Bannerman ministry. One wonders: What are we to do with Lloyd George? He criticizes everything the cabinet does! — What do we do? Well, we bring him into the cabinet; once inside, he can offer less opposition than from the outside. He becomes a minister. And it turns out that in no time at all he finds himself in this situation as well, for he is truly a representative of our time. Now, of course, people ask themselves: Which portfolio should we give Lloyd George? — The point was, after all, that he was a capable man. So they agreed to give him what he didn’t understand: the portfolio of public works and public construction. But lo and behold: within three months, he had gotten the hang of it and achieved great things as minister precisely in this field, which he had previously known nothing about.

[ 14 ] This is indeed a characteristic figure of our time. There are many such figures in one sense or another. You need only ask: Who are the people who, by the age of twenty-seven—which is, after all, the cut-off age today—have developed to such an extent that they have absorbed what their environment has to offer, then immediately entered public life and ceased to continue their development?

[ 15 ] A figure closer to home is Matthias Erzberger. Study his biography, and you will find the same thing if you approach it in this occultistic way. This is something that emerges in a very peculiar way in the course of history. But looking into the human heart in this somewhat occult way—that is something that must become part of the history of human development. You see how the culture of our time reveals itself when one gets to the bottom of it in this way. Now, of course, the culture of our time demands that we be able to penetrate deeper than is customary today. But this will only be possible if we become aware that the dead have a say in the matter. Naturally, those who are such characteristic representatives of our time will reject this in the most emphatic sense.

[ 16 ] If you wish to study a person in whom you can see a constant striving for further development—this unconscious belief in the enduring reality of the divine-human in the human soul right up until death—then that person is Goethe. In this regard, Goethe is far more characteristic than is generally supposed. Goethe wanted to look back on the era, on the years of his life, in which he absorbed from the external world whatever the external world brought him, but he wanted to continue his development. In Poetry and Truth, he described his youth. It breaks off with his arrival in Weimar. Born in 1749, he came to Weimar in 1775; thus, he continues the reflection on his life—as he wishes to portray it—roughly up to the age of twenty-six, concluding before the age of twenty-seven, because he unconsciously knows that a particularly significant moment lies ahead. At the age of thirty-five, a person experiences a moment that most people today sleep through. It is the moment when life, which has been sprouting and rising, transitions into a phase of decline with regard to the body. But it is precisely then that the spirit is driven to the ability to reveal itself, and to reveal itself more and more.

[ 17 ] The thirty-fifth year of life is a significant moment in a person’s life. It is, in fact, the point at which a person truly gives birth to their soul within their physical life. Ask yourself how this manifests itself in someone like Goethe, who remained capable of development throughout his entire life. In 1786—that is, after his thirty-fifth year, precisely during the crucial period from thirty-five to forty-two—Goethe traveled to Italy. If you delve more deeply into Goethe’s biography, you will see what a turning point this represents in his life. In an essay—which is now to be published in a small book titled Goethe’s Spirit as Revealed Through His “Faust” and through the “Fairy Tale of the Snake and the Lily”—I have demonstrated how Goethe actually viewed his own Faust. I have at least touched upon this with a few hints. Precisely in this regard, what has otherwise been written tends to confuse rather than enlighten. It is not particularly significant—as people usually smugly point out—that Faust says right at the beginning:

Now, alas, I have studied philosophy,
law, and medicine,
and, alas! theology as well
with the utmost diligence.
Here I stand, poor fool that I am
and am just as wise as before ...

[ 18 ] People smugly point out: “He went through all four faculties and never got anywhere; he doubts all knowledge.” — Actors, in particular, often feel that they must despise the four faculties. But that is not at all the defining characteristic; it is not the specifically Goethean element that matters—it is merely a prelude. Many people said that in Goethe’s time. Where the Goethean element enters Faust, things change. That is where Faust takes the book of Nostradamus in his hands and first beholds the sign of the macrocosm. This symbol, after all, depicts how the human being places himself within the entire macrocosm. How his spirit is connected to the spirit of the world, his soul to the soul of the world, and his physical being to the physical being of the world—this is portrayed in the grand image of the interflowing “world buckets”—planets and suns, with the hierarchies lying behind them. But Faust turns away, saying: “What a spectacle! But alas, only a spectacle!” He sees images, a spectacle. Why? Because at that very moment, in a single instant, he wishes to grasp the mystery of the world. But that is possible only over the course of a whole human life, as long as the physical world exists—the entire course of development. Knowledge can, in general, only provide images. So he turns to the sign of the microcosm. There he does not have the spirit of the macrocosm, but only the spirit of the Earth. The spirit of the Earth provides what history encompasses—the human condition on Earth.

Amidst the tides of life, in the storm of deeds
I surge back and forth,
I sway to and fro!

[ 19 ] Faust seeks self-knowledge through the Earth Spirit, but rejects knowledge of the world. That is the Goethean; that is where the Goethean begins. What comes before is a prelude. In his youth, Goethe was indeed such that he could go no further than to say: Everything that relates to the macrocosm gives me only images; we cannot penetrate it. The mystery of life can be solved only from within. — But this Earth Spirit—that is, the spirit of self-knowledge—told him:

You are like the spirit you comprehend!
Not me!

[ 20 ] Then Faust collapses. What kind of spirit does he resemble? You see, here in Faust you finally have the opportunity to get to know a poet who doesn’t theorize! There is no theorizing here; instead, you have a poet who portrays things in vivid artistic reality. Follow along: “You resemble the spirit you comprehend! Not me!” There’s a knock at the door: Wagner enters. That is the answer: You resemble Wagner, not me! — We must especially rethink this point in Faust. This must not be portrayed on stage as it usually is: with Faust merely as the idealistic man who wants to ascend to the heights of the spirit, who is absolutely right, and then Wagner limps along behind him. If I were to portray it, I would do so in such a way that Wagner wears Faust’s mask, that both stand in the same form, because Faust is to be made to realize: Look at your own image—you are no different! — And what Wagner says there is a coherence in and of itself; what Faust says is, in fact, nothing but the stuff of longing. But the interpreters of Faust—and people in general—want to make things as convenient as possible. People also like to quote: “Feeling is everything; a name is mere sound and smoke,” even though Faust coins this phrase for a sixteen-year-old girl. So what is actually adolescent wisdom is always presented as philosophical wisdom. Then Wagner brings Faust face to face with his self-knowledge—as I said, I’ve elaborated on this further in the little book—but Faust has, after all, been touched by the spirit. The Earth Spirit has appeared to him; he has gained access to the spiritual world; he must go further, and must make up for what he has missed up to the age of forty. Faust is forty years old when he appears at the beginning of the poem. Yes, he must also make up for what he has not experienced: the Bible. He engages in a kind of retrospective on the missed opportunities of his youth. Then another form of self-knowledge approaches him: Mephisto. Following the self-knowledge brought about by Wagner comes yet another form of self-knowledge.

[ 21 ] But then something peculiar happened. In the 1790s, specifically in 1797, Schiller became somewhat insistent: Goethe should continue his Faust. In 1797, Goethe was forty-eight years old. Another important milestone. Seven times seven is forty-nine; this is the point at which a person transcends the specific development of the spiritual self and enters into the spirit of life. Schiller pressed him. People have taken the easy way out with their explanation. Minor, who wrote an interesting book about Goethe, suggests: Goethe is overtaken by old age, and is no longer truly capable of poetry. — But just think: if that were true, Faust could never have been written! The life of a person in old age could not be portrayed at all—and Faust was, after all, of advanced age! Goethe is now approaching that age of which the ancient Indians spoke: “Now a person enters the stage of life where he can ascend into the realm of the fathers, gradually rising into the deeper mysteries of spiritual life.” — It is then that Goethe encounters his Mephisto in a remarkable way.

[ 22 ] As you know, when one attempts to understand the forces that oppose humanity, there are two: Ahriman and Lucifer. Goethe conflated these two, lumping them together. He did not realize this earlier, and so Mephisto has become a contradictory figure. You need only look at specific details to see that Mephisto is not a unified figure: Goethe conflated Lucifer and Ahriman. He realized this in 1797, which is why it became so difficult for him to continue Faust. Spiritual science had not yet advanced far enough to divide humanity’s adversary into two adversaries; Goethe stopped at one. One can already discern Goethe’s nature when one considers that Goethe actually should have created two figures, which he instead merged into one. Goethe truly went through an inner struggle because he perceived Mephisto as a figure full of internal contradictions. The fact that Faust was ultimately completed and stands as a great work of poetry is, of course, attributable to Goethe’s great poetic power. But this, in turn, is something that Goethe already found surging within himself from his subconscious. You see, human beings are capable of development; they can feel in their souls, in a very elemental way, what works together with the spirit within us throughout our entire lives—not just into our twenties.

[ 23 ] What you know as the “Prologue in Heaven,” Goethe did not write until 1798. So what happened in Faust? He did not say it outright, but it is there in his soul: he had Faust reach for the book once more, and now he stands face to face with the Spirit! Now it is no longer a play: there the spirits weave in the spheres, and there stands Faust, caught up in the entire struggle between good and evil within the macrocosm. One must not view Faust from beginning to end in such a way that one regards everything as if it were the same; rather, Goethe broke with the perspective of his youth and introduced Faust more and more into the spirit of the macrocosm. — I just wanted to show you how regularly this evolving life of Goethe is structured. Through him, one can demonstrate how the periods of human development extend from seven to seven years all the way to death. In accordance with the meaning and spirit of the present, one must increasingly raise the subconscious into consciousness. Much is said about this subconscious; but it is not viewed in the right way—it is not viewed deeply enough.

[ 24 ] Today there is, of course, something called analytical psychology and psychoanalysis. These approaches attempt, in a sense, to engage with the subconscious mental and spiritual aspects of the human being, but with inadequate means; for the adequate means are those of the spiritual sciences. The textbook example that psychoanalysts cite time and time again demonstrates precisely how people work with inadequate means. Let us consider an example from the realm of the soul, one upon which psychoanalysis itself was actually developed: There is a woman who knows a man. The man is married; she knows him in a way that may have been acceptable to her husband, but not to his wife. Lo and behold, the husband’s wife—for various reasons, among which this very lady may well have been a factor—becomes ill, nervous—people tend to become nervous and neurasthenic these days; there’s no need to be surprised by that. She must go to a spa for several months. She is scheduled to leave one evening, but before that, a dinner party is held—a “souper,” as they say in German—to which the lady, who is well acquainted with the husband and indeed with the entire family, is also invited. The souper goes quite well. Then the lady of the house must go to the train station. The guests gradually disperse, as they say. A group of the guests walks down the street with this lady, who is well acquainted with the host. Well, as sometimes happens late at night, don’t you think, people aren’t walking on the sidewalk anymore, but in the middle of the street. But lo and behold, a horse-drawn carriage—not a car, but a horse-drawn carriage—rounds the corner, and that lady, who is a friend of the host, doesn’t step aside onto the sidewalk like the others, but runs ahead of the horses. The coachman shouts and cracks his whip; but she keeps running ahead of the horses, running and running, until they reach a bridge. Then it dawns on her: she must save herself. It’s a dangerous situation. So she saves herself by jumping into the water. She is pulled out, rescued, and the group carries her into the house she had just come from: into the homeowner’s apartment. She stays there for the night. The others go home again. And something has been achieved, which I do not wish to elaborate on further at this point. The psychoanalyst now studies this case for hidden psychological motives: Perhaps the lady went through something special involving horses in her seventh or eighth year; that resonates from her soul once more, and in that moment she loses consciousness—it arises solely from her fear of horses. —This is how one searches for “hidden psychological realms.” But that is not the truth. The truth is this: There is a subconscious in a person’s soul that can be smarter and more cunning than the conscious mind. This lady was a very respectable woman, but she was in love with the master of the house. Her conscious mind would never have allowed herself to think: “I want to stay in this house”—but the subconscious does. It calculates very precisely: “If I run out in front of the horses and jump into the water, then they’ll bring me back!”—And that’s how it’s achieved. The lady would never admit this to herself in her conscious mind, but in her subconscious, these things are experienced; that’s where it exists. Human beings carry within them this subconscious, which is much wiser and much more astute—for better or for worse—than the conscious mind. — As I said, modern thought is becoming somewhat attentive to this subconscious, but it seeks it with inadequate means. One must be clear that it can only be found through spiritual science using adequate means, if one wishes to demonstrate that alongside the “I” that lives through the body, the eternal-spiritual lives within us—which is not merely an angel and can therefore also be cunning, depending on its karma. From a spiritual-scientific perspective, one must study what this subconscious always is in its manifestation through human beings. The present age must come to realize that truth and reality must be known. Today, the subconscious is knocking at the door of consciousness, and we can no longer cope with life if we ignore this, if we do not also follow with our consciousness the paths that the subconscious takes. Many people do not want this, which is why they do not want to engage with spiritual science.

[ 25 ] On the one hand, there are certain reasons why people are unable to approach spiritual science: they refuse to understand that, when it comes to the dead, things are actually the exact opposite. One must completely re-learn. Whereas in ordinary life we are accustomed to words coming out of our mouths when we say or ask something, in communication with the dead it is the case that what we say comes forth from their soul, and what they say rises up from within us. This is a natural process.

[ 26 ] The other factor is the antipathy that people feel toward the spirit, because they are reluctant to admit to themselves how this spiritual realm knocks at the gate of consciousness. In many cases, one finds this spiritual force knocking at the gate of consciousness. For example, in people whose lives are somewhat abnormal, a loosening of the spiritual-soul aspect within the physical body today allows the subconscious to penetrate more fully into consciousness than in those who have nothing of this loosened nature within themselves. It is by no means suggested that one should strive for this loosening—truly not—but in some people there is a natural loosening, as was the case, for example, with Otto Weininger. He was truly a gifted individual; he had earned his doctorate in the early 1920s, then developed the book Sex and Character from his doctoral dissertation—a work that is thoroughly amateurish and even trivial in many respects, yet remains a curious phenomenon. He then took a trip to Italy, keeping a diary along the way that contains something quite remarkable. Certain insights into the humanities are expressed there almost as caricatures. This loose, spiritual-psychological perspective observes many things, but it caricatures them! His moral outlook is usually somewhat corroded as well. But Weininger was a genius. At the age of twenty-three, he rented a room in the Beethoven House and shot himself there. From this you can see that he was a truly abnormal soul. But I just want to mention this: If you read his last book, you’ll find, among all sorts of other things, a curious passage. There he says: Why doesn’t a person remember their life before birth? Because the soul has degraded itself to such an extent that it wants to submerge itself in unconsciousness regarding its previous life! — I mention this only—and I could give a thousand more examples—to show that there are many people who are very close to spiritual science but cannot find it, because the present age does not want to let people approach spiritual science at all. I mention this as an example because it is quite evident: through a relaxation of the spiritual-soul aspect, Weininger comes to express—as a matter of course—that the human being, as a spiritual-soul entity, unites with the physical-bodily aspect. He expresses this as a matter of course—something that many other people still say today, but only in a very coy manner. Yet this is a fundamental requirement of our time: that people truly summon the courage to draw upon the strength needed to face the spiritual world in its concrete manifestations.

[ 27 ] And it is precisely this concrete manifestation that I wanted to speak to you about in particular: that people allow the dead to have a say; that people’s social life is once again shaped by the fact that they sense the differences between people based on their age groups, but is also transformed somewhat by the fact that people believe in the entirety of their human life. God does not reveal Himself only up to one’s twenties. In the past, He revealed Himself physically; now He must be perceived through spiritual science. But a person must believe in the gifts of the divine-spiritual world. Throughout their entire life, they must have the encouraging, sustaining feeling: When I am fifteen years older, I will offer to the divine-spiritual realm what it can receive differently than before. Think how one can live into the future when one is so full of expectation! How this pours a different soul-spiritual aura over our entire social life! One must know that people will need this aura as they develop toward the future. This is infinitely important. Try to feel how much must change! We live in an age in which so much, so much must change. Above all, it must come to pass that certain things are no longer viewed hypocritically, but are seen as they really are. It does no good to lie to oneself about certain things. And I would like to discuss one such self-deception.

[ 28 ] How many people are there today who say: I do not look up to the various hierarchies—angels, archangels, and so on—but I look up to “my God.” And how many go on to proclaim what a great step forward it is that humanity has brought itself to believe in the one God, in monotheism. But one must ask the question: To whom do people actually turn when they seek to enter into a concrete relationship with the spiritual world, and in doing so speak of “their God”? — Whether one is Catholic or Protestant—whatever one may be—when one speaks of one’s God, one can only speak of what truly enters one’s consciousness. This can only be one of two things: Either it is the one guardian angel whom the person then calls God—who is no higher a God than an angel—and since every person has an angel whose task is to protect them, we find ourselves in a situation of pluralism; or they mean their own ego. But people are deceived by the fact that they use the same name for this—that everyone calls their own particular angel by the same name, “God.” In contrast, there is one thing to consider that is actually very instructive. There is, in fact, a word whose origin remains a mystery to people despite all their research: the word “God.” Isn’t that interesting and thought-provoking? Look it up in the various dictionaries that analyze words from a linguistic and philological perspective: there is complete uncertainty surrounding the word “God.” People do not know what they are actually referring to when they speak of God. And in our time, people either mean their angel, or—when they speak of their God—they become, so to speak, unconsciously followers of our teaching: for they are speaking of their own “I,” as it has developed from the last death up to this birth. That is the concrete reality they call “God”: either the angel who protects them comes into play—it is merely the angel, but they call him God—or it is nothing more than the individual “I.” Whether one reinterprets this or not is irrelevant: it is the egoistic religious creed that exists in many souls today, but people do not want to admit it to themselves. Only spiritual science will make people aware of this. People will then come to hate spiritual science and will fight against it more and more, because they find it so convenient to call that which is closest to them—and which stands above them in the hierarchical order—their God. When people speak of God so often today, they mean nothing other than either their own “I” or the angel.

[ 29 ] One can only move beyond such a view by entering into a concrete relationship with the spiritual sciences. This is precisely the kind of issue that people will have to shed more and more light on as they look toward the future. And truth must exist among people. This will have to be a particular demand for the future, and truth is not very widespread in the present—not at all widespread. Precisely in scholarly circles, one sometimes encounters very peculiar notions of what truth is. You know from my book On the Riddles of the Soul—if I may briefly refer to it—the peculiar way in which that remarkable man, Max Dessoir, dealt with the truth. It is truly heartbreaking what one sees in the latest issue of the Kant-Zeitschrift! I feel I must mention this specifically because anthroposophy is not mentioned there; this essay therefore does no harm to our own cause. But in this “scholarly” journal one finds an essay that is not only amateurish in the field of anthroposophy but also, through and through, the most banal thing imaginable for anyone who understands these matters. And yet it is taken seriously.

[ 30 ] As you know from my book, one must—one simply cannot do otherwise—demonstrate to Dessoir in a schoolmasterly manner that he has not read my books, but twists everything in every possible way. I would like to mention just one of the most foolish distortions once again: In the first edition of his book On the Afterlife of the Soul, Dessoir claims that my *Philosophy of Spiritual Activity* was my debut work. Well, Philosophy of Spiritual Activity was published in 1894, ten years after my debut work; but he is just as superficial in this regard as he is in everything else. So, Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is supposedly my debut work. I pointed this out to him—among other, more important matters—to show him his true colors. A second edition is now being published. In the preface, he asserts all sorts of things that reveal exactly what kind of person this university professor is. But he had already stated in the first edition that The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity was my literary debut; now he says he didn’t mean that, but rather that it is my “theosophical debut.” Consider this alongside the way in which, from another quarter, the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is once again being treated as something that is contradicted by my “theosophy”: there you will see a veritable quagmire! But such things make it very easy to gain insight into the present, and it is very important to gain a complete understanding of these matters. And that is possible only if one equips oneself quite openly with the weapons of spiritual science.

[ 31 ] Even the study of history will, under the influence of the spiritual sciences, have to become something entirely different from what it has been until now, for history, as it is generally presented, is for the most part nothing more than a fable convenue. Where one truly delves into the facts, one is led to something entirely different from what conventional history portrays.

[ 32 ] I would like to make a point. You will see shortly where I am going with this line of reasoning. We know that the fourth post-Atlantean epoch ended with the 15th century. This is the Greco-Latin era; its final vestiges extend into the 15th century. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch begins in 1413, marking a powerful turning point. If we keep this in mind, we might ask ourselves: What caused the downfall of the Roman Empire, into which everything that constituted Greco-Latin culture ultimately converged? There are various causes, but one of the most important is the following: The Romans waged great wars; these wars gradually expanded their territory beyond its borders. Many new peripheral peoples emerged. This had a very specific consequence. Anyone who studies that period—the early Christian centuries—will find that, due to the unique interaction of the Roman Empire’s administration and internal social structure with the peripheral peoples and with the East, there was a continuous outflow of metallic currency from the Roman Empire to the East. And this is one of the most crucial events of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries A.D., as the Roman Empire gradually declined: the flow of metallic currency to the peripheral peoples in the East. And the Roman Empire, despite its complex military administration, became increasingly depleted of gold and currency. This is the outward expression, the image of the inner processes. I mention this outward image—the Roman Empire’s growing poverty in gold and money—because it is also the outward expression of the mood of the soul. What emerged from this state of mind? Of course, this state of mind has a specific significance within the broader context of world history. Something was bound to come of it—of this depletion of metallic currency on the part of the Romans. And what did come of it? It gave rise to individualism, which is the defining characteristic of our age. There was much talk of the art of making gold. Where did this art come from? Because Europe had become materially impoverished in gold, this outward, physical longing to make gold arose, until America was discovered and gold came from there. These broad connections must be grasped. What one comes to understand when truly studying the downfall of the Roman Empire had an impact extending all the way into alchemy and, through it, into the development of human souls: a scarcity of gold resulting from the expansion of the social structure beyond the peripheral peoples into the Orient.

[ 33 ] We now live in a time when people must admit to themselves: The era of instinctive living is over. We cannot achieve social structures unless we are able to revitalize social thinking through ideas that arise from an understanding of the spiritual world. That is why the social sciences are so sterile, and that is why humanity has brought itself into this catastrophic present, in which social structures are causing chaos throughout the world—because people are unable to allow spiritual-scientific ideas, which should flow from the impulses of human development, to flow into social thinking and communal life. There are indeed spiritual causes for this catastrophic present. This is humanity’s resistance to the inflow of the spirit. In truth, this is what has given rise to the current catastrophe. For everywhere, people are turning against the spirit that seeks to enter.

[ 34 ] Let me give you an example that you might also find characteristic. Suppose someone today is thinking about the various worldviews that exist, and classifies them purely on the basis of external criteria: Catholicism, Protestantism, socialism, naturalism, and so on. Consider the lecture series I once gave in Berlin, where I structured the worldviews more according to inner categories, based on the number twelve and the number seven. There you really do arrive at seven worldviews: Gnosticism, Logism, Voluntarism, Empiricism, Mysticism, Transcendentalism, and Occultism. Of course, anyone who merely picks them up—these worldviews—will not label them with these names. And yet the music of the spheres reigns everywhere within them! So imagine today a person who is nothing more than a materialistic observer, who simply surveys the worldviews as they are accessible to him—how many would he find? He would find seven. He may name them differently, depending on how they present themselves outwardly, but they must appear in seven categories. Read the current issue of the Preußische Jahrbücher. There, in the first essay, you will find an observation in which a person sought to catalog the worldviews as they currently exist. He lists them. How many does he identify? Seven: Catholicism, Protestantism, rationalism, humanism, idealism, socialism, and personal individualism. There are indeed seven. The categories are merely shifted, but one cannot identify anything other than seven. — There you have an example of how what we recognize as the meaning of development manifests itself in quite ordinary external development. People do not want to admit this to themselves, but it is necessary to acknowledge it in the present; that is, not to ignore these things, but to have the courage to face them head-on.

[ 35 ] What is actually happening in the present? In ancient times, during the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch, there was a far-reaching impulse moving from east to west across the entire globe—an impulse that, unlike today’s impulses, did not arise merely from material life, but from the spiritual realm. At that time, spiritual impulses also influenced social life. A certain impulse developed, spreading from the East toward the West. One can characterize it by saying: Some people at that time strove to pass on to others what they had wrested from the spiritual world as enlightenment—what had come to them, more or less through their age or through initiation into good or bad mysteries; they wanted to impose upon others what they possessed. At that time, this was an impulse that moved from the East to the West: to spread a few spiritual forces in the interest of human progress, to fill the Earth with a few spiritual maxims, with forces that came from the fading mysteries. Social life at that time was also shaped by this. It was during the third post-Atlantean epoch; historically, little is recorded of it. But what happened back then is now being repeated. Imagine what spread back then as an impulse from the East to the West, translated into the purely material realm in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch: Back then, it was the atavistic-spiritual forces that brought about a social structure by imparting strong spiritual impulses to people; these were to be instilled into humanity. Now consider the opposite: some people want, of their own accord, to conquer the material world and take it away from others. Back then, the intention was to bestow the spiritual, and this precisely led to catastrophes breaking out so many years after the Mystery of Golgotha. In the process, the Roman Empire fell. At that time, spiritual catastrophes broke out, culminating in certain peoples from the East seeking to flood the lands of the Earth with specific maxims. The same is now making itself felt, as the British-American people seek to take the Earth away from humanity. That is what lies behind the whole matter. And it is being carried out exactly the same way: it appears as a mirror image. One cannot understand what is happening in the present unless one looks into the true course of human development, unless real history takes the place of what is taught as history. For it is necessary that, as they face the future, people be placed in full awareness of what is truly happening. Today’s economic life has long been a chaos, and this catastrophe has developed out of it. Now you have two forces at work. From west to east: the reflection; from east to west: what has grown old. There you still find the remnants of the ancient spiritual outlook of the entire Asian Orient—what it did to spread the spiritual, to infuse the spiritual into the world. If you study the current catastrophe, you will see, coming from the East, a war of souls, in which souls are fighting to assert Oriental-Slavic concepts; coming from the West: a purely material war over markets. One can understand these things only by viewing them from the broad perspective of human evolution. But for that to happen, it would be necessary to be able to speak freely about these matters. People should be allowed to be enlightened about what it is, in fact, that they are living in. This is of immense importance. What must come to an end, however, is that people are literally sleeping through what is happening. The most important things can take place—yet people can no longer understand them. They can no longer grasp their significance, because at present this is possible only if one is able to illuminate them with the light of spiritual scientific knowledge. They cannot be illuminated in any other way.

[ 36 ] But what is the attitude of today’s most learned people toward knowledge derived from the humanities? Well, here is a good example. In various places I have mentioned time and again that it is an interesting fact that a book—an excellent book—was written by a member of the Haeckel school, namely Oscar Hertwig: The Development of Organisms: A Refutation of Darwin’s Theory of Chance. In it, Oscar Hertwig pointed out the various downsides of Darwinism. I have praised this book highly. But within our spiritual science movement, you must get used to a complete absence of authority. For a short time ago, another book by the same Oscar Hertwig was published: “In Defense Against Ethical, Social, and Political Darwinism.” Now, you mustn’t go saying: “Well, Steiner praised Hertwig, so let’s study his latest book in the same spirit”—because then you’ll be in for a disappointment. The disappointment that I must say: While the first book is an absolutely excellent one, this latest book is the most amateurish, nonsensical thing one could possibly say about the chapters in question. So if you simply want to say, “Steiner praised it, so we, too, can accept it as gospel”—then you can never be sure that I won’t in turn be compelled to apply the opposite adjectives to something that arises from the very same soil. Blind faith in authority must not flourish in our ranks; rather, only our own observation and our own opinion. But where does this actually come from? It stems from the fact that Hertwig is an outstanding natural scientist; but the concepts of natural science must not be introduced into social life. If one does so, then one finds everywhere only the dead, the dying aspects of history, as, for example, in Gibbon, who wrote the excellent history of the decline of the Roman Empire. This is a mystery—one I have also described before—of historical development: that if one attempts to view this historical development through the concepts used in the natural sciences, one will never find what grows and sprouts, but only what is turning into a corpse. One encounters only manifestations of decay in historical life when one attempts to apply the concepts that are well-suited to the natural sciences. People have sometimes sensed this. That is why Treitschke said that the driving forces in history were human passions and follies. That is not the case. It is unconscious forces that descend in the course of historical development. That is why the following is true: If one wishes to introduce decay into public life—and thus also into practical life—then one places scholars and theorists in parliaments. These people will devise only those laws that give rise to signs of decay, because with what is considered scientific today, only the signs of decay in history can be identified. These realities must enter into people’s consciousness. This is far more necessary than most people believe, and it must be grasped if one is honest and sincere about what is to lead humanity out of the present catastrophic era. We cannot afford to continue to sleep through the important events that are unconsciously entering human life—events that people will not be able to cope with through their ordinary consciousness unless they are willing to shed light on them through spiritual science. But the point is precisely this: that we grasp life in its reality, that we truly look into the true structure of life.

[ 37 ] Here one must take into account the interplay of these three impulses: the normal human, the Luciferic, and the Ahrimanic. For one must not approach these things by saying: “I want to be a normal human being, and so I will avoid everything Ahrimanic, everything Luciferic!” — Anyone who wants to be so “good” as to avoid everything Ahrimanic and everything Luciferic will end up falling into the Luciferic on one side and, even more so, into the Ahrimanic on the other.

[ 38 ] For the point is not to avoid these things, but to bring the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic into balance. The Luciferic is characteristic of youth, while the Ahrimanic is characteristic of advancing age. The Luciferic is more characteristic of women, while the Ahrimanic is more characteristic of men. When we look to the future, we look primarily toward the Ahrimanic; when we look to the past, to what is still in its embryonic stage, we look primarily toward the Luciferic. When we look at the British Empire, we are looking into an Ahrimanic realm; when we look at Eastern political systems, we are looking into a Luciferic realm. The point is that we find everywhere how these forces make their way into human life. We must not be blind to these things.

[ 39 ] Take just one example: Throughout the entire social structure of human life, the Luciferic principle has at times played a highly disastrous role, because people did not know how to channel it into a proper current, because they allowed the scales of Lucifer to tip too far. That is why Luciferic impulses have played a major role in the way the social structure has developed. Even in school, young children are taught to strive to “be first,” “be second,” “be third.” Just think of the Luciferic ambition at work when people wanted to be top of the class! Then there are titles and medals and everything associated with them! Just imagine how the social structure has been built up by the Luciferic principle! But this era is coming to an end; that, too, is something we should recognize! The era is coming to an end; the Luciferic principle is fading more and more in its shadow realms. That, too, would be a good thing if people were a little more vigilant—at least for the immediate future—regarding the waning of the Luciferic. But they are inattentive to something that is now entering in a different, harmful way. Namely: an Ahrimanic force is taking the place of the Luciferic. The catchphrase has been uttered: “Make way for the capable!” — I have already said: What good is it to say “Make way for the capable” if one then regards one’s nephew as the most capable of all! Isn’t it true that what matters is looking at the concrete, looking at reality? But that is not what I mean now; rather, I mean: An entire Ahrimanic system is emerging, with very dangerous side effects. This Ahrimanic system is somewhat connected to the catchphrase that is called “giftedness testing” in the field of education today. You will find this giftedness testing praised everywhere. The people who talk about it are purely devilishly obsessed. The aim is to select, from a group—say, a hundred—of gifted boys and girls who have particularly good report cards, the most gifted ones—the best in terms of intellectual ability, concentration, memory, and so on. They are then tested using the latest psychological methods. According to experimental psychology, for example, intelligence is tested in a very peculiar way. The children are presented with three concepts: murderer, mirror, rescue. Now they are supposed to use their intelligence to find the connection. The one who merely finds the connection—that the murderer sees himself in the mirror just like other people—is simply stupid. But the one who finds, say, the “most obvious” connection—that the person looks in a mirror, sees the murderer creeping up, and is able to save themselves—is considered normal. A “gifted” child would be one who, for example, says that the murderer creeps up to the mirror, sees his own face in it, is startled, and refrains from the murder. Particularly clever would be the one who might say: Near the person whose life is to be ended by the murderer, there is a mirror; in the darkness, the murderer bumps into the mirror, makes a noise, and then desists from the murder. So that’s even cleverer! That is how one tests talent! So this is supposed to be something particularly magnificent, when in fact it is nothing more than the application of a purely Ahrimanic method—one intended for machines—to human beings. The most terrible consequences will result from the mechanization of human life if one attempts to determine talent in this way. People need only reflect on what they themselves assumed not long ago. I could prove to you just how nonsensical people sound when they conduct such tests. Take, for example, a whole series of people whom those very same people regard as significant—very significant—individuals, who are now products of the spirit that leads to these giftedness tests; let’s say, for instance, Helmholtz, the physicist, and others. If all of them had been tested according to the method of the aptitude test, many would likely have been deemed unqualified—Helmholtz, for example. All these matters must be taken much more seriously, for the future of humanity depends on them. In this area, nothing can remain mere rhetoric. Today, events themselves teach us an immense amount.

[ 40 ] Consider the following: Imagine the period from 1930 to 1940. There might be certain people who would then be in their forties or early fifties. Imagine if you’d had this thought in 1913; you might have thought: Of those living in 1913, a certain number will still be alive in 1930 and will hold leadership positions; the social structure—indeed, the entire external, physical life in various parts of the world—will depend on them. You can roughly imagine how things would have unfolded from 1930 to 1940 if the eighteen- to twenty-year-olds—today’s young people—had turned forty by then. Now consider another thought and ask yourself: How many of those who would have done what you assumed they would have done by 1930 have now fallen on the battlefields and will no longer be able to participate physically in the management of the Earth’s physical affairs? — Others will take their place! Picture these two scenes side by side: the first scene—if this war catastrophe had not occurred, then what would have emerged from the antecedents would have unfolded exactly as you had imagined the future back then. And now the other scene, which you must now picture: how perhaps all those who could have held the most important positions have fallen on the battlefields! When you picture such a scene, you will arrive at a very tangible understanding of Maya, of the great illusion of the outer physical plane. Is this physical plane in 1930 the way it would have been if all those who were young in 1913 had lived? It would have turned out quite differently. Thinking such things through is not without significance. But only spiritual science, by thinking through such matters, can truly offer the possibility of thinking in a way that corresponds to reality, even within the real world. Spiritual science leads you to concepts that are detached from the purely physical brain. Our current concepts are primarily bound to the physical brain; hence, contemporary thinking has a certain characteristic. Precisely because the concepts of the natural sciences—which are most closely bound to the brain—dominate the present, our thinking today has a particular characteristic: narrowness and limitation. For this is the most limited form of thinking, one that is primarily bound to our brain. Spiritual science must tear thinking away from the brain; it must set thoughts in motion. Today we have attempted to present a whole series of thoughts to our souls—thoughts that are agile and that broaden our horizons.

[ 41 ] But it is not only the horizon of thought that must be broadened, but also the horizon of feeling. How philistine people have become because their thoughts were primarily bound to physical life! Alongside narrow-mindedness, philistinism is the most prominent characteristic of our age. A church-tower perspective! People are interested only in their immediate surroundings. Spiritual science must lead people back out into the vastness of the universe; it must unfold vast realms of events before them, because the present can only be understood in this way. Spiritual science must lead people out of philistinism. Spiritual science must fight against narrow-mindedness and philistinism.

[ 42 ] The will, too, has gradually taken on certain characteristics. As a certain social structure has emerged from materialistic culture, people have become clumsy. Clumsiness has arisen! People are pigeonholed into very specific fields and actually know nothing beyond their own field; they are extremely clumsy when it comes to everything else. Today one meets men who, because they did not become tailors, cannot sew on a button. But spiritual science has the distinctive quality of developing concepts that are alive, that permeate the limbs, and that also make people more skilled. The remedy for narrow-mindedness, for philistinism, for clumsiness is spiritual science. We need an age that leads people out of narrow-mindedness, out of pettiness, out of clumsiness, and into broad horizons, into generosity of spirit, into dexterity. Spiritual science must be approached with a full sense of life and a deep understanding of its meaning. If one were to present today, in relation to our time, even the simplest concepts drawn from spiritual science, one would already see that deeply connected to the misfortune, the suffering, and all the pain of our time—which truly have not yet reached their peak, truly not—is humanity’s resistance to the spirit. People have cut themselves off from the divine-spiritual life; they must once again find their connection to the divine-spiritual life.

[ 43 ] That is what I wanted to bring before your soul this time. Do you increasingly feel that the signs of the times are speaking clearly and audibly? But only those who have learned to read them through the methods of spiritual science will discover what they are saying. No matter how far one goes, one can never regard spiritual science as sufficiently energetic and serious a pursuit; one must go further and further in penetrating life through what spiritual science provides. People in our time have little courage to think through life using the forces that come from the spirit. This must be learned; that is what is mainly lacking. If it is not learned, if it continues to be lacking, then what has befallen humanity as a catastrophe will last a long, long time. Therefore, one can already say that… we should seek a way out of the present conflict through spiritual science. Please take this very seriously and deeply to heart: then what we wanted to discuss together at this gathering will bear the right fruits in your hearts and in your souls.