The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] Before today’s lecture, Dr. Steiner will recite the remainder of the “Chorus of Primitive Instincts”—the part she has not yet recited. I would like to preface this with a few words, which I ask you—indeed, I beg you—not to take as suggestive; they are meant to be entirely objective. We have arranged things so that the lecture begins in such a way that our friends from Zurich will, hopefully, be able to hear it through to the end—or at least to a point where they won’t miss anything of particular importance. And I would just like to make one remark in response to various wishes—more or less naturally justified wishes—that have arisen here and there. This is that I would not consider it in keeping with the spirit of our movement if, for example, the opinion were to take hold too strongly that the most essential part of our movement has already been accomplished simply by considering the content of the lectures held here. Our movement must be rooted in the spirit of the times, and it must take into account the things that arise from the demands of the times. And you can be quite certain that we will not achieve even what you believe can be attained by absorbing the content of the lectures—we will not achieve it unless we show ourselves to be accommodating and understanding toward the newer artistic endeavors that are being pursued within our movement. This applies in particular, of course, to the art of eurythmy, which in a certain sense is meant to be a new art and is meant to be perceived as such—as a new art distinct from everything similar to it. But I myself would like it to be noted that this also applies to the art of recitation. What one actually experiences in relation to recitation—if one wishes to unfold artistic sensibility in the world—is something immensely great, something terribly painful that happens to one there. We have, after all, developed a certain method that is in keeping with the spirit of our spiritual scientific movement, particularly with regard to the art of recitation. And, don’t you think, I wouldn’t want it to be viewed merely as if it were, well, a hobby of one sort or another, offered as an afterthought to our cause; no, it is one of the most important things—that we find our way into a new artistic sensibility. When it comes to recitation, most people have—well, how shall I put it so as not to use the expression that’s on the tip of my tongue—the most primitive notions. People actually believe that anyone can recite, and that recitation is not a special art. In a certain sense, recitation is one of the most difficult arts, because one must first work through the material very slowly and gradually. And since we are striving precisely to bring the artistically shaped word to the fore—and this is an essential part of ensuring that there is interest in such things within the future social order of humanity, that this interest is not lost, and that the general bourgeois stagnation, which makes itself felt particularly strongly in a field such as recitation—which everyone simply regards as reading—that is what we are striving for, and I ask that you not regard this as a trivial matter that, depending on circumstances—because trains run one way or another—can simply be postponed to any arbitrary hour of the day or night.

[ 2 ] As I said, what I said was not meant to be suggestive at all; but I simply wanted to voice my opinion regarding what is otherwise often viewed as mere embellishment to our cause.

[ 3 ] Now it is time for the conclusion of Fercher von Steinwand’s “Chor der Urtriebe” to be recited.

[ 4 ] The premise from which I have proceeded in these reflections: the necessity of perceiving the truth at work in the facts of the world—I might also say, of perceiving the active reason or the active spirit—must, of course, find particular application in the understanding that one must acquire in the age of the conscious soul, in the understanding of this catastrophic event in which we now find ourselves. For, fundamentally speaking, this event arose from—one might say—an illusion in which people have been living. I have hinted at this to you from various angles; it could be elaborated upon further. Yet you have already seen that the people who were involved in the outbreak—the final outbreak of this catastrophic event—were actually moving within illusions, that they were full of phantasms and delusions, that they were far removed from standing within reality. Yet it must be said that, over the years, more and more of what had been misnamed—precisely because people were living in illusions and appearances—and of what had been wrongly criticized—again because people were living in illusions and appearances—gradually and slowly gave rise to that which contained the truth of the matter itself. This has already come to light to some extent, and will come to light even more over the next few years. I have already pointed out on several occasions that this was not a war in the old sense between one group of powers and another, which in the ordinary sense can also be ended by a peace treaty; rather, it was that which will play out as a surge in social struggles, taking on the most diverse forms. What one must bear in mind is that what will gradually emerge as the truth—the social struggles—has, so to speak, seized upon the superficial appearance, and is initially playing itself out entirely within that superficial appearance, within the illusions and phantasms that have become reality. And one must take into account what is actually alive in the most recent conflicts of the present, what is actually hidden in reality within these conflicts of the present. One cannot do this without repeatedly pointing out how people’s thinking and imagination—even their entire outlook on life—have drifted away from something that is essential to human understanding of the world, but which has been lost precisely under the influence of humanity’s recent development. Our spiritual science, after all, has the task—in the most eminent sense—of drawing upon what has been lost in the modern sense and bringing it back to people, for whom it is so necessary in the present and looking toward the future.

[ 5 ] I have often pointed out the various perspectives on the threefold human being and the threefold world, and emphasized that it is necessary to distinguish, in addition to what is commonly called the human being, at least two other structures within the human being; and to distinguish other structures within what is called the world. In all these matters, it does not matter whether one names one thing one way or another—as I have done for certain reasons—based on the requirements of spiritual science, or whether one names it based on intuition, as Fercher von Steinwand does in his *Geisterzögling*. Where he speaks of what you will find referred to in my *Theosophy* as the “world of souls,” he speaks of “Sinnheim”; for reasons that would take us too far afield to discuss here, he refers to what I have called the “Land of Spirits” as “Wahnheim,” but he does not mean merely a home where delusion resides; rather, when he speaks of “Wahnheim,” he actually means the Land of Spirits. What matters is that one truly delves into these matters in some way and takes them seriously in one’s life. One could say: With the gradual decline of Greek civilization, humanity actually lost a great, great deal in its development from the third to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch; this must be reawakened in a different form—precisely from the perspective of the new spiritual science—if order is to be brought to the social chaos that is now set to unfold. For we must emphasize again and again: The most important thing today is that economic continuity not be severed, but that, so to speak, a provisional arrangement be created in the realm of economic life—and be perceived as such—while at the same time a genuine effort is made to provide general enlightenment regarding what humanity so desperately needs to understand. One cannot establish a new social order using the concepts that already exist today. The very best approach is to try, in a spirit of understanding, to come to terms with what is now emerging as the most essential demands, to create a provisional arrangement so that economic continuity is not lost, and to ensure that we begin at the very point where a beginning is so necessary: through education—in the broadest sense of the word—and through the creation of ideas that spring from human understanding and take root in people’s minds. For it is only by creating ideas in people’s minds that you can make a difference. If only these thoughts were already there in people’s minds! After all, you are not dealing with porcelain figurines that you can place here and there at will, onto which you can impose any order you like, but rather with human beings who must first gain the ability to understand what is necessary for the development and progress of humanity. Taking the human being as the starting point must lead to a gradual awakening in people’s minds regarding what it means for people to be together—whether you call it a kingdom, a state, a democracy, or whatever you like; all these labels matter far less than the substance of the matter itself. In people’s minds, a complete muddle has arisen regarding this coexistence—regarding this form of coexistence—to the point that people can no longer form truly concrete, vivid mental images of why one thing exists and why another does.

[ 6 ] Based on the primordial wisdom that, as I have often explained to you, was acquired by humanity in an atavistic manner but must be regained in a fully conscious way by the Age of the Conscious Soul—based on this primordial wisdom, Plato divided the human being into three parts. Today, this is regarded as somewhat childish. Yet it springs from a very profound wisdom—a wisdom that is truly deeper than what is taught today about human beings, whether in the natural sciences, economics, or other disciplines at our universities.

[ 7 ] Plato divided human beings into three parts. Today we categorize things somewhat differently, but awareness of this tripartite division persisted well into the eighteenth century. It was only then that it was completely lost. And the people of the nineteenth century—those so clever, so enlightened people—merely laughed at this tripartite division in its concrete form, and continue to laugh at it to this day. Plato divided the human being—whom one must understand if one wishes to understand the social structure—first into the part that develops wisdom, insight, and knowledge: the logical part of the soul, that which we associate with the head organism, just as we associate its knowledge with its sensory and nervous organism. Plato then distinguished the so-called active, impetuous part of the soul—the irascible, the courageous, the brave part of the soul—all that which we associate with rhythmic life. You need only look it up in my book *On the Mysteries of the Soul*. He then distinguished the desiring human being—the human being insofar as he is the source of the capacity for desire—all that which we now know in a much more perfect form; Plato was able to link this physically to metabolism and spiritually to intuition, just as we understand it in our threefold division of the higher cognitive faculties: imagination, inspiration, and intuition. One cannot understand what is happening in the social structure of humanity and how social structures play out unless one comes to know human beings themselves according to this threefold nature of theirs. For human beings do not exist in the world—as members of the physical plane—in such a way that they develop these three aspects equally in terms of their inner, intimate forms and qualities; rather, they develop them in different ways; one person develops one aspect more, another develops another aspect more. And it is precisely this varied development of the parts that underlies the formation of social classes, as they have emerged in the course of the development of European humanity and its American offshoot.

[ 8 ] One could say: The segment that focused primarily on rhythmic life—organizing education, communal living, and social views in such a way that rhythmic life was what people primarily perceived as “human”—that is the estate or class that emerged as the old nobility. If you imagine a social structure that arose because people primarily saw themselves as “chest-oriented” beings, then you have what constitutes the group of the nobility, the noble class. If you imagine those people who primarily develop the powers of the head, the wise part—and here I’ll say something that might reconcile some of what I’ve said—those people who were united in the class that primarily develops the wise part, the head, the sensory and nervous part, that is the group that has gradually coalesced within the bourgeoisie. Those people who today constitute by far the greatest number, who have primarily come together in all of this—but you know, intuition is spiritually connected to metabolism—which has its source in the will, in metabolism, that is the proletariat. So that, in fact, people are socially structured in the same way that the individual human being is structured.

[ 9 ] Now, however, one must recognize the special nature of human association. And in this regard, there is still a great deal to be done for human consciousness and for the development of human concepts, for when it comes to what I am referring to now, modern humanity in particular holds the most completely mistaken ideas. Modern humanity has even gone so far as to imagine that the human being, as an individual, is less perfect than as a creature of the state; that the human being gains something by becoming a member of a state; and it will be very difficult to instill in people’s minds the idea that, by integrating themselves into a state organism, human beings do not gain anything, but rather lose. Likewise, a person loses by integrating into estates or classes. Whatever a person develops as an individual is not fostered—but rather stifled and suppressed—by the fact that it exists within the social structure as part of the majority.

[ 10 ] Thus, the traditions and ideas of the noble caste suppress the primordial individual forces of the “chest-human.” In other words, rather than fostering them, they suppress them and hold them back. That is the crux of the matter. It is crucial to realize that, although the group of noble people unites those whose souls, upon incarnation, tend primarily toward the breast-human, this external union on the physical plane stifles what would otherwise emerge from the breast-human. It would take us too far afield if I were to show you this in detail. But just suppose, for example, that what we call a sense of honor develops in a wholly individual way from the breast-human; the external concept of honor, however, exists precisely to create the external, so that the inner can sleep. All such unification actually serves to constitute something externally, so that the inner, the original, the elemental can sleep. I need not recall once again Rosegger’s saying, which I have already cited many times: “One is a human being, more are people, and many are beasts.” — The human being is indeed what he is, emerging from the elemental forces as an individuality. I also attempted to demonstrate this on a scientific foundation in my *Philosophy of Freedom*.

[ 11 ] Everything to which the modern proletariat aspires is not suited to bringing to fulfillment what is at work within it at a fundamental level, but rather to suppressing it, pushing it into the background, and dulling it. And today is the time when one must recognize this, when one can only make progress by seeing through things. For the instinctive forces—as I have often explained—no longer have any effect. And the bourgeoisie—here comes the flip side of the matter—has existed in its coalition mainly to dull wisdom. People have already come together in the bourgeoisie, whose souls have striven to shape the intellectual being; but especially the so-called scientific approach of the social bourgeoisie has brought about a structure in which the intellectual being has become as headless as possible. And indeed, in the face of the onslaught of modern times, he is proving more and more to be a truly headless being.

[ 12 ] Well, on the one hand, this human structure has emerged in a very distinct and significant way. But people had failed to grasp the underlying concept; they could no longer form ideas about the way people live together, because they had lost their understanding of the threefold nature of the human being. For example, it would be necessary—and something like this would also have to happen before one can set about establishing a new social order anywhere or at any time—it will be necessary, for example, to study everything connected with the impulses of the breast-human. And only when this is truly studied—not as the Theosophists imagine it, but as it corresponds to reality—only then will we gain a true science of how labor, the fruits of labor, wages, interest, capital, means of production, and so on must be organized in the world in accordance with the instinctive demands of the modern age. As far removed as possible from this is what is officially called “national economics,” which is really nothing more than a play on concepts and words and which will, hopefully, disappear quite soon from the scientific arena; it is as far removed as possible from what emerges when one truly studies human beings as “breast-centered beings,” which then reveals what must be demanded in the development of humanity with regard to the distribution of labor, the means of production, land, and so on. Likewise, we must study, to the broadest extent possible, that which pertains to the “head-human,” the “sensory-human,” and the “nervous-human”—not, however, in the abstract manner envisioned by the Theosophists, but rather in all its concreteness: what the human being is in the sensory world as a spiritual creature, living together with other human beings in society, and with other human beings within any be it a state or some other structure. This must be studied based on the nature of the nervous and sensory human being. The study of the nervous and sensory human being provides a true social science. And finally, the study of the metabolic human being, which is connected to intuition, is what truly provides a genuine insight into human development and evolution; it is what provides a historical understanding of human evolution.

[ 13 ] Now you will easily understand that one could have neither a historical view of human development without truly understanding the microcosmic human being, nor a genuine understanding of the distribution of economic values, because one has not studied the “chest human”; nor could one understand how the individual human being is situated within human society, because one has not studied the “head-human”—that is, the sensory and nervous human being—in its reality, in its entire connection with the cosmos and its historical development; for one had actually lost sight of all these things. For centuries, people have not formed any conception of these things, or have merely laughed at them. Consequently, chaos has reigned first and foremost in people’s conceptions and then also in reality.

[ 14 ] Demands arose from that class of people which had, so to speak, been shaped by modern life—a life that no longer conformed to outdated notions but continued to evolve—from that class which had been formed precisely by modern life. The modern proletariat emerged from the modern world of machinery, industry, and the mechanization of the world. Demands developed from this because this modern proletariat came into conflict with those who were able to procure the machines as means of production.

[ 15 ] You see, the impulses shaping this proletariat’s worldview came from the metabolic human. But of course, human beings are in contact with the other members of the threefold human being. As a result, views began to form—starting from there—regarding what also radiated as impulses from the other members of the threefold human being; views took shape that were a necessity based on the proletarian social class. These views were formed with the help of what the bourgeoisie had established as science. For the proletariat had, after all, inherited only the science of the four—or, who knows, six—faculties, to which it has now expanded, that the bourgeoisie had created. Using purely bourgeois science, the proletariat gradually attempted, in the age of the conscious soul, to form conceptions of the social structure in which they lived. Of course, that could not suffice. Drawing on all the astute and other foundations—but again, precisely because he was a child of his time and had no inkling of the existence of a spiritual science as we conceive it—it was none other than Karl Marx, whom I mentioned yesterday, who created a science for the proletariat as an expression of what the instincts of the proletariat develop elementarily from within themselves.

[ 16 ] This Karl Marx has been treated by the proletariat quite differently than the so-called great figures of the bourgeoisie have been treated over the past few centuries. He has truly penetrated the entire mindset of the proletariat across the civilized and industrialized world. He dominated the thoughts of the proletariat, and he developed these thoughts into a doctrine. Indeed, for the first time ever, thoughts have actually become facts, for the thoughts of the bourgeoisie are not facts; they have grown out of illusions, even if one believes as strongly as possible that they are based on truly positive science. But Karl Marx’s ideas have become facts among the proletariat and live on as facts and exert their influence as facts, just as facts exert their influence—with all the contradictions of life, with all the conflicts that arise in life, with all the disharmony, with everything that is life-giving, destructive, and paralyzing that life brings. More is at work in people’s instincts and subconscious—especially in our age—than in their consciousness. The threefold human being was not incorporated into consciousness; but based on instincts—and therefore insufficiently, though indeed enriching reality and translating thoughts into actions, yet translating them into actions in an insufficient manner—Karl Marx founded his doctrine of “political economy.” It emerged as early as 1848 in the “Communist Manifesto,” which I spoke of yesterday, and then in his book on “Political Economy,” published in 1859—a year that was so infinitely fruitful in all manner of creative output, at least still at the end of the 1850s. This book on “Political Economy” by Karl Marx is among the diverse developments that emerged at the end of the 1850s. To mention a few other things: Bunsen’s spectral analysis emerged at the same time—and there is an intrinsic connection between them. Around the same year, what is known as Darwinism also became more widely known, as did a work that, on the one hand, had an infinitely stimulating effect but, on the other hand, plunged psychology into confusion: Gustav Theodor Fechner’s *Introduction to Aesthetics*, which subsequently led to psychophysics. This, too, belongs to that year; one could cite many other examples. There are internal reasons why all this emerged from bourgeois science. For Hegel, too, is bourgeois science—profound bourgeois science. But it was from within bourgeois science that Karl Marx sought to understand the social structure of humanity. As he understood it, it made sense to the proletariat. But what was forgotten was the most important thing of all: the knowledge of the threefold human being. This, above all else, must take root in people’s minds before any fruitful progress can be made—not theoretically, but by truly immersing oneself in the situation that the present has brought about. You see, one could say: the world also presented itself to Marx in a threefold manner. This physical-sensory world, too, presented itself to Karl Marx in a threefold form, and so he sought to unravel it in three ways: first, through his theory of value—the theory of surplus value—which I have already mentioned to you in some detail; second, through his materialist conception of history; and third, through his view of the socialization of humanity. It is remarkable how, entirely in keeping with the chaotic development of modern times, in the mind of Karl Marx—and in the manner, in the sense that I have discussed—in the minds of millions of people, of millions of proletarians, it is interesting how this threefold social structure takes shape there, without people having any real, sound, well-founded ideas about what human beings experience as beings and as they enter the world as spiritual beings.

[ 17 ] Because the impulses of the “chest-centered human,” the “rhythmic human”—in whom lies the actual reservoir of what later becomes labor in social life—were insufficiently and instinctively expressed, and because this found its way only inadequately into the ideas of Karl Marx and thus into proletarian ideas, the so-called theory of surplus value developed. Let us once again examine this theory of surplus value from a different perspective than we did recently. The most fundamental question for Karl Marx was: How is value—be it of one kind or another—actually produced in the modern economy? — It is not true—as Karl Marx concluded—that in the modern economy what a person receives, for example as wages, is truly related to what they produce. Such illusions can only be held by those who do not understand economic life—the belief that a person earns what corresponds to their work, to their output. That is simply not the case. What a person can earn in modern economic life—as it has developed over the last four centuries, particularly in the civilized world—is not tied to any relationship between earnings and work, but rather to the circulation of commodities. What a person can earn depends quite fundamentally on how value is generated—by bringing commodities to market, selling them, and receiving a certain amount in return. That is what generates economic value. It is not labor as such that directly generates value today, in economic terms, but rather what one receives for it on the commodity market once it is completed and brought into circulation through a wide variety of factors. Thus, when it comes to the production of economic value in the modern world, the only question that can really be asked is: What is the constellation on the commodity market for one thing or another? — This must be considered in the broadest sense; but when one considers it in this sense, that is how it is.

[ 18 ] It was Karl Marx who first articulated what those people—who had been forced into the proletariat by their living conditions, by their karma—instinctively felt. If the market value of a commodity is, in fact, the sole true determinant of the value relationship for everything that exists today and is the basis of all earnings, then it cannot possibly be true that a worker is in any way actually compensated for the labor he performs. For what one performs as labor has no value in circulation within the national economy; rather, only that which has become a commodity has value. And so Marx arrived at the formulation of what the proletarians instinctively sensed: the formulation that what matters for the worker in the modern economy is not at all assessed as performance, as activity, or as production, but that this, too, is assessed as a commodity—the commodity “labor power.” As Karl Marx put it, people buy cherries, shirts, pants, and so on, but they also buy the commodity “labor power.” The one who owns the means of production—the one who owns the land—sells cherries, sells grain, sells pants or skirts, sells machines; those who do not possess the means of production—those who are propertyless in modern economic life—can bring to the market only their labor power. Of course, they must contribute their own labor. But only that which counts as the commodity value of their labor has real economic value.

[ 19 ] But what does that mean? It means: One must think about how to pay for commodities. First, one pays for commodities based on what is necessary for their production. What happens to the commodity on the market afterward is something entirely different. You pay for a commodity first based on its production. After all, you go to the cherry tree owner, and he sells you the commodity; then you transport it and so on—it is only in the process of circulation that the value of the commodity is determined. But the commodity “labor power” must, so to speak, be purchased at its source. The person himself must bring it to the one who wants to buy it. The person must always be present. So what, then, can the compensation—the purchase price of the commodity “labor power”—consist of? Well, it consists of the cost of production. One must consider how many hours of daily labor are necessary to sustain a worker in terms of his labor power—that is, to sustain him so that he is fed, clothed, and so on. One must consider how many different people must work, and how much time they must work; let us say, for example, that five or six hours of work are required to produce enough food, clothing, and other necessities to equip a worker with labor power—so that he can be sent out into the labor market ready to be purchased. The bourgeois pays compensation for what is necessary to maintain the worker—that is, to produce the commodity “labor power.” He pays for what is necessary to provide the worker with food, clothing, and so on, as well as for the worker’s family needs and the like, if such exist. This requires, for example, five to six hours of work. But the worker sells himself, and by selling himself, he is compelled by the general circulation process to work longer than, say, five to six hours. There he works for the entrepreneur. That is where surplus value is produced. It is only because labor power is a commodity in the modern circulation process, and because commodities are paid for at their cost of production—thereby causing the worker to work longer than he would if he were merely earning back what is necessary for him—that surplus value is generated in modern economic life.

[ 20 ] This is something that Karl Marx explored in his books using Hegelian dialectics. This is something that made tremendous sense to the proletariat, because it is a science that, so to speak, considers the human being in his entirety; for it addresses not only the theoretical mind, but also, in a certain sense, moral sensibilities—in that the worker knows, even though he is told politically: “You are a free person”—but because only commodities have value in modern economic life and only commodities are paid for, his labor power is turned into a commodity in the modern process of circulation. As a result, he looks to the surplus value, which is generated not only by labor but also by mere speculation, by entrepreneurial spirit, whatever it may be.

[ 21 ] But something else emerges as a result. This leads to

[ 22 ] A consciousness emerges among the workers, entirely in the spirit of Marx: All this talk about achieving anything through brotherhood, through benevolence, or through a spirit of charity—it’s all just talk; it must be nothing but social rhetoric. — For he sees what has emerged: that labor power—his labor power—has become a commodity; he regards this as a necessity of modern development, and he says: Well, no matter how charitable, how fraternal, or how philanthropic the factory owner may be—he simply cannot do otherwise; historical development compels him to do so—he must buy the commodity “labor power” at its cost of production and then feed the rest, in its own way, into the process of circulation. It is therefore of no value whatsoever to any social thinking to preach morality or to speculate on impulses of brotherhood or philanthropy, for none of that matters. The entrepreneur has no choice but to reap the surplus value.

[ 23 ] These are the things that are of extraordinary importance: that it has been, so to speak, drummed into the proletarian that his inhuman existence does not depend on the morality or immorality of the business class, but rather that this is a historical necessity, and that this, too, must inevitably lead to class struggle; that is to say, there is no other way but for those belonging to the proletarian class to fight those belonging to the owning class, for they are adversaries by virtue of the historical process itself. Therefore, it cannot happen any other way than that, through the powerful social struggle of the proletariat, a different order will emerge than the one brought about by the last four centuries or by historical development to date. What the proletarian wants is of such infinite importance: it is to make history, to make history out of ideas, by saying to himself: Since modern economic development has led to a situation where only commodities are paid for—meaning that I, as a proletarian, must sell my labor power as a commodity, while others possess something that does not derive from the commodity of labor power but stems from surplus value—I myself want to share in that surplus value; I do not want to abolish the entrepreneur — for the entrepreneur is a product of the necessary historical process — but rather I want to become an entrepreneur myself; I want, as a proletarian and as a partner, to take communist possession of the means of production; then, as a partner, I myself am an entrepreneur. Only in this way can the class struggle come to an end—when I no longer have the entrepreneur standing beside me, but am an entrepreneur myself. —Advancing to the next historical phase: that is what follows for the proletarian from Marxist doctrine—making history, even if this can be portrayed in a more or less Kautskyite, Leninist, or Trotskyist manner, which are different shades of the same concept. But what I have said with regard to the one thing that is recognized in its true foundation—namely, building everything upon the human being of the heart, upon the human being of rhythm—lies at the root of the consciousness of the modern proletariat. It is something that should be viewed differently, viewed with immense power and turned into action. And there is no other remedy than to see through the matter; there is no other remedy, now that bourgeois education, with its entire university system, has failed to shed light on these things—since it does not even possess the scientific methods to do so—there is no other option but to create a provisional arrangement so that economic continuity is not lost, and to work toward enlightenment from the bottom up. That is where we must begin. Enlightenment from the bottom up can only take place by truly reintroducing the understanding of the threefold human being into the people of the present.

[ 24 ] But of course, if you speak to the modern proletarian today the way I am speaking to you now, after eighteen years of preparation, he will not understand you—he will simply laugh at you. You must speak to him in his own language. To do that, of course, you must first master the subject matter yourself and then have the willingness to adapt to the language that is understood there. You see, this theory of surplus value is structured—I would say—according to a closed Hegelian dialectic. The curious thing about this is: When Karl Marx died in the 1880s—in 1883—the bourgeois economists, as they later called themselves, social scientists, and so on, were very inclined to say: “Well, a socialist agitator—has no scientific value; a scientific socialist!” — One usually says that with a certain smug tone, with the smug tone of the expert who has things under control. Well, that’s how it was back then. But this bourgeois science never managed to delve deeper into things; at most, people like Sombart and others like him took some ideas on board—they let themselves be influenced. The actual bourgeois public, which, after all, remained oblivious to the feelings and thoughts of the proletariat, allowed itself to be exposed to them at most in plays, as I told you. But the university professors, who are themselves unproductive, have adopted some ideas and then regurgitated them wholesale. And so, in turn, you find in many books written by university professors all sorts of Marxist ideas—distorted, sometimes criticized—but all of it unproductive, because the issues are not truly grasped, and above all because there was no will to bring about a genuine insight, a genuine understanding of the threefold human being. If one had this understanding, one would arrive at the fundamental principles that are necessary to grasp—principles I can only hint at to you, but an understanding of which must be brought about. For only when this fundamental understanding takes hold with regard to two points will, on the one hand, the grandeur of Karl Marx’s theory of surplus value and that of the proletariat become apparent; but only then will one also see where the correction must be made—where that which is grounded in reality, and not once again in Marxist illusion, must come into play. But it is still difficult to find understanding for this.

[ 25 ] There are, of course, all sorts of offshoots—even if they are sometimes opponents—of the modern proletarian mindset. One such offshoot of a completely different stripe—if you’ll pardon the expression—came my way in Berlin in the 1890s in the person of Adolf Damaschke, in connection with land reform. This Adolf Damaschke did, of course, have followers, and a number of them were at the same time our members—members of the Theosophical Society. They felt it necessary for me to engage in a sort of discussion with this Damaschke in their presence. They were our followers who had at the same time formed a group of land reformers, and Damaschke was now to present his views on one thing or another. After Damaschke had presented his views, I then said: “Look, the situation is as follows. What you have outlined will certainly captivate people, for it is presented with a certain economic clarity—crystal clear, though I didn’t say that, but I thought it—and it sometimes makes sense, in the way I hinted at yesterday.” You do not, like the Social Democrats, want to nationalize the means of production, but you do want to nationalize the land—specifically, the land on which houses stand—that is, to nationalize all land in a sense in a communist manner, to establish common ownership of land, and thereby bring about a solution to the social question. Everything you’ve outlined is partly correct, but the whole argument suffers from a fundamental flaw—one that you’re bound to overlook, of course, if you proceed purely theoretically rather than in accordance with reality. What you say isn’t correct, but it would be correct under certain conditions. For example, if in a city two houses were adjacent to one another and a third house were to be built, and if the land where the two houses meet could be elastically expanded so that one house stood here and the other there, and space were created in between for the third house—if the land were elastic, then everything would be correct. But since the earth has a fixed area and is not elastic—it does not grow—the entire theory of land reform is, in truth, false.

[ 26 ] From this perspective, that is the most weighty objection of all. I can only sketch it out briefly. Damaschke told me at the time that it had never occurred to him, but he promised me he would think deeply about the matter. I haven’t heard anything further; I don’t know how deeply he reflected on it. There was no sign of it in his subsequent writings. He muddled on in the old way and continued to pursue all his ideas on land reform in this direction after all. Time and again, people would come along and say: “Yes, the Social Democratic idea won’t work, but land reform—that’s something that can certainly be realized.”

[ 27 ] There is one aspect that must be studied in greater depth; for social democracy also regards land as a means of production. It would be so only if it were elastic. Those means of production that—in an elastic manner, which is precisely what is not taken into account—can truly be regarded as they are in Marxism are the means of production that can also be produced, that is, brought into being, when needed. If you need machines, you can manufacture them to produce this or that, and if you want to produce more machines, you can employ more workers; that is where the flexibility lies. The moment one applies the same line of reasoning—and it is the line of reasoning that matters—to land, the approach fails due to the inflexibility of land.

[ 28 ] That is one area where we must take action. The other area where one must focus is that Marxist social thought is bound to fail because it is derived entirely from the economic process and conceives of the means of production—which it thus seeks to manage communistically—within the economic process solely as they are in reality: as means of production for manual labor. This excludes the infinitely important role that the spiritual plays in the entire process of development, including in the social process of humanity. For the spiritual has the peculiarity of requiring a minimum of means of production. For me, for example, the only actual means of production is the pen. One cannot even say that paper is a means of production, for it is an object of circulation. The only true means of production, in the Marxist sense, is the pen. Consequently, however, the entire impulse that must emanate from the spiritual—and which would be paralyzed if the world were organized according to Marxist social principles—this spiritual process must be eliminated by Marxist thinking. That is the other pole.

[ 29 ] Marxist thinking fails at two extremes. It is stuck in the middle. In the middle, it is dialectically extremely astute; at the two extremes, it fails. And it fails in the most eminent sense; it fails radically at these two extremes. First, the theory of surplus value. It fails because of the inelasticity of the land. It fails because of the inelasticity of the land, to a much greater extent than one might think. For, within a limited territory, the entire population statistic does not come into its own economically, because the land remains the same, even if, for example, the population increases. This brings about changes in the scale of value that cannot be taken into account by mere Marxist thinking. Furthermore, pure Marxist thinking cannot account for that which, in turn, cannot be increased or decreased within the economic process itself. It is curious that these two things lie at the very extremes of the economic process: that which sits in your head as “grit”—pardon me—and that which lies there as soil. What lies in between is actually subject to the concept of the means of production as understood in Marxist thought. But the soil—it depends on the weather, on all sorts of other factors; it depends on its extent—so, as I said, it is not elastic. That is at one pole.

[ 30 ] I can only hint at this, as a sort of conclusion. If I were to discuss this with you now and prove, point by point, that Marxism is bound to fail—precisely because it must fail at these two poles—I would first have to say a great deal. That might well be the case, but it would take us too far afield for now. But it can be proven. And that is the most dangerous aspect of the current social and economic experiment: that these two poles are not taken into account, that everything that emerges from it merely corresponds to Marxist-dialectical concepts conceived in industrial terms and relies solely on industrial concepts—concepts that leave out, on both the left and the right, land and property, as well as that which is equally beyond the reach of arbitrariness: talents and ideas. Consider how much depends on this! The economic process comes to a standstill if you do not incorporate land into the proper social structure, and if you do not incorporate human ingenuity—in the broadest sense—into the proper social structure. Everything comes to a standstill. You can only overexploit what already exists for so long. You can overexploit existing economic assets. But one day, stagnation will set in regarding what already exists if one does not think in a truly realistic way, if one does not develop what I always call “realistic thinking,” if one does not think realistically but only illusorily—that is, if one focuses solely on what lies in the middle and fails to take the whole, the complete whole, into account again.

[ 31 ] But from this you can see that, above all, it is necessary to provide clarification. And I can assure you: the role of land and the role of intellectual activity are more difficult to understand within the economic process than the insights that Marxism has brought to the economic process in such a beautiful and astute manner. But as for the rest, everything still needs to be done. Go out and see how many people today still take an interest in these matters! But there is no hope for the future unless people take an interest in these matters. And they can only be properly studied if one possesses the principles of the spiritual sciences. Just as bridges can be built today only if one is a mathematician and has studied mathematics, so social structures can be understood only if one forms the elementary concepts from the science of the spirit. That is what must be taken into account. Do not fail to realize that it is necessary, above all else, to create schools everywhere and in every place, educational opportunities everywhere and in every place so that what people need to understand in this field in order to live together can actually take root in their minds—then, no matter what you do, no matter how well-intentioned you are, no matter how many Lenins, Trotskys, Scheidemanns, and others of a similar ilk you might invoke (whose names perhaps cannot be mentioned here)—you will create only illusory constructs that can lead to overexploitation but are not real structures. It is better, then, to create—with the awareness that it is a provisional measure—a continuity of economic life, to regard this as a provisional measure, and to work above all toward the disappearance of the bourgeois educational system with its lack of understanding.

[ 32 ] You may view this as something difficult and inconvenient, but it is simply a necessity. One can only want either for humanity to descend into chaos, or for this to actually happen—one cannot regard this as an inconvenience—namely, that we truly begin at the right ends, starting first with the radical enlightenment of the people. That is where we must begin; that is what must be demanded. Above all, one must then be clear about the fact that, since Karl Marx essentially only took up bourgeois thinking and developed it very astutely through dialectics, Karl Marx also gives rise to inadequate conceptions regarding the other two areas. One can, with regard to the way in which people come together with one another—this coming together arises, after all, from interest and from feeling— one can only gain an understanding of how social structure must form in this sense by studying the nervous or intellectual type. But bourgeois society—which is organized specifically around the nervous-intellectual type—has, within that very class and social stratum, numbed this type, so that virtually all genuine, enlightened spiritual concepts in this area have vanished. Well, they have in fact quite visibly disappeared; one might say they have disappeared so strikingly: You can still see paintings today from the eighteenth century—the spirit has carried over into the nineteenth century, albeit in a less conspicuous form—in which people delight in how human beings are, by nature, social beings: princesses, queens—in short, all sorts of people who hardly exist anymore—dancing in shepherds’ costumes, reveling in the warmth and brotherhood that the original, elemental human being developed in social life. One cannot imagine anything more hypocritical than all these things, which merely took on different forms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But the lies, illusions, and fantasies dominated thought to such an extent that what Marxism—as an expression of the proletarian spirit—advocated from this perspective, which I have analyzed, namely the theory of surplus value, truly strikes like a bolt of lightning: Oh, come on—all that wishy-washy talk of brotherhood, of people’s place within society, of one person belonging to another; just look at how, particularly in relation to industrial life, the “sociality” that prevails between the mine owner and those who toil ceaselessly inside the coal mines—and who are forced to work so hard and for so long—has taken shape. Just look at the human and social relationship between the entrepreneurs and owners of sulfur mines in Sicily and the people who are down there engaged in this life-destroying labor, whose surplus value is appropriated by those owners. — It was precisely within this peculiar way in which people interact with one another—how people need one another in human life—that Karl Marx truly made an impact in a way that the proletariat could understand. And it was further understood that this human-to-human interaction manifests itself above all in the division into classes of the haves and the have-nots. Consequently, programs emerged with the conclusion: If this is to change, it can only change through the struggle of the proletarian class against the bourgeoisie, for that is a necessity.

[ 33 ] Of course, there will be many who are mine owners, and when the sufferings of the miners are once presented to them in the theater, their hearts will be filled with pity, with compassion—perhaps even their eyes will fill with tears. But that’s all for nothing, says the proletarian, because this pity doesn’t help the people; after all, they can’t help it—they aren’t personally, individually to blame for it. Human beings are not individual entities; through historical necessity, they are placed within a certain form of socialization—not “sociability,” as the idealistic notions of the eighteenth century would have it, but a form of socialization that can only come about through struggle. Understanding this is a necessity. There is no question of personal responsibility, for it is a necessity to promote a historical process.—This is what Karl Marx drummed into his proletarians and what the bourgeoisie has so little understood.

[ 34 ] And the third was materialist historical science. But before we turn our attention to this third point, we can ask: What is essential if one wants to understand socialization? — For Karl Marx simply did not grasp what a human being is as a nervous and sensory being: that he is an individual, that he is more than any society can give him as an individual. This is precisely what I had to counter in my *Philosophy of Freedom*, which touches on the very heart of the social question in this very point; this, in turn, is precisely what must be held against Karl Marx’s theory of socialization—where the individual disappears entirely—just as the role of land and soil and of intellectual labor must be held against the socialization of the means of production. For, once again, it can be shown that every social process must come to a standstill if it is not fed by the sources that spring from human individuality.

[ 35 ] This is important, but it, in turn, will only be possible if one understands this very source of human impulses—the human sensory and nervous system. Once again, it is necessary to begin with social work. Only from these other ideas can one deduce what is fact. Karl Marx, guided by a fine instinct, coined the wonderful phrase: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the facts in various ways; we, however, want to create facts, to change facts.” — And he wanted to change the facts through his thoughts; he wanted to create thoughts that could become facts, and he did achieve this; but all he achieved was that the proletariat itself—the proletariat’s way of thinking and feeling—exists. But what lives within it? The intellectual offshoots of bourgeoisie live within the proletariat—the legacy of bourgeois thought. This is what the proletarian must understand above all else: that he cannot advance on his path with his demands without a genuine, humanistic understanding of humanity, and that he can never attain this if he clings to bourgeois science. He will understand if he is enlightened in the right way—and if there is an opportunity to enlighten him in the right way. This opportunity must be created.

[ 36 ] And finally, the third point is that one must recognize the extent to which human beings are the beings they are precisely because of their metabolic processes, which are intimately connected with their most spiritual aspects. This gives rise to a genuine conception of history. But because Karl Marx had no concept whatsoever of the threefold human being—because this had been forgotten—his conception of history became a purely materialistic one. He correctly recognized that what people carry within themselves as their instincts is more important than what they delude themselves into believing—their illusions. This stems from the classes. He told the people: Look at him, the bourgeois! Don’t condemn him; after all, he truly didn’t become that way through any fault of his own, but rather the bourgeoisie as a class simply emerged through the historical process; as a result, he lives, in a very specific way, within his class. This life within his class shapes the direction of his thoughts. Different thoughts are generated within you. You can’t help your thoughts, and he can’t help his—because all of this comes from the subconscious, namely from the class structure, from the social structure. Don’t judge the matter morally, but recognize the necessity that he has no choice but to oppress you, that he has no choice but to be your opponent. Therefore, become his opponent. Achieve what is necessary through the class struggle.

[ 37 ] All three points ultimately culminate in the class struggle, which was presented as the great demand of the new era. Karl Marx took up the dialectic in a truly Hegelian manner. He said: As proletarians, we want nothing that we invent ourselves, but rather what development itself teaches us; we merely want to set the wheel in motion so that it continues to roll of its own accord. Everything we want would come about on its own as entrepreneurship increasingly consolidates into corporations, trusts, and so on. By harnessing state initiatives to its own ends, entrepreneurship is already ensuring that it increasingly separates itself as a class from the proletariat, that the haves and the have-nots stand in ever sharper opposition to one another, but in such a way that everything becomes increasingly standardized, so that there are fewer and fewer individual property owners, but rather ever larger corporations of property owners, which would necessarily be brought about by the proletariat in precisely this manner. Property is organizing itself. — A spirit of struggle was, above all, what dawned upon the proletariat from Marxist dialectics, from Marxist science. And this spirit of struggle had been alive for decades in the contrast between the proletariat—which, transcending all national and other boundaries, saw itself simply as the proletariat—and the business class, which became increasingly socialized and ultimately grew into imperialism. Thus, little by little, modern life shed the old political forms more and more, and what people still confusedly imagined to be old state structures became the new imperialisms, which are in fact nothing other than the embodiment of that which stands opposed to the proletariat as the capitalist class. And in the most eminent sense, among such imperialisms is that which imagines itself to be an old political entity, but which has gradually become nothing more than a capitalist enterprise: the British Empire; the United States also belongs to this category. You can read about this in Wilson’s earlier writings and lectures; he, after all, proved that this is indeed the case in reality, for in this area—in terms of insight into this area—as I have already demonstrated from another perspective—Woodrow Wilson is truly a man of insight.

[ 38 ] So that is what, one might say, actually underlies this war—this so-called war; that is what lay in wait, and what masked itself in the so-called opposition between the Central Powers and the Entente. This has been developing for decades. It had to find expression in some way and will continue to do so. More and more, the struggle will take the form of expressing—under some guise—the opposition that has already taken shape between the business class and the millions of the proletariat. To be a “state”—in the sense that the Western states wish to remain states—will only be possible if the state is used in some way as a framework for entrepreneurial and capitalist endeavors; and opposition will emerge wherever the consciousness of the proletariat prevails. It smoldered—if I may use the expression—it smoldered, it glowed, it scorched—what does not quite glow, that smolders—it smoldered beneath what spread across the world as a great lie, as the lie of the so-called World War; that exploited all the rhetoric that was now being bandied about regarding “freedom of nations, the right of every nation to self-determination.” “Freedom of nations” certainly sounds nicer than saying: We need a market in Eastern Europe, for where there is production, there must be consumption. — Perhaps one says this only if one belongs to a completely secret lodge that controls the entire situation from the hidden corridors of power. On the surface, the whole affair is embellished with fine-sounding phrases; it is dressed up by coining words—as much as possible—that people can take offense at, referring to all sorts of monstrous deeds and so on. But the truth that lies behind these things will reveal itself to people; it will become clear that what emerges from the sum of all this untruth is what lies behind it—and that this can only be healed through such a deep understanding of reality as is possible solely through spiritual science.

[ 39 ] For that which has organized itself in the old way—whether consciously or unconsciously—and that which is organizing itself in a new way out of the spiritual realm participates in this process in a unique way. We live in the age of the consciousness soul. The consciousness soul is at work primarily in all that unites the English-speaking population as the British Commonwealth. As you know, I have elaborated on this at length on other occasions; this, then, is the main feature of our time. But this contemporary reality must, in fact, clothe itself in entrepreneurship, in imperialism. It must become world domination in relation to the external material realm. If this is pursued with the means I have also outlined here in the 1916 Christmas Lectures, then what has emerged so far—and what will continue to emerge—is bound to result. That is what, despite everything, is the actual driving force behind the scenes of history; the other is something one can easily talk about. But the expansion of world domination—specifically, materialistic, material world domination—that is what is actually taking place: on the one hand, it is promoted; on the other, people are rebelling against it. Everything else is mere window dressing. For that which has taken shape within a different order—that which fits less seamlessly into the process of human development—must also find its own path of development. Thus it is that the Romance element, as its preeminent bearer—if we set aside Spanish, which is corrupt— we see Italian and French—the Romance element, which has been preserved from a completely different set of conditions, through inheritance from the earlier cultural period, from the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period into the fifth, will, precisely because of the victories it has now won, fall into decadence and meet its downfall. But you can also deduce this from certain things that can show you precisely how spiritual science is derived from reality.

[ 40 ] You see, I have explained to you what French unity means in a state context. Of course, I’m not talking about individual French people, but about the French person who feels French insofar as he belongs to the state of France—that state of France which attaches importance to possessing Alsace-Lorraine and so on. That’s a big difference; nothing that’s said is directed against the individual; it’s not directed against anything at all, but merely characterizes. But it does apply insofar as a person belongs to this or that group, which, of course, always makes one worse: “He’s just a person…,” because there are usually many nations, well, yes! So bear in mind that we are in the midst of a threefold development. The French stage is there in particular to develop, at the level where it is now possible, what we call the intellectual or emotional soul; we have already spoken about this. This intellectual or emotional soul, in its specific development, corresponds to the years between 28 and 35, as you know: the astral body up to the age of 21, the feeling soul up to the age of 28, the intellectual or emotional soul up to the age of 35, and from 35 to 42, the soul of consciousness, and then comes the spiritual self.

[ 41 ] But now, various currents of development are running counter to one another. You know that the individual human being, as a single person, is currently in the process of developing the soul of consciousness; that is to say, he is only truly introduced to the forces that his age can offer him if he lives beyond the age of 35. Before that, they must learn this, must be educated in it; but one can never learn on one’s own what the age will then provide if one lives past the age of 35. This is unpleasant for those who wish to postpone the age of choice, but it is simply a fact of development. So one can say: This development is particularly conducive to participation between the ages of 35 and 42. It is during this period that the forces capable of truly consolidating what is most in keeping with the times in the age of the consciousness soul develop. This could, of course, lead to an understanding of how it is precisely from 35- to 42-year-old English-speaking men and women that the consolidation of what makes the British Empire great from within can emanate—even if Lloyd George remained a twenty-seven-year-old; but Lloyd George is not a typical example of this, rather he is a typical example of contemporary humanity, not of Britishness.

[ 42 ] In contrast, humanity as a whole is developing in such a way that, as people become younger and younger, they are currently in the process of developing the period from the 21st to the 28th year—the soul of feeling. These two currents are now intertwined in the forward development of humanity. You see, the period from the 28th to the 35th year remains fallow, barren. Yet this is precisely the period assigned to French development: the 28th to the 35th year. This is expressed so strongly in what you can investigate from a spiritual-scientific perspective that even the infertility of the French population—the external, physical infertility—is reflected in it. At the same time, this is a perspective that points to what could otherwise be demonstrated in numerous occult studies: that the French people are no longer able to preserve, amidst the turmoil, that which is the legacy of Romanism. However, what flows to Italian culture from the fact that it is currently in the phase of development of the feeling soul—between the ages of 21 and 28—is that it is precisely through this renewal that Italian culture is destined to assume the hegemony of the Romance peoples, insofar as they still have a role to play in the future. This is so particularly important that one must keep such great matters in mind within the European process—so that one knows, for example, that something which arose from impulses entirely different from those of the present—such as the aftereffects of Romanism in European culture—is indeed in a state of decadence, but that, for the time being, the Italian people are assuming hegemony.

[ 43 ] Perhaps someone would deny me the right to speak about this “tragedy.” But that is also precisely what can be expressed with a certain sense of tragedy: that the French have not committed themselves to the French cause on either side, but have done everything in their power to promote that which will cause the French essence to vanish from the process of development of modern humanity.

[ 44 ] In the East, Russian Slavic culture awaits; it can wait, for it is destined for the future to embody all that will emerge from the bewildering chaos of developments here and there. Such things are precisely the “other” that must emerge from a spiritual-scientific understanding of the facts. What I would like to point out again and again through such reflections—which may well be expanded upon in the near future, if opportunities still present themselves—is this: to resolve to see things in their truth, to truly engage with them a little, not to remain stuck in illusions and phantasms, but to see things in their truth. Spiritual science, after all, is something that does not merely provide abstract concepts, but can familiarize us with reality. Then, when we are able to become acquainted with reality in this way through spiritual science, we will not overestimate all those peculiar concepts with which spiritual life—and indeed humanity in recent times—has so often nourished itself. These concepts have, in many cases—I would say—been formed in a Luciferic-Ahrimanic way, in that people have nourished their thinking and imagination with feelings from the most ancient times, which they have carried forward through the ages. People are so attached to these inherited concepts, and one can feel deep sorrow when one observes this attachment—this rigid clinging to inherited concepts—in people. Thus, even in this day and age, people have spoken of “great generals”; in a certain sphere, a veritable idolatry has been fostered for figures like Hindenburg and Ludendorff—a veritable idolatry, as if, in the entire context of the catastrophe that has unfolded, this old hero-worship could still have any significance at all! All the abilities that had previously won battles—or the inabilities that had previously caused battles to be lost—had, after all, ceased to have any significance whatsoever in the course of this war. Victory or defeat depended on whether the necessary resources—guns, ammunition, and manpower—were available in a particular place and in the hands of one side or the other; that is what determined victory. Or it depended on whether one side or the other had a more effective or less effective poison gas. That is what determined whether battles were won or lost. To that extent, the personal competence of the strategist was not even a factor, as it had been in the past. And here, too, one encounters a terrible falsehood in the assessment of one person or another. You have no idea how widespread the need is today to correct the concepts of truth and falsehood. Our age is already so deeply entangled in empty rhetoric and falsehood, in illusions and phantasms. That is why it must be emphasized again and again that we must break free from this entanglement in these notions. And these notions are particularly prevalent in the field of education. Start at the top and work your way down to the lowest levels of schooling—it is necessary everywhere: Medicine, theology, jurisprudence, and philosophy—and everything else that has become attached to these universities—then secondary education and all manner of things; this is precisely what has served to undermine the foundation of truth and what has lulled people into complacency more than anything else with regard to this undermining of the foundation for truth.

[ 45 ] It is, after all, so incredibly difficult to find understanding on this very point, and there is no hope unless one finds understanding on this point. Perhaps it has been easier for me to gain understanding on this point than for many others. For I do believe that it causes a great deal of harm in the present age that this way of thinking has prevailed for so long and has truly taken hold of broad segments of the human population—that way of thinking which consists in parents already providing for their young—I will leave aside for now how they provide for their daughters, for that would be a chapter in itself—but that they ensure he secures a government position, where, even if he enters it late—well, then the old man has to give him a helping hand—he then rises, without having to do anything about it, from five-year term to five-year term in his salary. He is provided for life, for he is entitled to a pension. This lulls one into a certain carelessness. It is, after all, only a minor matter compared to this fundamental fact, and one also knew, among other things: If you stay in one place long enough, you’ll receive the Order of the Red Eagle, 4th Class, then 3rd Class—that comes on top of it all. This is roughly what unfolds when one stands at the first gate of life—that which can make one so carefree because it lifts one out of the struggle for existence. Proletarian theory, or Marxism, would say: This is perfectly natural; anyone who, in a bourgeois manner, subconsciously generates the ideas that arise from this sense of security—the belief that one is entitled to a pension—cannot understand the person who, no matter how much he destroys what is present, as a proletarian destroys nothing but his chains. —That is, after all, a constant refrain in proletarian circles. But one senses in such things how ideas are truly shaped by the way one is situated within the social process. One ceases to take that intense, interested part in the struggle for life—on which alone a prosperous, fruitful life depends—when one knows that one’s salary increases every five years and that one will receive such-and-such a pension, ensuring one’s livelihood for life. As I said, I do not wish to speak of daughters. However, the mindset is by no means different in the social process with regard to the integration of daughters and women into social life.

[ 46 ] But I believe that a great deal depends on this. The fact is, however, that they are beginning—perhaps precisely by shaking up some things that were once considered certain, things people firmly believed in—to instill different ideas in people’s minds. Indeed, some who until now have been able to wait calmly for what has come along each year may find themselves looking strangely toward the future as the next five-year plan comes to an end. Perhaps, as I said, the fact that I have never in my life consciously sought any professional or other connection with anything related to government employment or, for that matter, to the state in any way at all, has helped me gain an understanding of these developments. It always filled me with disgust to have anything to do with anything that smacked of the state. I do not boast of this, for it is, of course, a great shortcoming; one then becomes a bohemian. Well, what did Harlan call me in the 1890s in the literary section of the *Vossische Zeitung*? “An unsalaried, free-roaming theologian.” Someone with whom I was friends at the time described me in such a way that his characterization still holds true today; he described many things, and he believed that I, just as little as he did, fit into the bohemian society of that time. He called me an unpaid, free-spirited theologian—which I already was back then—and who didn’t quite fit into that circle. But the whole crowd back then—I’ll say this in parentheses, please don’t take offense, we know each other too well for you to misunderstand me—the entire circle called itself the “Criminals’ Table,” and this name encompassed a number of people whose harmless agenda—if one can speak of an agenda at all—was specifically to annoy the philistines. Jokes are, after all, meant to conceal seriousness, and they are often nothing more than the self-educational expression of that seriousness through the art of living.

[ 47 ] But the day before yesterday, at the end of my talk, I spoke of how, out of current events, German identity must emerge in a certain way alongside Judaism and Hellenism—that German identity which, at first, will be eradicated, at least as a German essence, through brutalization, won’t it? But it will play a role. After all, Hellenism has also been wiped out, and Judaism has been wiped out in a certain sense. It will play its role. And I am quite pleased that, through the recitation of the “Chorus of Primordial Instincts,” one of the most outspoken minds of modern times, Fercher von Steinwand—who speaks so authentically from German folk culture, including that German folk culture which flourishes particularly in German-Austrian regions—has now stepped before your soul in those concrete, vivid ideas that will show you that a certain task is assigned precisely to this German spirit, which never had a true talent for an external state structure; that this German spirit possesses certain possibilities for sound self-knowledge precisely in such outstanding individuals as Fercher von Steinwand was.

[ 48 ] Today, people feel compelled to tell the Germans all sorts of things. Especially over the past four and a half years, there has been a constant sense of pressure to tell the Germans this and that from the outside. We have seen it just recently, haven’t we? I believe it was Lloyd George—His Excellency himself, of course—who, after so many other speeches, has once again spoken of all that is reprehensible and immoral about German culture, as if there were absolutely no possibility that precisely within this culture might spring forth what it needs in terms of self-knowledge. Fercher von Steinwand, on the other hand, is an exceptionally good example of this. You see, I told you about the lecture that he—Fercher von Steinwand—gave in 1859 on the Gypsies before the future King of Saxony, then Crown Prince Georg, before ministers and many generals—take note of that: before many generals, for that is militarism, isn’t it—; he gave this lecture before many generals. He spoke about such a wide range of topics concerning the Gypsies, for to him the Gypsies appeared, in a sense, to be something closely related to the role that the German people will play in the future. In 1859—isn’t that a remarkable display of self-awareness, the way he envisions this from one perspective? I read it to you the day before yesterday, but I’d like to characterize it for you from another angle as well. And to that end, allow me to read you another short excerpt from this lecture on Gypsies by Fercher von Steinwand. So imagine that Fercher von Steinwand is speaking—discussing what is favorable and unfavorable to the further development of the German people—before a crown prince, ministers, and generals; imagine that he speaks as follows:

[ 49 ] “In our mountainous region, there is a custom—which is, incidentally, commendable—that immediately before bedtime, the head of the household kneels at the table and leads a prayer known as the Rosary. This prayer is recited aloud in unison by the entire family—including the servants—in alternating verses, and its duration undoubtedly fills an entire hour. Indeed, it can be considerably extended by a devout housewife adding the Lord’s Prayer. For this reason, it will not seem unnatural if the longed-for sleep—which has been postponed by the continued recitation of the holy “Pray for us”—sometimes prematurely claims its due, interrupting the weary worker in the midst of the loud “Hail Mary” and repeatedly shaking him from his kneeling position, and so on, until the piety that began so eloquently has dragged itself to a slurred conclusion. This time, the master of the house himself was touched by the gentle hand of nature, and his “Lord, have mercy on us” had gradually lost all its usual force. I myself was kneeling in a corner of the room, nodding more toward my bed than toward God.

[ 50 ] “The dark-brown horde lay silently on the threshold of the open room door”—for there were Gypsies visiting—“sometimes revealing crystal-clear teeth.” The face of a young woman, whose beauty had faded early, calmly turned toward the doorway, was bathed in the flickering glow of the fireplace. The white of her eye seemed to be fading as drowsiness set in. All the more clearly, the pale yellow iridescence at the glazed edge of her eyeball stood out—a delicate pale yellow iridescence that characterizes every Gypsy eye and is sometimes discernible only to the painter.

[ 51 ] All our annoyance with the strangers had vanished, for fatigue had taken hold of the house. No one except the Gypsy mother we already knew—who had planted her knees right in the middle of the floor—had followed the prayer with a steadfast, courageous voice, and piety was on the verge of a general defeat.

[ 52 ] Suddenly, the old woman, writhing like a viper, rose from the floor with terrible ferocity, stormed toward the faltering prayer leader with swift, overwhelming force, and snatched the bejeweled rosary from his limp hand, bursting into a fit of cherubic rage. All the devout murmuring ceased as if at the blare of the trumpets of the Last Judgment, and the room seemed to tremble, struck by a holy earthquake. Then the woman, in a fit of Pythian ecstasy, leaped or sprang into the midst of the circle of worshippers; the outline of her face had become Gorgon-like, her voice had risen to the tone of a thunderstorm. Stretching both arms toward the heavens, she cried out: “But whoever is lukewarm, O Lord, you will spew out of your mouth”—the twilight glow of the lighting fluttered upon her coppery brow, rimmed with black, and beneath it it blazed forth with fiery power like the lightning of the Archangel Michael. Never before had I been told with such fiery urgency that wavering and indecisive people are the Creator’s worst and most worthless creations.

[ 53 ] What an immeasurable abundance of religious wealth permeated this woman—that’s what I thought; how enviable!

[ 54 ] Poor student that I was! I hadn't yet discovered what

[ 55 ] that it is one thing to possess a depth of feeling and quite another to convey it. I did not yet know that it was enough to sense within oneself the faint beginnings of such depth to, under certain circumstances, serve as an excellent interpreter of profound emotional depth.

[ 56 ] I once sat under a maple tree that was in the process of growing. But it gave no indication of this through the sound of a drum. Yet it cannot be denied that a good drum requires inner smoothness. Were this not the case, the greatest noise-makers and braggarts, the most adept manipulators of gestures, would also have to be the greatest creative minds among mortals, and bold, flamboyant actors would have to be the most profound playwrights—and modern Germany would have no cause to complain about the lack of excellent tragedies.

[ 57 ] Where would such a perspective be more appropriate than in a history of the Gypsies?

[ 58 ] This is, after all, the foundation for a kind of self-knowledge that does not need to be lectured on morality by the world, a self-knowledge that could already judge for itself that what existed had fallen into decadence beginning in 1870. However, if one understood these things, one acted as I did in my book on Friedrich Nietzsche, where I quoted Nietzsche’s words: “Exstirpation of the German spirit in favor of the ‘German Empire.’” I was unable to have the book on Friedrich Nietzsche reprinted during the war because of what is written in it. Fercher von Steinwand goes on to say:

[ 59 ] “The air is stifling and sultry from the oaths that have been sworn to the constitutions for eight decades. How many states are there where people have not broken these oaths time and again? Our minds are numbed by the blare of trumpets and the cheers with which we welcomed Freedom, our heavenly benefactress.”

[ 60 ] People think Fercher von Steinwand is talking about Wilsonianism and Entente views!

[ 61 ] “But count the mortals who are man enough to be free! Where are there still four walls that do not resound with spirited quotations from Schiller’s writings? But where—in what hut, in what palace, under what star in the German realm—does anything of the poet’s energetic soul, of his fiery spirit, of his tenacious drive toward a great goal still live on? Who would even have the courage and the gift to commit his mistakes? “The ‘tribunes of all European empires’ stagger under the weight of eloquence and scholarship, through which order and happiness are to be established in human society.”

[ 62 ] That is why I said yesterday: At least in Central Europe, we have reached a point where some contribution has been made toward exposing the lie. Where it has triumphed, it will live on.

[ 63 ] “You fools! What is the thought you have been thinking? Who among you is a Mirabeau? How fervent is your vision of a happy state—if it isn’t already cold as a corpse before you’ve even announced it? Tell me, who among you is greater than the moment? How many scoundrels have you intimidated, how many noble-minded people have you encouraged? How many complaints praise you through their silence? Does misfortune not speak louder than ever? Is it really so terribly difficult to hold fast to the idea that every human being, without exception, must be raised from childhood for freedom, order, and happiness—indeed, even for the art of educating oneself—raised far less through reasoning than through love, patience, strictness, and selfless sacrifice? Is it really so terribly difficult to reward productive work instead of rewarding noise? Is it really so terribly difficult to serve gentle, all-balancing reason instead of obeying bayonets?”

[ 64 ] “Imagine a state”—there they are, the generals!—“imagine a state of the first or second rank. Imagine, in addition, a discerning minister”—the ministers are sitting there too—“who does not take credit for what brings harm or disgrace to a neighbor; in a word, a minister who devotes two-thirds of his immense military budget to the education of the lowest classes of the people—what do you think? Wouldn’t such a minister bring about, within a few years, the most profound transformation of all conditions—to his own advantage, to the advantage of his people, to the advantage of his sovereign and king? Wouldn’t such a minister change the course of world history in less than half a generation? I would certainly have the heart to say “Yes” once again; for I care not a whit about being scolded as a foolish ideologue by some smooth-talking sabre-rattler or portly ceremonial official.

[ 65 ] Take heart, you Gypsies! You are not alone in your kind; you are not in danger of dying out: every day, new reinforcements flow to you from all walks of life!»

[ 66 ] It is indeed a philosophy of life that has taken deep root in the impulses grounded in genuine folklore—impulses that, in a certain sense, justify assertions such as those I have made, which I do not wish to make merely on the basis of emotional impulse, but which can be substantiated point by point.

[ 67 ] We'll meet again next Friday at 7 a.m., and then we'll continue our discussion.