The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Recently, I explicitly emphasized that — if we take the word again in the sense I used it at that time — a paradisiacal state on the physical plane is impossible, and that therefore all so-called solutions to the social question, which more or less consciously or unconsciously seek to bring about such a paradisiacal state on the physical plane—one that is, moreover, supposed to be permanent—must be based on illusions. In light of this clarification, I ask you to consider all the remarks I make regarding contemporary phenomena in this context. For there is undoubtedly a certain demand within present-day reality that can be called the demand for a social restructuring of human relations. The point is simply that we must not abstract this question, that we must not take it in an absolute sense, but—as I already said last time—that we must gain insight, based on spiritual scientific knowledge, into what is necessary specifically for our time. Let us now discuss a few more points regarding what is necessary for our time based on spiritual scientific premises.

[ 2 ] What is generally overlooked today—even to the greatest extent—when people speak of social issues or social demands is that, in accordance with the demands of our time, the social question cannot be addressed at all without a deeper understanding of human nature. One can devise whatever social programs one likes; one can strive to bring about however ideal social conditions—all of this must remain fruitless if it does not aim to grasp the human being as such, if it does not lead to a deeper understanding of the human being. I have pointed out that the social structure I have spoken of—this threefold social order, which I had to present in the most eminent sense as a demand of our time—is relevant to the present day precisely because it takes into account an understanding of the human being in every detail, an understanding of the human being as he is now, at this given moment in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. From this perspective as well, I ask you to consider all the arguments I will present.

[ 3 ] Above all, it is possible that a social order demanded by today’s circumstances cannot be established without realizing that this social order is linked to human beings’ self-recognition in their relationship to society. One might say: Of all forms of knowledge, knowledge of the human being is by far the most difficult; this is why, even in the ancient mysteries, “Know thyself” was held up as the highest goal of the quest for wisdom. What is particularly difficult for human beings today is gaining insight into all that is active within them, flowing in from the cosmos—all that is at work within them. Human beings would prefer to imagine themselves as simply as possible, because, especially today, they have become particularly complacent in their thinking and their conceptions. But human beings are simply not simple beings. Nothing can be done against this reality by arbitrarily manipulating one’s conceptions. Above all, human beings are not simple beings, especially in social relationships. It is precisely in social relationships that they are beings they would infinitely rather not be; they would infinitely rather be different from what they are. One might say: Human beings actually love themselves immensely. That much cannot be denied: Human beings love themselves immensely. And it is through this self-love that human beings turn self-knowledge into a source of illusions. Thus, human beings do not want to admit to themselves that they are, in fact, only half a social being, and that the other half of them is an antisocial being.

[ 4 ] To admit this plainly and forcefully—that human beings are at once social and antisocial beings—is a fundamental requirement of our understanding of human nature. One can certainly say, “I strive to become a social being”—and one must say it, because without being a social being, one cannot live properly with other people at all. But at the same time, it is human nature to constantly struggle against the social, to constantly be an antisocial being.

[ 5 ] We have repeatedly examined the human being from a wide variety of perspectives—based on the threefold nature of the soul, on thinking or imagining, feeling, and willing. Today, we can once again examine the human being in a social context in terms of thinking or imagining, feeling, and willing. Above all, with regard to imagination and thinking, we must be clear that in this imagination and this thinking lies an infinitely significant source of what is antisocial in human beings. By the very fact that human beings are thinking beings, they are antisocial beings. Only spiritual science can arrive at the truth about these matters. For only spiritual science can shed some light on the question: How, then, do we as human beings relate to one another at all? When, so to speak, is the right relationship between human beings established for ordinary, everyday consciousness—or rather, for ordinary, everyday life? Yes, you see, when this right relationship is established between human beings, then social order is undoubtedly present as well. But now we are faced with—one might say: unfortunately, but the one who recognizes this says: necessarily—the peculiar fact that we develop a genuine relationship from person to person only in sleep. Only when we sleep do we establish an unvarnished, genuine relationship from person to person. At the moment when you have numbed your ordinary waking consciousness, when you are in that state between falling asleep and waking up—in dreamless sleep—you are—and here I am speaking in terms of imagination and thought—a social being. The moment you wake up, you begin to develop antisocial impulses through imagination and thought. One need only consider how complicated human social relationships become as a result of the fact that, in reality, a person only behaves properly toward another person while asleep. I have alluded to this on various occasions from different perspectives. For example, I have suggested that one can be quite chauvinistically nationalistic while awake—but when one is asleep, one is transported precisely among those people, and is united with them—namely, with their national spirit—whom one hates most of all while awake. There is simply nothing that can be done about this. Sleep is a social equalizer. But since modern science wants to know absolutely nothing about sleep, it will certainly not include what I have just said in its social considerations for a long time to come.

[ 6 ] But through thinking, we are drawn into yet another antisocial current while awake. Suppose you are facing another person. After all, one faces all people only by facing the individual. You are a thinking person, of course; otherwise, you would not be a person if you were not a thinking person. I am speaking now only of thinking; we will speak later of feeling and willing—from the standpoint of feeling and willing, one might raise an objection, but from the standpoint of imagination, what I am saying now is correct. When you, as a thinking, imaginative person, face another person, the peculiar thing is that simply through the mutual relationship that forms between one person and another, there is a tendency in your subconscious to be lulled to sleep by the other person. You are, so to speak, lulled to sleep in your subconscious by the other person. You see, this is the normal relationship between people: when we come together, one person is always—and the relationship is, of course, mutual—striving to lull the other person’s subconscious. And what, therefore, must you do as a thinking person? Everything I am describing now takes place, of course, in the subconscious, but that does not make it any less real. It is a fact, even if it does not rise to ordinary consciousness. So when you face another person, they lull you to sleep—that is, they lull your thinking to sleep, not your feelings or will. Now, if you want to remain a thinking person, you must defend yourself against this internally. You must activate your thinking. You must take defensive action against falling asleep. Facing another person always means: awakening yourself, rousing yourself, breaking free from what they want to do to you.

[ 7 ] You see, such things happen in life, and one can only understand life by viewing it from the perspective of the spiritual sciences. When you speak with a person—indeed, simply being in the presence of another person—it means that you must constantly remain alert against their tendency to lull you into a state of mental complacency. Although this does not rise to ordinary consciousness, it acts within the human being as an antisocial impulse. In a sense, every person confronts us as an enemy of our imagination, as an enemy of our thinking. We must protect our thinking against others. This means that, with regard to imagination and thinking, we are to a high degree antisocial beings and can only educate ourselves to become social beings at all. If we did not have to engage in this constant warding off of other people through education, self-discipline, and the necessity of our circumstances, then we could be social beings through our thinking. But because we must do so, we must above all be clear that we can only become social beings through self-discipline—that, as thinking human beings, we are not social by nature to begin with.

[ 8 ] From this, however, you can also see that without taking into account the spiritual aspect—the fact that human beings are thinking beings—it is impossible to say anything at all about the social question, for the social question touches upon the most intimate aspects of human life. And anyone who fails to take into account that human beings, by thinking, simply develop antisocial impulses, will never gain any insight into the social question. It’s easy for us when we’re asleep. We’re lulled to sleep anyway. So that’s when the bridge to all other human beings can be built. When awake, the other person, by confronting us, strives to lull us to sleep so that a bridge to them can be built—and likewise, we do the same toward them. But we must resist this, for otherwise we would simply be deprived of our thinking consciousness in our interactions with others.

[ 9 ] So it is not so easy to simply make social demands; for most people who make social demands are not at all aware of how deeply antisocialism is rooted in human nature. And above all, people are not inclined to admit this to themselves as a form of self-knowledge. It might become easier for them if they would simply admit to themselves that they are not only antisocial beings, but that they share this trait with all other human beings. But deep down, even if they admit that, in general, human beings are antisocial as thinkers, every person secretly reserves a little part for themselves: “But I am the exception.” Even if they do not fully admit this to themselves, the thought still dawns on them a little bit in secret: “I am the exception; the others are such antisocial beings as thinkers.” It is particularly difficult for people to take seriously the idea that, as human beings, we cannot simply be something, but must continually become something. Yet this is something that is particularly closely connected to the things one can learn in our time.

[ 10 ] Today it is possible to do what, five or six years ago, no one even wanted to do: to point out that certain flaws and shortcomings of human nature are widespread across the entire Earth, for these flaws and shortcomings have been laid bare all too clearly. People try to delude themselves about this necessity of becoming something. Above all, they try not to point out what they want to become, but rather what they are. Thus, one will now find that a large number of members of the Entente and of America are content with what they are simply by virtue of being members of the Entente or Americans. They need not become anything; they need only point out how they differ from the evil people of the Central European countries—how those people are “black,” while they alone are “white.” This is something that has spread a human illusion across vast swaths of the earth, one that will, of course, take terrible revenge over time. This desire to “be” something rather than to “become” something—that is what lies in the background as opposition to spiritual science. For spiritual science cannot help but point out to people that one must continually become something, that one cannot be “finished” as something simply by being this or that. Human beings deceive themselves in the most terrible way when they believe they can point to something absolute that implies some kind of special perfection in them. Everything that is not in the process of becoming results in imperfection rather than perfection in human beings. And what I have told you regarding human beings as thinkers and the antisocial impulses this generates has yet another important aspect.

[ 11 ] You see, human beings hover, so to speak, between the social and the antisocial, just as they hover between waking and sleeping—one could even say: sleeping is social, waking is antisocial—and just as they must hover between waking and sleeping to lead a healthy life, so must they hover between the social and the antisocial. But that is precisely what is of extraordinary importance for human life. For this allows a person to lean more or less toward one or the other, just as one can lean more or less toward sleeping or waking. There are people who sleep beyond the proper measure, who—in the pendulum-like state in which a person must exist between sleeping and waking—simply lean toward one side of the scale. In the same way, a person can cultivate either the social or the antisocial impulses within themselves to a greater degree. This is what makes people individually different: one cultivates the social impulses more, while another cultivates the antisocial ones more. If one has a reasonable understanding of human nature, one can easily distinguish between people based on this. They fall precisely into these two categories. Some are more inclined toward the social, while others are more inclined toward the antisocial.

[ 12 ] Now I said: There is another side to this, because antisocial behavior is connected to the fact that we are, in a sense, protecting ourselves from being lulled into complacency. But there is something else connected to this. It makes us sick. Even if the resulting illnesses are not very noticeable—though sometimes they are very noticeable—the antisocial nature is among the causes of these illnesses. So it will be easy for you to understand that the social nature also has something healing and invigorating about it. But you can see from this how strange human nature is. A person cannot restore their health through social nature without, in a sense, numbing themselves. By tearing themselves away from social nature, they strengthen their thinking consciousness but become antisocial. In doing so, however, they also paralyze the healing forces present in their subconscious and in their organism. Thus, what exists in human beings as social and antisocial impulses plays a role right down to the healthy and diseased states of life. Anyone who develops an understanding of human nature in this direction will be able to trace a large number of more or less real illnesses back to the antisocial nature of human beings. Illness is more closely linked to the antisocial nature of human beings than one might think—particularly those illnesses that are, after all, often quite real illnesses, but which manifest themselves in such ways as “whining,” all manner of self-torment and the torment of others, “acting strange,” and the compulsion to “overindulge” in this or that. All of this is connected to an unhealthy physical constitution, but it develops gradually when one has a strong tendency toward antisocial impulses.

[ 13 ] Above all, one should be fully aware that a very important secret of life is hidden here. To have a living understanding of this secret of life—which is extraordinarily important both for the educator and for human self-education—and not merely in theory, means that one also gains the impulse to take one’s own life firmly in hand, to reflect on overcoming antisocial tendencies, to empathize with them, and to rise above them. Many people would heal themselves not only of their quirks but also of all manner of ailments if they were to examine their antisocial impulses within themselves. But this must be done earnestly. It must be done without self-indulgence, for this is of immense importance for life. — Let this be said for now about the social and antisocial aspects in human beings with regard to imagination or thinking.

[ 14 ] Moreover, human beings are sentient beings, and feeling is, in turn, a peculiar thing. Even when it comes to feeling, human beings are not as simple as they would like to imagine. For there is a paradoxical peculiarity to the way people feel toward one another. Emotion has the peculiarity that it is initially inclined to give us a false impression of another person. The first tendency in a person’s subconscious during human interaction is always that a false impression of the other person arises in our subconscious, and in life we must always first combat this false impression. Anyone with a good understanding of life will easily notice that people who are not inclined to engage with others in a genuine way actually end up badmouthing almost everyone, at least after a while. This is, after all, a characteristic of a large number of people. One may love one person or another for a while; but once that time has passed, something stirs within human nature, and one begins to find fault with the other person in some way, to have something against them. Often one does not even know what one has against them, for these things take place largely in the subconscious. This simply stems from the fact that the subconscious has a tendency to distort the image we form of the other person. We must first get to know the other person more closely; then we will see that we need to erase the distortions from the image we initially formed. As paradoxical as it sounds, it would be a good maxim for life—even if exceptions are to be considered—if we always made it a point to correct the image of a person that becomes fixed in our subconscious, to correct it somehow under all circumstances. For this subconscious has a tendency to judge people based on likes and dislikes. Life itself calls us to do this. Just as life calls us to be simple-minded people—and in doing so we become antisocial—so life calls us—and what I’m saying are simply facts—to judge based on likes and dislikes. But any judgment made based on likes and dislikes is false. There is no true, no correct judgment if it is based on likes and dislikes. And because the subconscious always follows its feelings of like and dislike, it always creates a false image of our fellow human beings. We cannot possibly have a true image of our fellow human beings in our subconscious. Certainly, we sometimes have an image that is too favorable, but it is always shaped by likes and dislikes, and there is nothing left to do but simply admit this fact to ourselves—to admit that, even in this regard, as human beings, we cannot simply be something, but must become something. We must tell ourselves that, particularly with regard to our emotional interactions with other people, we must lead a life of anticipation. One must not rely on the image that initially pushes its way up from the subconscious into one’s consciousness, but must instead try to live with people. One will see, when one tries to live with people, that the social disposition develops out of the antisocial disposition that one actually always has at first.

[ 15 ] It is therefore of particular importance to study the human emotional life insofar as it is antisocial. While intellectual life is antisocial because humans must protect themselves from falling asleep, emotional life is antisocial because, by organizing their interactions with others based on sympathy and antipathy, humans instill false emotional currents into society from the outset. What arises in people through sympathies and antipathies is, from the outset, such that it introduces antisocial currents into human society. One _ might say—as paradoxical as it sounds—that a truly social society would actually only be possible if people did not live according to sympathies and antipathies. But then they would not be human beings. From this, in turn, it follows that human beings are at once social and antisocial beings, and that therefore what is called the “social question” must address the innermost nature of the human being. If one does not address this, one will never arrive at a solution to the social question at any time.

[ 16 ] When it comes to the will—which plays out from person to person—it becomes particularly striking and paradoxical just how complex human beings are. As you know, when it comes to the will between people, it is not only sympathies and antipathies that play a role—though they do play a role, insofar as we are sentient beings—but also inclinations and aversions that translate into action; that is, sympathies and antipathies in action, in their expression and manifestation, play a very special role. A person behaves toward another person in the way dictated by their particular sympathy for that person, by the particular degree of love they feel toward them. Here, a subconscious inspiration plays a remarkable role. For what is, after all, poured out over all interaction of will between human beings must be viewed in the light of the impulse to which this interaction is subject, in the light of the love—present to a greater or lesser degree—that operates between people. It is this love, operating between people, that carries the impulses of their will, which thus flow from one person to another.

[ 17 ] When it comes to love, human beings are subject to a great delusion in the most profound sense and are in even greater need of correction than they are with regard to ordinary emotional sympathies and antipathies. For, as strange as it may sound to the ordinary mind, it is absolutely true that the love which manifests itself from one person to another—if it is not spiritualized (and in ordinary life, love is spiritualized only in the rarest of cases), and I am not speaking here merely of sexual love or love based on sexual attraction, but of love from person to person in general—that this non-spiritualized love is not actually love as such, but rather the image one forms of it, and that it is, for the most part, nothing more than a terrible illusion. For the love that one person believes they are developing for another is—given the way people are in life—for the most part nothing other than self-love. A person believes they love the other, but in love they actually love only themselves. Here you see a source of antisocial nature, which must also be the source of a terrible self-deception. For one may think they are losing themselves in overflowing love for another person, but in reality one does not love that other person; rather, one loves the sense of connection with the other person within one’s own soul. What one experiences as a sense of bliss in one’s own soul through the other person—what one feels within oneself by being with that other person, by making declarations of love to that other person for one’s own sake—that is what one actually loves. All in all, one loves oneself by kindling this self-love in one’s interaction with the other.

[ 18 ] This is an important secret of life. It is of immense importance. For in the delusion regarding this love—which one believes to be love, but which is actually nothing more than self-love, selfishness, egoism, or masked egoism—and the vast majority of love that exists between people and is called love is nothing but masked egoism—in this delusion lies the source of the greatest and most far-reaching antisocial impulses imaginable. Through this self-love, which masks itself as love, human beings become antisocial beings in the most profound sense. After all, human beings are antisocial precisely because they bury themselves within themselves. And they bury themselves most deeply within themselves when they are unaware of—or refuse to acknowledge—this act of burying themselves within themselves.

[ 19 ] You can see that anyone who speaks of social demands—especially to humanity today—must take such states of mind into account to a very great extent. One simply has to ask: How are people to arrive at any kind of social structure for their coexistence if they are unwilling to recognize how much selfishness is embodied in so-called love—in love for one’s neighbor, for example? Thus, love can actually be an immensely powerful impetus toward antisocial behavior. One might say: Just as a person is—if they do not work on themselves, if they do not take control of themselves through self-discipline—so, as a loving being, they are under all circumstances an antisocial being. Love as such, as it is inherent in human nature without the person practicing self-discipline, is antisocial from the outset, for it is exclusive. This, in turn, is not a criticism. Many of life’s necessities are tied to the fact that love must be exclusive. Of course, a father will love his own son more than a stranger’s child; but that is antisocial. There is simply no denying that antisocial elements are woven into life by life itself. And if one says, “Man is a social being”—as has become downright fashionable today—that is nonsense, for man is just as much an antisocial being as he is a social being. Life itself makes man an antisocial being. So imagine for a moment such a paradisiacal state realized on earth—one that cannot possibly exist, but which is strived for because people always love the unreal far more than the real—let us imagine that such a paradisiacal state were established; for my part, even a “super-paradise” such as Lenin, Trotsky, Kurt Eisner, and others wanted to see on earth. Very soon, countless people would have to rebel against it, because they could not remain human under such conditions; for in such a state, only the social instincts would find satisfaction, while the antisocial instincts would immediately stir. This is just as inevitable as a pendulum not swinging solely in one direction. The moment you establish a paradisiacal state, the antisocial instincts must stir. If what Lenin, Trotsky, and Kurt Eisner want—and which they imagine to be a paradisiacal state—were to become a reality, it would, in the shortest possible time, be turned into its opposite by the antisocial instincts. For that is precisely what life is: it ebbs and flows. And if one refuses to understand that, then one understands nothing at all about the world. One often hears it said: The ideal form of social organization is democracy. — Well, let us assume, then, that the ideal form of social organization is democracy. But if one were to introduce this democracy anywhere, it would necessarily lead, in its final phase, to its own abolition. Democracy necessarily strives—when democrats are together—for one person to always want to overpower the other; one always wants to be right over the other. That is perfectly natural. It strives toward its own dissolution. So if you introduce democracy somewhere, you can paint a beautiful picture of it in your mind. But when put into practice, democracy leads just as surely to the opposite of democracy as a pendulum swings to the opposite side. It simply cannot be any other way in life. Democracies will always, after some time, die from their own democratic nature. These are the things that are absolutely essential for understanding life.

[ 20 ] Now, there is also the peculiar fact that, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, it is precisely the most fundamental human characteristics that are antisocial. For consciousness, which is built precisely upon thinking, is to develop during this epoch. Therefore, this epoch will bring out the antisocial impulses inherent in human nature most strongly. Through these antisocial impulses, people will bring about more or less intolerable conditions, and the reaction against antisocialism will always assert itself in the cry for socialism. One simply has to understand that ebb and flow must always alternate. For suppose you were to truly socialize society—such conditions would eventually arise in human interaction that we would all fall asleep in our dealings with one another. Human interaction would become a soporific. It is hard for you to imagine this today, because you cannot even begin to conceive of what life would actually look like in a so-called socialist republic. But this socialist republic would in fact be a vast dormitory for the human imagination. One can understand that there are longings for something like this. After all, many people also constantly yearn for sleep. But one must understand what the inner necessities of life are, and must not be content merely to want what suits one or what one likes; for as a rule, one likes what one does not have. One usually fails to appreciate what one does have.

[ 21 ] As you can see from these remarks, when discussing the social question, one must first and foremost delve deeply into the nature of human beings, and one must come to understand this nature in such a way as to know how social and antisocial drives are manifested in human beings. In life, social and antisocial impulses are intertwined in a way that is often tangled and inextricable. That is why it is so difficult to discuss the social question. The social question can hardly be discussed in any other way than by having a genuine inclination to delve into the intimate nature of human beings—to examine, for example, how the bourgeoisie itself is a bearer of antisocial impulses. Simply being bourgeois gives rise to antisocial impulses, because being bourgeois essentially consists of creating for oneself a sphere of life that suits one’s needs, so that one can feel at ease within it. If one examines this peculiar striving of the bourgeois, it consists in his desire to create, on an economic basis and in accordance with the peculiarities of our present era, an island of life on which he can sleep with regard to all circumstances, with the exception of some particular lifestyle habit that he develops according to his subjective antipathies or sympathies. Thus, the bourgeois is able to sleep a great deal as a result. He therefore does not strive for the kind of sleep sought by the proletarian, who is constantly kept awake because his consciousness is not lulled to sleep on an economic basis; the proletarian, therefore, longs for the sleep of social order. This is indeed a very important psychological insight. Possession lulls one to sleep; the necessity to struggle in life awakens one. Being lulled to sleep by property leads one to develop antisocial impulses, because one does not yearn for social sleep. The constant demands of the necessity to earn a living give rise to a longing to fall asleep within the social context.

[ 22 ] These things must certainly be taken into account; otherwise, one cannot understand the present at all. Now one might say: Despite all this, our fifth post-Atlantean epoch is, in a certain sense, striving toward socialization in the form I recently explained to you here. For the things I have described will come to pass: either when people are willing to accept them through human reason, or, if they are not willing, through cataclysms and revolutions. Humanity is striving for this threefold social order in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch; this threefold social order must come to pass. Our epoch is thus striving toward a certain form of socialization.

[ 23 ] But this socialization is not possible—as will become clear to you from various considerations we have already made here—without another form of socialization accompanying it. Socialization can only refer to the external social structure. In our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, however, this can really only consist of a taming of intellectual consciousness, a taming of antisocial human instincts. Thus, the social structure must, so to speak, bring about a taming of the antisocial instincts of the imagination. This must have a counterbalance; it must be brought into equilibrium by something. But this can only be brought into balance by ensuring that everything originating from earlier epochs—in which it was justified—regarding the subjugation of thoughts, the domination of one person’s thoughts by another, is eliminated from the world through increasing socialization. Therefore, the freedom of spiritual life must take place alongside the organization of economic conditions in the future. This freedom of spiritual life alone makes it possible for us to truly relate to one another as human beings, so that we see in the other the person standing before us, not “man in general.” A Woodrow Wilson-style program speaks of “man in general.” But this “man in general,” this abstract human being, does not exist. What exists is always only the individual human being. We can only take an interest in them—in turn—as whole human beings, not merely through abstract thought. We extinguish what we are meant to develop from person to person when we “Wilsonize,” when we construct an abstract image of humanity. The essential point is that socialization in the future must be accompanied by absolute freedom of thought; socialization is inconceivable without freedom of thought. Therefore, socialization will have to be linked to the eradication of all intellectual servitude—whether this intellectual servitude is cultivated by the activities of certain societies among the English-speaking population, which I have sufficiently characterized for you, or by Roman Catholicism. Both are equally harmful, and it is extraordinarily important to recognize the inner kinship between these two. It is of the utmost importance that there be no ambiguity today, especially regarding such matters. You can tell a Jesuit today what I have explained to you about the peculiar nature of those secret societies among the English-speaking population. He will be very pleased to receive confirmation of what he stands for; but you must be clear, if you wish to stand on the ground of spiritual science, that you must not confuse your rejection of these secret societies with the rejection that comes from the Jesuits. It is remarkable that even today, people still show too little discernment in this area.

[ 24 ] I recently pointed out in public lectures that what matters today is not only what a person says, but that one always pay attention to the spirit that permeates what is said. I cited the example of the identical statements made by Woodrow Wilson and Herman Grimm. I say this because you will now be able to observe with increasing clarity that, for example, that side appears to be taking a stand against those Anglo-American secret societies—but only in appearance—just as we here had to do. But something like what appears, for example, in the December issue of *Stimmen der Zeit* makes a grotesquely comical impression on anyone who looks at the facts objectively. For it goes without saying that what must be combated in the Anglo-American secret societies is exactly the same as what must be combated in Jesuitism. The two stand opposed to one another, each fighting the other, like power against power, which cannot coexist. Neither side has the slightest genuine, objective interest; rather, they are driven solely by partisan or sectarian interests. Today, we must especially break the habit of focusing solely on the content and failing to see from which perspective something is presented to the world. Something presented from a perspective that is valid for a certain period of time may be beneficial or salutary; when staged by another power, however, it may be either utterly ridiculous or even harmful. This is something that must be taken into account with particular care today. For it will become increasingly clear: when two people say the same thing, it is not the same thing, depending on the background behind it. After all the trials that life has brought us over the past three to four years, it is especially necessary that we finally take such things into account, that we truly address them.

[ 25 ] There is still little sign of a genuine engagement with these matters. For example, people today will still ask: How should one organize this or that, how should one do this or that so that it is right? Set up this or that here or there—if you do not put people in charge who think in the spirit of our age, then no matter whether you create the best or the worst system, it will turn out either for good or for ill, depending on the people you put in charge. What matters today is that people truly understand: they must become; they cannot rely on anything they already are; they must continually be in the process of becoming. They must also be able to truly look into reality. But people are very, very averse to this; I have emphasized this from a wide variety of perspectives. In all things, especially in contemporary circumstances, people are so inclined to avoid even approaching reality, but rather to take things exactly as it suits them. Forming a judgment that is appropriate is, of course, not as easy as making a judgment that heads as directly as possible toward being formulable. Judgments that are objective cannot be easily formulated, especially when they pertain to social, human, or political life, for in those areas the opposite of what one assumes is almost always also true—and just as true as the opposite. Only if one tries not to form any judgment at all about such circumstances, but rather to form images—that is, if one already ascends into the imaginative life—will one be able to follow roughly the right path. This is of particular importance in our time: that one tries to form images, not strictly abstract, self-contained judgments. After all, it is images that must drive us toward socialization. Then, what is further necessary: there is no socialization without a person becoming spiritually scientific—that is, free in thought on the one hand, and spiritually scientific on the other.

[ 26 ] I have, in fact, already pointed out the underlying principles in public lectures, including one in Basel. I said that certain materialistically minded people, who want to understand everything in terms of evolution, starting from the animal kingdom, say: Well, we see the beginnings of social instincts in animals, which develop into morality in humans. But precisely what constitutes social instincts in animals—when elevated to the human level—becomes antisocial. Precisely what is social in animals is, in the most eminent sense, antisocial in humans! People have no desire whatsoever to delve into the various lines of thought that provide a true picture of things; instead, they want to form quick judgments. One can only navigate the give-and-take of human interaction if one does not view human beings merely in terms of their animal nature—for in that respect they are, in the most eminent sense, antisocial—but rather if one views them as spiritual beings, every human being as a spiritual being. But this is possible only if one views the entire world in relation to its spiritual foundation. These three things are, in fact, inseparable: socialism, freedom of thought, and spiritual science. They belong together. In our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the development of one is impossible without the others.

[ 27 ] Above all, it will be necessary for people to come to terms with the fact that there is an antisocial element within every human being, and not to turn a blind eye to it. To put it in trivial terms: The salvation of this era depends to a great extent on people ceasing to love themselves so terribly much. That is, after all, the defining characteristic of modern man: that he loves himself so much. And here, too, you must make a distinction: he is particularly fond of his thinking, his feeling, and his willing—and once, for example, he has come to love his thinking, he will not let go of it.

[ 28 ] You see, anyone who is truly capable of thinking knows something that is by no means unimportant: about everything he thinks correctly, he has at some point thought incorrectly. In fact, one truly knows only that which one has experienced—what effect it has on the soul when one has thought about it incorrectly. But people are reluctant to engage with such inner states of development. That is why people understand one another so little today. Let me give you an example. The proletarian worldview, which I have often spoken to you about—the one that asserts that the way people think, the entire ideological superstructure, depends on economic conditions, so that people form their political ideas according to their economic circumstances.

[ 29 ] Anyone who is open to such ideas will find that they contain a broad truth, and are in particular almost entirely accurate when it comes to historical developments since the sixteenth century. For what people have been thinking since the sixteenth century is almost entirely a result of economic conditions. It is not correct in an absolute sense, but it is correct to a very large extent in a relative sense. However, this idea simply won’t sink into a mind like that of a professor of economics. For example, not far from here, an economist named Michels teaches at a university and argues that this is wrong, because it can be demonstrated that political ideas are not shaped by economic conditions, but rather that political ideas bring about significant changes in economic conditions. And this Professor Michels then points to Napoleon’s Continental Blockade, which virtually wiped out certain branches of industry in Italy or England, for example, and introduced others. So, he says, here we have the most striking example of economic conditions being determined by a political idea—namely, the Continental Blockade. He cites several more such examples. I know that if a hundred people read this book by Professor Michels, they will be convinced that what he says is true, because it is presented with tremendous logic. It seems absolutely correct, but it is, in fact, ridiculously wrong. It is ridiculously wrong because all the examples he cites must be treated according to the same pattern as this Continental Blockade. Certainly, the Continental Blockade meant that certain industries in Italy had to be restructured, but this restructuring of industries did not bring about any change in the economic relationship between employers and workers. That is precisely the defining feature. All of this falls through like water through a sieve or like liquid from a bottomless barrel. For this economic theory of Michels is, in fact, a bottomless barrel. Everything he puts forward falls through the cracks, because the proletarian worldview does not claim at all that an industry—such as the Florentine silk industry, for example—which did not exist before, develops there due to some concept like the Continental Blockade, while it does not develop in England. Rather, the proletarian worldview asserts: Even though the Continental Blockade may shift one industry here and another there, nothing changes in the economic relations between employer and worker—and those are what matter most. Thus, such matters fall outside the broader course of economic events and their ideological superstructure, and the Continental Blockade, in its effectiveness in the most eminent sense, does not prove what Professor Michels seeks to demonstrate.

[ 30 ] Now you ask: Why does a man like Professor Michels insist on his theory in the face of proletarian thought? For the simple reason that he is in love with his own thinking, and because he is completely incapable of engaging with proletarian thought. In fact, he falls asleep immediately. It is a latent falling asleep. The moment he is supposed to contemplate proletarian ideas, he falls asleep. He can only sustain himself by developing the very ideas he is in love with.

[ 31 ] This is how one must address spiritual matters. Our time is, above all, an age in which one must address spiritual matters in the most profound sense; otherwise, one will not understand what is necessary in our time; otherwise, one will not be able to arrive at any kind of salutary judgment regarding these difficult, tragic circumstances. And it is, after all, sound judgments that alone can—and will—lead us out of the misery of the present. There is no cause for pessimism on the whole; but there is ample cause to reverse one’s judgment. Above all, there is the greatest cause for each individual to reverse their judgment.

[ 32 ] One really has to say: It is very, very strange to see how people today pass judgment as if they were asleep, and how quickly they forget from one period to the next, no matter how brief those periods may be. We will see this especially now—how people will forget the way they judged things, all the rhetoric they spouted across the world about justice, about the necessity of fighting for justice against injustice. We will see that most people who spoke of justice in this way some time ago will forget it and fail to recognize how, in the near future, for the vast majority of those who spoke of justice, it will simply be a matter of asserting ordinary power. Of course, they should not be held against for this; but one must simply be clear about the fact that, if one has spoken of justice on the one hand, one then has no right to overlook that, in the end, the loudest voices are all about power and the drive for power. As I said, this should not be held against them, but it will not be a pretty sight to see how those who, until relatively recently, spoke only of justice, justice, and justice, now assert themselves. This should come as no surprise. But those who went along with it, who participated in it, should be surprised if they now find the picture so strangely altered! They should then at least come to realize how strongly human beings are inclined to form their judgments based on illusions rather than on reality.