The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Time itself speaks clearly enough to show that we should apply precisely those insights and reflections we gain from our study of the spiritual sciences to the circumstances of our time and to life in our time. And it is not only the external circumstances of our time that speak clearly today; our spiritual scientific views themselves also, in a certain sense, justify this message. After all, in so many of our reflections we have taken as our starting point a fundamental fact of human development: the fact that this development unfolds in successive stages, the first significant of which—the one that concerns us most at present, as we know—began with the great Atlantean catastrophe. Four post-Atlantean epochs have passed, and we are now living in the fifth post-Atlantean stage of development. And this stage of development, which began in the fifteenth century of our Christian era, is the one we can call the stage of the consciousness soul. Other human soul forces were developed in particular during the other cultural epochs. In our cultural epoch, which followed the Greco-Latin epoch in the first half of the fifteenth century, humanity is to gradually develop the consciousness soul. In the preceding cultural epoch, which began in the eighth century B.C. and was completed in the fifteenth century A.D., humanity primarily developed the intellectual or emotional soul through its culture.

[ 2 ] Well, we need not go into detail about the characteristics of these stages, but we want to focus in particular on what is distinctive about our age—this age, which has, after all, only a relatively small number of centuries behind it. For such an age lasts, on average, a little over two thousand years. So there is still much to be accomplished in this period of the consciousness soul. In this age of the conscious soul, the task of civilized humanity will be to grasp the entire human being and set it on its own feet, bringing much—an extraordinary amount—of what human beings instinctively felt and instinctively judged in earlier periods into the full light of consciousness.

[ 3 ] Isn’t it true that many of the difficulties and much of the chaos unfolding around us and within us in our time actually become immediately understandable once we realize that this is the task of our age: to raise the instinctive into consciousness. For the instinctive happens, so to speak, of its own accord; but what is to happen consciously requires that a person make an inner effort, that they begin, above all, to think truly from the depths of their whole being. And people shy away from this. It is something people do not like to do: to take a conscious part in shaping world affairs. Moreover, there is a point here about which people today are still greatly mistaken. People today think: Well, we are, after all, living in the age of intellectual development. People are proud that more thinking is done today than in the past. But first of all, this is a delusion, an illusion—one of the many illusions on which humanity lives today. What makes people so proud—this grasping of thoughts—is, in many cases, instinctive. Only when the instinctive—which has emerged in the course of human development and which today manifests itself in pride in thinking—becomes active; only when the intellectual truly springs not merely from the brain but from the whole human being; only when the intellectual itself becomes merely a part of the entire spiritual life; only when it is lifted away from the rational and raised into the imaginative, the inspired, intuitive—only then will that which is striving to emerge in this fifth post-Atlantean period of the consciousness soul gradually come to the fore. What confronts human beings today—what can already point to the fact that, in a sense, even the most everyday thoughts point to their particular characteristics in this age—is what must be mentioned again and again: the emergence of the so-called social question.

[ 4 ] But anyone who has seriously immersed themselves in our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science will very easily come to feel that the essence of the structure of a social order—whether one calls it a state or something else—must ultimately stem from what human beings develop from within themselves, from what they are capable of developing from within themselves with the task of regulating human interaction. Everything that human beings develop from within naturally corresponds to certain impulses that ultimately lie within our soul-spiritual life. If one looks at the matter in this way, one might ask: Yes, must not attention be directed first and foremost toward social impulses—toward that which seeks to emerge from human nature as social impulses? Let us call these social impulses—though we are not thinking of anything merely animalistic—social drives, for my part; but let us be mindful that the drive is not to be conceived of as merely unconscious or instinctive, but that when we speak of social drives, we mean: We are in the age of consciousness, and the drive seeks to rise up into consciousness.

[ 5 ] When such a claim is made—that there are social instincts that seek to realize themselves—that is precisely when, in our age, the terrible one-sidedness sets in once again; this should not be lamented, but calmly observed, because it must be overcome. People today are so inclined to view everything one-sidedly! It is always as if one were to accept only the swing of a pendulum to one side, and never consider that the pendulum cannot swing from the center to one side without also swinging to the other. Just as a pendulum cannot swing only to one side, so too can social instincts in human beings not manifest themselves only in one direction. Social instincts are naturally counterbalanced in human nature—precisely because of that same human nature—by antisocial instincts. And just as there are social instincts in human nature, so too are there antisocial instincts. This must be taken into account above all else. For social leaders and agitators succumb to the great illusion that they need only spread certain ideas and the like, or call upon some class of people who are willing or inclined to cultivate these social instincts—if they are indeed ideas. Yes, it is precisely an illusion to proceed in this way, for one does not take into account that, just as social instincts exist, antisocial instincts always assert themselves. What is at stake today is being able to look these things in the face without illusions. One can only look them in the face without illusions from the perspective of spiritual science. One might say: People miss out on the most important thing in life if they do not view this life from the perspective of spiritual science.

[ 6 ] We must ask ourselves: What is the nature of human interaction with regard to social and antisocial drives? — You see, the interaction between human beings is, in reality, something quite complicated! We must, of course, examine the matter—I would say—radically. Admittedly, this encounter varies and differs according to different circumstances, but we must focus on the common feature in one person’s encounter with another; we must ask ourselves: What actually happens in the total reality—not merely in what presents itself to the external senses—what happens in the total reality when one person stands face to face with another? — What happens is nothing less than a certain force acting from one person to another. The encounter between two people simply means that a certain force acts from one person to another. In our interactions with one another, we cannot face each other with indifference in life, not even in mere thoughts and feelings, even when we are physically distant from one another. Whenever we have to care for another person in any way, whenever we have to establish some form of communication, a force acts from one person to the other. This is, after all, what underlies social life. This is what, when it branches out and becomes intertwined, actually forms the basis of human social structure. Of course, one perceives this phenomenon most clearly when thinking of direct human interaction: there is a tendency, through the impression one person makes on another, for that person to be lulled into a state of lethargy. So this is a pervasive aspect of social life—that one person is lulled into a state of lethargy by the other with whom they interact. There is—as a physicist would say—a constant latent tendency for one person to lull another into a trance in social interaction.

[ 7 ] Why is that the case? Well, you see, it stems from a very important aspect of the human being as a whole. It stems from the fact that, fundamentally speaking, what we call social instincts actually develop fully from the human soul—in the context of ordinary, present-day consciousness—only when a person is asleep. Unless you have attained clairvoyance, you are, in fact, permeated by social instincts only when you sleep. And only that which carries over from sleep into wakefulness acts as a social instinct during wakefulness. But if you know this, you need not be surprised that the social nature seeks to lull you to sleep through human interaction. The social impulse is meant to develop within human relationships. It can develop only during sleep. Therefore, in human interaction, a tendency arises whereby one person lulls another to sleep for the purpose of establishing a social relationship. This is a striking fact, yet one that immediately presents itself to anyone observing the reality of life. Our human interaction consists, above all, in the numbing of our imagination within this interaction, for the purpose of establishing social instincts between people.

[ 8 ] But of course you cannot go through life constantly asleep. The tendency to develop social instincts is already inherent in—and expressed through—the fact that you should actually have a constant inclination to sleep. The things I am discussing, of course, all take place subconsciously, but they are no less real and no less constantly permeating our lives. So, precisely for the purpose of establishing the social structure of humanity, there is a constant tendency to fall asleep.

[ 9 ] However, there is something else at work here. It is the constant resistance, the constant struggle of human beings against this tendency—when they are not asleep. So that when you stand face to face with another person, you are always caught up in the following conflicts: Because you are facing them, a tendency always develops within you to fall asleep, to experience your relationship with them in a state of sleep; but because you must not lose yourself in sleep, because you must not sink into sleep, a counterforce stirs within you to keep yourself awake. This is always at play in human interaction: the tendency to fall asleep, the tendency to stay awake. The tendency to stay awake, however, is antisocial in this case—it is the assertion of one’s own individuality, of one’s own personality, against the social structure of society. Simply by being human beings among other human beings, our inner spiritual life oscillates back and forth between the social and the antisocial. And that which lives within us as these two drives—which can be observed between one person and another when we see people facing each other and observe them from a deeper, hidden perspective—is what governs our lives. When we encounter institutions—and no matter how far removed these institutions may seem from today’s highly sophisticated awareness of reality—they are nonetheless an expression of this oscillating relationship between social and antisocial drives. Economists may ponder what credit is, what capital is, what rent is, and so on; these things, which constitute the laws governing social interaction, are merely swings of the pendulum between these two drives—the social and the antisocial drive.

[ 10 ] You see, anyone who is thinking of finding remedies in this day and age would have to build upon these things in a sensible way—in a truly scientific way. For why is it that social demands are rising in our time? Well, we live in the age of the conscious soul, where the human being must stand on his own two feet. What does he depend on in this regard? He depends on—in order to fulfill his task, his mission in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch—asserting himself and not allowing himself to be lulled to sleep. It is precisely for his position in this era that he must develop his antisocial impulses. And the task of our era could not be fulfilled by humanity unless precisely these antisocial impulses—through which human beings rise to the pinnacle of their own personalities—become ever more powerful. Humanity today has absolutely no idea how powerfully these antisocial impulses must continue to develop well into the third millennium. It is precisely so that humanity can fully mature that these antisocial impulses must develop.

[ 11 ] In earlier ages, the development of antisocial impulses was not the spiritual sustenance of human evolution. Therefore, there was no need to counterbalance them, nor was any such counterbalance provided. In our time, when human beings must develop antisocial impulses for their own sake, for the sake of their individual selves—impulses that are already developing because human beings are subject to a process of development against which nothing can be done—what must now emerge is that which human beings set against these antisocial impulses: a social structure that maintains the balance of this developmental tendency. Internally, the antisocial impulses must be at work so that humanity can reach the pinnacle of its development; externally, in social life, the social structure must be at work so that humanity does not lose its humanity in the context of life. Hence the social demand of our time. The social demand of our time is, in a sense, nothing other than the necessary counterweight to humanity’s inner tendency toward development.

[ 12 ] You can see from this, at the same time, that a one-sided perspective gets us nowhere at all. For just consider that, given the way people actually live, certain words—I don’t even want to speak of ideas or feelings—certain words take on “value,” specific meanings. Well, “antisocial”—that takes on a connotation that strikes one as unpleasant; it is regarded as something evil. Fine, but one cannot concern oneself too much with whether it is regarded as something evil or not, since it is a necessity; since—whether evil or good—it is precisely linked to the necessary developmental tendencies of humanity in our time. And when someone then comes along and says that antisocial impulses should be combated, that is utter nonsense, for they cannot be combated. According to the very ordinary developmental trend of humanity, they must, in our time, take hold precisely within the human being. The point is not to find formulas for combating antisocial impulses, but rather to shape and structure the social institutions—the structure and organization of that which lies outside the human individual, that which the human individual does not encompass—in such a way that a counterbalance exists for what acts within the human being as an antisocial impulse. That is why it is so necessary that, during this period, the human being be separated with his or her entire being from the social order. Otherwise, neither one nor the other can be pure.

[ 13 ] You see, in earlier eras there were estates and classes. Our era strives beyond the estates and beyond the classes. Our age can no longer divide people into classes; rather, it must recognize humanity in its entirety and place it within a social structure such that only that which is set apart from it is socially organized. That is why I said yesterday in my public lecture: In the Greco-Roman era, slavery could still prevail; there, one was the master, the other the slave; people were divided into these categories. Today, all that remains is precisely what causes the proletarian such agitation: that his labor power is a commodity—that is, that something within him is still organized externally. This must go. And only that which does not depend on the individual can be socially structured: his position, the place where he is situated; not something that is within him.

[ 14 ] Everything one comes to understand in this way regarding the necessary development of social life must truly be understood today in such a way that, just as, for example, a person has no right to expect to be able to do arithmetic if he has never learned his multiplication tables, he is equally unqualified to have a say in social reforms and the like if he has never learned such things as we are now discussing: that there is socialism and anti-socialism in the way we have just concretely characterized them. The people who today, often in the most important positions of our governmental or social organizations, begin to talk about social demands—to the knowledgeable observer, they appear like people who want to start building a bridge over a raging river, yet have never even learned the theorem of the parallelogram of forces or anything of the sort! These people may well build a bridge, but it will collapse at the first opportunity. And this is how social leaders—or even those who maintain other social institutions today—appear to me: their institutions will prove unworkable at the next opportunity, for things require that we work with reality and not against it. This is so infinitely important that we must finally take seriously what is, I would say, the very essence of our anthroposophically oriented way of thinking.

[ 15 ] One of the impulses that inspire us in our anthroposophical movement is, after all, that we carry into the entirety of human life—so to speak—what most people consider applicable only to early youth: Even when we may have long since turned gray, we still take our seats at the school desk—the school desk of life, that is. This is also one of the differences that sets us apart from those people out there who believe that if they have lazed about and lazed about—no, I mean, taken courses at college—no, studied at college—they’re all set for the rest of their lives! Then there’s at most just some higher form of self-amusement, isn’t there, and the like, through which one might still pick up one thing or another. But this is precisely what comes to us as a profound feeling as we approach the heart of the humanities movement: that a person truly has to keep learning throughout their entire life if they want to be up to the tasks of that life. This is so important that we must also let this feeling permeate us. As long as we do not break with the belief that, through the abilities we develop by the age of twenty or twenty-five, we can already master everything—that we then need only gather in parliaments or elsewhere and decide on everything—as long as we do not break with this view, with this feeling, nothing beneficial can come about in the social structure of humanity.

[ 16 ] Studying the interplay between the social and the antisocial is of extraordinary importance, especially in our time. However, we can only study the antisocial, for, as I have explained, it is inherent in the development of our era that this antisocial aspect is precisely among the most important forces seeking to assert themselves and to develop within us. This antisocial aspect can only be kept in a certain balance by the social; but the social must be nurtured—it must be consciously nurtured. And in our age, this is indeed becoming increasingly difficult, because the other—the antisocial—is actually what is natural. The social is what is necessary; it must be nurtured. And one will see that in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch there is a tendency to disregard the social aspect altogether when people are left to their own devices, when they do not actively intervene, when they do not participate in spiritual activity. What is necessary and must be acquired very consciously—whereas in the past it asserted itself instinctively in human beings—is precisely this interest from person to person. The fundamental nerve of all social life is interest from person to person.

[ 17 ] It still seems almost paradoxical today to say: People will not gain any insight into so-called difficult economic concepts unless interest in one another grows, unless people begin to connect the illusions that prevail in social life with reality. You see, who readily thinks of the fact that simply by virtue of the position they occupy within the social order, they are actually always in a complex relationship with other people? Suppose you have a hundred-franc bill in your pocket and you use that hundred-franc bill by going out one morning to shop, buying enough to spend that hundred-franc bill. Well, what does it mean to go out with a hundred-franc bill in your pocket? The 100-franc note is actually a mere fiction; in reality, it is worth nothing at all, and it would be worth nothing even if it were metal money. I do not wish to speak today about the metallists and nominalists in the field of monetary theory; but even if it is metal money, it is actually a mere fiction, worth nothing at all. Money, you see, intervenes between two other things, and it is only because a certain social order—in our time, a purely state-based order—exists that this 100-franc bill you have, which you spend this morning on all sorts of things, is nothing other than the equivalent value of so many workdays of so many people. So many people must complete so many workdays; so much human labor must flow into the human social order and crystallize into commodities so that the nominal value of a banknote can become a real value at all—but only by decree of the social order. The banknote merely gives you the power to put so much labor at your service, or rather, to command so much labor. If you picture this in your mind: Here I have the banknote; by virtue of the social position I occupy, it grants me power over a certain number of workers, and if you now see that, hour by hour throughout the day, others are selling the labor of these workers as equivalent value—as the real equivalent value of what you have in your wallet as a hundred-franc note—then you have the true picture of reality.

[ 18 ] Our circumstances have become so complicated that we no longer even pay attention to these things, especially when they aren’t so obvious. I have in mind an obvious example where the matter is straightforward. When it comes to the more difficult economic issues of capital, rent, and credit—where the matter is quite complicated—not even university professors are in the know; I mean the economists, whose job it would be to know these things. From this you can already see how necessary it is in these matters that things be viewed correctly. Of course, we cannot set about reforming economics today—an discipline that has been driven into a helpless state by what students of economics learn today. But we can at least ask ourselves, with regard to public education and the like: What is needed so that social life can be consciously set against inner antisocial life? What is needed here? I said that it is difficult in our time to find the right kind of interest in other people. You do not have the right kind of interest if you believe you can buy something with a hundred-franc bill and do not consider that this entails a social relationship with so many people and their labor. You have the right kind of interest only when you can replace every such superficial act—such as exchanging goods for a hundred-franc bill—in your mind with the real act associated with it.

[ 19 ] You see, the mere—I would say selfish—heartwarming talk about loving our fellow human beings and putting that love into practice whenever we have the very next opportunity to do so—that is not what social life is all about. This love is, for the most part, a terribly selfish love. Quite a few people, sustained by what they have—one might say—seized, exploit their fellow human beings in a patriarchal manner in order to create an object for their self-love, because they can truly warm themselves inwardly with the thought: “You’re doing this, you’re doing that.” It doesn’t occur to people that a large part of so-called charitable love is self-love in disguise.

[ 20 ] The point is not merely to focus on what is closest to us—which actually indulges our self-love—but rather to feel compelled to direct our gaze toward the multifaceted social structure in which we are embedded. To do this, we must at least lay the groundwork. Today, very few people are even inclined to lay this groundwork.

[ 21 ] I would like to discuss one point, at least from the perspective of public education, and that is this: How can we—even in the first place—consciously counter the antisocial impulses that develop naturally with social impulses? How can we cultivate them in such a way that the interest in one another—which has dwindled terribly, especially in our age of the conscious soul—truly takes root within us, continues further and further, and leaves us no peace if it does not progress? After all, chasms have already opened up between people in our age! In ways people do not even suspect, they pass each other by today without understanding one another in the slightest. The longing to truly engage with another person—with their unique qualities—is very weak today. On the one hand, we have the cry for sociality, and on the other, the ever-increasing emergence of the purely antisocial impulse. Just how blindly people pass each other by today becomes evident when they come together in the most diverse societies and social groups. Today, these are often by no means an opportunity for people to gain insight into human nature. People today can spend years with others and still know them no better than they did when they first met. It is precisely this that is necessary: that, I would say, we bring the social into the antisocial in a systematic way in the future. On an inner, spiritual level, there are various means to achieve this, including when we try, from time to time in life, to look back on our current life—on this present incarnation—and when we try to survey what has taken place in our lives between ourselves and other people who have entered this life. If we are honest about this today, we—at least most of us—will say to ourselves: We tend to view the entry of many people into our lives today primarily by placing our own person at the center of our retrospective. What have we gained from this or that person who has entered our lives? We ask ourselves this quite intuitively. This is precisely something we should strive to overcome. We should try to bring to mind the people who have entered our lives as teachers, friends, or other mentors, or those who have harmed us—and to whom, from certain perspectives, we sometimes owe more than to those who have benefited us. We should let these images pass before our minds’ eye, vividly imagining what each person at our side has done for us. And we will see, if we proceed in this way, that we gradually learn to forget ourselves, that we come to realize how, in fact, almost everything that is part of us could not exist at all if not for these or those people who supported us, taught us, or otherwise intervened in our lives in some way. Only then—especially when we look back on years long past and on the people with whom we may no longer have a relationship, toward whom we can more easily maintain objectivity—will it become clear to us how the spiritual substance of our lives has been shaped by the influences that have shaped us. Our perspective broadens to encompass a multitude of people who have passed through our lives over time. When we try to develop an appreciation for how much we owe to one person or another, when we try in this way to see ourselves reflected in those who have influenced us and been with us over time, then—as we will come to experience—a sense gradually detaches itself from us, consisting of the following: Because we have practiced finding images of personalities connected to us in the past, a sense emerges from our soul that enables us now to form an image of the person we encounter in the present, the one we face face-to-face in the here and now. And this is what is immensely important: that within us the impulse awakens not merely to feel sympathy or antipathy toward a person when we stand before them, not merely to allow the impulse to arise within us to love or hate something about that person, but to awaken within us an image of the person as they are, free from love and hate. You may not feel that what I am saying now is something immensely important. It is important. For this ability—to bring an image of another person to life within oneself without love or hate, to allow the other person to rise up within one’s own soul—is a quality that, with each passing week in human development, I would say, is more or less fading away; it is something that people are gradually losing entirely. They pass each other by without the impulse within them to let the other person come to life within themselves. But this is something that must be consciously cultivated. It is something that must also find its way into early childhood and school education: this ability to develop the imaginative capacity in people. For we can truly develop the imaginative capacity in human beings only if we do not shy away from quietly looking back within ourselves—instead of pursuing what is sought today in the sensations of life—and allowing our past relationships with others to come before our soul. Then we will also be able to relate imaginatively to the people we encounter in the present. Then we counter the social impulse with what is inevitably and unconsciously developing more and more: the antisocial impulse. That is one aspect.

[ 22 ] The other point is something that can be linked to this reflection on our relationships with others: that we try to become more and more objective about ourselves. Here, too, we must go back to earlier times. But there, I would say, we can go straight to the facts themselves—for example, by thinking about it when you are, say, thirty or forty years old: “Yes, what was it like back then, when I was ten years old?” First of all, I want to imagine myself fully immersed in that situation; I want to imagine myself as if I were picturing another ten-year-old boy or girl; I want to forget for a moment that I was that person—I want to make a real effort to objectify myself. This objectification of oneself, this detachment from one’s past in the present, this separating the “I” from one’s experiences—we must strive for this especially in the present; for the present has a tendency to link the “I” more and more closely to one’s experiences. Today, people instinctively want to be what their experiences make them. That is why it is so difficult to attain the kind of activity that spiritual science provides. One must exert the spirit anew each time; one cannot simply rely on retention. — You will indeed notice: with mere retention, with comfortable retention, one cannot achieve anything in true spiritual science. One forgets things and must keep cultivating them again and again; but that is precisely what is good, that is precisely what is right—that one must make the effort anew each time. For those who are quite advanced, particularly in the field of spiritual science, try every day to bring the most elementary things to mind; the others are ashamed to do so. In spiritual science, nothing should depend on memorizing the subject matter, because what really matters is grasping it through the immediate experience of the present. And so the point is that we train ourselves toward this very ability by objectifying ourselves—by imagining this fellow or this young woman as if they were a being foreign to us from earlier stages of life—and by striving more and more to detach ourselves from the experiences and to be less and less like a thirty-year-old, so that in fact only the impulses of the ten-year-old still linger. Detaching ourselves from our past is not something that means denying our past—we regain it in a different way; but it is something that is immensely important. So, on the one hand, we consciously nurture the social instinct, the social impulse, by creating imaginative images of the person we are today—by looking at the people with whom we had relationships in the past and viewing ourselves, in our innermost being, as the product of those people. On the other hand, through this objectification, we gain the ability to directly develop an imaginative image of ourselves. This objectification of earlier times benefits us when it does not operate unconsciously within us. Just think: If the ten-year-old boy or girl continues to act unconsciously within you, then you—the thirty- or forty-year-old—are augmented by the ten-year-old; but you are also augmented by the eleven- or twelve-year-old, and so on. Egoism is immensely amplified. It becomes smaller and smaller as you separate the past from yourself, as you objectify it, as it becomes more of an object. That is what is significant, what we must keep in mind.

[ 23 ] And so the fundamental prerequisite will be—and this should be made ever clearer to the people today, who, in their ignorance, are making illusory social demands—: There should be an understanding of how human beings first make themselves into socially active beings in an age in which precisely the antisocial impulses must come to the fore in order to elevate human nature.

[ 24 ] What, then, is being created? You will grasp the full significance of what I have just explained if you consider the following. You see, in 1848, the first truly influential work appeared—one that continues to have an impact even today on the most radical forms of socialism, including Bolshevism: Karl Marx’s *The Communist Manifesto*, which summarized what often prevails in the minds and hearts of the proletariat. Karl Marx was able to win over the proletarian world for the simple reason that he said what the proletarian understands—what he thinks by virtue of being a proletarian. In 1848, this “Communist Manifesto”—the contents of which I need not explain to you—was published. It was the first document, the first seed sown for what is now, after other opposing forces have been destroyed, finally bearing fruit. This document contains one phrase, one sentence that you will find quoted in almost every socialist text today: “Workers of the world, unite!” This is a phrase that has passed through all manner of socialist organizations: “Workers of the world, unite!” What does it actually express? It expresses the most unnatural thing imaginable for our age. It expresses an impulse toward socialization, toward the unification of a certain mass of people. Upon what is this unification, this socialization, to be built? Upon opposition, upon hatred toward those who are not proletarians. Socialization—the coming together of people—is to be built on division! You need only consider this, and you must trace the reality of this principle in what has emerged today as a “real illusion”—if I may use the expression; you will understand it—first in Russia, now also in Germany and the Austrian lands, and which will continue to eat away at society further and further. That is why it is the most unnatural thing of all, because on the one hand it expresses the necessity of socialization, and on the other hand this socialization is built precisely upon the most antisocial instinct, namely class hatred, class antagonism.

[ 25 ] But one must view such things in a higher light; otherwise, one will not get very far; above all, one will not be able to intervene in a constructive way in the course of human development from one’s current vantage point. And today there is no means other than spiritual science to truly see these things in a comprehensive sense—that is, to understand one’s own time. Just as people shy away from addressing what underlies the physical human being as spirit and soul, so too do they shy away—because they are afraid, because they are discouraged—from addressing that which in social life can only be grasped through the spirit. People are afraid of this; they blindfold themselves and, like the ostrich, bury their heads in the sand in the face of such—admittedly very real and significant—things: that when one human being stands face to face with another, one is always striving to lull the other to sleep, while the other is constantly striving to remain upright. But this is, to speak in Goethe’s sense, the primordial phenomenon of social science. But it extends beyond what a purely materialistic way of thinking can grasp; it delves into that which can only be grasped when one realizes that in human life, one does not merely sleep when one is lazing about and sleeping soundly for for hours on end, but that the tendency to sleep also constantly plays a role in so-called waking life—that, in fact, the very same forces that make us wake up in the morning and fall asleep at night are constantly at work in the most mundane aspects of daily life and, through their interplay, help shape both the social and the antisocial. No thought about human social order can come to anything, no single institution can come to anything, if one does not make an effort to truly take these things into account.

[ 26 ] From this perspective, it is necessary—even in the face of events unfolding across the globe—not to turn a blind eye to this fact, but to look at what is sweeping across the earth. What does today’s socialist think? He thinks he can devise social maxims, socialist maxims, or call out to people across all countries of the world: “Workers of the world, unite!”—and then it must be possible to create a kind of paradise across the entire globe, internationally, as they say today.

[ 27 ] Well, that is one of the greatest illusions—and one of the most pernicious—that could possibly exist! Human beings are not merely “abstract human beings”; they are concrete human beings. The underlying principle is that every human being is an individual. That is what I sought to assert in my *Philosophy of Freedom* in opposition to the leveling tendencies of Kantianism and socialism. But human beings are also differentiated into groups across the globe. And we want to discuss one of these differentiations so that we can see that one cannot simply say: You start in the West and implement a certain social order all the way through the East and across the entire globe until you come back again. Just as people used to travel around the world in earlier times, so today people would like to spread socialism across the entire globe, viewing the Earth as a sphere where, if you start in the West, you arrive in the East. People are differentiated across the globe, and within this differentiation lies—if I may use the expression—an impulse, a driving force of progress. In this way, you can see that it is precisely the consciousness soul that must come to expression in our age. I would like to say: Only the people of the English-speaking world in our time are, through their blood, their innate dispositions, and their hereditary predispositions, actually equipped to imprint the consciousness soul upon humanity. This is how humanity is differentiated. The people of the English-speaking world today are particularly predisposed to developing the consciousness soul, so that in a certain sense they are the representative people of this fifth post-Atlantean epoch; they are equipped for this.

[ 28 ] The peoples of the East must represent and bring about the proper development of humanity in a different way. Among the peoples of the East—beginning with the Russian population and extending to the entire Asian hinterland, which will serve only as a source of reinforcements—there is currently a surge, a resistance against this instinctive, self-evident aspect of the development of the conscious soul. The people of the East do not wish to mix the intellect—which is the foremost faculty of the soul in our time—with lived experience; they wish to separate it and preserve it for the coming age, for the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, when a union is to take place—not with human beings as they are today, but with the spiritual self that will have developed by then. So while the characteristic force of our era, due to the course of historical development, originates precisely from the West—and can be cultivated particularly by the English-speaking population—the people of the East, as a cultural group—not the individual, for an individual always stands out from his national character as an individuality; the point is the national character—are there precisely to prevent the characteristic feature of this epoch from arising in their soul forces, so that what will be the particularly defining factor for the following epoch, which will begin in the fourth millennium, may develop within them in embryonic form. Such is the nature of things: there are laws governing human life and the human being. With regard to nature, people today are not surprised that they cannot, say, set fire to ice—that everything is subject to certain laws. But when it comes to the social structure of humanity, people believe that in Russia, for example, one can establish a social structure based on the same fundamental social principles as in England, Scotland, or even America. This is not possible; for the world is organized according to laws, and not in such a way that one can do whatever one wants arbitrarily everywhere. This is what must be taken into account.

[ 29 ] And in the central regions, the situation is precisely one of a middle state. There, one might say, there is an unstable equilibrium, leaning toward one side and then the other. So you have divided the population of the Earth into three groups. You cannot say, “Workers of the world, unite!” because these workers are also differentiated into three groups. The population is threefold. If we look once more at the population of the West, we find that for all who speak English—as a people, though individuals may stand out greatly— a special gift, a special predisposition, a special mission to develop this soul of consciousness—that is, in the age of the soul of consciousness, not to tear the characteristic qualities away from the soul member, but to combine the development of intelligence—the special nature of intelligence—with lived experience. Naturally—instinctively, I would say, out of a driving impulse—to step into the world as a human being of the soul of consciousness: this is the very foundation of the greatness of the British Empire’s expansion! Therein lies the primordial phenomenon behind the expansion of the British Empire: that which is rooted in the nature of its people coincides precisely with the innermost impulse of this age. As you know, you can already find the essence of all this in my lecture series on the European national souls; all of this is already contained there, in that lecture series, which was given long before the war and which actually provides the most essential material for an objective assessment of this war catastrophe.

[ 30 ] It is precisely this predisposition, which is connected to the development of the conscious soul, that gives the English-speaking population a special aptitude for political life. One can study how the political method of organizing societies and structures has spread from England to all places where conditions have remained as they were in the earlier fourth post-Atlantean epoch—that is, where they have remained as they are—all the way to the Hungarian county system headed by the Obergespan; thus, this political thinking from England has spread even into these Turanian peoples of Europe, because it is precisely from this bloodline that this political thinking of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch can arise. These people are particularly predisposed to politics. It is of no use to pass judgment on these matters today—only necessities decide them. One may find them likable or unlikable; that is a private matter. But objective necessities determine the affairs of the world. It is important to keep these objective necessities in mind, especially today, in the age of the consciousness soul.

[ 31 ] In his “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” Goethe described the forces within the human soul as three elements: power, appearance, and knowledge and wisdom—the Iron King, the Silver King, and the Golden King. In this fairy tale, when it comes to power relations, much is expressed in a peculiar way that foreshadows what is unfolding today and will continue to unfold further and further. Thus, it must be pointed out that what Goethe symbolizes with the Iron King—the impulse of violence—is spreading across the earth from the English-speaking population. This is a necessity due to the convergence of the culture of the conscious soul with the particular disposition of British and American cultures.

[ 32 ] You see, in the Central Lands, which have already been swept up in the chaos, there is a precarious balance between the intellect’s inclination toward the consciousness soul and its desire to break free; and so first one prevails, then the other. There is a completely different tendency. The Central European nations are not predisposed to politics. When they seek to be political, they are very prone to losing touch with reality—a reality that is always present—whereas political thinking among the Anglo-American population is firmly grounded, anchored in the soul. In the Central European nations, the second of the soul forces prevails: appearance, phenomenon. These Central European nations also bring intellectuality to the fore with particular brilliance. Compare this with anything that emanates from the English-speaking population in terms of thought: these thoughts are firmly connected to down-to-earth reality. Take the brilliant achievements of the German mind in particular, and you will find that they are more of an aesthetic shaping of thoughts, even when this aesthetic shaping takes on a logical form. What is particularly outstanding here is how one thought is led into another, because then what possesses special aptitudes appears in dialectics, in the aesthetic elaboration of thoughts. If one wishes to apply this to down-to-earth reality—or even to become a politician through it—one can easily become untruthful; one can easily slip into what is called “dreamy idealism,” where one seeks to establish unified kingdoms, where one raves about unified kingdoms for decades, and subsequently establishes empires of violence, falling from one extreme into the other. Nowhere has political life ever clashed so sharply in two contrasting forms as in the German dreams of unity from 1848 and what was subsequently established in 1871. There you see the wavering, the back-and-forth oscillation of that which actually strives for aesthetic form, and which can become untrue—illusory constructs, dream-like constructs—when it seeks to stand on the ground of politics. For there is no aptitude for politics; when politics is practiced, one either dreams or lies. — These are things that must by no means be said out of sympathy or antipathy, nor must they be said to accuse or exonerate, but are said precisely because they correspond, on the one hand, to necessity and, on the other, to tragedy. These are things that one simply must face head-on.

[ 33 ] And then look to the East, at what is taking shape there. Things go so far there that, if one speaks rather radically, one can say: Well, the German, when he wants to become political, falls into daydreaming, into idealism; when things go well, into beautiful idealism; when things go badly, into insincerity. The Russian, when he wants to become political, actually falls ill—or dies—from the very act of becoming political. He is so utterly unsuited to it that he becomes ill from it, that he dies from it. This is merely a clear, radical way of putting it, but that is the phenomenon. There is absolutely nothing in the Russian national soul that is intrinsically related to the thoroughness of this political aspect found in the English or American national soul. The East, on the other hand, is predisposed to carry over the intellect—which it detaches from its natural connection to lived experience—into the future age of the spiritual self.

[ 34 ] One must therefore understand how human dispositions are differentiated across the earth. And this is reflected even in the most significant experiences. From the various discussions that have taken place, you are all familiar with what is called, in higher supersensible experience, the encounter with the Keeper of the Threshold. The encounter with the Keeper of the Threshold also has its nuances. Of course, when the initiation takes place completely independently of any national tradition, the encounter with the Keeper of the Threshold is universal. But when an initiation is conducted by one-sided individuals or societies, and takes place within a national context, the experience with the Keeper also differs. It is the person belonging to the English-speaking population who, if initiated not by higher spirits—who are, after all, guiding—but by the national spirit, is particularly predisposed to bring to the threshold those spiritual beings who, as Ahrimanic spirits, constantly surround us here in the world, who accompany us when we go to the threshold toward the supersensible world, and whom we can then take with us if they develop, so to speak, an affinity for us. Above all, they lead us to behold the powers of illness and death. Thus, you will hear from the vast majority of those in Anglo-American countries who have been initiated into the supersensible mysteries and have crossed the threshold that the first and most important experience they encountered in their knowledge of the supersensible world was an encounter with the very powers that bring about illness and death. They come to know this as something external to themselves.

[ 35 ] Go to the Mittelländer, and if the national spirit plays a part in the initiation there, the initiate is not lifted out of the national character and into the universal human, but rather the national spirit plays a part, then the first and most significant event there is that one becomes aware of those struggles taking place between certain beings who belong solely to the spiritual world—those standing beyond the stream—and certain beings who stand here in the physical world, on this side of the stream, but invisible to ordinary consciousness. A constant struggle is taking place there. It is in the Central Lands that one first becomes aware of this struggle. This struggle, of which one becomes aware there, pulsates up from the threshold in such a way that, in the Central Lands, if one is a serious seeker of truth, one is particularly permeated by the forces of doubt. One becomes acquainted with all that the forces of doubt are, and with all that the forces of diversity are. In Western regions, people are much more inclined to be satisfied with a straightforward truth; in the Central Lands, the other side of the matter immediately comes to mind. There, too, one hovers in a state of instability with regard to the search for truth: every thing has two sides. One is a philistine if, in the Central Lands, one surrenders at all to a straightforward, one-sided assertion. But this is something one must also tragically endure when one reaches the threshold. One must become aware of how this struggle, which takes place on the threshold between the spirits who belong solely to the spiritual life and those who belong solely to the sensory world, determines everything that gives rise to doubt within the human being—the wavering with regard to truth, the necessity of first allowing oneself to be educated in the truth, and the refusal to place any value on the accepted impulses of truth.

[ 36 ] Go to the Eastern lands and ask, and you will find that the national spirit acts as a guide for the initiate; when a person is thus led to the threshold under the guidance of the national spirit, then the one who belongs to these Eastern peoples sees, above all else, all the spirits that work upon human selfishness. He sees everything that can give rise to human selfishness. This is not the first thing seen, for example, by a person from the West who steps onto the threshold. He sees the spirits that penetrate the world and humanity as illness and death in the broadest sense—as paralyzing, destructive, and downward-leading forces. The one who is initiated in the East first sees, at the threshold, everything that approaches human beings in order to tempt them toward selfishness.

[ 37 ] Therefore, the ideal that emerges above all from initiation in the West is: to restore health, to keep people healthy, and to ensure that opportunities for physical development are available to all people. In the East, above all—even arising from an instinctive awareness, a purely religious awareness of the world of initiation—there is an urge to feel small in the face of the sublime in the spiritual world. For it is the powers from the spiritual world that first come to meet one. People in the East are first and foremost directed toward the sublime in the spiritual world—toward curing selfishness, toward driving out selfishness—because they are made aware of its dangers. This is even expressed in the outward national character of the East. And much of what Westerners find unsympathetic about the Eastern national character stems precisely from what manifests itself on the threshold.

[ 38 ] Human characteristics become distinct precisely when we look at inner development, at the inner structure of the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being. It is important not to turn one’s gaze away from these things. In certain occult circles among the English-speaking population—where people are familiar with these matters, albeit under the auspices of the national spirit—prophetic references to events unfolding today could be found throughout the entire second half of the nineteenth century. Just imagine what it would have meant if the people of the rest of Europe—apart from the English-speaking population—had not plugged both ears and blindfolded both eyes to any attempts to draw their attention to these matters! I will share with you a maxim that was repeatedly expressed throughout the second half of the nineteenth century; it is this: In Russia, for the Russian people to develop, the Russian state must disappear, for in Russia socialist experiments must be carried out that can never be carried out in Western countries. — This is a wisdom that may be unsympathetic to non-Russians, but it is great and far-reaching, the height of intelligence. And whoever possesses these ideas to such an extent that he can believe in them as the impulses in whose realization he participates—he is truly immersed in his own age, while the other places himself outside of it.

[ 39 ] These things must be taken into account. It was, of course, the inevitable fate of Central and Eastern Europe to plug both ears and blind both eyes to the hidden realities, to turn a deaf ear to them, and to engage in abstract mysticism, abstract intellectualism, and abstract dialectics. But now the age is dawning in which things cannot go on this way! Such reflections should not lead to pessimism or despair. No, strength, courage, and a sense of what is necessary—that is what we derive from them. And in this sense, we must bear in mind that we are truly not working against the tasks of the age, but rather with the tasks of the age within this anthroposophically oriented spiritual-scientific movement. Let us be clear about what we would otherwise miss. That spiritual science—which reveals to consciousness what is otherwise hidden from it, which shows us what forces a human being develops when free from the body, as is the case from falling asleep until waking—also leads us, through wakefulness and consciousness, to the development of our social instincts. Let us be clear: We nurture the forces most necessary for our age when we think while awake about that which our soul can penetrate powerfully only if we think about it while awake. Otherwise, we become powerless if we must develop it only while asleep.

[ 40 ] Two forces are at work in the present. One is the force that, in the various metamorphoses of the Christ impulse, has passed through all subsequent periods of Earth’s evolution since the Mystery of Golgotha. We have often spoken of the fact that, particularly in our own centuries, a kind of reappearance—this time of the etheric Christ—is to take place. This reappearance of Christ is not far off. That he is to appear is, again, something that truly cannot give rise to any pessimism, but neither should it give rise to a longing to simply drift through life in a nebulous way and to inquire only into, so to speak, self-serving, soul-warming theosophical theories. This Christ impulse, in its most diverse forms—including the form it now takes, in which it seeks to proclaim to humanity what the spiritual world wishes to reveal as spiritual wisdom for our age—will help bring this about. It will seek to be realized, and the Christ impulse will be a help toward this realization. This realization will be what truly matters. And at this critical moment, humanity stands before an important decision. On the one hand stands the Christ impulse, which calls upon us, out of a free decision of the soul, to turn toward what has been spoken of today—to consciously take in the social impulses, all that is healing for humanity and can help it—and to take it in freely from the soul. Therefore, we do not unite under such considerations in order to surrender to a love founded on hatred, as in the call: “Workers of the world, unite!”; rather, we unite by striving to realize the Christ impulse and to do what Christ wants for our time.

[ 41 ] Opposing this is the adversary, that which the Bible calls the unlawful prince of this world. He asserts himself in a wide variety of forms. One of these forms is this: the powers available to us as human beings to turn, of our own free will, toward that which has been spoken of today—these powers, which are meant to be placed at the service of free will, are instead put at the service of physicality. The adversary, the unlawful prince of this world, has various tools at his disposal. Among them, for example, are hunger and social chaos. Through physical means, through coercion, the very power that should be placed at the service of the free human being is then exploited. Just look at how humanity today demonstrates this to you at every turn: it does not wish to turn, of its own free will, toward social life and the recognition of true human progress; it wants to be forced. See how this coercion has not even gone so far as to enable people to distinguish in any way between the spirit of the supersensible world—between the Spirit of Christ and the spirit of the adversary, the illegitimate prince of this world! There you see this relationship, and you can understand how it explains why, in many places today, people stand and resist accepting anything from spiritual proclamation, spiritual truths, and spiritual science: they are simply possessed by the unlawful prince of this world.

[ 42 ] Consider yourselves—as you turn to the spiritual life out of your innermost free will—not only in the most humble sense, but also in the most serious and powerful sense, as missionaries for the Spirit of Christ in our time—as those who must fight against the unlawful prince of this world, who possesses all those who, rather than acting out of consciousness, allow themselves to be compelled by other forces to bring about anything that leads humanity toward the future. Such an attitude will not lead you to pessimism; such an attitude leaves you no time to view the world merely with pessimism. It will not close your eyes and ears to seeing, in its true form, the things that have happened—some of which are powerful, and some of which are terribly tragic. But above all, it will present these things before the eye of your soul in such a way that you will say to yourself: I am certainly called upon to see everything without illusions; but I must not succumb to pessimism or optimism, but rather do everything in my power to awaken within my own soul the strength to contribute to the free development of humanity, to progress, right where I stand. — And the aim is not to encourage pessimism or optimism—even if, from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, one sharply points out the ills or inertia of the times—but rather to encourage people to stand on their own two feet, to awaken within themselves, in order to work and cultivate the right thoughts. For insight is necessary above all else. If only enough people today had the impulse to say to themselves: Above all, we must have insight into such matters; the rest will follow! — And if one wishes to gain insight into social matters, what matters most is that, for an alert life, we have the will to acquire knowledge. The stimulation of the will—and this is already taken care of—will come of its own accord, for it develops naturally. If we simply want to educate ourselves in our waking life and form concepts for social life, then we will gradually arrive at this, and indeed, according to an occult law, in such a way that anyone who seeks this knowledge for themselves can even bring another along with them. Anyone, if they have the will, can take care of two people. We can accomplish a great deal if we only have the sincere will to first gain insight. The rest will then follow. It is not so much a problem that many people today are still unable to do anything; what is infinitely worse, however, is when people cannot bring themselves to at least become acquainted with the social laws from a spiritual-scientific perspective, to study them. The rest will follow once they are studied.

[ 43 ] That is what I wanted to share with you today regarding knowledge and insight that are important for the present, and also regarding the way in which this insight is to become a life impulse. Hopefully, at some point in the not-too-distant future, we will be able to speak once again about the more intimate aspects of our spiritual science. I hope to see you again!