The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today I would like to offer some fundamental reflections on the matters that we have long regarded as our task. When considering how the spiritual science referred to here can address and answer such questions—which are questions of life—we must, above all, take great care to make it clear to ourselves that this spiritual science—and thus our time and the future in general— places different demands on the way people conceive and think than we are actually accustomed to based on the habits of thought—namely, those arising from science and its popularization—of the immediate past and also of the present. You know, of course, that everything spiritual science has to say in any field—including the social sphere, and especially the social sphere—is the expression of spiritual research findings that are not obtained through merely rationalistic or abstract means, but are drawn from spiritual reality. They can be understood, as you know, simply by applying common sense to them—but they can only be discovered by rising from ordinary consciousness—which encompasses rational and abstract thinking, natural science, and so on—to imaginative, inspired, and intuitive consciousness. What emerges through the path of imagination, inspiration, and intuition is formulated into expressive concepts and ideas, and this constitutes the content of the science that anthroposophically oriented research has to offer.

[ 2 ] Now, one simply has to get used to having different ideas about the search for truth than one is accustomed to, and that is precisely what makes it so difficult for many of our contemporaries to take the necessary step from the ordinary, conventional thinking of today to anthroposophical spiritual science. People today are so quick to ask: Can one thing or another be proven? — Certainly, the question is very valid. But one must also consider this question from the standpoint of reality. If what is meant is: “Can one, based on the concepts one has already acquired—the conventional concepts one has absorbed through one’s education and life experience—prove in any respect what the spiritual researcher presents?”—then one is often led astray; for the findings of spiritual science are drawn from reality.

[ 3 ] I want to use a very trivial, simple comparison to show you that error can arise in ordinary, purely abstract thinking. One thought is supposed to lead to another; and when one then sees that it does not follow as a thought, one believes it must be false, whereas in reality the matter is nevertheless correct. Consequences in reality do not coincide with mere consequences of thought; the logic of reality is something other than mere logical reasoning. In our age, because the legal way of thinking has taken hold of everyone’s minds on a metaphysical level, people believe that everything must be encompassed by what they are accustomed to as logical reasoning. But that is not the case. You see, if you have a cube whose sides are, say, thirty centimeters long—that is, a cube that extends thirty centimeters in every direction—and someone tells you: “This cube is located one and a half meters above the floor here in this hall,” then you can deduce from what they tell you—using nothing but your logical reasoning—without even being in the room where the cube is: it must be resting on something. There must be a table there that is high enough, because the cube cannot float in the air. — So you can deduce this even if you aren’t there at all and haven’t experienced it yourself.

[ 4 ] But let’s suppose there were a ball on top of the cube. You can’t deduce that mentally; you have to see it, you have to look at it. Yet this does correspond to reality. So reality is permeated by entities, by things that naturally have a logic of their own, but a logic that does not coincide with mere conceptual logic. The logic of intuition is different from mere conceptual logic.

[ 5 ] This, however, requires that one first take the trouble not to simply call the so-called logical inferences—to which contemporary thinking has become accustomed—“proofs”; otherwise, one will never be able to make sense of things. In the field I have been discussing here for weeks now—the field of the social structure of human society—a great many demands arise simply from the premises I have presented to you regarding the threefold social order that will be necessary for the future. For example, a very specific tax system emerges from this. But this tax system, in turn, can only be discovered by drawing on intuitive logic. One cannot make headway here with mere conceptual logic alone. This is why it is necessary to listen to those who know something about these matters; for once the matter has been explained, common sense—when it takes all sides into account—can settle the issue. Common sense, my dear friends, will always suffice; it can always verify what the spiritual researcher says. But common sense is something other than the logic of thought that has emerged—particularly through the scientific mindset of the present day. From this, however, you can see that spiritual science itself is not intended merely to have the effect on a person of imparting a certain set of ideas, after which the person believes they can treat these ideas just like anything else communicated to them today by science or the like. That is simply not possible and inconceivable. For if one thinks that way, one is led astray. Spiritual science causes the entire way of thinking—the way of perceiving the world—to become different in a person than it was before; it enables a person to learn not only to see things thoroughly, but to see them in a different way. Above all, when you immerse yourself in spiritual science—with your inner eye, of course—you must keep this in mind so that you can always ask yourself: Am I learning to view the world in a different way by taking in this spiritual science—not clairvoyance, but spiritual science—am I learning to view the world differently than I did before? — Yes, someone who regards spiritual science as a collection of compendia may know a great deal; but if they continue to think exactly as they did before, then they have not truly taken spiritual science to heart. One has truly taken in spiritual science only when, in a certain sense, the nature, the formation, and the structure of one’s thinking have changed—when, in a certain sense, one has become a different person than one was before. This is brought about simply by the power, by the force of the ideas one takes in through spiritual science.

[ 6 ] Now, in social thinking, it is absolutely essential that this demand—which can only be realized through the humanities—take hold of people, for what I drew attention to yesterday can only be understood at all in this light. Yesterday I pointed out that the mainstream economists who teach people about economic concepts today are actually quite helpless in the face of reality. Why are they so helpless? Because they want to understand something that cannot be grasped through natural-science-oriented thinking—precisely by means of that same natural-science-oriented thinking. Only when we become willing to understand social life in a way that differs from thinking trained in the natural sciences will we be able to find fruitful social ideas that can be realized—ideas that are truly fruitful for life.

[ 7 ] I have previously drawn your attention to something that may have surprised some of you, but which requires deeper consideration. I have pointed out to you that the logical consequence one is inclined to draw from certain concepts—or even from a worldview—is by no means always the same as what actually follows from that worldview in real life. What I mean is this: Anyone can have a set of concepts or even an entire worldview. You can visualize this worldview purely in conceptual terms and then perhaps draw other conclusions from it—conclusions that you rightly assume to be logical—and you may believe that these conclusions, which you logically derive from it, must necessarily follow from this worldview. But that is by no means necessary; rather, life itself may draw entirely different conclusions from it. You may be greatly astonished at how life draws different conclusions from it. What does it mean that “life draws different conclusions”? Let’s suppose you develop a worldview that strikes you as quite idealistic. Rightly so, let’s say, this worldview appears idealistic to you. It contains wonderful idealistic notions, wonderful idealistic ideas. Depending on the nature of this worldview, it may happen that you teach it to your son or to your students at a certain age, allowing the influence of the worldview to take a living effect on them. You yourself will probably allow only the logical consequences of your worldview to emerge. But if you instill this in another mind, if you also contemplate life across those abysses where it passes from one person to another, then the following may occur—something that only spiritual science can explain to you as a necessity: You develop a worldview that seems idealistic to you, one that rightly leads you to believe that everything you can logically deduce from it must also be idealistic, beautiful, and grand, and you teach it to a son or daughter or a student, and those concerned turn out to be rascals—that is, scoundrels. That is entirely possible. In life, your idealistically shaped worldview can lead to scoundrelly behavior.

[ 8 ] This is, of course, an extreme case—one that could, however, occur at some point—but it is meant only to help you understand that in life, people draw different conclusions than they do in mere thought. That is why people today are so terribly out of touch with reality—because they fail to see through such things, because they are unwilling to truly bring into consciousness what used to happen instinctively. The instincts of earlier times already sensed: this or that will arise here or there. Instincts were not inclined to always assume only what was logically deducible from thought. Those instincts already functioned logically. But today we have fallen into a certain uncertainty, and this uncertainty will naturally grow ever greater in the age of the development of the conscious soul unless a counterbalance is created—one that consists in consciously embracing the logic of reality. And one embraces it at the very moment when one truly grasps the spirit lying behind sensory reality—in its essence and in its processes.

[ 9 ] I would like to share a practical example with you that can illustrate what I have just discussed more theoretically. But at the same time, it should also illustrate something else to you. It should show you just how much one can go astray when one considers things solely on the basis of their outward symptoms. In my lectures over the past few weeks, I have spoken about symptomatology in the study of history. Symptomatology is, in general, something that people must master if they wish to move from the external—from phenomena—to reality.

[ 10 ] A Russian writer and philosopher, Berdyaev, recently wrote a very interesting essay on the philosophical development of the Russian people from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present. There are two things in Berdyaev’s essay that are quite remarkable. One is that the author proceeds from a peculiar prejudice, which proves that he has no insight into those truths that must already be very familiar to us—namely, that in the Russian East, for the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, the epoch of the development of the spiritual self, entirely new elements are in the process of emerging, elements that are present today only in embryonic form. Because he does not know this, he misjudges one point entirely. He tells himself that it is indeed strange—and as a Russian philosopher he must know this—that in Russia, unlike in the West of European civilization, people actually have no real sense of what the West calls “truth,” particularly in philosophy. Although there has been considerable interest in Western philosophy, there is no real sense of Western philosophy insofar as it strives for “truth”; rather, philosophical truth is embraced insofar as it serves life, insofar as it is useful for an immediate understanding of life. The socialist, for example, is interested in philosophy because he believes that this or that philosophy provides him with a justification for his socialism. Similarly, the Orthodox Christian is not interested in any particular philosophy in the same way as a Westerner—because it is truth—but rather because it provides him with a foundation and a justification for his Orthodox faith, and so on. Berdyaev regards this as a major shortcoming of the contemporary Russian national soul. For he says: Those in the West are far ahead; they do not believe that truth must be guided by life, but rather that truth is truth, and it exists, and life must be guided by truth. In this regard, he explicitly states the following remarkable sentence—remarkable, however, not for a person of the present day, since a person of the present day finds it self-evident—but a sentence that is highly remarkable for a scholar of the humanities: the Russian socialist has no right to use the term “bourgeois science,” “bourgeois science,” because bourgeois science contains the truth; it has finally established the concept of truth; and that is precisely the irrefutable truth. Therefore, it is a shortcoming of the Russian national soul to believe that even this truth can be overcome.

[ 11 ] Berdyaev shares this view not only with the entire academic community, but also with the supporters of that community—namely, the entire bourgeoisie of Western and Central Europe, the nobility in particular, and so on. Berdyaev simply does not realize that what is now in its embryonic stage within the Russian national soul is precisely why it often finds expression in tumultuous and caricatured forms. Yet within this conception of truth from the perspective of life—which is currently distorted—lies the seed of a vision for the future. In the future, matters will set themselves right. For once what is now in its embryonic stage—the steering of human development toward the spiritual self—has come to fruition, then what we call truth today will indeed take on an entirely different form. And today I have drawn your attention to a few peculiarities. This truth will, for example, make people aware—something that people today cannot comprehend at all—that the logic of facts, the logic of reality, and the logic of perception are different from mere conceptual logic. And this transformed conception of truth will have other characteristics as well. This is one thing you see emerging in Berdyaev, and it is very remarkable because it shows how little such a writer grasps the true meaning of our time’s evolution—a meaning he could perceive very well among his own people, but which he cannot acknowledge due to this prejudice.

[ 12 ] Another matter must be assessed from an entirely different perspective. Berdyaev evidently views—as is evident from the tone of his essay—the emergence of Bolshevism with great unease. Now, depending on whether one is a Bolshevik or not, one may agree or disagree with him on this point; that is something I do not wish to dwell on at present. I wish to present the facts; I do not wish to criticize. But what is important is the following. Just as in the 1860s—so Berdyaev argues from the perspective of viewing truth and philosophy as dependent on life—just as materialism gained a foothold in Russia at that time and people believed in materialism because they found it useful for life, so too in the 1870s did people believe in positivism, for example, as espoused by Auguste Comte. Then other views—including, for example, Nietzsche’s—gained a foothold in Russia among the intelligentsia. Now Berdyaev asks what kind of philosophy has taken root among the Bolsheviks, who belong to the intelligentsia. A philosophy has indeed taken root. But when it comes to the convergence of this peculiar philosophy with Bolshevism, Berdyaev is actually quite at a loss. He cannot fathom how Bolshevism, curiously enough, regards the teachings of Avenarius and Mach as its philosophy.

[ 13 ] If someone had told Avenarius and Mach that their philosophy would be accepted by people such as the Bolsheviks of all people, they would have been even more astonished than Berdyaev. They would have—if I may use the trite expression—climbed the walls—both of them are, after all, already dead—if they had had to imagine themselves regarded as the official philosophers of the Bolsheviks. Just imagine the respectable, bourgeois Avenarius, who believed he was working only with the most sophisticated concepts, who naturally assumed that only people who—well, let’s say—wear proper skirts, do no harm to anyone in a Bolshevik sort of way, in short, are quite well-bred people in the sense that “well-bred people” were conceived of in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. Only among such people, Avenarius imagined, could his philosophy find followers. Well, once you delve into the content of this Avenarius philosophy, you will find it even harder to comprehend the fact that Avenarius is the official philosopher of the Bolsheviks. For what does Avenarius think? He tells himself: People live under the prejudice that, in there—in my head or in my soul or wherever—are the subjective ideas and perceptions; outside are the objects. But that is not correct. If I were alone in the world, I would never even think to distinguish between object and subject. I only come to recognize the difference because other people are there as well. If I were looking at a table all by myself, I would not even come up with the idea, Avenarius argues, that the table is out there in a room and that there is an image of it in my brain; rather, I would simply have the table and would not distinguish between subject and object. I distinguish between them only because, when I look at the table with someone else, I tell myself, “He sees the table; I perceive it; that perception is still in my mind.” Then I consider that what he perceives, I also perceive. So within such purely theoretical considerations—I don’t even want to present them all to you; you’d say none of this interests us at all—within such epistemological, purely abstract considerations, Avenarius operates. In 1876, he wrote the little book: “Philosophy as Thinking About the World According to the Principle of Least Effort.” ” For based on such premises, as I have just explained to you, he demonstrates that the concepts we possess as human beings have no real value in reality whatsoever, but rather that we create concepts solely for the purpose of holding the world together in an economical manner. The concept of “lion,” for example, or the concept expressed in a law of nature, is not at all real; according to Avenarius, it does not point to anything real either; rather, it is inefficient if I have seen five, six, or thirty lions in my life and am supposed to imagine all of them; so I make the matter more economical by forming a single concept that encompasses all thirty lions. All concept formation is merely an internal, subjective economy.

[ 14 ] Mach holds a similar view. Mach is the same man I told you about—the one who, feeling tired one day, got on a bus that had a mirror. So he got on and saw a person coming from the other side. Well, he found this person extremely unappealing, and he said to himself: “What kind of unappealing-looking schoolmaster is that?”—And then it occurred to him that there was a mirror hanging there, and that he had seen himself. He simply wanted to illustrate how little we know even about our own outward human appearance, how little self-knowledge we possess. He even recounts a second instance where he had walked past a reflective shop window, where he thus encountered himself, and where he was furious that such an ugly-looking schoolmaster had appeared before him. The same Mach, about whom I have told you these things, took a somewhat more popular approach, but he holds the same view as Avenarius. He says: There are no subjective ideas, no objective things; rather, there are actually only contents of sensation. And I myself am merely a content of sensation. The table out there is the content of sensation; my brain is the content of sensation; everything is merely the content of sensation. And the concepts that people form are also there merely for the sake of economy. It was perhaps in 1881 or 1882; I was present at that session of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna where Mach had delivered his lecture on “The Economic Nature of Physical Research,” on the economy of thought. I must say, it made a truly terrible impression on me—a very young man at the time, in my early twenties—when I heard that there were people of such radicalism who had absolutely no idea that, through the process of thought, the first hint, the first revelation of the supernatural enters the human soul; who deny concepts to such an extent that they see in them merely a result of the human soul’s activity, which is driven by economy. But all of this, in the case of Mach and Avenarius, remains within the bounds of—you will not misunderstand me—quite respectable thinking. One need not be particularly cunning to assume that these two gentlemen and all their followers are people with a thoroughly bourgeois mindset, for whom any even moderately practical-radical thought—let alone a revolutionary one—is as far removed as possible. And now they have become the official philosophers of the Bolsheviks! One could never have imagined it! If you read Avenarius’s little book on the “least measure of force,” you might find it interesting; it’s quite nicely written. But if you were to start reading his *Critique of Pure Experience*, you’d probably stop soon, because you’d find it dreadfully boring. It is written entirely in a professorial tone, and there is absolutely no possibility that you could derive anything about Bolshevism as a consequence from it. You could not even derive from it a practical worldview with even the slightest hint of radicalism.

[ 15 ] Now I know that, of course, those people who take symptoms to be realities might now offer me a rebuttal. A staunch positivist would say: Oh, this is as simple as it gets. The Bolsheviks recruited all their intellectuals from Zurich. Avenarius taught in Zurich, and those who are now active as intellectuals among the Bolsheviks were his students. Furthermore, a student of Mach’s, the young Adler—who later shot Srürgkh in Austria—worked there as a private lecturer. Numerous followers of Lenin, perhaps even Lenin himself, associated with him; they absorbed these ideas, and they spread. So this is a pure coincidence. — I know, of course, that staunch, rigidly positivist people can explain it that way. But I also explained to you recently that one can then trace the entire poetic personality of Robert Hamerling back to the fact that the good principal Kaltenbrunner botched Hamerling’s application for a teaching position in Budapest, and as a result, someone else got the job in Budapest. Had Kaltenbrunner not botched that application, Hamerling would have gone to Budapest as a high school teacher back in the 1860s, rather than to Trieste. And if you now consider all that Hamerling became as a result of spending ten years of his life in Trieste on the Adriatic, you will see that Hamerling’s entire poetic life is a consequence of that. Outwardly, however, the respectable Principal Kaltenbrunner at the high school in Graz fumbled the application, and in doing so, he set the stage for Hamerling to come to Trieste. One must not take these things as facts, but rather as symptoms of what they inwardly express.

[ 16 ] And Berdyaev’s interpretation—that the Bolsheviks have chosen the respectable bourgeois philosophers Avenarius and Mach as their idols—leads right back to what I explained at the beginning of my talk today: that the reality of life, the reality of perception, is different from mere logical reality. Of course, it never follows from Avenarius and Mach that these people could become the Bolsheviks’ official philosophers. But everything you can logically deduce from a given matter is only of superficial, symptomatic significance. One can only arrive at reality through research that addresses that reality itself. Spiritual entities are at work in reality.

[ 17 ] And now I could tell you many things that would, however, make it seem necessary to you that philosophies such as those of Avenarius and Mach, when applied to real life, already lead to the consequences of the most radical socialism of the present day. For behind the scenes of existence, it is the same forces that instill Avenarius’s or Mach’s philosophy into human consciousness, and that instill into human consciousness what leads, for example, to Bolshevism. It is simply not possible to logically deduce one from the other. But reality does deduce it. This is something I ask you to engrave deeply in your hearts, so that you, too, may carry within you something of what I emphasize time and again. Today, it is necessary to make the transition from the mere logical thicket—through which people today illusorily believe realities to be interwoven—to true reality. If one looks at symptoms and knows how to interpret them, then the matter may indeed sometimes become more serious. Here I would like to draw your attention to something that others—those who are not scholars of the humanities—tend not to notice, because they dismiss it as mere rhetoric or something of no consequence. You see, Mach, the positivist—and a radical positivist at that—concludes that, in fact, everything is sensation. The doctrine, which the young Adler also expounded as a private lecturer in Zurich and which certainly won over many on his side, as well as on Mach’s and Avenarius’s, states that everything is sensation, that we have no justification for distinguishing between the physical and the psychological. Outside, the table is physical-psychic in exactly the same sense that my ideas are physical-psychic, and concepts exist merely for the sake of economy.

[ 18 ] But what was peculiar about Mach was that he sometimes instinctively distanced himself from his own worldview—from this radical, positivist worldview. He would step back and then say: Yes, even when I realize—in light of all the achievements of the modern era—that it makes no sense to speak of anything existing beyond my own sensation, or that I should make a distinction between the physical and the psychological, I am nevertheless compelled, time and again, when I see the table before me, not merely to speak of the sensation, but to believe that something physical still exists out there. And again, when I have a thought, a sensation, or a feeling, I do not merely have the perception—what is taking place, the phenomenon—but I believe—even though I know, based on the science I can form for myself, that this has no justification—that there is a soul within and an object without. I feel compelled to make this distinction. What is that, actually? — Mach asks himself: How do I come to such a conclusion, that I must suddenly assume: there is something spiritual inside, and something non-spiritual outside? I know, however, that this is not a distinction at all. I am led to think something other than what my science tells me—Mach sometimes says to himself when he steps back from these matters; this is written in his books. He then makes a remark and says: Sometimes one finds oneself asking whether, as a human being, one is being led around in circles by an evil spirit? And he answers: I believe the latter.

[ 19 ] I know how many people simply skim over a passage like this as if it were just a phrase. But such a passage is symptomatic. Sometimes, what is truly real peeks out from over the shoulders of the soul. It is the Ahrimanic spirit that leads people in circles, causing them to think as Avenarius and Mach do. And in such moments, Mach becomes aware of this Ahrimanic spirit. It is the same Ahrimanic spirit that is now also at work in Bolshevik thinking. Therefore, it is no wonder that the logic of reality has produced this result. But you see, if one wants to understand the things of life, one must look deeper into that life. This is truly not insignificant, especially in the social sphere today and for the near future. For the conclusions that must be drawn are not those drawn by Schmoller or Brentano, Wagner, Spencer, John Stuart Mill, or whoever else; rather, in the social sphere, conclusions must be drawn that are grounded in reality—logically grounded in reality. And the trouble is that in our current agitational efforts—and in what has become of these agitational efforts—mere logical conclusions and illusions persist, and these illusions have become external reality. I would like to give you two examples of this. You are already quite familiar with one of them; you simply need the perspective from which I am now presenting the example.

[ 20 ] The Marxist-leaning socialists—as I explained to you yesterday and on many previous occasions, this is almost the entire proletariat of the present day—say, under the influence of Marx: The economy, economic contradictions, and class contradictions—which stem from economic contradictions—are the true reality; everything else is ideological superstructure. What people think, write, and create artistically—what they think about the state, about life, about everything—is merely the result of the way they live economically. For this reason, the proletarian of today also says: We do not need a general national assembly if we want to bring about a new order, because the bourgeoisie will be there again, speaking from their economically determined bourgeois perspective. We have no use for that. We can only rely on those who speak from a proletarian perspective, for they are the ones who must shape the world today. We don’t need to convene any assemblies at all; rather, the few proletarians who happen to be at the top should exercise the dictatorship, for they hold proletarian views and will therefore think correctly. — Just as Lenin and Trotsky did in Russia, Karl Liebknecht in Berlin rejects the National Assembly. He says: “That will be nothing more than a new edition of the old gang of Reich chatterboxes”—by which he means the Reichstag.

[ 21 ] Well, what is the basis for that? What lies at the root of this was precisely the subject matter that, sixteen years ago—as I told you when I explained the history of my *Philosophy of Freedom*—was the main reason I was forced out of the Socialist Workers’ Educational School in Berlin. Among other things, I had given lectures on scientific topics, led public speaking exercises, and also taught history. I taught it the way I believed it should be taught objectively. That was entirely sufficient for those who were my students. Had this been allowed to continue—had it not been brought to an artificial end—I know it could have borne good fruit. But the Social Democratic leaders came to the conclusion that I was not teaching Marxism or a Marxist view of history, but that—curiously enough, which my students, the workers, really liked—I was even making such leaps of logic, which I’d like to tell you about now. For example, I said: Ordinary historians cannot fathom what the seven Roman kings are all about; they even regard them as a myth, because the succession of the seven kings, as recounted by Livy, is a cycle of rise and fall—always a kind of ascent up to Marcius, the fourth, then a decline into decadence up to the seventh, Tarquinius Superbus. And I then explained to people that this takes us back to the earliest period of Roman development, to the time before the Republic; that the transition to the Republic consisted precisely in the fact that the ancient, atavistic spiritual patterns gave way to a certain kind of popular chaos, whereas in earlier times, as is still clearly evident in Egyptian pharaonic rule, a wisdom—one that can be explored through spiritual science—underlies the institutions. It was not for nothing that it was said that Numa Pompilius received inspiration from the nymph Egeria to organize the whole system. I then explained how people came to receive inspiration in the first place to establish such orders—not, as was the case later, with one ruler simply succeeding another, but rather as determined by the laws derived from the spiritual world. Hence this regularity in the succession of the Egyptian pharaohs and also of the Roman kings, who succeeded one another in the line of Romulus, Numa Pompilius, and so on up to Tarquinius Superbus. If you now consider the seven principles, as I have summarized them in my *Theosophy*, one after another from a certain point of view, then you will find these seven principles reflected in the succession of the seven Roman kings. This is something I am merely hinting at now; here among you, I need only hint at it, but it is something that, when presented in the proper light, can certainly be shown to be a completely objective truth—and one that sheds light on this peculiar aspect, which the ordinary materialistic historian cannot comprehend. That is why today the seven Roman kings are regarded by a true—no, scientific! — historian—are generally regarded not as having existed at all, but as a myth. You see, I have gone that far and have also presented these things in other ways; and if one does so appropriately, it naturally comes across as something that corresponds to reality. But it is not a “materialist conception of history.” For a materialist conception of history requires that one examine what the economic conditions were, how agriculture related to livestock farming at that time, how agriculture related to trade, how the cities were founded, what kind of economy the Etruscans had, how the Etruscans traded with the emerging Romans, and how, under the influence of this economic factor, conditions then developed under Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, and so on.

[ 22 ] But you see, of course, that wouldn’t have gone over so easily on its own. Yet once again, true reality came to my aid; precisely because I turned to true reality, true reality came to my aid. Of course, it’s not just young people who make up this audience. Among them were also those who had already adopted proletarian thinking to a certain degree, as well as those who were already riddled with all sorts of prejudices; such people are by no means easy to convince, even about things that are foreign to them. For example, when I was once speaking about art—where I had explained what art is and how it works—a woman suddenly shouted from the very back of the room: “Well, what about Verismo—isn’t that art?” So these people didn’t simply accept things on authority alone. It was a matter of finding ways to reach them—not through clever back channels, but out of a sense of reality and truthfulness. So it came to pass that one had to say—not merely could say, but had to say: “Yes, but you are filled with concepts that correspond to the materialist conception of history, which believes that everything depends solely on economic conditions and that all spiritual life is based solely on ideology, which is the mirage that spreads out above on the basis of economic conditions.” And Marx analyzed this very astutely and wittily. But why did all this happen? Why did he analyze it, and why does he believe it? Because Marx saw only his immediate present and did not go back to earlier times. Marx takes as his basis only the historical development of humanity since the sixteenth century. It is true that a phase has indeed begun in human development in which intellectual life—though not exactly as Karl Marx describes it—has nonetheless, in a certain sense, become an expression of economic conditions across large parts of the world. — Goetheanism cannot be derived from economic life, but Goethe is also regarded by these people as being removed from economic life. So one could say: The error lies in the fact that what applies only to a specific period—and specifically to the most recent period—has been generalized. And only the last four centuries could be understood if one presented them in the spirit of the materialist conception of history.

[ 23 ] But now comes the important part, and this important part consists in the fact that one must not proceed merely on the basis of conceptual logic—for, from a conceptual-logical standpoint, there is very little that can be raised against Karl Marx’s tightly condensed propositions—but rather one must proceed on the basis of the logic of life, the logic of reality, and the logic of intuition. Then, however, it becomes apparent that beneath this evolution—which has been taking place since the sixteenth century in such a way that it can be interpreted from a historical-materialist perspective—an important involution is occurring, something that runs invisibly and supersensually beneath what is outwardly sensory and visible. And this is what seeks to rise to the surface, what seeks to emerge from the human soul—precisely the antithesis of materialism. Thus, materialism becomes so vast and exerts such a powerful influence only so that human beings may rebel against it, so that they may find the possibility of seeking the spiritual within themselves in the Age of Consciousness and the Soul, and bring it to the self-consciousness of the spiritual. So the task is not, as Karl Marx believes, simply to observe reality and deduce from it that “the economy is the basis of reality for ideology”—but rather to say to oneself: Since the sixteenth century, reality has not offered us what is truly real; rather, that must be sought in the spirit. One must find precisely that social order which outweighs what appears externally—what has been observable externally since the sixteenth century. The times themselves compel us not merely to observe external processes, but to find something that can intervene in these processes in a corrective manner. One must set back on its feet that which Marxism has turned upside down.

[ 24 ] It is extremely important to realize that, in this case, the logic of reality virtually reverses Karl Marx’s purely astute dialectic. A great deal of water will flow down the Rhine before a sufficient number of people come to realize this necessity—the need to arrive at the logic of reality, the logic of intuition. But it is essential that people realize this. It is essential precisely because of the pressing social issues. That is one example.

[ 25 ] The other example ties in with some of what I told you yesterday. I told you that it has been a characteristic feature since Ricardo, since Adam Smith, and so on, that people have observed how the economic order results in human labor being used in human social interaction, brought to market as a commodity, and treated as a commodity according to supply and demand. I explained to you yesterday how this is precisely what is so compelling—the very driving force—in the proletarian worldview. Anyone who thinks purely in terms of conceptual logic observes that this is the case and says to themselves: So we must have an economic theory, a social doctrine, a social worldview that takes this into account—one that answers, in the best possible way, the question of how, since labor power is a commodity, we can protect this commodity—labor power—from the exploitation of human beings. — The question is framed incorrectly. It is wrong not only from a theoretical standpoint but also in terms of real life. Framing the question incorrectly has a destructive, devastating, and exploitative effect today. Unless there is a reversal, it will have an increasingly exploitative effect. For here, too, what is upside down must be turned right side up. We must not ask: How should the social structure be designed so that people cannot be exploited, even though their labor power is brought to market as a commodity subject to supply and demand, just like any other commodity? For that contradicts an inner impulse of development that arises from the logic of reality; it corresponds to an inner impulse that is not explicitly articulated, but which nonetheless corresponds to reality and can be expressed as follows: Even the Greek era—that Greek culture which has become so important to us—is conceivable only because a large portion of the Greek population were slaves. Slavery is the prerequisite for that culture which is of such great significance to us. But in Greek culture, slavery was so very much a prerequisite that even a philosopher of such eminent intellect as Plato regarded slavery as justified and necessary for human culture.

[ 26 ] But human development continues. Slavery existed in antiquity, and as you know, humanity rebelled against slavery—instinctively rebelled against the idea that a human being could be bought or sold. A human being as a whole cannot be bought or sold. Today, one might say, this is an axiom, and wherever slavery still exists, it is regarded as barbarism. For Plato, however, the existence of slaves is not barbarism but a matter of course. For him, it is as self-evident as it is for any Greek of Platonic persuasion—indeed, for any Greek who thought in statesmanlike terms. The slave thought nothing other than: It is a matter of course that human beings can be sold, that human beings are brought to market according to supply and demand—though not, of course, like cows. But that is merely a mask, merely a cover-up, for it gave way to a milder form of slavery: serfdom. That lasted a very long time. But humanity rebelled against that as well. What remains, extending into our own time, is that while not the whole person can be sold, a part of the person—labor power—can be. But today, people are rebelling against the sale of labor power. What is demanded in the rejection of the buyability and sellability of labor power is simply the continuation of the rejection of slavery. It is therefore entirely natural that, in the course of human development, opposition has arisen against the notion that labor power is treated as a commodity and functions as such within the social structure. The question cannot, therefore, be posed as follows: How can human beings be protected from exploitation?—if one starts from the axiomatic premise that labor power is a commodity, as has become customary since Ricardo, Adam Smith, and others, and as Karl Marx and the entire proletarian worldview actually regard it. For it is already considered an axiom that labor power is a commodity. But even though it is a commodity, the aim is merely to protect it from exploitation—or rather, to protect the worker from the exploitation of his labor power. The entire line of thought proceeds in such a way that—more or less instinctively, or perhaps not instinctively, as in the case of Marx himself—this is accepted as an axiom, particularly among the usual dozen or so economics professors currently teaching at the universities; there, it is regarded as an axiom that labor power is to be treated in the same way as a commodity.

[ 27 ] Yes, these days such matters are dominated entirely by prejudices, and those prejudices are shaping our world. Prejudices are truly terrible, especially in this area. I don’t know how many of you here might even consider it unreasonable for people to concern themselves with these matters, to reflect on them. But one cannot truly reflect on life as a whole if one is unable to think about these things. One allows oneself to be led astray in all sorts of ways if one cannot think about these things. The last four years have clearly demonstrated all of this. Just think of everything these last four years have brought! One could witness the strangest things. Let me give you just one example. Whenever one returned to Germany—and it was no different elsewhere—one would find that at every turn there was something new that served as a fresh call to patriotism. Just as we were returning to Germany for the last time, for example, yet another new patriotic slogan had emerged regarding cashless transactions: People were no longer supposed to pay with cash but were to promote the use of checks—in other words, to keep cash out of circulation as much as possible and use checks instead. People were told that promoting cashless transactions was particularly patriotic, because it was believed to be necessary to win the war. No one realized that it was utter nonsense to put it that way. But it wasn’t just said—it was actually propagated—and people acted on it; even the most unbelievable people acted on it—people whom one would assume, because they ran factories and industrial enterprises, actually understood something about the national economy! They claimed: Cashless transactions—that’s patriotic! — Cashless transactions would be patriotic under only one condition: if people calculated every single time how much time they saved through cashless transactions—which, of course, only certain people can do; most people can’t. They’d have to add up all that time and then go and say: “Yes, I’ve saved this much time through cashless transactions; please put me to work on this or that—I’m willing to do such-and-such work in return.” Only then would it be a real saving. But people haven’t done that; they haven’t even considered that it could have patriotic significance for the economy only under this condition. And such nonsense has, of course, been bandied about in the most appalling way over the past four and a half years, because everything was in upheaval. The most unbelievable amateurish measures have been implemented. Impossibilities have become realities because people—including those who ordered them—have no idea what the actual interrelationships in this field really are.

[ 28 ] The point, with regard to the questions I touched on last, is that the investigation must focus precisely on this: How do we shape the social structure and social coexistence in such a way as to separate the objective commodity—the good, the product—from labor power? And this is what matters in everything that must be strived for in the national economy: that the product be brought to market and circulate in such a way that labor power is separated from the product. This problem must be solved specifically from an economic perspective. But if one starts from the premise—as if it were an axiom—that labor power is crystallized within the commodity, that the two are inseparable, then one obscures the very core problem; one turns what should be standing on its feet upside down. One fails to realize that the most important question—on which the fortune or misfortune of the civilized world in the economic sphere depends, and to which every impulse of the thinker must be directed—is this: How does the objective commodity, the good, become detached from labor power, so that labor power can no longer be a commodity? This can be achieved. If the necessary institutional arrangements are put in place in accordance with the threefold social order I have outlined to you, this is the path to separating from labor power that which is objectively a commodity or good detached from human beings.

[ 29 ] However, there is still little understanding of these matters, which are drawn directly from reality. In 1905, I published the essay “Theosophy and the Social Question” in *Luzifer-Gnosis*. At that time, I drew attention to the fundamental principle that must be upheld in order to separate the product from labor: that the solution to the social question can lie only in thinking correctly about production and consumption. Today, people think entirely in terms of production. A shift in thinking is needed! The focus must be shifted away from production and directed toward consumption. One could have offered specific advice in many instances, but due to the inadequacy of the circumstances and other shortcomings, such advice could not have produced the proper, tangible results. This has, in fact, been experienced at times. But it is indeed the case that people today, through their belief in certain logical consequences—which they take to be real consequences—have no sense of the need to look at reality. Yet it is precisely reality—especially in the social sphere—that gives rise to the right questions. You will, of course, easily find today that people will say to you: “Yes, but don’t you see that work must be done if goods are to be available?”—Certainly, work must be done if goods are to be available. Logically, goods do indeed result from work. But reality is something other than logic.

[ 30 ] I have repeatedly made this clear to our friends from a different perspective. I have said: Just look at the thinking of the Darwinian materialists. I can vividly recall how, many years ago in the Munich branch, I first attempted—and then repeated many times—to make this clear to our friends: Just try to imagine a true Haeckelian. He believes that humans evolved from an ape-like animal. Now, as a naturalist, he is supposed to form the concept of the ape-like animal and then the concept of man. If no human beings existed yet and he had only the concept of the ape-like animal, he would never be able to pick out or distill the concept of man from that concept. He believes that the concept of man arises from the concept of the ape-like animal only because, in reality, it has arisen from it. In real life, people already distinguish between pure conceptual logic, imaginative logic, and intuitive logic. But this distinction must take hold; otherwise, we will never achieve the kind of order in social and political relations that is necessary for the present and the near future. If one is unwilling to turn toward thinking in accordance with reality, as I have once again presented to you today, one will never arrive at Goetheanism in the public sphere. But the fact that Goetheanism may enter the world should be symbolized by the fact that there will one day be a Goetheanum here on this hill.

[ 31 ] Just for fun, I’d like to advise you to read the large advertisement that appeared on the back page of today’s *Basler Nachrichten*, calling on everyone to do everything possible for the greatest day in world history—which is to dawn with the establishment of the “Wilsoneanum”! Well, it is, after all, just an advertisement at first, isn’t it, and I only wanted to mention it in jest. But in people’s hearts, at least, the “Wilsoneanum” is taking very strong root.

[ 32 ] I recently explained to you that the fact that there is now a Goetheanum here does have a certain significance, and at the time I called this “negative cowardice.” The intention was to express the opposite of cowardice. And it is indeed true that events will occur in the future—even if this advertisement is merely a playful prediction—that will make this protest, rooted in a certain worldview, appear prophetically justified. Even if one does not take the half-page advertisement for the Wilsoneanum seriously, it is still good to know that Wilsoneana will indeed be established. That is why there should be a protest beforehand: a Goetheanum!