The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] What I would like to emphasize again and again—and now also in connection with what was said yesterday regarding our appeal—is that, given humanity’s current situation, my next priority is to foster a true understanding of social issues in as many people as possible. You must not forget that the living conditions, as they have developed in recent times, have brought about a kind of chaos across a large part of the civilized world—a chaos that can only be overcome from within the human soul itself. External measures—whether legislative in nature or in the form of a merely external regulation of economic life—will not, given the way the situation has turned out, be able to help humanity in a decisive way. Certainly, things may still work for a while in individual territories, but it would be wrong today to believe that this creates conditions that can endure in the long run for individual territories amid the social wave that must develop to encompass all of humanity. No help can come from anywhere other than social understanding—from the concepts held by human souls regarding social conditions; help cannot come from anywhere else.

[ 2 ] What I have just explained in somewhat complicated terms can, of course, be put more simply. One could say: that which is now striving toward disorder will not strive back toward order unless people prove themselves capable of establishing that order. And they will prove capable of establishing this order only if they acquire genuine social understanding—something from which humanity today—one might say, humanity today across all political parties—is as far removed as is humanly possible. Spreading this social understanding is what must be considered first and foremost. It is of paramount importance that what lives in the souls of the millions upon millions of proletarians themselves is something entirely different from what lives in their leaders. The leaders carry within them, for the most part, the legacy of the bourgeois outlook on life, which they seek to apply—albeit in a somewhat agitational form—to the living conditions of the proletariat.

[ 3 ] This is an undeniable fact. And one can only take this fact into account by deciding to work first toward social understanding. Even if one must admit that external circumstances will initially become even more chaotic than they already are, one would still be proceeding from a false premise if one were to believe that one could achieve anything through some half-hearted tinkering here and there. What people lack today is, after all, social understanding. The reason people lack it is that the entire development of thought, the entire development of feeling and will in humanity in modern times, has not made it a priority to truly bring about social understanding. Social understanding is also extraordinarily limited even among many of those individuals in whom the social impulse is powerful today.

[ 4 ] Do not take this to mean that developing social understanding requires special, in-depth knowledge or a broad-ranging scientific understanding. That is not the reason; rather, it is simply that today’s humanity lacks even the most basic guidelines for social understanding. People are thinking about things entirely different from those that need to be considered when it comes to acquiring the most basic social understanding. And this most basic social understanding is what matters first and foremost. It is quite right today to focus one’s attention above all on finding a way away from the abstract, fanciful concepts in which many people today take comfort; people believe that the present age has the ability to resolve the social problem from some ethical or religious standpoint. That is not the case. No matter how good the religious or ethical teachings one preaches to people today, they may warm the heart and have some effect—but precisely in a selfish sense. Concepts must be made capable of intervening in the social fabric of human society.

[ 5 ] So, gaining understanding is of infinite importance today. I said: people in whom the social impulse is also powerfully surging and bubbling today often have primitive notions. Isn’t it true that there are still many people—on the one hand, those belonging to the ruling circles, and on the other, those belonging to the proletarian world—who imagine that a simple reshuffling could bring about real change? For example, if those who were previously at the top—the ministers and state secretaries—were to tumble down, and the others, who were previously in some proletarian positions, were to rise up—in other words, if a simple reshuffling were to take place—the idea that this could make things different would be entirely mistaken. Some people will deny that they hold such a notion. And yet, in fact, they do. They are merely clouded by all sorts of party views, and as a result, they do not realize that they actually hold the kinds of notions I have just described. What is at stake is that people acquire, in a truly simple way, an understanding of what I have now presented to you on several occasions here and also in public lectures; an understanding of the necessary threefold structure of the social organism; that all details in social measures develop in such a way that account is taken of the necessity inherent in this threefold structure—that is what matters. Whether one has to take measures regarding, say, the construction of a railroad to be entrusted to a private company or the state, or whether one has to decide on the manner in which services are remunerated on any given occasion—I am not speaking of labor, but of services— in all these matters, what matters is that one directs one’s measures according to this threefold division: the independence of spiritual life, legal life—the state, political life proper—and economic life.

[ 6 ] You can certainly raise the question: How should one thing or the other be done? For the most part, these are questions posed incorrectly at the stage we’re at today. The spirit of what lives within this threefold structure can be described roughly as follows. After all, to pick just one example, there is such a thing as the best tax system. Now, the point today is not at all to devise this best tax system, but rather to work toward the threefold structure. And as this threefold social order becomes more and more a reality, the best tax system will emerge through the activity of this threefold social order. The point is to create the conditions under which the best social institutions can arise. For the idea that someone might try to “spun out” the best solution is not at all the point; it has no real value whatsoever. Just consider for a moment that you—any one of you—were a genius of such magnitude as has never before existed in human development, and that, precisely because you were such a genius, you would be able to devise the best tax system. But if you were standing alone in the world with your idea of the best tax system, and the others didn’t want it—perhaps they want the wrong one, but they don’t want yours—that is what matters. What matters is not conceiving the best, but finding the one thing on the basis of which humanity as a whole will do what is best. Well, you might say: Yes, but you have to start somewhere. You have to establish the threefold social order, even if people don’t want it!

[ 7 ] That is something else entirely, my dear friends; for this is not something that people can choose to want or not want, like any tax system, but rather something that, deep down, all people actually want—if only they understood it. This is what you can truly help people understand if you find the right path, because deep down, people want this to become a reality in the coming decades of human history throughout the civilized world. This isn’t just a theory; it’s an observation of what people actually want. And the reason so many people still reject it today is not because they don’t want it, but simply because they are still full of prejudices and are actually working against the very thing that is determined to come to fruition. The rest follows as a consequence. You must focus on the primary issue. The primary concern is that for which—whether it takes a shorter or longer time—understanding can be awakened, provided that some of what still hinders this understanding today is first removed. Of course, there are still certain leaders who stand in the way. These leaders will not be persuaded; they must first bang their heads bloody against the resistance they will face. And there will be much such resistance. Therefore, even if the cause does not proceed exactly as envisioned at the very first attempt today, it must not be labeled a futile endeavor. The cause must be prepared. It must be in place by the time what is now being realized in life—wrongly realized—has run itself into the ground, when much of what is now coming into the world will be just as gone as, for example, the German princes are now—who, even in 1913, could not have imagined that they would no longer be there by 1919. When what people often still cheer for today is gone, then at least something must be present in people’s minds and hearts that can be drawn upon. It must be prepared; the groundwork must be laid. That is what you must keep in mind regarding these matters, my dear friends. Once you have delved deeply and thoroughly enough into this threefold division of spiritual life, political life, and economic life, you will already feel the need to develop a certain understanding of these matters. This understanding is absolutely necessary; otherwise, one speaks about these things in such a way that, while one may pour all one’s good will into one’s speech, it cannot become a reality. The social organism is subject to certain laws just as the natural human organism is. If you act against these laws of the social organism—even with the most beautiful principles—you will achieve nothing. At best, you can lead people into a dead end. — That is what matters.

[ 8 ] Now don’t say: “Well, what then is human freedom if human beings are to be placed within a social organism that has certain laws?” — That is not a wise question; for you could pose the same question in another context: “Can a person be free if he is compelled to eat every day?” — They are not free to choose whether to eat at all. The things in the world that are subject to certain laws—even if humans are situated within these laws—ultimately have not the slightest to do with the problem of freedom, just as the fact that we cannot reach down and grab the moon has nothing to do with the problem of freedom. But there is something else that has to do with what is necessary for social understanding. That is, putting oneself in a position to return to the fundamental, to the primary, and not to make one’s social understanding dependent on the secondary or tertiary—on what is merely a consequence. Isn’t it true that, based on a certain life situation, one can say: within this life situation, a person needs at least a certain amount of resources—let’s say, money, since we’ve already expressed these resources in monetary terms—to be able to provide for their life. One can speak of a subsistence minimum in a particular life situation. But one can speak of this subsistence minimum in such a way that, on the one hand, one says something that seems utterly self-evident, and on the other hand, one says something that is complete nonsense. I’ll try to make this clear to you with an example.

[ 9 ] If you consider the prevailing living conditions in any given territory, you might be able to say—based on your intuition, on your instinctive sense—that someone who simply works, who does manual labor, needs a certain amount to meet their basic needs; otherwise, they cannot live in that community. That may seem like a perfectly obvious thought. But consider this: no matter how obvious the thought may be, if—as you must conceive it, based on the conditions I have just outlined—it cannot be realized within the social organism in which anyone lives; if it is impossible to realize it—what then? That is the question you must answer above all else: what then, if it is impossible to realize this?

[ 10 ] When you think about it the way I just described, it is not a primary thought. You do not go back to the fundamental things, but rather you build on something secondary, something that is merely a consequence. One must always be able to ground one’s social understanding in the fundamental issues. One such fundamental issue is being able to form a perspective—a life-affirming perspective—on what the minimum standard of living might be, specifically in accordance with the living conditions of the social organism; and by “life-affirming,” I mean, in this case, a perspective from which a viable social situation and a viable social coexistence among people can emerge. That is the primary concern. And now, of course, this leads to certain ideas that are, for the most part, quite uncomfortable for humanity today, because over the past few centuries, the basic school education—which is supposed to address such matters—has failed to truly guide students toward them. It should soon become clear to people today that, to be a reasonably educated person, one should not merely know that three times nine is twenty-seven, but should also know, for example, what exactly this thing called “ground rent” actually is. Now I ask you, how many people today have a clear understanding of what a basic income is? But without a comprehensive view of the social organism in relation to such matters, a prosperous further development of humanity cannot be brought about at all.

[ 11 ] These matters have gradually become very confusing. And it is these confusing circumstances that lead people today to their ideas, not the actual circumstances in this area. You see, ground rent—which can be assessed in some way based on the productivity of a piece of land in a given territory—this ground rent yields, let’s say, a certain amount for a territory defined by the state. Land is worth a certain amount based on its productivity—that is, based on the nature or degree of its rational utilization in relation to the overall economy. It is very difficult for people today to conceive of this simple land value in clear terms, because in today’s capitalist economic life, interest on capital—or capital itself—has become conflated with ground rent; because the real economic value of ground rent has been turned into a mirage by mortgage law, the mortgage bond system, the bond market, and the like. As a result, everything has essentially been driven into impossible, untrue notions. Of course, it is not possible to truly grasp what land rent actually is in the blink of an eye. But simply think of land rent as the economic value of the land and soil of a territory—the land and soil as such—but in relation to its productivity. Now, there is a necessary relationship between this ground rent and what I referred to earlier as the human subsistence minimum. Isn’t it true that there are many social reformers and social revolutionaries today who dream of abolishing ground rent altogether, who believe, for example, that ground rent will be abolished if all land is, as they say, nationalized or socialized? But simply transforming something into a different form does not abolish it. Whether the entire community owns the land, or whether it is owned by a certain number of people, does not alter the existence of ground rent at all. It merely disguises itself; it takes on other forms. Ground rent, defined as I defined it earlier, is simply always there. If you take the ground rent in a given territory and divide it by the population of that territory, you get a quotient, and this quotient represents the only possible subsistence level. This is a law which, just as Boyle–Mariotte’s law in physics is a very specific law that cannot be otherwise, is equally unalterable. But this is a primary fact, a fundamental truth: in reality, no one in any social organism actually earns more than the total ground rent divided by the population. Whatever else is earned is earned through coalitions and associations, which create conditions whereby one individual receives more value than another. But truly, nothing more than what I have just described can pass into the movable property of a single person. And from this minimum—which truly exists everywhere, even if real circumstances obscure it—all economic life arises, insofar as this economic life relates to what an individual possesses in terms of movable property. One must proceed from this fundamental fact. It is crucial to proceed not from a secondary fact, but from this primary one. You can compare this primary fact with any other primary fact—let’s say, for example, with the primary fact, which is also one for economic life, that within a given territory there is only a certain quantity of a raw product. Of course, you could also describe it as desirable if more of this raw product were available, and you could calculate how much more one would then have in that territory. But you cannot increase the quantity of the raw product. That is a primary fact. Likewise, it is a primary fact that, in reality, within a social organism, no one earns more—one does not earn through work, no matter how much one works—than what this quotient, which I have cited, yields. Everything else is brought about by coalitions and so on among people.

[ 12 ] Social and political institutions can act against such a fact. They can violate it. That is what it is all about: directing the entire process of organizing thought in the direction in which the facts are moving. That is what matters. Contentment among people can arise only when such things are understood. For if one directs the organizing thought—the thought that is translated into reality—in the directions demanded by the nature of the social organism, then everything else aligns with it, and it cannot happen that one person feels disadvantaged compared to another. This is what underlies, as a law, the social life—the actual life—of the social organism. But you can only think about such things in the right way—I have given you this example of the relationship between the minimum subsistence level and ground rent—and you can only form concepts about such things that have a real impact on reality if you start from the threefold social order that we regard as fundamental. For only under the influence of this threefold order is it possible for people to take such measures that human coexistence across a territory truly develops in the most productive way. Life will develop in the most productive way, namely, when it proceeds in the direction of these laws, not against them; in other words, living in accordance with the social organism—that is what matters.

[ 13 ] Now, however, one must realize the following. You cannot gain insight into the fundamentals of the threefold division through external observation of life, any more than you would grasp the Pythagorean theorem—no matter how many right-angled triangles you were to examine; but once you have grasped it, it is applicable wherever there is a right-angled triangle. So it is with these fundamental laws. They are applicable everywhere once they have been grasped in the right way, in accordance with reality. And you, my dear friends, still have the opportunity to understand the necessity of this threefold division from the foundations of spiritual science. You also still have the following possibility. Consider what is described as this threefold division. If I may put it this way, the life of earthly spirituality: art, science, religion, and, as I have said, also private and criminal law—that is one sphere. The second sphere is the political coexistence of human beings, which relates to the relationship between one person and another. The third is economic life, which relates to the relationship between human beings and what is, so to speak, subhuman—that which human beings need in order to rise to their true humanity. These three spheres are the ones referred to when speaking of the threefold social order. According to these three members, the human being is to be placed within the social organism. He must be placed there in this way, for all three of these members have a completely different origin in the human being as such.

[ 14 ] Everything that constitutes earthly spiritual life is, in a sense, the echo of what—and what I am saying now applies to our time—human beings experienced in the life prior to their descent through birth into physical existence. There, the human being lived as a spiritual individuality in spiritual connection with the higher hierarchies, in spiritual connection with the disembodied souls who are in the spiritual world and are not currently incarnated on Earth. Whatever a person develops here as spiritual life—whether they are engaged in religious activity or devote themselves to religious practice, or live in a religious community; whether they are engaged in artistic activity; or whether they must judge, as a judge, someone who has in some way transgressed the law or wronged another person—all that is lived out in this spiritual life stems from the forces that a person has acquired through living together in the spiritual world before descending through birth into physical existence. Here you must distinguish between living together with other people in accordance with individual destiny, and living together with other people in accordance with what I have just described. We human beings in earthly existence enter into individual relationships with one person or another. These depend on our individual karma; they lead back to previous earthly lives or point toward future earthly lives. But you must distinguish these individual relationships between people from others. These are the ones you enter into when, for example, you belong to a certain religious community. There, you think or feel in the same way as a number of other people within that religious community. Or suppose a book is published. People read the book, absorb the same thoughts through it—this, too, is a community one enters into here. And in such communities, 7a, earthly spiritual life actually consists—whether it relates to education and instruction or to something else—in entering into relationships with people, developing communities with them, in order to advance spiritually through this community itself. All of this, however, is a living out of circumstances in which one was immersed in a completely different form before descending into earthly spiritual life. This has nothing to do with individual karma, but rather with what was prepared during the time spent in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. $o Thus, the source of what I have specifically referred to as the spiritual realm must be sought in the life the human being had already lived before setting out to descend into earthly existence through birth.

[ 15 ] Then there is something one goes through simply by living here on Earth between birth and death. One only gradually grows into this life. When one enters existence through birth, one is a child; at that point, one still carries a great deal—if I may use a rather foolish comparison, for what one carries is not, after all, heavy—of the eggshells of the spiritual world. The child is very spiritual, even though it is precisely the physical body that needs the most development. But its aura contains much that is spiritual; what it brings with it is very closely related to what constitutes earthly spiritual life. Gradually, however, one enters more and more into the life that belongs solely to the period between birth and death. In this life, which at first gives no indication of anything spiritual, lie the sources of the life of the political state. The political state is concerned only with what a human being experiences between birth and death. Therefore, nothing should interfere in political life that concerns anything other than the relationship between human beings, insofar as we are beings between birth and death. If anything else interferes—if, for example, the state spreads its wings over spiritual life, over the church and the school—then this is subject to the judgment that people in places where they were capable of judging such matters used to pass, saying: If the state interferes in anything that relates to anything other than public legal life between birth and death, then the unlawful prince of this world reigns. In all that which is the subject of state organization, nothing else belongs there except that which relates to life between birth and death.

[ 16 ] The third element is what I have referred to as the economic aspect. This economic life—which we must lead because we are human beings who must eat and drink, who must clothe ourselves, and so on—this economic life compels us humans to plunge into the subhuman realm. This binds us human beings to something that actually lies below the level of our full humanity. By having to engage with economic life, by having to immerse ourselves in economic life, we experience something that, from a social perspective, has more depth than is usually realized. By being immersed in economic life and engaging in it, one cannot live according to the spiritual, nor even according to the law; rather, one must sink into something subhuman. But precisely because one sinks into something subhuman, something develops within us that has no other opportunity to develop. While we organize economic life, while we are active in economic life and higher thoughts must remain silent—and even the relationship between human beings comes into play only from another realm—that which we then carry through the gate of death into the spiritual world takes shape in our subconscious. While in earthly spiritual life we live out the aftereffects of what we experienced spiritually before descending to Earth, and while in the legal life of the political state we live out only what lies between birth and death, something unfolds within us as we engage in economic life—where we cannot immerse ourselves with our higher self— something is being prepared—something that is also spiritual—which we carry through the gate of death. No matter how much people might wish that economic life were intended solely for the earth, it is not; rather, precisely because we immerse ourselves in economic life, something is being prepared for us as human beings that, in turn, relates to the supersensible world. Therefore, no one should be tempted to regard the organization of economic life as insignificant. It is precisely this outer, material life that has a certain connection to life after death, however strange and paradoxical that may seem. Thus, for the connoisseur of human nature, the three realms actually fall into distinct categories: The purely spiritual realm points to pre-birth life; the political realm points to life between birth and death; and economic life points to life after death. We truly do not develop brotherhood in economic life in vain. In all that develops as brotherhood at the foundation of economic life lie antecedents—prerequisites for the life we will develop after death. I am merely sketching this out for you in outline form for now—we will discuss this further later—to show how the threefold structure of human nature in this regard sheds light, particularly for the spiritual scientist, on the necessity of dividing social life into three distinct spheres. This is what is unique about spiritual science: if one engages with it, it becomes immediately practical. It sheds light on the life around us, and in today’s world, people have no other way to truly illuminate life in its real circumstances than to engage with spiritual science in some way. Therefore, it would be desirable for those who are interested in this spiritual science movement, in particular, to radiate understanding toward others; for the spiritual scientist has a relatively easier time seeing through these things. They understand concepts such as pre-birth and post-death life from an anthroposophical perspective, and from this perspective, the necessity of the threefold division of life becomes clear to them. One can already see the necessity of this threefold division today. But one will gain a deeper, more comprehensive insight into it if one also possesses something like the foundations of spiritual science of which I have spoken here.

[ 17 ] Consider how much has been said in a faddish manner over the course of the last few centuries—by speaking of a general moral doctrine and the like, by separating the religious as much as possible from external, everyday life. We now find ourselves at a point in time where we must develop concepts that can permeate everyday life—concepts that do not merely extend to the promise of salvation or to the imperative: “Little children, love one another!”—after all, they don’t do it unless they have to, or unless there is some other reason! The concepts we develop in these areas must also possess sufficient substance and driving force to truly understand economic life, which has become so complicated today. Thus, the necessity of the threefold structure of a healthy social organism is given simply through an understanding of human nature.

[ 18 ] Today, this must become clear to as many people as possible as the very first foundation for a new beginning. This mere talk of the Spirit—which I already pointed out yesterday—is perhaps more harmful today than the materialism that began in the mid-19th century and has continued to spread to this day. For mere talk of the Spirit, mere yearning for the Spirit, mere worship of the Spirit—these things are no longer in keeping with our era. What is in keeping with our era is that we realize the Spirit, that we give the Spirit the opportunity to live among us. It is not enough today for people to believe in Christ; rather, it is necessary today for people to embody Christ in their actions and in their work. That is what matters. For when people develop sound thinking and feeling in this regard and in this area, then this sound thinking and feeling also flows into other areas.

[ 19 ] Never forget to keep something like the following in mind: A large portion of today’s official representatives of this or that Christian denomination speak of the Christ. I have already touched on this fact from other perspectives here, but we must keep returning to these matters from various angles. People speak of “the Christ,” but when asked why what they call “the Christ” is in fact the Christ, they can really only offer a superficial answer and are, in fact, living a lie within themselves. A large number of today’s theologians—because the Gospels have gradually been more or less disheveled by so-called scholarship—speak of “the Christ”—yet if one were to ask them: “In what way does what you conceive of as the essence of Christ differ from the God Yahweh, from the simple God who permeates and surges through the world?” — they would be unable to answer. The great theologian Harnack in Berlin wrote a book on “The Essence of Christianity,” but what he describes there as the essence of Christ is the Old Testament Yahweh, for Yahweh possesses precisely these characteristics. And that is why it is an inner lie to designate Yahweh as Christ. And so it is with hundreds upon hundreds, with thousands of those who preach Christianity today, that they are actually preaching only God in general, the God of whom one can say, “Ex deo nascimur.” One has found the Christ only after experiencing a kind of inner rebirth. One must speak of the God to whom one refers when one says, “Ex deo nascimur,” only when one is simply healthy in one’s entire human being. To be an atheist is, in reality, to be sick. But one can speak of Christ only after experiencing a kind of rebirth of the soul—which is not simply a matter of being born as a human being—and specifically after experiencing such a rebirth of the soul within the context of the present cycle of human history.

[ 20 ] One can do this by telling oneself: Today, human beings are, by their very nature, born with prejudices. We are born with nothing else but prejudices. That is the essence of modern humanity. And if a person remains as they are today, they will carry these prejudices throughout their entire life. They live a one-sided existence. Today, one can only save oneself by having inner tolerance, by being able to engage with the opinions—even if one considers them to be errors—of other people. If one has understanding—the deepest understanding—for the opinions of other souls, even if one considers them to be errors; if one can lovingly accept what the other person thinks and feels just as one accepts what one thinks and feels oneself—if one acquires this ability, this inner tolerance—then one gradually transcends the prejudices that are innate to us today in our current cycle of humanity. And one learns to say to oneself: What you have understood in one of the least of my brothers, that you have understood of me—for Christ did not speak to people only during the time when Christianity arose; Christ has fulfilled his word: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” And he is always revealing himself. Not only did he once say, “Whatever you did for one of the least of my brothers, you did for me,” but today he says to each person: What you understand in one of the least of your brothers with inner tolerance—even if it is a mistake—that you have understood from me, and I will enable you to overcome your prejudices if you wear them down through the tolerant acceptance of what the other person thinks and feels. — That is one thing. With regard to thinking, this is the path by which Christ comes: that Christ may dwell within us, that we not merely have thoughts about Christ, but that Christ may live in our thoughts. Only in this way will he live in our thoughts, as I have just described.

[ 21 ] The second relates to the will. In youth, people are sometimes idealistic. It is an innate idealism. We possess it simply by virtue of being born human. Today, this idealism of humanity is no longer sufficient in our human cycle. Today we need a different kind of idealism—one that we cultivate in ourselves, one that we do not simply possess by virtue of being human, but one to which we discipline ourselves. That is the kind of idealism we need. We need an idealism that we have acquired for ourselves. This is the idealism that does not disappear with the years of youth, but rather keeps us young and idealistic throughout our entire lives. If we adopt such an idealism—one that we cultivate within ourselves—then this idealism, based not on a logical law but on a law of reality, will give us the impetus not merely to act as individual, selfish human beings, but to place ourselves within the social organism in order to act from within that social organism. No one who does not open themselves to this today—or who is not educated in self-acquired idealism—will attain true social understanding.

[ 22 ] We acquire the “Ex deo nascimur” simply by being born. The path to Christ leads, on the one hand, through transcendent thoughts, and on the other, through the will. Through thought, we are convinced from the outset that we are born today as people full of prejudices; we must overcome these prejudices by tolerantly tempering them against the opinions of others. With regard to the path of the will, we must say: our will today receives the proper social fire only if we possess self-acquired idealism—idealism that we have instilled within ourselves through our own activity. That brings about rebirth. And what we have thus found—by acquiring it for ourselves as human beings—is what leads to Christ. Not the God to whom we say, “Ex deo nascimur,” may be called Christ, for that is an inner untruth. The Old Testament could also have that God. The God who speaks to us when, as human beings, we have transformed ourselves during our lives in accordance with these two directions I have described—that God is clearly perceived by us as different from the mere God the Father—that is the Christ. — Modern theology actually speaks very little of this Christ. This Christ must enter humanity as a social impulse. Many people today speak of Christ in such a way that their speech is nothing more than an inner lie.

[ 23 ] Now, such things cannot be understood in the way people today tend to speculate about them—as if they were logically linked, one after the other. I told you the other day: There is an understanding of reality that is different from a merely external, logical understanding. But when a person develops something within themselves—as I have now described as a rebirth—then their thinking is brought closer to Christ, and they learn to think and feel as they must if they are to place themselves within human society today for the sake of humanity’s salvation. For when they think and feel correctly about this fundamental matter, they also learn to think and feel correctly about other things. Yet the spiritual life of modern humanity has strayed terribly far from this. And the reason is often that this spiritual life of modern humanity has been absorbed by political and state life. Humanity’s spiritual life must be liberated from political and state life so that it can once again become fruitful and a source of inspiration for human development. Otherwise, all thoughts will be distorted, and false realities will be created based on these distorted thoughts.

[ 24 ] I have already cited Wilson’s definition of freedom. Certainly, from a philosophical standpoint, it is not particularly significant how a statesman defines freedom today. But it is significant as a symptom of what lives within a person when he holds this or that view of freedom. Wilson says: We say that something is free if, within certain conditions, it adapts itself in such a way that it can move freely. So, in a machine, if a basket can move freely—if it doesn’t bump into things here and there but can move freely—we say the basket runs freely; or a ship that is designed to sail with the wind moves freely forward. If it were to move against the wind, it would be restrained; it would not be free. In the same way, a person is free when he is adapted to the conditions within the social mechanism. — In that case, one can only speak of a social mechanism.

[ 25 ] What matters is not so much that such thoughts exist in one’s mind and are realized, but rather that what is realized finds expression in such thoughts. This is how one can tell whether it is healthy or whether it runs counter to what is healthy. The thought is completely distorted. And why? You need only consider the following, based on the insights you gain from spiritual science: If you are well-adjusted—you may be quite well-adjusted to external life circumstances; your life proceeds in accordance with this adjustment to circumstances, and you encounter no obstacles anywhere—then you are free; like a ship sailing with the wind, you are free. — But that is not how a human being stands in the world; they stand somewhat differently in this world. For when the ship sails with the wind, it sails freely—but it must also be able to come to a stop at times. This is precisely what is very important for human beings: that they can also turn around at times to face against the wind, so that they are not merely adapted to circumstances but can become attuned to their own inner selves. One cannot imagine anything more utterly wrong than the definition of freedom that Wilson attempted; for it contradicts human nature; it states the opposite of what underlies true human freedom. If one wishes to compare a human being to a ship sailing freely in the wind, one must compare him to a ship that, having sailed far enough, can also turn around and face the wind, so that it no longer needs to continue sailing. For if a human being must constantly chase after external circumstances, then he is, of course, free in relation to those circumstances, but he is not free in and of himself. Human beings have been completely lost in today’s worldview and conception of life. One can no longer rely on human beings at all. Human beings have fallen out of the worldview and conception of life. They must be placed back into the world.

[ 26 ] What I have just said has some very, very serious aspects; it is only a symptomatic observation, but it does have very serious aspects. For people today are so embedded in the social organism that they are essentially just sailing with the wind, and the capitalist economic order has imposed upon the proletarian in particular the condition that he can only sail with the wind and can never adjust himself, nor come to a standstill, nor turn against the wind so that he might find peace. I said in a public lecture in Basel: within the capitalist economic order, the capitalist needs only the worker’s labor power. In a healthy social organism, things must be arranged so that the capitalist also needs the worker’s rest—that he is dependent on that rest. Abstract capitalist capital needs only labor power—but that capital which, through the threefold social order, is returned to the purely human driving force will also need the worker’s rest; it will need the rest of all people. For it will have to integrate itself socially into the social organism, will know how it is sustained by the social organism and must in turn sustain it,

[ 27 ] Anyone who thinks clearly and belongs to the spiritual realm knows quite well what the individual, the individual life, is; it is a matter in itself, not a matter for the social organism; as such, it has an individual life. But insofar as a person has a social life, what is spiritual in them comes from the human community; they must give it back to the community and will feel the need to do so.

[ 28 ] That is what matters: that we also need the proletarian who conserves his labor power, so that he may participate in intellectual life; that we have the will to give the worker enough rest, to allow him to conserve enough of his labor power, so that he may be able to participate in intellectual life. That is what matters. Whereas the bourgeois economic order has gradually led to the emergence of a deep chasm, as I already indicated yesterday: the bourgeois economic order produces a spiritual realm that applies only to this bourgeois economic order and has absolutely no connection to proletarian life. One might add: capitalism has reached a point where it relies solely on labor power and not on the proletarian’s rest. Such matters still seem abstract today. They must no longer remain so. For the salutary development of humanity’s present and future depends on a proper understanding of these matters.

[ 29 ] Well, today I have once again offered you some insights specifically regarding the relationship between certain fundamental principles of the spiritual sciences and social life. One would so much like to see a spiritual movement such as ours also become healthy within itself—as a small social organism—through the interweaving of practical concepts of life with spiritual-scientific concepts, so that this terribly bourgeois attitude, which has developed to the detriment of humanity, this separation of economic, material life from spiritual life—so that this unhealthy separation may cease. The social organism must be restructured so that there are no longer people who, on the one hand, clip their coupons and, in clipping those coupons, are nothing other than slaveholders—because for the coupons they clip, so many people—with whom they have no connection—must perform hard labor, and who then go to church and pray to God for their salvation, or attend theoretical gatherings to talk about all sorts of beautiful things; who have absolutely no concept of the absurdity of leading an abstract spiritual life, of seeking a connection with God, while at the same time, by clipping coupons, they are simply participating in the enslavement of others, in the exploitation of labor. You are separating things in an unhealthy way if you do not address the need to separate them in a healthy way. That is what this is all about, what has been neglected and must be corrected: this abstract separation, this creation of a gulf between a religiosity and ethics floating in a cloud cuckoo land and the external life that one thoughtlessly carries on according to the structure that today’s unhealthy social organism has assumed. What matters is that we see through these things—and above all, that we realize the misfortune of our time has arisen from this bourgeois separation of the abstract and the concrete. One can already make a start—precisely within a movement such as ours—to bring about a kind of healthy, small social organism by striving to root out everything that asserts itself as pathological formations within such a movement: sectarianism. Nothing has caused more suffering in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement than the fact that, time and again, here and there, tendencies toward sectarianism and the formation of sects emerge; without even realizing it, people are striving toward some form of sectarianism. The opposite of any form of sectarianism must be an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Then it will also meet the unconscious and subconscious demands of the present, which truly do not amount to forming new sects, but rather to developing something that evolves from the whole human being for all human beings, and from all human beings for the whole human being.

[ 30 ] Just think for a moment about how you can transcend the inner sectarianism in your own souls, my dear friends. Sectarianism persists today like an atavism, like an unhealthy legacy, in numerous souls. And this sectarianism is rooted in a reluctance to bring what is true spiritual life into the circumstances of outer life. It was only through such sectarian fanaticism that, for example, this appeal—which I spoke to you about yesterday and read aloud to you—was criticized: one would have expected precisely this group to point to the Spirit. Indeed, this has always happened to me: I have never been able to point to the Spirit in the sense that such fanatics expect. When, in the early 1890s, the Adler-Unold ethical movement spread over from America, I opposed it with all my might, because a movement for ethical culture was supposed to have been founded that was based on absolutely nothing and connected to absolutely nothing in life, except for the mere desire to spread ethical principles. An understanding of life—an understanding of life arising from the very foundation of that life—that is what humanity today needs, not empty rhetoric about how things should be done this way or that. And with regard to the social organism, the threefold social order is the very thing that must first be thought through, researched, and contemplated as something fundamental—something that should actually take root in people’s minds so that they master it just as one masters the multiplication tables.