The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] If you now follow current events closely, you will find that there is, in essence, a certain tendency running through all of humanity that is ill-suited to directing people’s thoughts toward what the clearly evident facts unfolding in the world themselves demand. In general, people have a certain aversion to thoughts that do not follow the familiar patterns of the past. But perhaps never before has it been as natural as it is today to ask: How is it that people are actually so reluctant to engage with thoughts they have not already considered? — You see, what we are experiencing today—and I would say throughout the course of history—is a fundamental phenomenon. I have often drawn attention to how this fundamental phenomenon manifested itself years ago. One could compile a fine collection of speeches by European statesmen from the spring and early summer of 1914, and one would find in the content of these speeches pretty much the same thing that was said, for example, in a speech delivered at the German Reichstag by State Secretary Jagow at that time. It went something like this: “Through the efforts of the European cabinets, it has been possible to establish such satisfactory relations among the great powers of Europe that peace in Europe is secured for a long time to come.” In various variations, one could find this speech time and again among these “practical men”—as these people call themselves. That was back then. And just a few weeks later, that global conflagration began, which has now only entered a crisis phase. What else are we witnessing now in the intentions and actions of people who are so very much of our time? In recent days, I have been following some of the proceedings of the so-called “League of Nations Conference” in Bern. People there also spoke on various topics. Among these various topics, everything was essentially of the same caliber—in relation to the events described above—as the speeches of European statesmen from the spring and early summer of 1914. These people speak along the same old familiar lines of thought. They say what they have been accustomed to saying for years. Essentially, they have taken in nothing—absolutely nothing—from the lessons of the past four and a half years, which speak from the depths of world existence.

[ 2 ] This is a fact to which the humanities scholar, in particular, should devote the most intense attention; for this desolation pervades a large part of the European continent. Despite the various variations, it nevertheless seems, time and again, quite typical—albeit expressed only in the extreme—when, arising from powerful but, for the present age, pernicious undercurrents, there is talk of a particular ideological movement that, due to the indifference and apathy of the European population, will have great prospects in the near future of making one impression after another, one conquest after another. When I was still a very young boy—it has been a long time now—the following was stated very decisively in my religion textbooks to guide the boys toward an understanding of who Jesus Christ was. It read: Jesus Christ was either a hypocrite or a fool—or he was what he himself claimed to be, the Son of the living God. Since one cannot assume that Christ was a hypocrite, nor can one assume that he was a fool, there can only be one possibility: that what he said is true—that he is the Son of the living God. — What was written in my old religion textbook decades before our time, I heard it recently in a speech given in Bern by Professor Ude of the University of Graz following the “League of Nations Conference” in Bern! Once again, one could hear the words: Jesus was either a hypocrite or a fool, or he was, as he himself claimed, the Son of the living God. “And since you will not dare”—the man called out to the crowd—“to call Christ a fool or a hypocrite, he can only have been what he himself claimed to be: the Son of the living God!” All of this was hurled into the crowd with Jesuitical fervor, and there were probably few people in the hall at that time who raised the only truly significant question regarding such a matter: Hasn’t this little saying been repeated for centuries before the faithful, and hasn’t great ruin befallen humanity despite this very saying? Could there still be a heart and a mind today that do not give thought to how senseless it is, after the great global catastrophe and in the midst of it all, to keep shouting into the crowd, over and over again, the very things that have so clearly proven their futility? — And I heard another speech by the same professor at the University of Graz on the social question, and this speech, from beginning to end, contained no indication whatsoever of what should actually happen, what must happen; it was merely a kind of condemnation of certain abuses—which certainly exist—that prevail in the present; yet even there, nothing had been learned from the tragic events of the last four and a half years!

[ 3 ] This is actually a better example than many others for the following reason: among the speeches delivered in Bern by people from all sides, those by Professor Ude of Graz were by far the best; for they at least stemmed from a worldview—albeit one that, if propagated today, would inevitably prove dangerous. The others stemmed from an inability to even rise to any worldview or philosophy of life at all. One must emphasize time and again: people’s thoughts today have become dull and shallow. They are incapable of penetrating reality. They move within illusions; they move merely on the surface of things. It is impossible today to grasp what this very era demands of those who wish to have a say in the so-necessary reshaping of things.

[ 4 ] My dear friends, let us tell ourselves this again and again: Over the past four centuries, we as the European people—along with our American descendants—have developed a way of thinking that is suited only to understanding the lifeless and the dead. We have developed a way of thinking that is entirely oriented toward the mathematical and the technical. We have become incapable of directing our thoughts toward that which lives in nature. We comprehend only the dead. What we are able to say in our official science about the organism applies only to the dead organism; it has been derived solely from corpses. But today, now that we have become accustomed to this way of thinking, it is also applied to the social organism. This means nothing other than that, in broad circles, humanity today is incapable of even thinking about the living social organism at all. At most, people today find such thoughts difficult. What kinds of thoughts do people find easy today? — Those that have been drummed into them for centuries through catechism, those that run along well-worn tracks, or those that are the offspring of ideas that relate only to the dead aspects of the living organism. But on the other hand, it is necessary for the present age to comprehend the living social organism.

[ 5 ] Let’s take a specific example. Contemporary socialist thought is, to a large extent—as I have described to you from every angle—directed against capitalism. Socialism calls for the socialization of all private capital in the means of production. This socialization was, after all, discussed at great length in what I believe is called the “National Assembly” in Weimar. The way people talk about capitalism today stems directly from the outdated thinking of the past centuries, which flourished within a purely scientific-materialist worldview. What is actually at stake here? — The fact is, my dear friends, that capitalism has essentially become a terrible oppressor of the masses; the fact is that one can find little to object to in all that has been said—and continues to be said—by the proletarian population against the oppressive nature of capitalism in intellectual, legal, and economic terms. But what conclusion do socialist-minded thinkers draw from this undeniable fact? — They draw the conclusion: Capitalism must therefore be abolished; it is, after all, an oppressor, it is something terrible, it has proven to be a scourge of modern humanity—it must be abolished. What could be more understandable, what could be more fruitful for ordinary agitation—which is now, however, playing out in terrible realities across Europe—than this demand for the abolition of capitalism? For those who do not turn solely to the dead thinking of the last four centuries, but who are able to turn to the living thinking that we need above all for our spiritual science, for them this argument— that capitalism must be abolished because it is an oppressor, a scourge, just as logical, just as grounded in the logic of facts, as if someone were to say: We constantly inhale oxygen and exhale deadly carbon dioxide; since oxygen is transformed into carbon dioxide within us anyway, why do we even inhale it in the first place? It does, after all, become a deadly poison within us. Undoubtedly, oxygen turns into a deadly poison within us, but for the sake of life we must breathe it in, for the life processes of the human and animal body are inconceivable without oxygen respiration. Nor is social life conceivable without the continuous accumulation of capital—namely, without the continuous production today of the means of production—and that, after all, is essentially what capital is. There is no social organism that does not depend on the contribution of individual human abilities. If the demands of the social organism were understood in the broadest sense, the worker would say: The point is that I have confidence in the manager of the enterprise; for without him managing the enterprise, I cannot perform my work—that goes without saying. But if there are managers of enterprises, the necessary consequence is that capital accumulates. There is no way to escape the accumulation of capital. So if a socialist line of thought—which is, in a certain sense, well-meaning but misguided—asks: “How do we destroy capitalism?”—then this question is tantamount to asking: “How do we destroy the social organism altogether? How do we drive social life to its death?”

[ 6 ] It is beyond doubt to anyone who can see through things that capital accumulates even under the most rational social order, and it is equally beyond doubt that one cannot help but wonder: How does one prevent the accumulation of capital? How does one nip it in the bud? How does one ensure that no capital accumulates? — But you see, this dilemma is too difficult for people today. People today do not want to grapple with such thoughts. They want everything to be easy, especially when it comes to thinking. But the times do not allow us to take the easy way out, especially when it comes to thinking. For what is always forgotten is that everything living is in a state of becoming, that time is an integral part of understanding everything living, that the living is one way at one moment and another way the next. With a little reflection, it is not difficult to realize that time is essential to understanding the living in its concreteness. For the human organism is a living being. Take the human organism—I mean, your own organism—at around half past one; you are all hardworking people who don’t linger long in the cafeteria, and when you come out of the cafeteria having just eaten, you are—at least, as would be desirable under normal circumstances—fully satiated; you are not hungry. Your organism is most certainly a concrete, human organism. You define it by taking it in its concreteness at a quarter to two in the afternoon, when you’ve just come out of the cafeteria: a human organism is a living being that isn’t hungry. But at half past twelve, when you’re heading to the cafeteria, it’s different—you’re all hungry then. There, you could define it again: a human organism is that which is hungry. — What we have here is that you are observing the concrete, living entity at two different points in time, and that what is necessary for the flourishing of this organism at these two different points in time are precisely opposite states—that something must be brought about within the organism which is processed in such a way that its opposite occurs. This is true of the natural living world, but it is also true of the social living world, my dear friends. In the social living world, one can never prevent capital from arising as a concomitant event—as a natural consequence of the application of individual human abilities—nor can one prevent private ownership of the means of production from developing. If someone devotes himself to managing a branch of production, and he also shares the products created quite fairly with the craftspeople working alongside him, the social organism could not survive at all unless capital were to arise as a concomitant phenomenon—capital that the individual possesses, just as he possesses what he needs for his own use, what he produces in order to exchange it for his own use.

[ 7 ] But just as one cannot forbid eating—because once one has eaten, one becomes hungry again—and just as one cannot ponder whether one should actually refrain from eating, so too one cannot ponder how capital might not form at all at any given point in time; rather, one can only ponder how this capital must in turn be transformed at another point in time, and what must become of it. You cannot seek to prevent the formation of capital without undermining the vitality of the social organism; you can only seek to ensure that what forms as capital does not become harmful within the healthy social organism.

[ 8 ] What is required in this way for the healing of the social organism is possible only within a threefold social organism. For only within a threefold social organism can one member function in a manner opposite to that of another member, just as in the human natural organism. It is in the individual’s interest that there be a section within the social organism in which individual human abilities can find expression; but it is in everyone’s interest that these individual human abilities do not, over time, transform in a way that harms the organism. Capital will always accumulate within the economic cycle. If you leave it within the economic cycle, it leads to unlimited accumulation of wealth. You cannot leave what accumulates as capital through individual human abilities within the economic sphere—you must transfer it into the legal sphere. For at the moment when a person acquires more from what he has produced—whether alone or in community—than he consumes, that is, at the moment when he accumulates capital, at that very moment his property is truly no more a commodity than human labor power is a commodity. Property is a right. For property is nothing other than the exclusive right to use a thing—say, land or a house or the like—to the exclusion of all others, to dispose of any thing to the exclusion of all others. All other definitions of property are unhelpful for understanding the social organism. That is to say, at the very moment a person acquires property, that property is something to be administered within the purely political state, within the constitutional state. But the state must not acquire it; otherwise, it would itself become an economic manager. It must merely transfer it to the spiritual organism, where people’s individual abilities are managed. Today, such a process is carried out only with the goods that are the “most trivial” for the present age. What I have just explained certainly applies to these most trivial goods. It does not apply to valuable goods. — If someone today produces something of an intellectual nature—say, a very significant poem, a significant work as a writer or artist—then they can, of course, bequeath the proceeds to their descendants for thirty years after their death. After that, the work, as a free good, does not pass to their descendants but to humanity at large. Thirty years after a writer’s death, his works may be reprinted in any manner. This stems from a perfectly sound idea: the idea that human beings owe even their individual abilities to society. Just as one cannot learn to speak on a desert island—since one can only learn to speak in the context of other people—so too does one possess one’s individual abilities only within society—certainly based on what lies in one’s karma, but this must be developed through society. In a certain sense, one owes this to society. It must in turn revert to society, and one is entrusted with managing it only for a time, because it is better for the social organism if one manages it: One knows best what one has produced oneself, and can therefore initially manage it best. These most precious goods for humanity today—namely, the spiritual ones—are thus, in a certain sense, socially valued with due regard for the concept of time.

[ 9 ] I was told that some capitalist-looking members of the audience in Bern recently became angry during my lecture when I said: Why, for example, should it be impossible to have a law that obligates the capital owner to allocate his capital, a certain number of years after his death, to the free administration of a corporation—that is, the spiritual organization, the spiritual part of the social organism? Certainly, one can conceive of various ways to establish a concrete law. But if people today wanted to return to what was lawful in ancient Hebrew times—redistributing property after a certain period of time—people today would regard that as something unheard of. But what is the consequence of people regarding this as something unheard of? The consequence is that, over the past four and a half years, humanity has killed ten million people, maimed eighteen million, and is preparing to do more along these lines. — Prudence in such matters—that, after all, is what matters most of all today, my dear friends. It is indeed no trivial matter when it is demanded that the concept of time be applied to understanding the social organism. People tend to think of the social organism as entirely timeless when they say: this or that should already be done with capital in its nascent state, in its status nascens. One must allow capital to come into being; one must also allow it to be managed for a while by those who brought it into being; but one must again have the possibility, through a healthy—that is, a threefold—social organism, of allowing it to pass into the true community of humanity.

[ 10 ] You cannot say: Why shouldn’t a single-member social organism be able to do all of that as well? People still believe today that it can. But believing this shows a rather poor understanding of the human psyche. Just consider what it means—for one must take the human soul into account—when a close or distant relative is brought before a judge. He has his particular feelings as a close or distant relative, but when he has to judge, he will not judge according to those feelings, but according to the law, of course. He will judge from a different source. Thinking this through thoroughly from a psychological perspective gives you insight into the necessity for people to assess what converges within the social organism from three different directions and to manage it from three different sources. Our times simply demand that we engage with such matters. For our times are the times of the Age of Consciousness. And this Age of Consciousness seeks concrete ideas to serve as guiding impulses for human action.

[ 11 ] Many people today argue that one should not rely on reason and abstract thought—since they know only abstract thought—but rather judge from the heart; above all, they say, one should adhere to a certain faith when it comes to the principles governing human relationships, since thinking is, after all, reserved only for the actual matters of science. — This is, for that very reason, a troubling statement, because especially in our time, people are intensely predisposed toward the most abstract forms of thinking. People want to hold on to only the most straightforward concepts. And once they have grasped them, they cling to these straightforward concepts with tremendous tenacity. This abstract thinking is, above all, the kind of thinking that has only the human head as its organ—the kind of thinking most closely bound to the physical organ, the human head. In the past, during the era of atavistic clairvoyance, a form of thinking oriented toward the spirit flowed into this mode of thinking from the rest of the human organism. That era of atavistic clairvoyance is over. People must now consciously rise to the level of imagination and consciously grasp spiritual life. For without engaging with spiritual life, people’s thoughts today remain empty. Where does this come from?

[ 12 ] As you know from the discussions we have had recently, what is today the head in every human being is actually the rest of the organism—excluding the head—from a previous incarnation. I have explained this to you on several occasions. The formative forces of the head—not, of course, the physical substance, but the formative forces of the human head, which, in their roundness, are modeled after the cosmos—pass over into the cosmos. The forces that endure through our life between death and rebirth and become the head in the next incarnation—to which the rest of the organism, formed from the mother’s body and fertilized by the father, is then attached—these are the remaining body parts from the previous incarnation. We lose the head in terms of its forces when we pass through death; we transform the rest of the body, in terms of its forces, into our head in the next incarnation. The vast majority of people today were positioned on Earth in their previous incarnation in such a way that they were despisers—as was understood at the time, in the true Christian sense—of this earthly vale of tears. This contempt is a feeling. It is bound to the rest of the organism, not to the head. But as these people reincarnate today, what was in their previous incarnation an apparently very sublime Christian feeling—now that it forms and reincarnates through the organ of the head—is transformed into its opposite; it becomes a longing for matter, a longing for material life. People today have reached a turning point in their development, about which one must say: as little as possible from the previous incarnation has entered their minds. And precisely for this reason, something new must enter into people—something that is a present-day revelation, something that is now being revealed anew to humanity from the spiritual world. Today it is not possible to rely solely on the Gospels. Today it is necessary to listen to what is being said to humanity in spiritual terms today. The Catholic Church, for example, also participates in this dead way of thinking that cannot comprehend the living organism. The speakers of this Catholic Church, in particular, have not grown weary of professing their faith in Christ, the Son of the living God, even now once again in Bern. But, my dear friends, what good is it to profess faith in Christ, the Son of the living God, if one grasps this Christ only with dead thinking—that is, if he becomes a dead ideal in one’s own thoughts? Today we do not need to call upon Christ, the Son of the living God; rather, we need to call upon Christ, the living Son of God. That is, upon the Christ who is now actively at work, bestowing new revelations upon humanity.

[ 13 ] In this sense, spiritual science seeks to make that which is now emerging as a new revelation directly from the spiritual worlds the driving force behind all thought. But that would give people thoughts capable of penetrating reality. These thoughts, however, would in many respects be opposed to those that dominate people today. You see, my dear friends, people today tend to cling to the boldest thoughts—those that are as far removed from reality as possible. And once they have such a thought, they cling to it tenaciously, unaware of the realities at work that may, under certain circumstances, modify that thought. I will give you a striking example.

[ 14 ] Over in Bern, just as statesmen spoke of world peace in the spring and early summer of 1914, so now various people—who are said to think “internationally”—are speaking of the coming League of Nations. As you know, the idea of the League of Nations originated in the mind of Woodrow Wilson. In that speech in January 1917, Wilson articulated this idea of the League of Nations. He presented it as something that must be strived for so that people in the future would not again be driven into such terrible, horrific catastrophes as those into which the people of the present have been driven. He described the pursuit of this League of Nations as absolutely necessary. At the same time, he said—and this is the crucial point—that the realization of this League of Nations is contingent upon a specific prerequisite; without this prerequisite being met, there can be no question whatsoever of establishing such a League of Nations. The necessary prerequisite for the establishment of such a League of Nations, however, is that this war end without the victory of one side over the other. For a League of Nations could never be realized in a world where there is a decisive victory on one side and a decisive defeat on the other.

[ 15 ] Well, that is the prerequisite without which Wilson would not have spoken of the League of Nations. What has come to pass is the exact opposite of what Wilson described as the prerequisite for the League of Nations. Nevertheless, people today will justify the League of Nations in the very way Wilson spoke of it as a hypothesis in January 1917. This means, precisely in his way of thinking, being completely detached from reality, clinging to an idea, and having no possibility whatsoever of immersing oneself in reality with that idea, of grasping reality, or of incorporating that reality into one’s thoughts. But that is what is most essential for the present. It does not even occur to people that they must not remain stuck in their thoughts, but that what they need above all else today is to look into reality from the vantage point of these thoughts.

[ 16 ] Another example of a well-meaning person could now be seen in Bern in the person of the pacifist Schücking. You see, people were talking about the League of Nations with all its institutions. Curiously enough, there were even suggestions that, just as individual states have parliaments, we should strive for a supranational state and supranational parliaments. Schücking said, for example: “Yes, it is objected that the various states are, after all, individual entities and will not submit to such a uniform, centralist, supranational leadership. But this is contradicted, for example, by what the National Assembly in Weimar is doing. There, the small territorial principalities are also individual entities, yet there is still a sense of the need to bring the whole together.” — It is an obvious thought—one might say, a self-evident thought for those who think in abstract terms—for what could be more correct than to do on a large scale with the supranational state what can be done on a small scale with the many small principalities—namely, to bring them together through the National Assembly! But anyone who thinks realistically and concretely, anyone whose thoughts immediately turn to reality, will say: How did this become possible in Weimar? Through the German Revolution! Otherwise, there would have been no question of it ever becoming possible. So: let a world revolution come first, and then a supranational parliament modeled on the Weimar National Assembly will be possible! That is the realistic idea—one that is grounded in reality everywhere, that does not detach itself from reality, and that would feel sick if it were not grounded in reality.

[ 17 ] It is so difficult, my dear friends, to make people today understand that a new way of thinking is necessary—a completely new way of thinking that is in tune with reality—and that the recovery of our circumstances depends on humanity’s inclination toward this reality-oriented way of thinking. But no way of thinking that wants nothing to do with the spiritual world can immerse itself in reality, for the spiritual world is alive in all of reality. And if one wants nothing to do with the spiritual world, then one can least of all immerse oneself in reality today, and in the future one will be even less able to do so. Therefore, one of the key issues for the recovery of today’s world is humanity’s turning toward spiritual scientific knowledge. This must, of course, form the foundation—and it could form the foundation; it can easily form the foundation. Do not keep repeating the superficial, empty words that it is difficult to translate this spiritual science into reality because people do not want to accept spiritual science. Abolish state oversight of universities, high schools, and elementary schools—and in ten years, spiritual science will have taken the place of today’s science, which kills and corrupts human souls, at least in its necessary, elementary foundations! For what can grow today out of the emancipated third of the healthy social organism, out of the spiritual organization, will look different from that which has been supervised by a state that sought only to train its clergy—that is, tolerated only a state theology—or that sought only to train its lawyers, and therefore recognized only its state lawyers; not to mention medicine, where it is absurd and ridiculous that a different form of medicine should be valid on one side of the border and on the other, from state to state, that the same knowledge should not be healing for people here and there, and so on.

[ 18 ] I have often emphasized to you that, for socialist thought, all intellectual life is an ideology. What, then, is the deeper reason that all intellectual life is an ideology for the socialist thought of the proletarian masses today? — Because all knowledge is supposed to be supported by an external force—the political state—since it is merely the shadow of the political state! It is, after all, an ideology. For if intellectual life is not to be an ideology, it must continually prove its reality through its own powers; that is to say, it must be emancipated and rely on itself. Intellectual life must continually prove its reality; it must not rely on external support. Only such an intellectual life—one that has no external support, that relies solely on human capabilities, and that governs itself entirely from within—will in a healthy way also send its offshoots into capitalism. For governance through capitalism is nothing other than governance through human capabilities. If you make spiritual life healthy at its source, then spiritual life will also be healthy where it flows into capitalism and is called upon to guide economic life. This is how things are interconnected, and one must familiarize oneself with this connection. My dear friends, we must avoid all the thinking of today’s abstract thinkers—that thinking divorced from reality, which confronts us at every turn and which has brought about our present circumstances, of which our present circumstances are the consequence. People simply do not recognize this yet.

[ 19 ] Today, people ask: What should the supranational state be like? — and they reflect on what the state has been like so far; whatever it has done, the supranational state should do as well. But isn’t it much more natural to ask what this state should refrain from doing? Since the states have led to the European catastrophe, it is much more natural to ask what they should refrain from doing. They should refrain from interfering in intellectual life; they should refrain from acting as economic managers. They should limit themselves to the purely political sphere. Today, one cannot ask, “How is a League of Nations to be established?”—and take as a model for this establishment what the states have done or should do; rather, it is better and more in keeping with the times to ask what the states should refrain from doing.

[ 20 ] People are still not very inclined to truly engage with these issues. But the fate of humanity in our time will depend on whether we engage with them. Today, I have spoken to you—I would say, by way of introduction—about these issues. I will continue discussing them tomorrow.