The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] What is called the social question is making itself felt in our time in the most intense way as a demand of world history. At the same time, however, it can be said that this era—our present—is as ill-prepared as possible to meet the true nature of this social question with a genuine, profound understanding. Let us not harbor any illusions regarding this fact. We have often had to point out the deep chasm that exists between the classes and social strata that have persisted into our own time and the proletarian masses. In the broadest sense, the ruling classes and estates have, in the course of recent historical development, closed themselves off within certain spheres of interest and have neglected a universal human understanding. The proletarian masses have, through their entire living conditions, been forced to regard themselves as increasingly excluded from that in which the ruling classes have, to a greater or lesser extent, entangled themselves. Now, one could certainly argue that, with regard to class division, the situation in ancient Greece, for example, was even more unfavorable. There were large groups of slaves who were not only regarded in part—in terms of their labor—as commodities, but who were regarded as commodities in their entire humanity, bought and sold on the market. But one would be looking at the matter incorrectly if one focused solely on what has just been mentioned. Certainly, well into modern times there was a sharp class division and separation; but it pertained more to external living conditions—to those conditions expressed in external social rank. Whereas in recent times—and this is precisely what is significant—a kind of spiritual community has spread among the ruling classes, a spiritual community that is closely linked to the self-interested concerns of these ruling classes, and in which the great proletarian masses cannot participate. One need only consider how little the spiritual life of earlier times had an effect in this particular direction. Certainly, there were individual figures in ancient times—as leaders of the mysteries or as initiates—who were imbued with the higher aspects of spiritual life; but this spiritual life was not structured as it is today, in such a way that a person, so to speak, dons a bourgeois education just as he dons finer bourgeois attire in contrast to a worker’s smock, and in such a way that he leaves the proletarian with nothing but a proletarian education, just as he leaves him with nothing but a worker’s smock. Consider how Christianity, over the course of centuries, strove to pour out upon humanity precisely a shared spiritual life that was meant to place all people equally before God. And even if, for my sake, you look back at the spiritual life of ancient Hebrew culture—certainly, there were the scribes and Pharisees, individual communities that stood out, who possessed a certain spiritual life; but what they imparted from this spiritual life, they gave to all classes in the same way. The division into classes had much more to do with other factors than with spiritual life itself. And we must not forget that, for example, throughout the Middle Ages, the content of spiritual life lay in something entirely different from what it is today. The content of spiritual life in the Middle Ages lay in the image that was in the church, where everyone could see it—where the highest nobleman could see it, where the poorest person could see it. This spiritual life united people from the lowest to the highest.

[ 2 ] But then the modern era dawned, which essentially replaced the old visual art with literature. There was less and less appreciation for the pictorial and the imaginative, and more and more people sought education in literature, in written works, in the written and printed word. And this written and printed “word” increasingly took on a form that made it possible, so to speak, for an educated upper class to emerge alongside the proletarian, universal human sensibility. This duality of the soul in social life, which has become increasingly apparent in recent times, has, more than anything else, been the root cause of the deep, deep social divide that now has such terrible consequences.

[ 3 ] Added to this was the fact that, in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch—this epoch of the prevailing development of the consciousness-soul—people became more and more selfish because they had to, so to speak, place themselves at the pinnacle of the human personality, since it was precisely the human personality that they were meant to develop. Through this development of the human personality, it became apparent that people were less and less capable of truly understanding one another or responding to one another. We have, after all, finally reached a point in the present age where it has become almost impossible for one person to be convinced by another, and where, as a result, the spread of ideas is so readily sought through the use of force. How often have I emphasized here and elsewhere in our community context that today, in fact, everyone always has their own point of view on everything—regardless of any underlying assumptions. No matter how young a person may be today, they have their own point of view even in the face of the most mature perspectives. The sense that perspectives on life’s meaning should be gained through maturation and the broadening of experience—this sense has been fading more and more. The willingness to engage with others—so that one might be convinced by what lives in the other’s soul—has receded further and further; that is why people understand one another so very little.

[ 4 ] Added to this is the fact that, over the course of the last few centuries, people have increasingly turned their backs on spiritual matters altogether. Just the other day, I once again emphasized here in particular that one should by no means be deceived by the fact that even today people still go to church and claim to be religious. This so-called religion means extremely little in relation to the connection that human beings need and should seek between the sensory world in which they live between birth and death, and the supersensory world. The greatest part of what people today claim as religious content for themselves is, after all, nothing more than a life in words, a life in language. And since we emphasized yesterday and the day before yesterday how abstract life in language has become, we need not be surprised that religious life—which, after all, is expressed to people mostly through language—has also become abstract and thus materialistic. For everything abstract actually leads human beings constantly toward the materialistic. And the question that should actually permeate and resonate throughout our entire lives: What, in fact, is a human being? — this question points to something that is scarcely accessible to people today, to the average person. Consider, after all, that to answer the question of what a human being is, one must engage with the entire world in a devoted manner; for the human being is a microcosm, a small world, and becomes comprehensible only when one is able to imagine him as he is born out of the whole world. To understand the human being, one must understand the world. Yet how little, in this age of natural science focused purely on the external, is a true understanding of the world—and thus an understanding of the human being—sought after today. Although people today often think that this has nothing to do with understanding the social question, it is nevertheless entirely true that everything I have just outlined is intimately connected with an understanding of the social question. But people will only gradually begin to recognize this connection again when they are willing to engage lovingly with the spiritual realm. Today, people want to solve social issues solely on the basis of external factors. It can only be truly resolved if one can ground all human striving, feeling, and willing in spiritual experience, if one can once again fruitfully ask the question: How can a true connection be established between the world in which a person lives between birth and death, and the world in which they live between death and a new birth?

[ 5 ] You are all already more or less familiar with the “group” that is to represent the Trinity in the worldview of the future: the representative of humanity between Lucifer and Ahriman. You will have noticed that an attempt has been made to portray this representative of humanity in such a way that, as a whole, he is actually meant to have the same effect as the human face otherwise has through its features. The human face, through its features, has an effect in which these features are an expression of the soul life. We speak of physiognomy; we speak of gestures in reference to certain external aspects of the human being; and we know that this expressiveness, which is expressed in physiognomy and gesture, is connected to the life of the soul. Not only was an attempt made to depict the face—insofar as it possesses a physiognomic expression in human beings between birth and death—physiognomically in our group’s representation of humanity, but, in a sense, following the principle that in nature only the human face is so structured, an attempt was made to form the whole human being, making every contour and every limb, so to speak, an extended face. Why is that? Because in our time, the endeavor must once again take hold to create a common understanding between beings who live solely as spiritual-soul beings and beings who live here on Earth in physical bodies, such as human beings. Let us consider—just as we have considered what the dead perceive of our language—what they perceive of our Earth as a whole.

[ 6 ] First, on our Earth, we have the vast realm of stone, the mineral realm; to a certain extent, this mineral realm exists in crystalline forms, but it also exists in a shattered, amorphous state, as they say. Essentially, the dead see only the crystalline forms of the Earth and whatever else emerges as a regular shape from the Earth’s morphological and structural conditions; and they perceive this as a hollow body. You can read about these things in my *Theosophy*. As for plants, the dead do not initially see the form that we perceive with our eyes. It is, in fact, very difficult to describe what the dead see of the plant world. First of all, the entire plant world of the Earth appears to them as one great body; but they do not see the green form of the plants that we see—rather, they perceive a certain movement, the growth of the plants; they see the emergence of one leaf after another leading up to flowering; they see precisely what escapes human perception. So they see the Earth as a single, great organism and, in a sense, spiritually perceive the “hairs” growing out of the Earth—for these plants are spiritualized. Again, regarding the animal world—I am now speaking only of the outer, sensory forms—the dead see only the movement of the animals across the Earth; not the individual form of the animal, but rather its change of location.

[ 7 ] And as for human beings—insofar as they have physical forms—what do the dead see of them? Indeed, the human form as such is almost entirely such that, with only a few exceptions, the dead see nothing at all of human beings. They perceive the soul, the spiritual aspect, but not the outer form at all. If, therefore, we had designed the representative of humanity in a purely naturalistic way—as a human form such as that of a person here on Earth—this form would be utterly imperceptible to the dead; and likewise to the angels and archangels. For all spiritual beings who no longer possess a body containing physical eyes, the human form—purely replicated in its shape—is something invisible, something imperceptible. And only when you begin to express the soul in the form—so that the outer form no longer corresponds naturalistically to the human form here on Earth—do the dead also begin to see this form. If you sculpt an ordinary symmetrical face—which, after all, faces generally are not, but as people perceive them—then the dead see nothing in such a so-called work of art. Our figure could only be made visible to the supersensible beings because it is asymmetrical, because the asymmetry is particularly emphasized, and because there is something within it that is spiritual and that is not otherwise expressed naturalistically in the outer form.

[ 8 ] But now consider how art has become more and more naturalistic in recent times. I may have already mentioned this: As a young badger, I knew a sculptor friend of mine—who later even made a name for himself in his home country—who said—we were talking about artistic monuments—to my horror: “Well, the best representation of a human being would be created if one were to reproduce, in exact spatial detail, every single feature of the human form in stone, bronze, or some other material.” — I replied: “What results from that is the exact opposite of what should result! It is as far removed from a work of art as possible! For in reality, a work of art should have nothing in common with such a mere replica; it should be entirely different from the original.” — He didn’t understand that at all; to him, the “cast” was actually the most perfect work of sculptural art. But one might say: Modern art has, after all, been shaped in many ways by this mindset, and artistic judgment is also formed accordingly. Where else, after all, could a different artistic judgment come from? Surely people must feel something when they see something like that sculpted in marble or bronze or the like! If people have no connection whatsoever to a spiritual world, then they ultimately have no choice but to form an artistic judgment by asking themselves: Is this natural? Does something like this exist in nature? — And if someone concludes, “Something like this does not exist,” then they simply do not consider what art depicts to be justified.

[ 9 ] But, my dear friends, let us say this to ourselves again and again: There is, after all, something ridiculous about this purely naturalistic imitation of life! Writing Hauptmann-style dramas is, after all, something ridiculous, for nature can, of course, do it better. We simply cannot keep up with nature in that regard. Whereas that which is drawn—albeit imperfectly—from the spiritual world enriches nature, introducing something new into this world. But in recent times, society has turned more and more toward this naturalism, which is nothing other than materialism in the historical realm.

[ 10 ] All of this stems from humanity’s turning away from spiritual life. A return—a healthy return—to spiritual life is possible only if we conceive of the relationship between the sensible and the supersensible in such concrete terms as we have now once again attempted to do in a wide variety of fields, by

[ 11 ] to make clear what the dead hear of language and see of the forms that exist here on Earth for the sensory human being. If we, just as we do for anything on the physical earth, make it clear to ourselves in concrete detail what the relationships between the sensible and the supersensible are, only then will we have a real understanding of the connection between the sensible and the supersensible! In more recent times, it was the rising materialistic naturalism—which has gripped people with ever-greater intensity since the 15th and 16th centuries—that killed the sense of this connection between the sensory and the supersensory. Science ultimately accepts nothing other than what is sensually perceptible and factual. As a result, people have torn themselves away from a genuine, living connection with the spiritual world.

[ 12 ] In the 18th century, the situation was still different in certain cultural regions. Within French culture, materialism bore its most brilliant fruits among the Encyclopedists; then it spread more and more, and finally came about what leads people furthest away from the spiritual world: a life immersed in theosophical abstractions! This life immersed in theosophical abstractions—which is limited to saying that human beings consist of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and so on; that human beings have karma; that human beings live through repeated earthly lives”—the desire to teach these abstractions as something grand while getting stuck in words ultimately leads even to the extreme arrogance so widespread in many theosophical societies; for there one remains entirely stuck in external words. Only when one moves on to a line of inquiry such as: “What do the dead hear of what we speak? What do the dead see of what we have here in our surroundings?”—only when one advances to such concrete concepts do real thoughts about the spiritual world open up. The two extremes are closely related: the endless rambling and drivel about terms like “astral body,” “etheric body,” and so on—behind which there is often nothing but the word itself—and purely naturalistic materialism.

[ 13 ] One must certainly develop a sense for these things—a sense that leads one to seek concrete insights into the relationships between the physical and the supersensible worlds. And only when we fill ourselves with such concrete ideas of the connection between the physical and the supersensible worlds can we return to what people of earlier epochs on Earth possessed in a different way—we can return to far-reaching interests in the world. We may ask: Why has all this misfortune befallen the Earth? Yes, the ultimate reason is that people’s interests have become so narrow that they scarcely extend beyond the most mundane matters. Of course, when people cease to take an interest in the stars, they begin to take an interest in idle chatter; when people cease to contemplate the relationships of the higher hierarchies, a longing arises within them to squander their time on everyday trifles. One need only look at the interests that have occupied the leading circles of humanity for the past few centuries; one need only observe what these people do from morning till night! And if one views this with understanding, one will not be surprised that such a debacle has befallen humanity as it has. After all, people today are happy if they can form even a vague idea of something, outlined in just a few words! They are happy if they can comfortably grasp one thing or another.

[ 14 ] The history of human development speaks loud and clear about the various ways of looking at things. There are countless examples in this regard. In recent years, for example, German culture has been repeatedly and persistently accused of having Hegel with his theory of the state—that Hegel is said to have claimed: the state is, in the final analysis, something like a god on earth. Yes, but one must bear in mind that within German intellectual life, there was not only Hegel, but also Stirner—and the two were separated by only a few years. While for Hegel the state was something like a walking god on earth, for Stirner the state was utter rubbish, something that must simply be negated. The two lived very close to one another. One cannot imagine greater extremes, both emerging from the same intellectual life. If one wishes to portray such an intellectual life, one must do so as I have done, for example, in my *Riddles of Philosophy*, where one way of thinking is presented with the same weight as the opposing viewpoint. You may first read about Hegel in my work in such a way that you might believe I hold Hegel’s position; then you might read my writings on Stirner in such a way that you could believe I take Stirner’s standpoint. But this is meant to imply nothing other than that we should train ourselves to understand the diversity of human beings, to cultivate inner tolerance! We should be interested in what is conceived in another’s soul in a way entirely different from our own thoughts; for we should feel that this other perspective complements our own. Let’s say there are ten individuals (it’s drawn here); I am one of them, and the other nine are gathered around me. Now I tell myself: I think this way about certain things, the second person thinks that way, the third this way, the fourth and fifth that way—all varying and differing from one another to a greater or lesser extent; we are all right, yet none of us is right. If we intuitively grasp the arithmetic mean of all this, if we feel, within this context, that we perceive everything with equal love—regardless of whether we say it or the others say it—and if we learn to feel ourselves within the whole, then we rush together toward the destiny that awaits the people of the future. We must strive for this rushing toward it. We must strive for it simply so that we may gain a sense of true social life. We must learn to feel at home within what is encompassed by the genius of language, to feel at home within what is encompassed by our shared legal life, by the genius of law; we must learn to feel at home within what is encompassed by the collective economic genius: only this living sense of belonging to a whole—which human beings must consciously make their own in the age of consciousness—is what drives them toward humanity’s future destiny. But we cannot make this move toward humanity’s future destiny our own except by expanding our interests further and further; in other words: by learning to detach ourselves more and more from ourselves. Yes, my dear friends, if you consult your innermost selves with complete honesty, you will ultimately find that the very least interesting thing in the whole world is what you yourselves can think and feel about yourselves within the confines of your narrowest “I.” Yet many people today think and feel a great deal about this narrowest “I.” That is why their lives are so boring, and why they are so dissatisfied with life. We will never become interesting if we just keep going around in circles on this point. On the other hand, if we look outward and always observe how the outside world shines upon us, if we continually broaden our interests, then our “I” becomes interesting in that it provides us with a vantage point from which to observe the outside world; only then does our “I” become significant, precisely because it is only from this particular vantage point of the “I” that we—and no one else—can see the world. Another person sees it from yet another vantage point.

[ 15 ] But if we remain within ourselves and always revolve around ourselves, we are actually only considering what we have in common with all other people; eventually, every other person loses their significance for us, and ultimately the whole world loses its appeal. Expanding one’s interests—that, after all, is the primary goal of spiritual science. But in order to experience this expansion of interest, it is necessary that we train our soul so that it becomes capable of being receptive to what approaches it from the outside, so that it can truly take in something new. People reject spiritual science not because it is difficult—for it is not difficult—but because it does not follow well-worn patterns of thought; because it demands that people adopt new ways of thinking. People reject anything that demands new ways of thinking. One can indeed have very strange experiences. I have shared the content of the “Appeal”—which you are familiar with—as well as various passages from the book on the social question that is now due to be published in a few days, with various individuals during these past years of terror, because the point was actually that people should have learned from the bitter experiences of recent years to act of their own accord as they ought to have acted. For example, when I discussed with one person or another the necessity of making intellectual life self-sufficient—that it should no longer be entangled with political and economic life—people did listen; but on many such occasions, it initially seemed as though they were making an effort to develop a thought on the matter. When you’re speaking to them, people are polite and don’t act the way they would if they were merely reading about the matter. So they’ve developed a thought, but then, once the gesture of politeness is over—which, after all, has no truth to it—the “thought-automatic” kicks back in, and on such occasions you’d always hear the same thing again: “Oh yes, the separation of church and school makes sense!”—That was the only thing people had heard, the only thing that, as a familiar idea since ancient times, is repeated over and over again, expressed one way by one person and another way by another—a well-worn track of thought! Everything else passes like sound and smoke.

[ 16 ] Here we touch upon the things that must change in our time. That spirit of devotion we are to develop will also become receptive to the revelations that, as I recently explained here, the spiritual world wishes to reveal to humanity precisely in our age. How often have we heard the words lately: “Everything must be simple, simple!” — And yet, time and again, one could hear even the wisest people quoting, for example in reference to Goethe: “Does not the All-Encompassing, the All-Sustaining, encompass you, me, and Himself?” “A name is mere sound and smoke; feeling is everything,” and so on. It was meant to be very profound. But Goethe wrote it as a lesson from Faust to a sixteen-year-old girl; that was overlooked! What had been written down—something perfectly suited to Gretchen’s naive mind—became profound philosophical wisdom! People didn’t notice that. But of course it is easier to understand what is meant for a sixteen-year-old Gretchen than what is meant not for a sixteen-year-old Gretchen, but for mature adults. People today should take these misconceptions into account and move away from many, many traditional concepts. Time and again, modern culture has also resonated with ideas that contain certain seeds for the future. Some time ago, I quoted a saying by Fichte here: “A person can do what they ought to do; and when they say, ‘I cannot,’ it is because they do not want to.” This is a very important statement—above all, one that modern people absolutely need as a guiding principle. For modern people must not lie back idly and say, in the face of certain challenges, “I can’t do that.”—It is, after all, in the nature of modern people that they are capable of much more than they often convince themselves of, and that “genius” must, for them, increasingly be the result of diligence. But one must be able to cultivate the faith in this diligence. One must, so to speak, eliminate as much as possible any thought that one cannot do this or that which one ought to do. One should always keep in mind how all too easy it is to claim that one cannot do something simply because it is too inconvenient to make the effort to try. And the more modern people make this a rule in their everyday lives, the more they will work themselves up to this state of mind for the soul-spiritual, for receptivity to the soul-spiritual. This state of mind will evoke, in far more people than you realize today, the inner experience of what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to convey. What anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to convey—at least regarding certain fundamental matters—is accessible, my dear friends; it is accessible to the human soul. One need only find the courage to embrace it. But once this state of mind is developed, social understanding and social interest will also develop. For when do we lack social understanding? We lack social understanding only when we have no interests that extend beyond our own sphere of life. Social understanding awakens immediately when we take an interest in what lies beyond our sphere of life—but a genuine and sincere interest! Taking these things into account is especially necessary in the age of the development of the consciousness soul. It is necessary for this reason because, in the age of the development of the soul of consciousness, the world forces direct human beings toward the “I,” toward the soul of consciousness. So human beings must be all the more vigilant in order to transcend this “I”! Because so much antisocial behavior is rising today from the depths of the human soul, consciousness must all the more develop social qualities, which we in turn send back down into the depths of the unconscious. For most people today, it is all too easy to feel that they cannot do anything right with themselves. But this stems solely from the fact that they want to do something only with themselves. The moment one wants to engage not merely with oneself, but with the whole world—empathizing and feeling—then one also begins to do the right thing with oneself.

[ 17 ] These things, after all, go hand in hand with what we might call today an understanding of the social question. In many respects, the social question is a question of the soul. But only those who are deeply immersed in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science will be able to truly feel it as a question of the soul. That is what I wanted to tell you today.