The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] I will have to begin very meticulously today, because I will be compelled to shed some light on our time—in the sense of providing a general characterization of this era—by focusing on a single detail. I would like to describe a characteristic of our time that is, however, of extraordinary importance for anyone who is to view our time from a spiritual-scientific perspective—that is, with an open soul’s eye. And here I would like to proceed, so to speak, empirically from a single example, which might seem very pedantic, but which is in fact a symptom of a very, very general characteristic of our time. For now, I would just like to hint at which characteristic of our time I am actually referring to. It is a certain confusion of the soul that stems from a superficiality of our time that appears very significant. To illustrate this, I would like to start with a very concrete, individual example.

[ 2 ] You may recall—at least some of you—that in the many, countless discussions about the events that preceded this World War catastrophe, an English telegram plays a major role, one that has also been reconstructed in a very specific way. I will not revisit the cause of the war today; I am not speaking of that today. I am speaking of this formal characteristic of our time. What I am about to discuss has nothing directly to do with all that we have discussed regarding the events of 1914. There has been much talk of a telegram that was drafted in London and sent to St. Petersburg, and which played a curious role there, even though it was believed that this telegram had actually been composed with the consent of Foreign Minister Grey and Ambassador Lichnowsky. This is how people imagined the origins of the telegram, which made a particular impression in St. Petersburg and immediately triggered the Russian mobilization. And it was a mystery to many: how could it be that, through an agreement between the German envoy in London, Lichnowsky, and Edward Grey, a telegram was drafted, sent to St. Petersburg, and immediately prompted mobilization there?

[ 3 ] Evidence of the existence of this telegram—which, curiously enough, has just been the subject of much discussion— is simply not found in the English “Blue Book”; a curious piece of evidence for this was seen in the wording of the proposal that Sassonov made—as was said—directly in response to this telegram—that is, without actually taking into account a proposal in the drafting of which the German ambassador had also participated—which originated in England. Regardless of the content of this telegram, mobilization was immediately set in motion in Russia.

[ 4 ] As I said, I am not discussing the causes of the war; I just want to emphasize, for now, that it was a great mystery how, in response to this very telegram, Sassonov could have worded his proposal regarding Austria and Serbia the way he did, how he could have agreed to mobilization, and so on. Among those who spoke at length about this telegram was David, then a member of the German Reichstag and now a German Socialist minister. Not only did he deliver a speech in the Reichstag—that is, before a large number of people who, in such serious times, were naturally well-informed about such matters—but he also wrote a highly sensational article in the *Frankfurter Zeitung* about this telegram. So this became a very puzzling affair. Now I’d like to write the wording on the board—as you can see, I’m starting off very pedantically today—which the Russian Foreign Minister Sassonov adopted in response to this telegram: “On behalf of his government”—that is the translation—“the British ambassador conveyed to me the London Cabinet’s wish to make some amendments to the wording I proposed to the German ambassador yesterday. I replied that I accept the British proposal. I hereby convey to you the corresponding amended wording.”

[ 5 ] As mentioned, the current German minister, David, also referred to this statement by Sassonow, and in the article he wrote for the *Frankfurter Zeitung*, he specifically emphasizes the words: “I replied that I accepted the English proposal.”

[ 6 ] This sentence is intended to convey that the English proposal—which was reportedly formulated in that telegram between Lichnowsky and Grey and which has been the subject of much discussion—is being accepted. This telegram, on which David relies, is the subject of a long article in the *Frankfurter Zeitung*—an article that has been widely read and caused quite a stir—and which specifically sheds light on this telegram, based on the fact that, curiously, Sassonov replies: “I replied that I accepted the British proposal.” But mobilization followed shortly thereafter. It must therefore be concluded that the telegram must have contained a British proposal for mobilization.

[ 7 ] Now I note: this underlining is not found in the formula; but this underlining is extraordinarily important for what I call the confusion of our time. For, of course, when people today come across something that is underlined—that is, printed in bold—they are particularly inclined to pay close attention to it and regard such underlined text as the main point of the matter. But, as I said, it is not underlined at all in the original formula. But let’s read this formula. Let’s really read it. Just as is discussed in detailed articles on the subject, reference is made here to a proposal that is said to be contained in a telegram, as I have explained to you. But let us read this formula: “On behalf of his government, the British ambassador conveyed to me the London Cabinet’s wish to make some amendments to the formula that I proposed to the German ambassador yesterday.” The formula Sassonov is referring to here is the one Sassonov himself had drafted the previous day. Grey requested a change to this formula. Sassonov makes this change and says: “I replied that I accepted the British proposal”—namely, to amend today the formula he had drafted yesterday. So this sentence refers to the fact that he is amending the wording he had drafted yesterday—the wording that served as the basis for yesterday’s version of this very same wording—into this form. And this sentence refers to that amendment. The proposal refers to the fact that he is to amend his wording.

[ 8 ] In other words, that telegram does not exist at all. This telegram is nothing but a phantom and is based solely on the fact that this phrase was misread because, in the superficiality of the present, people did not take the time to properly follow what is contained in the sentences. Can you imagine that in today’s world, even in the most serious matters, people would be talking about something that doesn’t exist at all, simply because, in their superficiality, they no longer understand what they’re reading? This is just one concrete example of a situation that occurs countless times today: that those who write and have their work printed cannot read, and that the readers—thousands upon thousands of them—do not notice that the writers and publishers cannot read and are talking about things that do not exist.

[ 9 ] You see, this is the punishment for failing to acknowledge a spiritual world, for failing to acknowledge what people call ghosts—that in their superficiality, they themselves create ghosts. Anyone who looks at the world today with a sound mind will find, as I said, at every turn the most devastating consequences of this terrible superficiality, which manifests itself precisely as confusion of thought. And the saddest thing is actually that when one highlights these things and discusses them, they make no particular impression on people today, because superficiality and thoughtlessness have, unfortunately, already become a general human trait. And it is simply terrible how much of our entire present-day life is based on the consequences of this superficiality. This is how we must view the spiritual life of our time. And we cannot take such phenomena seriously enough, nor regard them as important enough. In fact, almost everyone in our time who attempts to learn about something through the means commonly available today—whether someone else tells them something—for the same superficiality is present in speech today—or whether they read something here or there—should constantly let themselves be guided by an inner critical sense and say to themselves: You must try to see through the things that are swirling around in the world today, and which—by entering people’s souls through all manner of channels and acting as impulses within them—enormously confuse life and throw it into utter disarray. As I said, I started with a concrete example to show you how leading figures, through their superficiality, are led to not only talk about something that doesn’t even exist, but to write pages and pages of arguments about something that doesn’t exist at all, and how such figures, who are called upon to have a say in world affairs, can present such nonsense before assemblies without the hundreds of representatives who are there to represent their people even noticing it.

[ 10 ] These matters must indeed be taken very seriously. And one of the most bitter realities of our time is that, especially over the last four and a half years, people have become even less inclined to look closely and precisely at what actually exists in reality. Positivism is not uncritical thinking; positivism is seeing things as they are, rather than living out fantasies that create mere phantoms instead of reality. What I am saying is very relevant today, because it concerns every single person in every single situation in life. And something of this sort can happen to every single person in every single situation at any moment.

[ 11 ] Now, I could not only multiply this example a hundredfold, but a thousandfold, and this thousandfold increase would serve as evidence that it is a general characteristic of humanity today to plunge itself into confusion through superficiality, because there is a certain reluctance to confront reality. But this stems from deeper foundations of our human development. Not only can one speak of these things in the ordinary sense—as my words might again be interpreted, as if I were merely seeking to criticize the present—but it is indeed true that through extraterrestrial influences, through influences from the spiritual, Ahrimanic side, this confusion, this wave of confusion, has swept over humanity. This can be seen, on the one hand, in the fact that this confusion exists just as I have shown you in a grotesque example; on the other hand, in the fact that many people who know how one must treat people today are exploiting this confusion and, in the broadest sense, counting on it. People who are not of a benevolent nature, but who seek to make use of spiritual forces, are in fact instilling among people precisely that which counts on confusion and on a refusal to face the facts.

[ 12 ] My dear friends, the things that get published these days! You just need to factor in a little bit of confusion, and then it’s easy to confuse people and make them believe all sorts of things. Here’s an example: Some time ago, a Russian book was published whose first part—I’m not talking about the rest of the content here—contains a number of “protocols,” alleged minutes of meetings of some secret society, in which its leaders have the most unbelievable things discussed. This secret society is practically a kind of devil, one might say, among humanity. This secret society is said to promote the very opposite of everything that is good and wholesome for humanity. And these protocols are supposed to be proof—based on the speeches delivered within that secret society—that such a society exists. These protocols are even said to have been found very close to here; they are included in a book written from a Russian perspective. As I said, I do not wish to discuss the rest of the book’s content, but one need only read a very small portion of these Protocols and have some knowledge of the world to realize that this is one of the crudest Jesuit hoaxes. They are simply Jesuit forgeries that were written down to portray such a society. These things are, in turn, being used to sow confusion among people. This confusion among people is immensely dangerous in our time, because, as I said, it is not based merely on the impulses one can find within physical earthly life, but because spiritual forces of an Ahrimanic nature are at work here. One must certainly familiarize oneself with these matters, for it is truly not a matter of practicing anthroposophical spiritual science in the sense of knowing everything that is communicated in terms of content within anthroposophical spiritual science; rather, the essential point is, as I have often said, that by taking in anthroposophical spiritual science—which necessitates a way of judging that is not applicable in the ordinary physical world—one becomes more open to reality, more insightful, and better able to judge life and the world.

[ 13 ] Well, I said that a wave of confusion is sweeping across the world. Why is that? Remember that our current fifth post-Atlantean epoch—the epoch of the development of the soul of consciousness—began in 1413. Since that time, humanity has been striving to develop the consciousness soul in particular. When one speaks in this way about our present epoch, one speaks as if standing right in the midst of Earth’s evolution. For in the physical evolution of the Earth, what is expressed in words is precisely this: Since the middle of the 15th century, humanity has been in the age of the development of consciousness.

[ 14 ] However, one could also pose the question from a different perspective—one that must be repeatedly addressed in spiritual science. One could also pose the question from the perspective of disembodied souls—souls that live between death and a new birth. For many topics that must be discussed in anthroposophical spiritual science, it is of great importance to always clearly consider the perspective of how things appear to disembodied human souls or even to other spirits of the various spiritual hierarchies. Only in this way can one properly verify whether what one decides on earth—which must always be one-sided—is expressed correctly from the perspective of spiritual science. Now, anyone who surveys this period of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch through spiritual scientific research will find that, from a very specific point in time onward, just as the lives of the living change—as they increasingly ground themselves in consciousness, with the pinnacle of their personality—so too does the life of the dead change. And here we can initially only consider the extent to which this life of the dead changes in its interaction with the people living on Earth. After all, the relationship between the living and the dead is so extraordinarily difficult to bring into human consciousness because—as I have often indicated to you from a wide variety of perspectives—what is experienced there is, after all, extraordinarily different from what can be experienced here within the physical sphere of the Earth. It is within the physical sphere of the Earth, however, that human beings usually form their conceptions; but we are living in a time when these conceptions, formed within the physical sphere of the Earth, must be corrected in light of our experiences with disembodied souls. At first, it is extremely difficult to understand what is actually happening there. One experiences there in an extraordinarily vivid way the effect of what I have hinted at in my recent lectures here: the relationship of the dead to human language. I have told you: nouns are scarcely understood by the dead. I have described to you how the other words of language are understood by the dead. But even within that, there are differences, and one might say: What is clearly perceptible is that human language, as it is spoken here on Earth—even though what I explained recently is entirely correct—that human language, as it is spoken here on Earth, becomes increasingly incomprehensible to the dead. Certainly, they still understand verbs; they also understand relational words; they understand all those things that compel us ourselves to develop figurative concepts. But precisely when it comes to what can actually be expressed in language, the dead are increasingly losing their understanding and comprehension as time goes on, and this will continue to change in the future, becoming more and more different.

[ 15 ] Above all, one thing stands out with particular clarity—though only for certain people—and that is that the dead do not understand at all what is practiced here on Earth as natural science. If you speak to the dead about all sorts of other things, they will understand. But if one frames what is intended to facilitate communication with the dead in the language of natural science, the dead person experiences this as nothing short of pain. This is extraordinarily important, and it confirms what can also be gleaned from other spiritual sources: that everything that can be brought up here with regard to natural science is, in fact, produced solely by the human physical organism. And as soon as a person leaves this human physical organism, what they have developed in the physical organism regarding nature as natural science no longer applies to them. It has no significance for them. They no longer take it in; it is no longer there.

[ 16 ] One can form very clear ideas about these things. Take a book written purely from a scientific perspective by a genuine scientist—let’s say, on botany. Take a chapter and try to present to the deceased what is written purely in the spirit of modern science; it causes him pain. He has no idea where the pain is coming from. It is completely at odds with him; he cannot accept it. The moment you remember seeing a dandelion—the kind the naturalist might be talking about—and you vividly imagine the dandelion’s yellow color and its peculiarly jagged leaves, in that very moment when you truly feel inwardly what your eye sees — you must indeed feel it, for the visual image is not there at all for the deceased — but then, when you feel it, that is when the deceased begins to grasp it.

[ 17 ] That, you see, is very strange. The dead can share in the joy of a green meadow along with living people. But they cannot share in the scientific concepts regarding the green meadow. Contemporary natural scientists say that one cannot actually form a conception of the living. They claim that only in the future, through some particularly advanced natural science, will it be possible to determine—from all possible atomic combinations—how the living is composed. But one should not form a conception of the living based on today’s foundations. However, if you conceive of the living as, for example, Goethe does in his theory of metamorphosis, and bring this conception to life within yourself, then the dead person, too, can understand it. These, in turn, are concepts that the dead person understands.

[ 18 ] Now, everything I am discussing here is based on a very specific spiritual-historical fact. You see, it is only from about the year 1721 onward that what I have just said really begins to emerge. If you go back to the time before 1720 and delve deeply into writings about nature that were composed back then—most people don’t notice such things, but it is indeed the case—you will see that nature is discussed in a much more vivid way. This way of speaking about nature today—and now I may say so—in a way that is incomprehensible to the dead, actually only began at the start of the 18th century. It was only then that this wave began to sweep over humanity. Before that, people always felt the need to write about nature in a much more vivid way, so that the dead could still understand it, so that a certain shared experience between the dead and the living could take place. Since that time—since the transition to the 18th century—scientific concepts have become such that they are merely concepts for earthly human beings as long as these earthly human beings are in their physical bodies; they no longer form a link upward into the spiritual world.

[ 19 ] This is an extraordinarily important fact in the history of spiritual development. For you can easily imagine now how we are entering a process in which, so to speak, the disembodied beings are being cut off from the Earth by science—the only thing humanity is still willing to accept—precisely by that which humanity considers to be of the greatest scientific value. Try to imagine with great vividness what I have just said. It does no good to close one’s eyes to these things—I mean, the spiritual eyes. Imagine that, at universities all over the world, everything that cannot stand up to so-called exact natural science is gradually being weeded out. So the universities are like islands on Earth (a diagram is drawn) where everything that is not exact science is eradicated most thoroughly. But this makes these universities the very places from which the spirit—that is, everything that exists as essence in the spiritual realm—flees. And they are those islands in human culture where unspirituality—the unspiritual life—begins most strongly.

[ 20 ] Universities are, after all, viewed from other perspectives, our centers of intellectual life. But just think about how we earthlings actually speak. Since the 18th century, we have been calling those places our centers of intellectual life where the spirit takes its leave, where the spirit is least present! Today is no longer the time to shut oneself off from these things, to fail—I would say—to view them dispassionately in accordance with true reality. For one shuts oneself off from that which must be understood if one wishes to look into the true reality of our time; if one overlooks such things.

[ 21 ] This development, which began in the 18th century, has reached its peak in our time. And in our time, a return is necessary. In our time, a return to that other, spiritual wave—which I described to you here some time ago—is necessary, for it is through this wave that a spiritual life is truly communicated to humanity.

[ 22 ] Now there is a certain kind of spirit that has a particular tendency to, so to speak, feed on what becomes non-spiritual in this way on our Earth. These are the Ahrimanic spirits. The ordinary disembodied human souls in the life between death and a new birth at least feel—I would like to

[ 23 ] say, negatively, in that: they perceive this knowledge of nature as a kind of pain; they sense something of this knowledge of nature and thus have a kind of negative experience of it. The Luciferic spirits harbor a terrible rage toward this knowledge of nature; they hate it, whereas only the Ahrimanic spirits have a certain affinity for it, seeking to achieve their goals precisely by engaging with this knowledge of nature, so that this knowledge of nature forms a bond of attraction for the Ahrimanic spirits.

[ 24 ] Now, Ahriman is precisely the spirit of deception and deceit, and in explaining this to you, I have at the same time shown you that since the beginning of the 18th century, Ahrimanic influences have grown ever greater and greater. And with that, a wave of confusion has swept over humanity. That is where it comes from. This wave of confusion is what has engulfed people like a whirlpool, and what manifests itself in the grandiose superficiality I spoke to you about at the beginning of today’s discussions.

[ 25 ] We need to know these things because it is precisely through this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that we must enable ourselves to guard against them, to protect ourselves from them. One way of protecting ourselves is precisely that critical attitude I spoke to you about—this vigilance toward whatever might come at us from every direction today to confuse us, as in the example I just cited here, which went largely unnoticed, noticed by only a few. But on the other hand, what I have said also points to something else. After all, one cannot escape a phenomenon that is widespread throughout the world; it is simply there. This wave of confusion is indeed present today. Closing our inner eye to it does us no good at all. It only helps us to become aware that this wave of confusion is present. And we become aware when, above all, in matters relating to the spiritual world, we always tell ourselves: The confusion is there; it seeks to prevent us from gaining a true understanding of the spiritual world. If we always—I would say—maintain a certain degree of skepticism whenever something from the spiritual world is communicated to us, recognizing that it could also be a mistake, and if we get into the habit of being cautious enough, then we will most certainly not succumb to the wave of confusion prevailing in the present. We must summon the courage to pass through this confusion and rise above it by engaging very, very deeply with genuine, sound common sense. This sound common sense will become our own only if, above all else, we do not allow ourselves to be confused by something that is so all too common in the present day. These days, people are generally only willing to accept things they are already familiar with once they have reached a certain age.

[ 26 ] It is a very common phenomenon that people can hardly be convinced of anything new once they have reached a certain age. When confronted with something new, they simply ask themselves: Have they already thought of this? — if so, they agree with it; but if they haven’t thought of it yet, then to them it is wrong or abstract or something of the sort. In short, there is always some reason why they refuse to engage with the matter. In contrast, people today actually have the serious task of constantly allowing themselves—I won’t say to be convinced by—new things, but at least to let themselves be touched by them without prejudice or preconceptions, and to participate in the new things that are entering the world. It might seem as though I am making a trivial remark here. It is not a trivial remark, because in the present day there is such an extraordinary amount of transgression against what I mean. And many things would quickly improve if more persuasive power could develop in people’s interactions today, if people were not so dismissive of one another in their dealings, if they did not cling so stubbornly to their own opinions—opinions they absorbed at a certain stage of life. Where does this actually come from, my dear friends? At the very moment when what I have indicated to you with regard to the scientifically oriented conception occurs, at that very moment a very specific process of development begins within humanity, which consists of the following: Broadly speaking, the human being is a physical body embedded in an etheric body; we need not consider the other aspect today. But the intimacy of the connection—I am not referring here to the spatial overlap, but to the dynamic aspect of the connection—changes in the course of Earth’s evolution, and the intimate relationships between the etheric head and the human physical head—which existed, for example, in the centuries most commonly referred to when speaking of Greek culture—have not existed since the 3rd century B.C. Since the 3rd century B.C., the old intimate connection between the human etheric head and the physical head has already been lost. But a quite intimate connection between the human physical heart and the human etheric heart has always been maintained. But since the year 1721, strangely enough, the connection between the human physical heart and the etheric heart has been loosening more and more. If I may put it this way: when the physical heart is here and the etheric heart is there (see drawing), it used to form more of a unified whole; now the etheric heart can be shaken in an etheric sense—it is no longer connected internally as dynamically as it once was. Later on, other human organs will also detach from the etheric. But the fact that the heart is gradually detaching from its etheric component—and will have detached completely by the third millennium, around the year 2100—is also of great significance in terms of human development. What this signifies can be characterized as follows. It must be said: What this means is that human beings will need to seek—through the path of spiritual life—something that used to come to them naturally through the connection between the physical heart and the etheric heart. This etheric heart, separated from the physical heart, will only establish its proper relationship to the spiritual world when the human being seeks spiritual knowledge, when the human being seeks spiritually oriented thoughts based on anthroposophy. This must be sought more and more.

[ 27 ] Now you will find something most peculiar in our time. When anthroposophical spiritual science is discussed among — with all due respect — newspaper people, it is often said: “Yes, but that has a systematic structure; it is complicated; you have to think deeply about it”; Christianity makes it all simple—it has faith!”—But this faith, which refuses to rise to spiritual life, which refuses to engage with genuine thoughts about the spiritual world—this faith has been extraordinarily dangerous ever since that separation of the etheric heart from the physical heart, for this faith, which refuses to comprehend the spiritual world, which seeks only to develop a naive emotional relationship to the spiritual world, this faith materializes the heart of humanity; it is a means of fostering materialistic culture in a realm one does not usually consider. That is why, if one takes the matter seriously, religious people in particular have become so terribly materialistic in our time, because they rely on mere faith. This faith must be imbued and spiritualized by genuine ideas about the spiritual world, and it is an Ahrimanic trick to instill in people in this age of confusion the idea that they must by no means come to a direct perception of the spiritual world, but must remain at the level of mere faith. Here again, you see a reference to something in our time that is of immense significance. And what I said at the beginning today, and what I am now saying at the end of today’s “discussion,” all comes together. Just look impartially at the appalling thoughtlessness, at the boundless superficiality from which our sad circumstances have developed; look deeply at what can be established solely through spiritual science—the separation of the etheric heart from the physical heart—and draw from such discussions the impulse of seriousness that is so necessary for development in our time. On the one hand, there are more and more people in our time who, caught up in superficial confusion, no longer even know what they are talking about. Of course, with such a person it is quite clear that they do not know what they are talking about, for they speak of something that no longer exists at all—because they can no longer read. And on the other hand, there are an ever-increasing number of people who seek to fish in troubled waters—who exploit the confusion of minds to instill whatever they please, for all manner of impulses can be implanted into confused minds. For among the spirits that still have a connection to earthly confusion are the spirits of deception, the Ahrimanic spirits. And one can instill in people the opposite of what is reasonable and wholesome by counting on their confusion.

[ 28 ] These are serious matters, my dear friends. Let’s talk more about them tomorrow. Tomorrow we will begin the lecture at half past seven.