The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Over the next few days, I would like to explore with you some of the ideas necessary for understanding and acting within our present civilization. It will hardly be difficult, based on the facts—which, in a sense, are evident everywhere today—to come to the realization that our present civilization contains signs of decline and forces of decay, and that it is necessary, in the face of these forces of decay within our civilization, to turn toward what is needed to infuse this civilization with new forces. When we survey our civilization, we see that it contains primarily three forces of decline—three forces that must gradually bring about its downfall. All the distressing phenomena we have already experienced in the course of human development, and all that we are yet to experience—for in many respects we are only at the beginning—are merely individual symptoms of what is unfolding on a grand scale as a phenomenon of decline in our time.

[ 2 ] If we do not look short-sightedly only at what has taken place in the present and in our civilization over the last three to four centuries, but instead take a broader view of the course of human development, then we may notice that ancient times possessed, as the foundation of culture—and also as the foundation of everyday life—something that we today can really only believe in. These ancient cultures, particularly pagan culture, possessed a certain scientific character, such that people were aware that something of the entire universe lived on within their souls. You need only think of how vivid the Greeks’ imaginations still were regarding what lies beyond the everyday—the world of gods and spirits that exists behind the sensory world. And you need only recall how vividly that which gave these people of older cultures a certain connection to a spiritual world they knew penetrated their everyday lives. In all their everyday activities, these people of the ancient cultures were fully aware that they lived in a world that was not limited to the mundane, but into which spiritual beings acted. Everyday activities were carried out under the impetus of spiritual forces. In particular, then, when we look back at the pagan cultures, we find a fundamental scientific character about which we can say: These people had—to put it this way—a cosmogony. That is to say, they knew themselves to be members of the entire universe; they knew that they were not merely lost beings wandering here on the green grass of the Earth like lambs, but rather that they were connected to the entire vast universe and had their destiny within that entire vast universe. The people of ancient times had a cosmogony.

[ 3 ] Our civilization has no drive to truly create a cosmogony. We do not, in the true sense of the word, have a genuine scientific way of thinking. We have catalogs of individual facts of nature, and we have an ideal conceptual framework; but we do not have a true science that connects us to the spiritual worlds. How meager is that which permeates our everyday life—of what is cultivated today as science—in comparison to what ancient people knew pulsed through them as the forces of the spiritual world when they acted. They had a cosmogony; they knew they were connected to the entire universe. They did not look up at the sun, the moon, and the stars as if they were alien worlds, but knew in their inner being that they were kindred with the sun, the moon, and the starry worlds. Thus, ancient civilization had a cosmogony, and this cosmogony has been lost to our civilization. A person cannot be strong in life if he has no cosmogony. That is the one thing which, I would say, as the scientific element, is driving our civilization to decline.

[ 4 ] The second factor driving our civilization toward decline is the absence of a genuine impulse toward freedom. Our civilization lacks the ability to establish the freedom of life in a comprehensive way. Few people today have a true understanding of it, even though many speak of freedom, and even fewer have a genuine inner impulse toward what freedom actually is. Consequently, our civilization is gradually succumbing to what civilization cannot possibly bear: it is succumbing to fatalism. We have either a religious fatalism, in which people surrender themselves to certain religious forces, placing themselves at their service and wishing, above all, that these forces pull their strings as one pulls the strings of marionettes; or we have a scientific fatalism. Scientific fatalism manifests itself in the fact that people have gradually come to believe that everything proceeds according to natural necessity or economic necessity; there is supposedly no room for human free action. — When people feel constrained by the economic or scientific world, this is nothing other than true fatalism. Or we have the kind of fatalism that modern religious creeds have brought about, which actually excludes true freedom. Just consider how many hearts and souls today harbor the conviction that they would most like to surrender themselves to whatever Christ or some other spiritual power does with them. This is, in fact, a criticism very often leveled at anthroposophy—that it does not place great value on people being, as they say, redeemed by Christ, but rather by themselves. People want to be guided, want to be led; they actually want fatalism to be true. And how often have we heard people speak of this in recent years of misfortune, here and there, saying: “Why doesn’t God or Christ help this or that community? One would have to believe that divine justice exists.” — People would like this divine justice to be imposed upon them just like fate. They do not wish to attain the true inner strength that comes from the impulse toward freedom. A civilization that is unable to nurture this impulse toward freedom weakens humanity and condemns itself to decline. That is the second point. The lack of a cosmogony is the first; the lack of a true impulse toward freedom is the second factor that constitutes the forces of decline within our civilization.

[ 5 ] And the third point is that our civilization is incapable of generating new impetus for a genuine religious sensibility and will. Our civilization really only wants to continue cultivating and rehashing old religious creeds. Our civilization lacks the strength to give life to new religious impulses, and as a result, it also lacks the strength for truly altruistic action in life. Our civilization is so permeated by selfishness precisely because it lacks any strong altruistic impulse. A strong altruistic impulse can come only from a spiritual worldview. Only when a person recognizes themselves as a member of the spiritual world do they cease to be so terribly preoccupied with themselves that their own self becomes the center of the entire world; then the selfish impulses cease, and the altruistic impulses begin. Our age, however, has little inclination to develop this deep interest in the spiritual world. For this interest must grow if one truly wishes to feel oneself as a part of the spiritual world.

[ 6 ] And so it comes to pass that—one might say—the ideas of reincarnation and karma were, as it were, swept into our civilization. But how were these ideas of reincarnation and karma understood? Even by those who turned to these ideas of reincarnation and karma, these ideas were, in essence, understood in a very selfish sense. It was said, for example, that a person deserved his fate in a particular life. One has even heard from otherwise intelligent people that the ideas of reincarnation and karma are in and of themselves an answer to the question of the existence of human suffering; the social question, they argued, has essentially no justification. Thus, some otherwise intelligent people have said that the poor person simply deserved this in a previous incarnation and must now simply live out in this current incarnation what he or she earned in the previous one. Even the ideas of reincarnation and karma are incapable of influencing our civilization in such a way as to serve as a driving force for altruistic sentiment. After all, it is not merely a matter of introducing ideas such as reincarnation and karma into our time, but rather a matter of how we introduce them. If they become merely an incentive for selfishness, then they do not elevate our culture; on the contrary, they push our culture even further down. On the other hand, reincarnation and karma do indeed become unethical—even anti-ethical—ideas when many people say: “I must become a good person so that my next incarnation will be a good one.”—To act out of this impulse to become a good person in order to experience as much pleasantness as possible in the next incarnation is double egoism; it is not merely simple egoism. But this double egoism—for many people, it stemmed from the ideas of reincarnation and karma. So one can say: Our civilization has so little altruistic-religious impulse that it is impossible for it to even conceive of ideas such as reincarnation and karma in a way that turns them into impulses for altruistic—rather than egoistic—action and feeling.

[ 7 ] These three things, then, are the forces of decline in our culture: the lack of a cosmogony, the lack of a proper foundation for freedom, and the lack of an altruistic sensibility. And you see, where there is no cosmogony, there is no true science; there is no true knowledge; there, knowledge ultimately becomes a kind of worldly frivolity or civilizational frivolity—which is often the case in our time—insofar as it is not merely a matter of utility in external culture, in external technical culture. Freedom has in many cases become a mere phrase in our time, because a thorough justification of freedom and the spread of the impulse toward freedom are not the driving forces of our civilization. Nor do we have the possibility, in the economic sphere, of truly making progress in a social sense, because our civilization contains no altruistic impulse, but only selfish—that is, antisocial—impulses, and one cannot build a social order with antisocial impulses. For to build a social order means to bring about a structure of society in which one person acts for the sake of another. But just imagine that in our civilization, one person is supposed to act on behalf of another! The entire social order is, after all, arranged in such a way that everyone can act only for themselves. All our institutions are like that.

[ 8 ] This raises the question: How can we move beyond these signs of decline in our civilization? — We cannot simply gloss over the signs of decline in our civilization. In light of what has been said, the point is to face this impartially and unreservedly, without indulging in illusions. We must acknowledge: There are forces of decline manifesting themselves, and we must not believe that we can somehow correct them or the like; rather, there are powerful forces of decline at work that can be characterized as we have just described. Instead, the point is to turn now to that from which forces for ascent can be drawn. This cannot be achieved through theories; in this day and age, people can invent the most beautiful theories and have the most beautiful principles—but mere theories are of no use. To accomplish anything in life requires only the forces that are truly present on this earth—forces that must be summoned. If our civilization were, through and through, as I have described it, then we could do nothing but say to ourselves: We must let this civilization come to ruin and participate in its downfall. For any attempt to correct this state of affairs based on mere ideas or notions is an absurdity.

[ 9 ] One can only ask: Doesn’t the matter perhaps run deeper than that? — And it does run deeper. The fact is that people today—as I have often explained here from other perspectives—are striving too hard for the absolute. When they ask, “What is true?” — they are asking: “What is true in an absolute sense?”—not: “What is true for a particular era?” When they ask: “What is good?”—they are asking: “What is good in an absolute sense?”—They do not ask: “What is good for Europe? What is good for Asia? What is good for the 20th century, what is good for the 25th century?” — They ask about absolute goodness and truth. They do not ask about what is actually the case in the concrete development of humanity. We, however, must pose the question differently, for we must look to reality, and from reality the questions must be posed differently—often in such a way that their answers seem paradoxical compared to what one is inclined to assume from observing the surface of things. We must ask ourselves: Is there no possibility of returning to a cosmogonic way of thinking? Is there no possibility of arriving at a truly socially effective impulse of freedom? Is there no possibility of an impulse that is both religious and an impulse of brotherhood—that is, a true foundation of the economic and social order—is there no possibility of arriving at such an impulse? — And when we pose these questions to ourselves based on reality, we also gain real answers; for what is at stake here is this: that in the present, not all types of human beings are predisposed to attain the whole, comprehensive truth of the world, but rather that the various types of human beings on Earth are predisposed only to attain specific aspects of true activity. And we must ask ourselves: Where, perhaps, in present-day earthly life is there the possibility for a cosmogony to develop; where is there the possibility for a far-reaching impulse of freedom to develop; and where is the impulse toward a religious and fraternal coexistence among human beings in a social sense?

[ 10 ] If we begin with the latter, an unbiased observation of our earthly conditions reveals that we must seek the mindset and way of thinking necessary for a truly fraternal impulse on our Earth among the Asian peoples—among the Asian peoples, particularly in Chinese and Indian culture. Even though these cultures have already fallen into decadence, and even though this seems to contradict what is apparent upon superficial observation, we find there those impulses of love for all beings that spring from the very depths of the human heart—impulses that alone can provide the foundations, first, for religious altruism and, second, for a genuine, altruistic economic culture.

[ 11 ] The peculiar thing is that, while Asians do have the disposition for altruism, they have no way of putting it into practice. They possess only the disposition, but they lack the means or the ability to bring about social conditions in which the first stirrings of altruism can be realized in practice. Over the course of millennia, Asians have known how to nurture the altruistic impulses in human nature. Nevertheless, they have allowed the terrible famines in China, India, and elsewhere to rage. This is the peculiarity of Asian culture: that the disposition exists, and that this disposition is inwardly sincere, yet there is no ability to realize this disposition in external life. And this is indeed the peculiarity of this Asian culture: that it contains an immensely significant altruistic impulse within human nature but no means to realize it externally at present. On the contrary, if Asia were to remain on its own, the very fact that it has the capacity to establish altruism internally but lacks the ability to realize it externally would turn it into a dreadful civilizational wasteland. So one can say: Of these three things—the impulse toward cosmogony, the impulse toward freedom, and the impulse toward altruism—Asia possesses the third most abundantly in its inner disposition. But it has only one-third of what is necessary for the present civilization if it is to rise again: namely, the inner disposition toward altruism.

[ 12 ] What does Europe have? Europe has the most urgent need to solve the social question, but it lacks the mindset to address it. It would actually have to adopt the Asian mindset if it wanted to solve the social question. All the prerequisites for solving the social question are present in Europe due to its social necessities; but Europeans would first have to imbue themselves with that way of thinking that comes naturally to Asians; it’s just that Asians lack the ability to truly perceive social distress from the outside. Often, they even find it pleasing. In Europe, the external impetus to do something about the social question is present, but the mindset for it is lacking. On the other hand, Europe possesses, to the greatest degree, the talent and the ability to establish the impulse toward freedom. What constitutes specifically European talents is the capacity to shape the inner feeling, the inner sense of freedom, to the highest degree. One could say that it is a specifically European gift to arrive at a true idea of freedom. But these Europeans lack people who act freely, who would bring freedom to life. Europeans can grasp the idea of freedom magnificently. But just as an Asian would immediately know what to do if he were to receive the unclouded idea of European freedom without the other European vices, so too can the European develop the most beautiful idea of freedom—yet there is no political possibility of directly realizing this idea of freedom with the people of Europe, because the European possesses only one-third of the three conditions of civilization: the impulse toward altruism, the impulse toward freedom, and the impulse toward cosmogony—only one-third: the impulse toward freedom—he lacks the other two. And so the European, too, possesses only one-third of what is necessary to usher in a truly new era. It is very important that we finally recognize these things as the secrets of our civilization. We in Europe—and we may well say this—possess, in the most beautiful way, all the prerequisites for thinking and feeling that enable us to know what freedom is; but we have no way of readily breaking through with this freedom. I can assure you, for example, that the most beautiful writings on freedom in Germany were penned by individuals during the time when all of Germany was groaning under the tyranny of Ludendorff and others. There is a talent in Europe for conceiving the impulse toward freedom, but for now, this impulse accounts for only one-third of what is needed for a true ascent in our civilization—not the whole.

[ 13 ] And if we look beyond Europe, to the West—whereby I include Great Britain with America in this context—if we turn, then, to the Anglo-American world, we find there, once again, one-third of the impulses, namely one of the three impulses necessary to elevate our civilization: the impulse toward a cosmogony. Anyone familiar with Anglo-American intellectual life knows that this Anglo-American intellectual life is, at first glance, formalistic; that it is, at first glance, materialistic; indeed, that it even seeks to approach the spiritual in a materialistic way; yet it does possess the means and ways to arrive at a cosmogony. Even if this cosmogony is sought today along entirely wrong paths, it is still being sought within the Anglo-American spirit. Yet another third: the search for a cosmogony. There is no possibility of connecting this cosmogony with the free, altruistic human being—there is indeed the talent to adhere to this cosmogony and to develop it, but no talent for integrating the human being into this cosmogony. One could say that even the endeavors of spiritualism—which has gone astray—were cosmogonic in nature, as they began in the mid-19th century and, in fact, have not yet entirely subsided today. The aim there was to discover what forces lie behind the sensory forces; however, a materialistic path, a materialistic method, was pursued. But the aim was not to arrive at the kind of formalistic sciences that the Europeans, for example, have, but rather to come to know genuine, real supersensible forces. As I said, they merely took a wrong path—a path that is still called “American” today. Thus, here too, we have only a third of what is actually needed for the true ascent of our culture.

[ 14 ] Indeed, one cannot understand the mysteries of our civilization today unless one knows how to distribute the three impulses—which constitute the rise of our civilization—across the various regions of the Earth’s surface; unless one knows that the pursuit of cosmogony lies in the talents of the Anglo-American world, the pursuit of freedom lies in the European world, and the pursuit of altruism and of a mindset that—when properly applied in reality—leads to socialism lies, in fact, only in Asian culture. America, Europe, and Asia each possess one-third of what is necessary to strive for a true rebirth, for a rebuilding of our culture.

[ 15 ] Anyone who is serious and sincere about working toward a new structure for our culture must think and feel from these foundations today. Today, one cannot simply sit in one’s study and ponder what the best plan for the future might be. Today, one must go out into the world and draw from it the impulses that are there. I have said: If one looks at our culture with its moments of decline, one cannot help but get the impression that it cannot be saved unless people realize: that one thing is present in this person, a second in that one, and a third in yet another—unless people come together on a grand scale across the globe to collaborate and to truly recognize what the individual cannot achieve in an absolute sense on his own, but what can only be achieved by the one who, if I may say so, is predestined for it. — If the American today wishes to shape not only cosmogony but also freedom and socialism from within himself, he cannot do so. If the European today wishes to find not only the impulse of freedom but also cosmogony and altruism, he cannot do so. Nor can the Asian assert anything other than his time-honored altruism. Only when this altruism is adopted by the other populations of the world and infused with what they, in turn, are gifted to do will we truly make progress. Today, humanity is dependent on cooperation because humanity possesses diverse talents.

[ 16 ] We must first admit to ourselves that our civilization has grown weak and that it must become strong again. To make what I have just said in abstract terms a little more concrete, I would like to say the following. As you know, the ancient pre-Christian Eastern cultures also gave rise to great cities. We can look back on widespread Eastern cultures that also gave rise to great cities. But these great cities of the ancient cultures were characterized by a certain mindset. All Eastern cultures shared the distinctive feature that, through life in the great cities, they fostered the view that, in fact, if a person does not penetrate beyond the physical to the supersensible, they live in emptiness, in nothingness. And so the great cities of Babylon, Nineveh, and so on were truly able to develop because, through these cities, people did not come to regard what these cities produced as the truly real, but rather that which lies beyond all of that. It was not until Rome that urban culture was made into a standard for the view of reality. The Greek cities are inconceivable without the countryside surrounding them; they draw their sustenance from the land around them. If our history were not so much a “fable convenue” as it is, but were instead to bring the true form of earlier times back to life, it would show how the Greek city is rooted in the land. Rome was no longer rooted in the countryside; rather, the history of Rome actually consists in turning an imaginary world into a real one—making a world that is not real into a real one. In Rome, the citizen was, in fact, invented—the citizen, this dreadful caricature standing alongside the essence of humanity. For a human being is a human being; and the fact that he is also a citizen is an imaginary construct. The fact that he is a citizen is recorded somewhere in church records or legal texts or the like. The fact that, apart from being a human being and possessing certain abilities as such, he also has registered property—property recorded in the land registry—is something imaginary alongside reality. But all of this is Roman. Yes, Rome accomplished much more than that. Rome understood how to distort into reality everything that arises from the separation of cities from the countryside—from the real countryside. Rome, for example, understood how to introduce Roman legal concepts into the religious concepts of the ancients. Anyone who, in accordance with truth, goes back to the ancient religious concepts will not find Roman legal concepts within them. Roman jurisprudence has, in fact, permeated religious ethics. Essentially, it has permeated religious ethics through what Rome made of it—as if in the supersensible world there were judges sitting just as they sit on our Roman-style judges’ benches, passing judgment on human actions. Indeed, we even experience this—because Roman legal concepts still have a lingering effect—in that wherever karma is discussed, most people who profess belief in karma today imagine its effects as if there were some kind of otherworldly justice that, according to earthly concepts, rewards or punishes a person’s actions with this or that reward or this or that punishment, entirely in accordance with Roman legal concepts. All saints and all supernatural beings actually live within these conceptions, such that Roman legal concepts have crept into this supernatural world.

[ 17 ] Who, for example, understands today the great idea of Greek fate? We cannot understand Oedipus in terms of Roman legal concepts! Moreover, under the influence of Roman legal concepts, humanity has completely lost the ability to understand tragic grandeur. And these Roman legal concepts have crept into our modern civilization; they are alive everywhere within it; they have essentially transformed what is imaginary—not imaginative, but imaginary—into reality.

[ 18 ] We must therefore be fully aware that our ideas are, in fact, detached from reality, and that we need to infuse our ideas anew with reality. Because our concepts are, in essence, empty, our civilization still lacks the awareness that people across the globe must work together. We do not really want to get to the bottom of phenomena anywhere; we want to remain more or less on the surface everywhere.

[ 19 ] I’d like to give you another example of this. As you know, in the various parliaments around the world, two political factions emerged in the past—let’s say, in the first half of the 19th century, or perhaps a little later—that were actually held in quite high regard until then: a conservative and a liberal faction. The other political parties that emerged only joined these two main parties later on. But you see, it is so necessary today to look beyond the rhetoric to the substance of the matter, and in many cases not to ask what the people who represent these views themselves have to say about them, but rather to look at what lies in people’s subconscious. And there you will find that those people who identify with parties of a more conservative bent are those who are somehow more closely connected to agriculture, to the care of the land—that is, the fundamental element of human culture. Of course, all sorts of secondary phenomena can arise on the surface. I am not saying that every conservative must be an agrarian; of course, there are hangers-on everywhere, and there are always those who adhere to a certain principle merely for the sake of rhetoric; but one must look at the main point, and that is that the agrarian population is the one that has an interest in maintaining certain structural forms of the social order and in preventing them from changing too rapidly.

[ 20 ] That which stems more from industry, that which stems more from labor torn away from the land—that is liberal; that is progressive. Thus, these political currents have deeper roots; and we should strive everywhere to take these ideas beyond mere rhetoric, to move from words to deeds.

[ 21 ] But ultimately, these are all things that tell us only one thing: that, deep down, we have lived strongly within a culture of words. We must move forward toward a culture of substance, toward a civilization of substance; we must reach a point where we are no longer swayed by words, by programs, or by objectives expressed in words, but rather we must come to see reality clearly, and above all, we must see through to those realities that lie deeper than rural culture and urban culture or agrarian culture and industrial culture. And deeper still today are the impulses of the individual branches of humanity scattered across the earth: the American branch striving toward cosmogony, the European branch striving toward freedom, the Asian branch striving toward altruism and socialism.

[ 22 ] At first, however, this is—or was—practiced in a strange way. Anglo-American culture is conquering the world. As it conquers the world, it must absorb whatever can come from the conquered parts of the world: impulses toward freedom, altruistic impulses; for it itself has only one cosmogonic impulse. It even owes its successes solely to a cosmogonic impulse. It owes its successes to the fact that one can think in terms of world ideas, as we discussed time and again during the war; that these successes arose from a certain kind of supersensible impulse that others were unwilling to understand. The cosmogonic must not remain isolated there, but must interpenetrate with the realm of freedom.

[ 23 ] To truly understand this statement, it is, of course, necessary to break away very, very strongly from empty rhetoric and get to the facts. For anyone who clings to empty rhetoric will naturally say to themselves: Well, who has championed freedom more in recent years than the Anglo-American world! — Of course, in words, an immense amount; but the point is how things actually are, not how they are represented in words.

[ 24 ] As you know, it has been necessary time and again to point out the rhetoric of Wilsonism here. This rhetoric of Wilsonism was very widespread in Western countries for a long time. It even took hold in Central Europe beginning in October 1918. The illusion didn’t last long there, but this rhetoric did take hold in Central Europe. It had to be pointed out time and again, and I remember how a small stir would always arise whenever, year after year, attention was drawn to the futility, the emptiness, and the abstract nature of what is associated with the name Woodrow Wilson. But now, it seems, even in America, people are beginning to see through this abstractness and emptiness of Wilsonism to some extent. This was not a matter of international opposition to Woodrow Wilson; it was not a matter of antagonism originating in Europe; it was a matter of antagonism arising from our understanding of the forces of civilization. It was a matter of characterizing Wilsonism as the archetype of abstract, utterly unreal human thought. Wilsonian thinking is the kind that has had such a one-sided effect because it has absorbed the American impulse without truly possessing the impulse toward freedom—for speaking of freedom is, after all, no proof that the impulse toward freedom is actually present—and without possessing the impulse of genuine altruism.

[ 25 ] That which constitutes Central European life lies in ruins, more or less plunged into a terrible slumber. At present, the German is compelled to think about freedom—not merely in the way that freedom was once spoken of in fine, rhetorical terms while people sighed under Ludendorff’s oppression—but hardship naturally fosters some understanding of the idea of freedom, albeit with paralyzed souls and physical strength, and with the inability to muster the will for any truly intense thought. We have made all sorts of attempts at democratic structures, yet we have no democrats in Germany; we have a republic, but no republicans. All of this is a phenomenon that stands out particularly clearly in Central Europe as characteristic of European identity.

[ 26 ] And in Eastern Europe: for decades upon decades, the proletariat of the entire world extolled the virtues of Marxism. Lenin and Trotsky were able to apply Marxism in practice: it leads to the overexploitation of civilization, which is tantamount to the downfall of civilization. And these things are only just beginning.

[ 27 ] Nevertheless, Europe possesses the talent to ground freedom in ideal and spiritual terms. But this Europe must, in a true sense, complement itself through cooperation with the other peoples of the world.

[ 28 ] In Asia, we see the ancient Asian spirit shining anew. Asia’s spiritual leaders—you need only consider, as I have already pointed out, the example of Rabindranath Tagore—demonstrate through the very way they speak that the ancient altruistic spirit is by no means dead. But even less so than was the case in earlier times is there any possibility that a civilization might be achieved through this third of humanity’s civilizational impulses.

[ 29 ] All of this is why people today talk so much about things that actually belong to a culture in decline, yet they speak of them as if they represented something meant to serve as an ideal. For years we have heard it proclaimed: Every people must have the opportunity to—well, I don’t even know how—live in its own way, or something like that. — Now I ask you: What does “a people” actually mean to a person today, if that person is honest and sincere? In reality, it is just a phrase; it is not a reality. One can speak of a people when one speaks of a national spirit in the sense that it is understood in anthroposophy—when there is a reality behind it—but not when one means an abstraction. And people today who speak of the freedom of nations and so on are referring to an abstraction, for they do not believe in the reality of any national entity. Therein lies the deep inner untruth that is revered today: that one does not believe in the reality of the national entity, yet speaks of the freedom of the nation, as if the nation were something for today’s materialistic human being. What is the German people? Ninety million people whom one can add up as A plus A plus A! That is not a self-contained national entity in which people believe. And so it is with the other nations. And people speak of these things, believing they are speaking of realities, while lying to themselves in their innermost being.

[ 30 ] On the other hand, it is a reality to say: the Anglo-American nature: the pursuit of cosmogony; the European nature: the pursuit of freedom; the Asian nature: the pursuit of altruism. — And now we must seek to grasp these three partial forces within the world consciousness, and from within this world consciousness say to ourselves: The old culture, which strives from the partial, must perish, and to want to preserve it actually means acting against one’s time and not with it. We need a new civilization built upon the ruins of the old. The ruins of the old will grow smaller and smaller, and only those who have the will and the courage to embrace something truly new will understand the present age. But the new must arise neither from the mere Greek or Roman sense of the land, nor from the earthly consciousness of modern man; rather, it must emerge from the cosmic consciousness of the human being of the future—that cosmic consciousness which, in turn, looks up from the earth here toward the cosmos. But we must come to view this cosmos in such a way that we do not merely engage in Copernicanism or Galileanism. The Europeans have understood how to mathematize the Earth’s surroundings; but they have not understood how to attain a true science of the Earth’s surroundings. For his time, Giordano Bruno was certainly a great figure, a great personality; but today we need the awareness that where he saw only mathematical order, spiritual order reigns—reality reigns. In reality, the American does not believe in a purely mathematical world, in a purely mathematical cosmos. From within his civilization, he strives for knowledge of supersensible forces, even if he is still on the wrong path. In Europe, people have understood how to pursue all kinds of knowledge. But when Goethe, in his own way, posed the question: “What is science?”—no further progress could be made; for this Europe was unable to grasp the possibility of extending what can be researched—let us say, about human beings—to cosmogony. Goethe discovered metamorphosis: the metamorphosis of plants, the metamorphosis of animals, the metamorphosis of human beings. The head, with its skeletal system, is a transformed spine and spinal cord. All of this is beautiful. But all of this must be developed into an awareness that this head is the transformed human being from the previous incarnation, and that the human being as a collection of limbs is the preparation for the next incarnation. True science must be cosmic; otherwise, it is not science. Science must be cosmic—it must be a cosmogony—otherwise it is not something that provides inner human impulses, something that carries the human being through life. The human being of modern times cannot live instinctively; he must live consciously. He needs a cosmogony, and he needs true freedom. He does not need mere talk about freedom; he does not need merely all that constitutes the rhetoric of freedom; he needs freedom to truly take root in his immediate existence. This can only be achieved along the paths that lead to ethical individualism.

[ 31 ] And it is, of course, telling that the very moment my *Philosophy of Freedom* was published, Eduard von Hartmann—who had received one of the first copies of this book—wrote to me that the book should not be titled: “Philosophy of Freedom,” but rather “Epistemological Phenomenology and Ethical Individualism.” Fine; it would have been a long-winded title, but it wouldn’t have been a problem if it had been called “Ethical Individualism”; for ethical individualism is nothing other than the personal realization of freedom. Even the best people simply did not understand that the spirit of the times demanded something like what is set forth in this book, *The Philosophy of Freedom*.

[ 32 ] And let us look across to Asia: Asia and Europe must learn to understand one another, and Asia and America must also learn to understand one another. — But if things continue as they have been, they will never understand one another. Asians look toward America and see that there is really only a mechanism governing external life—the state, politics, and so on. Asians have no appreciation for these mechanisms; they have an appreciation only for that which arises from the impulses of the innermost depths of the human soul. And Europeans have, of course, also engaged somewhat with what constitutes the Asian spirit and Asian spirituality, but one might say: They haven’t really grasped it with great understanding so far! They haven’t really reached a consensus, and from the way they’ve disagreed, one could see that they didn’t exactly know how to bring into European culture—with true understanding—what the real impulses of Asian culture are. Just think of Blavatsky: she wanted to introduce all sorts of elements from Indian and Tibetan culture into European culture; much of what she attempted to introduce is open to question. Max Müller tried to introduce Asian culture into Europe in a different way. There are things found in Blavatsky that are missing in Max Müller; there are things in Max Müller that are missing in Blavatsky. Yet Max Müller’s judgment of Blavatsky clearly shows how little the matter was really addressed. Max Müller believed that Blavatsky had not brought genuine Indian spiritual content to Europe, but rather an imitation, and he illustrated this with an analogy, saying: If people were to see a pig that merely grunts, they would not be surprised by it; but if they were to see a pig that speaks like a human being, they would be surprised by it. — Well, the way Max Müller used that analogy, he could only have meant that, with his Asian culture, he grunts like a pig, and with regard to Blavatsky, he meant it was as if a pig were to start speaking like a human. It seems to me that it’s certainly not particularly interesting when a pig grunts, but it would certainly arouse some interest if a pig suddenly started running around and speaking like a human. So the metaphor does show that one was actually looking for a comparison that’s quite abstract. But people today pay no attention to that, and if one really unhesitatingly highlights the absurdity of such a thing, then people feel that one shouldn’t do that toward a, as they say, recognized authority like Max Müller; for that is simply not proper. But that is precisely the point: the time has come when we must speak quite honestly and sincerely. This honest and sincere discourse requires that we present, without embellishment, such things as are the secrets of contemporary civilization: Anglo-Americanism has a talent for cosmogony; Europe has a talent for freedom; Asia has a talent for altruism, for religion, and for a socio-economic order.

[ 33 ] These three attitudes must merge for the sake of all humanity. We must become citizens of the world and act from the perspective of a citizen of the world. Then, one day, what the times truly demand may come to pass.