The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] From the previous lectures, you will have seen how human beings arrive at a kind of illusory conception of the external world, how, in fact, what is usually understood as the interrelationships of nature is internally dependent on humanity itself, and how we can only gain a true worldview by considering the Earth—indeed, the world as a whole—in its entirety, that is, by viewing humanity as an integral part of it and taking into account the interrelationship between humanity and the world. Otherwise, we always end up with an insubstantial abstraction, with a mere abstract conception of the mineral world—or, at most, the plant and animal worlds—neither of which, however, plays a significant role anymore in the current view of nature. When people speak of the natural order, they generally have in mind only the mineral aspect of nature, to which they then append this brief episode—which they call “historical”—as a truth of an entirely different nature. From this perspective, which does not actually extend to human beings, humanity must turn away from this point forward. We have cited reasons from a wide variety of perspectives as to why humanity must move away from these views, which, as you know, have indeed emerged with a certain inevitability over the past three to four centuries. I will mention only this much today: with regard to their external knowledge and external understanding, people are becoming more and more dependent on their physical body and its needs if they are unwilling to do anything for their own development or to bring about a higher understanding—one that must be undertaken through the will. The issue in the future will be this: Either humanity must succumb to what can be gained as a view of the world by, I might say, remaining as one is, as one was born—that is, by seeking no other concepts or ideas than those one already possesses simply by finding oneself placed into the world through birth and through the ordinary education still common today; that is one possibility. The other possibility is this: that people will cease to believe that simply by being born human one can know everything desirable or judge everything that is real, and that they will build upon a true human development, as indicated by spiritual science. That would then be the other path. Humanity will have to take this latter path; otherwise, the Earth would simply be heading toward decline. What I have just said can also be viewed, in a sense, from a geographical perspective, and then it takes on a very special significance for the present.

[ 2 ] If we go back far enough in the Earth’s evolution, we will find that human beings are not rooted in earthly existence itself. As you know, human beings underwent a long period of development prior to their earthly evolution. You will find this development described in my book *Outline of Esoteric Science*. You know that humanity was then, in a sense, drawn back into a purely spiritual existence and descended from this purely spiritual existence into earthly existence. Now it is indeed the case that with this descent of humanity into earthly existence, a vast body of what might be called inherited knowledge—an ancient wisdom, an inherited wisdom—was brought along; a wisdom that was, in fact, uniform for all of humanity. You will find these matters described in detail in my lecture series “The Mission of Individual National Souls” in Kristiania. This inherited knowledge was, therefore, uniform. When I speak of knowledge, I do not mean merely what is usually referred to as such within science, but everything that a human being can take into his or her soul as a perception of the world around them and of their own life.

[ 3 ] Now this primordial knowledge has become more specific. It has become so specialized that it has differed according to the various regions of the Earth. If you look at this from the outside—at what is called the culture of the various peoples of the Earth—and you can gain an even better overview by consulting the various chapters of our spiritual science that deal with this subject—you can say to yourself: What the people of the various nations have known has always been different. You can distinguish between Indian culture, Chinese culture, Japanese culture, European culture—and within European culture, further differentiated according to the individual European regions—then American culture, and so on.

[ 4 ] If you ask yourself: How did ancestral and primordial wisdom come to take on this specific form, and how did it become increasingly differentiated? — you will be able to answer: It was due to the inner conditions, the inner dispositions of the peoples. — But essentially, these inner conditions of the peoples are always adapting to the external conditions of the Earth. And one can at least gain some insight into this differentiation by attempting to find the connection between, say, Indian culture and the climatic and geographical characteristics of the Indian subcontinent. Similarly, one gains an understanding of the distinctive nature of Russian culture by considering the connection between the Russian people and their land. Now one might say: With regard to these conditions, humanity today—as it is in so many respects—finds itself in a kind of crisis. This dependence of human beings on their territories gradually reached its greatest possible extent in the 19th century. Admittedly, people have emancipated themselves—emancipated, in their consciousness, from their territories—that is true; but they have nevertheless become more dependent on these very territories. One can see this by comparing, for example, how a Greek of antiquity related to ancient Greece, and how a modern Englishman or even a German relates to his country. The Greeks still retained much of this primordial wisdom in their culture and education. They were perhaps physically more dependent on their Greek territory than people today are on theirs. But this greater dependence was offset and mitigated by their inner fulfillment with primordial wisdom, with primordial knowledge. This primordial knowledge has gradually faded away for humanity. We can clearly demonstrate how, around the middle of the 15th century, the direct understanding of certain forms of primordial wisdom ceased, and how even the traditions of this primordial wisdom gradually dried up in the 19th century. Artificially—I would say, like plants in greenhouses—these primordial wisdoms are still preserved in all sorts of secret societies, which sometimes do very terrible things with them. But these secret societies preserved the primordial wisdom in the 19th century in such a way—in the 18th century it was still somewhat different—that one can say they are, as it were, like plants in greenhouses. After all, what do Masonic symbols today have to do with the ancient wisdom from which they originate, other than what plants grown in greenhouses have to do with plants growing in the open air? Masonic symbols have no more to do with ancient wisdom than the former have to do with the latter.

[ 5 ] But it is precisely because people lose their inner connection to primordial wisdom that they become even more dependent on their territories. And unless a treasure trove of spiritual truths—one that can be freely developed—is once again attained, people across the Earth would become completely divided according to their territories.

[ 6 ] We can indeed—I would say—distinguish three types here, which we have already distinguished from other perspectives. We can say today: If impulses from the humanities were not spreading throughout the world, only economic truths would be asserted from the West—truths that, of course, can also give rise to many other things. But economic thinking and economic concepts would be the essence. What would come from the East would essentially be spiritual truths. Asia will increasingly limit itself to spiritual truths, even if perhaps in a very decadent way. Central Europe would cultivate the intellectual realm more. And this would assert itself quite particularly, connected to a certain tradition from ancient times, connected to what drifts over from the West in the form of economic truths, and what drifts over from the East in the form of spiritual truths. But the people who would live beyond these three main types of earthly division would increasingly specialize in this direction. The trend of our present time is certainly aimed at actually bringing this specialization of humanity to dominance. One can say—and I ask that you take this very, very seriously—that if a spiritual-scientific influence were not to prevail in the world, the East would gradually become entirely incapable of running its own economy or developing economic thought. The East would only be able to produce—that is, to cultivate the soil directly and process natural products directly—using the tools supplied by the West. But everything that is managed on the basis of human reason would develop in the West. And viewed from this perspective, the catastrophe of the World War that has just ended is nothing other than the beginning of a trend—to use a popular expression—toward the economic penetration of the East from the West; that is, to turn the East into a region where people work, and the West into a region where the products that the East extracts from nature are managed. — Where the boundary between the East and the West lies need not be defined, for it is a variable concept.

[ 7 ] If the prevailing trend were to continue—and if it were not countered by spiritual forces—then there is no doubt—one need only state this hypothetically—that the entire East would inevitably become an object of economic exploitation by the West. And this course of development would be regarded as the given reality for humanity on Earth. It would be seen as entirely just and self-evident. There is no other way to introduce into this trend something that does not turn half of humanity into helots and the other half into exploiters of these helots than to permeate the Earth with the shared spirituality that must once again be attained.

[ 8 ] When these things are spoken aloud, people today are still quick to dismiss them. People today are all too inclined to brush these things aside with a wave of the hand, for the simple reason that it is outwardly uncomfortable for them to face true reality today. People tell themselves: Well, even if economic penetration of the East does take place, it won’t happen so quickly that I’ll live to see it. — Those who have children do think a bit more seriously about their children’s future, but they still prefer to delude themselves a little with the idea that perhaps better times will come again and so on. But to truly grasp this in one’s innermost being—that there is no other way to shape the future of humanity in a way that is truly human than to permeate the Earth not only economically but also spiritually—very few people give this thought serious consideration, out of a certain complacency. One could say that humanity has acquired the current configuration of its cultural life from three directions. And it is extraordinarily interesting to take a closer look at precisely these three aspects of earthly cultural life, especially in light of the task we now wish to set for ourselves in these lectures.

[ 9 ] You see, when one surveys the world from east to west, one must say the following: Everything that humanity possesses as a certain foundation of ethical truths, of moral truths, it has, in fact, derived from the East. The form in which the East once developed its ethical principles alongside a general worldview—the form of general cosmology and so on—has been lost. But what has remained, as a remnant of Eastern thought and feeling, is a certain ethic. Read, from this perspective, the speeches given by Rabindranath Tagore, which are collected under the title *Nationalism*. You will see that there is hardly anything left in them of the great cosmic teachings of wisdom that once lived in the minds of people in the East. But: it is extraordinarily interesting. Anyone who reads Tagore’s speeches collected under the title “Nationalism” with understanding will say to themselves: The moral pathos that lives within them—and that is, in fact, the main point of these speeches—the ethical will that lives within them, this harsh moral critique directed at the entire individualistic mechanism of the West, and at the even worse political mechanism of the West—all that is alive in the ethos of these speeches by Tagore—none of this could be said without the ancient primordial wisdom of Asia standing behind it, even if it no longer lives outwardly in people’s consciousness today. The moral truths that resonate from the East when people like Rabindranath Tagore speak were imbued with the wisdom drawn from the stars. And if one examines everything that has developed in terms of education in Central Europe and the West—not with prejudice, but with complete impartiality—one must say: Whatever existed there—whether among philosophers or non-philosophers, among the simplest of people or the highly educated—that which permeates the people of Central and Western Europe in ethical and moral terms has, at its core, been distilled from Asian culture, from the Orient. The Orient is the true homeland of ethos and ethics.

[ 10 ] When we look to the West, whose culture, I would say, has unfolded before the eyes of history, we see that there is a greater emphasis on the rational, intellectual processing of worldly phenomena—that which relates to the principle of utility. There is a great contrast—one that humanity really ought to become aware of—between something that lives as pathos in Tagore’s speeches and that which lives in everything that has developed in the West as the utilitarian standpoint.

[ 11 ] To put it bluntly, one would have to say: Something like what we find in, say, philosophers such as John Stuart Mill or economists such as Adam Smith, or the kind of intellectual philosophy found in Bergson—such things remain, for Asians, even if they try to understand them, something that lies completely outside their nature. He may regard it as an interesting fact that such things are said by people, but he will never be tempted to produce such ideas—which relate to external human utility—from his own nature. Asians thoroughly despise the European and American mindset because it confronts them at every turn with the utilitarian perspective, which can be mastered only through the intellect, through reason. And so it has come to pass that the modes of thought and conception associated with the idea of “utility” are, above all, the product of the West.

[ 12 ] Just as I pointed out earlier that primordial wisdom has taken on specific forms among the peoples of the world, we can now distinguish the major types: the ethical type in the East, in the Orient, and the intellectual-utilitarian type in the West. In between, there is always something seeking to assert itself, to break through—what I would like to call the third type, the aesthetic type. The aesthetic type is actually just as characteristic of Central Europe as the ethical type is of the Orient, and as the utilitarian, intellectualist type is of the West.

[ 13 ] One need only recall a single phenomenon to demonstrate, based on external facts, how the aesthetic type of human being is asserting itself precisely from Central Europe. While in the West the French Revolution was raging on the one hand and bearing fruit on the other, and the East was caught up in spiritual dreams, we see, for example, Schiller writing his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.” These letters tie directly into the French Revolution; yet they seek to resolve the problem that the French Revolution raised politically in a purely humanistic, human way. They aim to make the human being a free person from within. And it is interesting that Schiller’s entire approach in the “Aesthetic Letters” is based on the fact that, on the one hand, he rejects the intellectualist, purely utilitarian standpoint, and, on the other hand, the purely ethical standpoint as well. You see, the ethical standpoint, too, was once rationalized and intellectualized. Everything in the world undergoes various metamorphoses, and then it appears in a completely different form. Thus, the ethical standpoint of the Orient is certainly not intellectualistic, but one can also conceive of it as the intellect; one can intellectualize it, “Königsbergize” it—and then it becomes Kantian. This has happened before, and it is from Kant, after all, that this beautiful saying originates: “Duty! You sublime, great name, which encompasses nothing that is merely pleasing or that carries flattery within it, but demands submission…,” namely, submission to morality. Schiller, on the other hand, said: “Gladly do I serve my friends, yet alas, I do so with inclination, / And so it often gnaws at me that I am not virtuous.” As a true Central European, Schiller could not accept this Kantian, this Königsberg intellectualization of ethics. For him, a human being was not a “complete human” who first had to submit to duty in order to fulfill it. For him, a human being was a “complete human” who felt within himself the inclination to do what is morally valuable. Therefore, Schiller rejected Kant’s ethical rigorism. But he likewise rejected the purely intellectual principle of authority, and he saw in the creation and enjoyment of beauty—that is, in humanity’s aesthetic behavior—the highest free expression of human nature. He wrote his “Aesthetic Letters,” one might say, as a character sketch of Goethe. After all, he had struggled greatly to come to terms with Goethe. Schiller’s initial attitude toward Goethe was one of envy and inner aversion. One might say: For Schiller, there was a time in his youth when the very mention of Goethe made his mouth turn bitter. Then they got to know one another. And not only did they come to respect one another, but they also came to merge into one another. And then Schiller wrote his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man” as a kind of intellectual biography, a spiritual characterization of Goethe. Nothing in these “Aesthetic Letters” could ever have been written if Goethe had not exemplified what is written there.

[ 14 ] At the beginning of their friendship, Schiller wrote that letter to Goethe dated August 23, 1794—which I have often quoted—saying: “For a long time now, though from a considerable distance, I have been observing the course of your mind.” And now he describes Goethe as a spirit who is, in essence, a reborn Greek, so that we see how this ties in with the first dawn of the aesthetic spirit of Central Europe—with Greece.

[ 15 ] And in Goethe, we see how he works his way out from the most intellectual elements toward a recognition of truth that is grasped through art just as much as through science. If you follow how Goethe studied Spinoza’s ethics with Flerder, how Goethe then traveled to Italy and wrote home that in the works of art he saw as having emerged from the Greek spirit, he saw “necessity,” he saw “God”—then one can say: Spinoza’s intellectualism becomes aesthetic in Goethe during his Italian journey as he contemplates the works of art. And Goethe bears witness to the fact that the Greeks followed the same laws in creating their works of art as nature itself follows—laws which he believes he is on the trail of. That is to say, Goethe does not hold the view that when one creates a work of art, one creates something fantastical, and that only science is strictly true. No, Goethe held the view that what lies at the heart of true art is, in fact, the deeper truth of natural existence—that is, an aesthetic worldview. And so one can say: the West—intellectual, utilitarian; the central regions of the world—aesthetic; the East—ethical, moral. And it is entirely correct to say: wherever ethical truths have emerged—be it in the East, the Middle, or the West—they originally stem from the East. It makes no difference whether utilitarian truths emerge in the Middle or the East; they originally stem from the West. Beauty originates in the central regions. One can trace the course of these three elements of human life in this way everywhere. Sometimes one can trace it down into great detail. You see, if one is destined by one’s karma to found anthroposophy in Central Europe, then something of that Goethean belief must live within this anthroposophy—namely, that ultimately the same element that lives in art is also the element of truth, that the same element expressed in painting, in sculpture, and even in architecture must also live in the intellectual structure of truth. Yes, one must—as I attempted to do in the first chapter of my *Philosophy of Freedom* (which is now the last chapter in the new edition)—come to the conclusion that the philosopher, the person who establishes a worldview, must be a “conceptual artist.” The concept of the “conceptual artist” is one that is otherwise rejected. There, I had to accept it. All of this springs from a single spirit.

[ 16 ] All ideas expressed in this way take on certain characteristics that reflect what I just said. But then books are written—such as the one by Aimee Blech, which recently appeared as a pamphlet—containing all sorts of malicious, deliberately malicious slanders, in which, for example, it is also stated: “In what is presented as anthroposophy by this (Steiner’s) side, there is indeed much that is beautiful; but it runs counter to the clarity of the French mind!” — Certainly, it runs counter to intellectuality, to the sober, rhetorical grasp of concepts. Such people would rather have something grossly material and tangible represented, for that can be grasped with sharper conceptual contours. So one can certainly trace these things right down to the details. I could show you some examples that go into great detail, which would illustrate what I have just outlined in broad strokes. But I will leave it at what I have just mentioned, for this is actually, precisely as a detail, extraordinarily interesting.

[ 17 ] The point is to understand this thoroughly—that, for example, morality, art, and intellectualism are not simply produced in the West. Oh no, there art is taken from the central regions, ethics from the East, and to these are added the intellectual element and the utilitarian element. Likewise, a kind of aesthetic element is cultivated in the West, and everything that was incorporated into this aesthetic element—particularly in the 19th century—was adopted from the East. It would be interesting to write the history of biology from this perspective. If you read Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis today, you will find in it a magnificent theory of evolution. But the West will always find it tainted by aesthetics. For the Darwinian element in evolutionary theory penetrated the 19th century—a century that had become dependent on the West across the entire globe—from the West. This introduced the utilitarian standpoint, the doctrine of expediency. You will find the doctrine of expediency completely absent in Goethe, because Goethe is permeated throughout by aestheticism. It should not be the case that in the future, people—precisely as they are economically differentiated, as I characterized earlier—will refuse to accept anything from one another; for this would cause a certain ethos to gradually spread across Asia, as one finds it advocated in such fiery tones by Rabindranath Tagore. It would spread throughout Central Europe in a somewhat different form—one that certain Nietzsche-like figures have already advocated, albeit in a manner characteristic of such figures—a certain “Beyond Good and Evil,” a certain aestheticization even of moral concepts. We see the triumphant advance of this aestheticization in the 19th century, particularly toward the end of the 19th century, asserting itself very, very strongly. And the purely utilitarian viewpoint would spread throughout the West: cleverness from a utilitarian standpoint, the imitation of the spiritual element from a utilitarian standpoint, and so on. The only remedy for this is the permeation of humanity with a genuine spiritual element. The prerequisite for this, of course, is that this spiritual element be taken entirely seriously, that one develop the will to view things as they present themselves today to those who truly wish to be unbiased. This catastrophe of war has, after all, brought many very strange things to the surface. It has also brought to light phenomena that are, in part, highly unsettling, but which are, on the other hand, instructive. I would like to mention one such phenomenon to you.

[ 18 ] You see, in contemporary German literature—it’s almost impossible to keep up with reading them anymore, as they appear almost every week now—“flattery,” I meant to say, omissions by a wide variety of people regarding their involvement in the course of military and political events, and we were able to read what such minds, and I say explicitly “minds”—have thought: people like Jagow, like Bethmann—Michaelis, I believe, has spared us so far—Tirpitz, Ludendorff, and one could name a whole host of others. Yes, on the one hand, it’s uncomfortable to read this stuff. But on the other hand, it’s also highly interesting! It’s highly interesting from the following perspective. You see, one can approach books like Bethmann’s or Tirpitz’s from completely opposing viewpoints, but—what do I mean by “viewpoints,” right!—it sometimes simply comes down to whether one was treated with a kind eye and the other with the heel of a boot for a certain period of time! For a certain period, Bethmann was treated with a “favourable eye” by the “most exalted lord,” while Tirpitz was treated with the “heel of a boot”; consequently, they have different perspectives. So let’s not dwell any further on the perspective itself. That matters far less than seeing what spirit lives in such writings.

[ 19 ] Well, for starters, you can do the following. You see, I conducted an experiment: After subjecting myself to the whole murky mess of these writings—this Bethmann and Tirpitz mess—I tried once again to read a series of Herman Grimm’s essays, which are very dear to me, specifically those that non-Germans would, admittedly, find chauvinistically German, but that, of course, is just a point of view, and that’s not what matters to me; what matters to me is the spirit that lives within them. Now, at first glance, one might ask: Well, how does the spirit, the way of thinking, the inner state of mind of the Bethmann-Tirpitz drivel relate to what lives in Herman Grimm’s—for my part—political reflections? — One must say: For Herman Grimm, Goethe lived—and did not live in vain; he was there for him. He was not there for Bethmann or for Tirpitz. I do not mean to say that they did not read him. It might perhaps have been wiser if they had not read him; but he was not there for them. At first, I told myself, what is written in these books sounds as if it were written by medieval mercenaries, and indeed with the logic of medieval mercenaries. Ludendorff’s logic, for example, is particularly interesting. He is, after all, the one who earned “the great merit” of having been the deciding factor in Lenin’s transport through Germany to Russia in a sealed car. He is the actual “importer” of Bolshevism into Russia. He doesn’t have the nerve to deny this outright in his book, even though he had the nerve to do many other things. That is why he says the following. He says: Bringing Lenin to Russia was a military necessity; but the political leadership should have averted the dire consequences of this; they simply failed to do so. — You see, that is the logic of these gentlemen! But I certainly do not mean to claim that Clemenceau had better logic. So please do not think for a moment that I am taking sides on anything; Lloyd George and Wilson do not have better logic either; but it is not so easy to point this out in their case.

[ 20 ] Yes, that’s what one tells oneself at first. But then the matter goes further. If one seeks a historical comparison, one finds that one must go back quite a long way. There is a striking similarity between the way of thinking and the way of imagining—particularly in the case of Tirpitz and Ludendorff—and the way of thinking of those people who guided the so-called culture of Rome in the first and second centuries B.C. And if one wishes to identify a deep spiritual kinship there, one might actually say: It is as if the mindset of ancient pre-Christian Rome were reemerging, and as if everything that has happened since then—including Christianity—had never taken place, even though these gentlemen speak outwardly of Christ and the like.

[ 21 ] You see, when people speak of the Luciferic principle as something that has remained behind in humanity, they often think this refers only to otherworldly matters. In the world itself, this principle of backwardness comes to the fore very strongly. One could say: the pre-Caesar great figures of ancient Rome have been reborn in such people. And everything that has happened since then in Europe is, for them, essentially nonexistent.

[ 22 ] People today should observe this phenomenon with an open mind. They should take it into account. For only in this way can one gain a free, well-informed perspective from which to assess the present. The present places great demands on people’s ability to judge. All of this must be said when it is argued that it is necessary for the present to be permeated with spiritual impulses. Superficially speaking, it is easy to say to oneself: Well, the present simply must be permeated with spiritual impulses!”—But the matter is not that simple. You need only examine whether spiritual impulses have borne desirable fruit wherever they have gained a certain foothold among humanity. You see, ultimately one must also admit the following. Let’s take, for example, certain brochures, certain pamphlets that have been written. Some have been written by long-time followers; there are even some in which what appears here as spiritual science is “correctly” presented to the world—only it is turned upside down, turned inside out! These, too, are plants that have grown on the ground where an attempt is being made today to communicate spiritual knowledge to people. And anyone who would believe that the process has already run its course—a process in which so-called followers turn what has been conveyed as spiritual knowledge into its opposite—would indeed be naive. This is by no means over! It is by no means as easy as one might think to reckon with the fact that spiritual truths are to be brought to humanity. For, as humanity is today, it tends to differentiate itself primarily according to the three “types” I have characterized: the ethical, the aesthetic, and the intellectual—but within these, further distinctions arise.

[ 23 ] Now, spiritual truths are not suited to be fully grasped by people who approach them with such distinctions. It is entirely impossible for spiritual truths to be fully grasped by people who approach them with these distinctions—and with other distinctions from the present day. Just consider that today, on all sides, people are rushing to shut themselves off in national chauvinism. Indeed, if you seek to embrace universal human and spiritual truths through the lens of national chauvinism, you are thereby already turning them into their opposite. It is impossible today to simply convey what, from a certain point of view, would be desirable to convey. For people tend toward such differentiation as has been described. Therefore, it is naturally necessary, above all, to awaken the interest of those who are already developed as such. It is necessary to build upon what already exists in a certain way, but to take into account that people have a tendency to distance themselves from the ancient inherited wisdom and to replace it with nothing but territorial distinctions across the earth. That is precisely why it is not possible to spread spiritual wisdom among humanity without also spreading a certain ethos. Many people have read the book *How to Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds*. These books have, after all, been widely read for some time now. These people have found that the first pieces of advice given there are ethical in nature, and that one can certainly agree with them from an ethical standpoint. — You are right; the first pieces of advice given must be ethical, and they must constitute an essence of the finest ethical principles of earthly culture. But on the other hand, it is also necessary to cultivate a certain artistic element. This has caused quite particular difficulties within the anthroposophical movement; for within the anthroposophical movement there was initially a certain aversion specifically toward the artistic. People strove for an abstract, aesthetic, and indifferent symbolism. And even today there are movements that call themselves “theosophical” and reject everything artistic. That is why it was a stroke of good fortune, a good karma for our movement, that we were also able to undertake artistic experiments here in Dornach and develop these artistic experiments out of the abstract symbolic elements. Perhaps, had it been up to some, we would be seeing many black crosses surrounded by seven rose-like blobs as profound symbols of our building! Naturally, we had to resist this symbolic nature and strive to create from the artistic elements.

[ 24 ] So we must draw on the best tradition—even if I call these impulses “tradition”—of the human spirit: to throw these things in the world’s face, even when there was actually no one there who could take them in. But now we must start from a certain foundation, namely, that this catastrophe of the World War can indeed teach us a great deal. For most people, of course, there is nothing to be learned from the facts. They have a certain stock of judgments, and they do not change it. They cannot grasp what underlies the matter, if one can even speak of learning from facts at all.

[ 25 ] I tell this to everyone I show around here in the building: If I had to design a building like this a second time, I would do it differently. — I certainly would never build it the same way again. This is not meant as a criticism of this building; but I myself would never build it the same way again, because, of course, one must learn from what has been done, from what stands as a fact. — This morning, to my horror, I read that Field Marshal Hindenburg said that if he had to wage this war again today, he would do exactly the same thing he did.

[ 26 ] Yes, you see, people read these things, they skim over them, and they don’t realize that they must gain an understanding of the times through the lessons so harshly imparted by this catastrophe of the World War. Today, everyone should read whatever reaches their ears from the world—and by that I mean, of course, what they read as well—with the appropriate context in mind, and they should be able to say to themselves: In important matters, a reevaluation of one’s judgment is necessary, indeed indispensable. Up until this catastrophe of the World War, there was an outward, apparent justification for calling Bismarck a practical man. Herman Grimm regards him as a “tower” of practicality. The world catastrophe has taught us that he was a dreamer, and we must come to terms with this judgment, for the creation of the Empire was, of course, a figment of the imagination.

[ 27 ] You see, I want to make it clear to you that it is life—and it must be life—to which all cultural endeavors must be linked. And above all, it must be noted that these are profoundly serious truths, which sound something like this: Whoever wishes to arrive at true knowledge must cultivate a sense of truth within themselves. — When one speaks radically about this matter, one touches upon something that already sounds extraordinarily offensive to many people. For the rigorous pursuit of truth in all things is something that is extremely uncomfortable for many people today—something they, at the very least, gloss over in their lives. But a false nature—even if it is false merely out of sentimentality—is incompatible with the rigorous sense of truth demanded by a genuine devotion to those truths that, for example, seek to enter the world through anthroposophy.

[ 28 ] In this regard, the denominations in particular have sinned greatly, for they have fostered something that is no longer at all compatible with a full, pure sense of truth. Certain forms of piety have been propagated in the world that indulge human egoism rather than correspond to the human sense of truth. That is why it is so particularly necessary to devote genuine attention to cultivating inner truthfulness, a point that is emphasized in various places throughout the anthroposophical writings. Life itself demands many untruths from people today, and one can say that there are clearly two tendencies today that give rise to a certain aversion in humanity to accepting truths based on the facts. There is a tendency today to characterize things according to personal preferences, rather than according to what the facts themselves indicate. Today—and I have had to mention this frequently in other contexts in the world recently—one describes as a “practical” person someone who is, in a certain sense, a person of routine; someone who, out of a certain brutality, acts ruthlessly within their sphere and rejects everything that does not serve this conception of routine-driven striving. From this perspective, a distinction is made between “practical” people and “fantastical” ones. And with a certain degree of world-historical untruthfulness, the consequences of these things have become terribly apparent, particularly throughout the 19th century and right up to the present day. Indeed, even before this catastrophe of the World War—that great trial for humanity—it was difficult to say anything that characterized these matters unreservedly and impartially. I will soon publish a collection of some of my more important essays that appeared in the 1880s and 1890s, to show how, at that time, one had to attempt—I would say—to speak certain truths through the cracks. Among these essays is also the one titled “Bismarck, the Man of Political Success,” in which I attempt to explain how the successes attributed to this figure are entirely based on the fact that, at heart, he never saw further than a few steps ahead of himself. — But there were no illusions to be found, even in the moral-historical realm. Last Sunday I demonstrated here how one must acknowledge the illusions within the context of nature; how things coexist in that context and how natural science describes them, and how one must then conclude that humanity is actually involved in what happens within that context—and thus how what natural science says about the natural world can be a web of illusions. Today I wanted to help you understand how one must allow oneself to be corrected by the facts of history and life, because outwardly, things often appear at first—and for long periods of time—to be nothing but an illusion. Today, one is frequently forced to regard people who were taken for granted by many as the most practical individuals as dreamers. But one must be willing to revise one’s judgment. Today, in every area of life, there is not only ample opportunity but also a necessity to revise this judgment. And one’s attitude is in harmony with what the anthroposophical movement aims to be only when one says to oneself: I must revise my judgment—perhaps even regarding the most important matters! — Judgments about the interrelationships in nature can generally be revised through spiritual science itself. One will revise judgments about life only if one truly develops within oneself the attitude required for the anthroposophical movement.