The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] In one of the lectures I have given here recently, I pointed out that education and teaching today do not merely require a certain traditional set of what are commonly called didactic and pedagogical insights and skills, but that it is above all necessary for today’s educators and teachers to delve into the major cultural currents of the present. After all, the educator is dealing with the younger generation. This younger generation will have to grapple with many more issues—and will be thrust into situations—than those that have been experienced from the past up to the present. And it is essential that educators and teachers, in dealing with the younger generation, have some sense of the age and its character into which today’s young generation is growing.

[ 2 ] It should, in fact, already be more or less clear to everyone by now just how much those who today speak in the ordinary sense of guilt or wrongdoing between this or that people are fixated on the surface of things. It should already be clear today that one cannot clearly see the course of events in the present and the recent past unless one can free oneself from those concepts of guilt or atonement that apply to the individual lives of human beings. For what has happened and what is still happening, concepts such as tragedy and fate are far more applicable than the concepts of injustice, guilt, atonement, or the like. And however little humanity is currently inclined to raise its own capacity for judgment to a higher level, it will nevertheless have to be raised. For does not the struggle that humanity has waged clearly and unmistakably point to the fact that, in this humanity—simply from a cultural-historical, one might say anthropological-historical, perspective—there lay a restlessness that gripped humanity across nearly the entire globe? If one asks here or there, “What did people actually do or think in 1914?”—judgments fall apart. One must simply look to the elemental inner restlessness that has come over humanity across the entire earth. And this inner restlessness, which is already clearly manifesting itself today, initially played itself out, one might say, in the physical armed conflict. This physical armed conflict was more physical than previous wars. For how much that was purely mechanical, how much that was purely mechanical, played a part in this armed conflict. But just as this armed conflict was of such a nature that it cannot be compared to anything in history to date, so it will be followed by a spiritual struggle that, likewise, will be unlike anything in history. The most extreme physical armed conflict on the one hand will be followed by a spiritual struggle that will also represent an extreme of what humanity has experienced so far in its historical development. It will become clear that the entire world will take part in this spiritual struggle, and that in this spiritual struggle, the East and the West will stand opposed to one another in ways of a spiritual and psychological nature unlike anything that has ever existed before.

[ 3 ] Events always foreshadow themselves through all sorts of signs, the significance of which is not always fully appreciated. Much will depend on how the Anglo-American world—as the Western world—will relate to the Eastern world in the future. For the Anglo-American world—as the West—will not be able to cope with the East spiritually as easily as it did physically with Central and Eastern Europe. The fact that India is half-starved today, that this half-starved India is crying out for a restructuring of all human relations, signifies something immense in the present. For when this half-starved India rises, it will—through the legacy, the spiritual legacy of time immemorial—be a far more fundamental enemy to the West, to the Anglo-American world, than Central Europe, with its materialistic mindset, ever was.

[ 4 ] Our young generation is growing up into this great spiritual struggle—for which all the social and other endeavors of the present are merely a prelude, a kind of preparatory phase—and it will have to be equipped with strengths that today’s humanity, including those involved in education, often cannot even imagine. If today’s humanity wishes to engage in social pedagogy, it must necessarily draw upon things entirely different from what can be learned through today’s scientific methods—which are, for the most part, methods of the natural sciences. In many cases, the most utterly misguided ideas have found their way into our educational system—precisely because there is already an urge to bring something deeper from human nature into this system, yet people still resist the true reality, which cannot be conceived without spiritual reality. Let us just consider for a moment that today, in the field of education, there is a drive to introduce all sorts of ideas from so-called analytical psychology and psychoanalysis into the educational system. Why is this happening? It is happening because people are incapable of thinking about the spirit in a spiritual way, and therefore seek to investigate the development of the spirit psychoanalytically based on the physical constitution of human beings. Everywhere, it is this resistance to spiritual knowledge that undermines the endeavor in which we are meant to be engaged.

[ 5 ] Through the various materialistic tendencies of the past, we have developed within ourselves, as human beings, what I would call a certain human attitude. It is with this attitude that we live in the world today. Just how much this human attitude—I am not speaking now of a single people, but of humanity as a whole—is worth can be seen from the fact that millions of people have been killed and even more maimed as a result of this attitude of humanity. But let us not now view the rising generation in a formal, superficial, or stereotypical way; rather, let us look at them from within and consider what we must do for them in terms of education and instruction. Let us view this in the light of that study of humanity—anthropology—which should be familiar to us, who have been engaged with anthroposophy for years. For us today, even the smallest observation of human life borders on the very greatest and most significant cultural currents and forces.

[ 6 ] How often has it been discussed here how three successive stages of human development differ from one another in relation to the overall unfolding of human nature? As I have often said, we must make a clear distinction in the growing human being between the period of life up to the time when the permanent teeth come in—that is, up to the change of teeth. This change of teeth is a far more significant indicator of the entire course of human development than is generally assumed by modern science, which today focuses solely on external appearances. It is in these external aspects—and this must be emphasized again and again—that natural science has celebrated its greatest triumphs; yet it is unable to penetrate to the inner essence of things. Precisely because it is so great in regard to external appearances, it is unable to penetrate to the inner essence.

[ 7 ] If one wishes to understand human beings in this earliest stage of life, one must first consider the fundamentals of human heredity. I have already spoken about this. These hereditary relationships are understood only in a very one-sided way if one views them solely through the lens of contemporary natural science. Heredity is such that two clearly distinguishable influences are at work: the maternal and the paternal elements. The maternal element is what transmits to the individual, to a greater extent, the characteristics of the general national character, of the people as a whole. From the mother, a person inherits more of the general: the fact that they grow into a national character with a specific national character. The mystery of motherhood lies in transmitting, from generation to generation through physical forces, the characteristics of the national character. The specific contribution of fatherhood is to imbue this general character with the individuality of the person—that which makes a person a unique individual. Only when one considers the details of human character in the manner described by the principles of heredity outlined above will one come to understand clearly what one is actually dealing with in a newborn human being.

[ 8 ] However, with regard to the earliest stage of life, it must be noted that during this time, human beings are entirely imitative creatures. Everything a person acquires up to about the age of seven is acquired precisely because they are a being who imitates. Through this, however, the life of the growing child becomes connected to the most intimate cultural characteristics of an era. Those whom the child imitates at first are the child’s role models. Everything they carry within themselves—including their innermost characteristics—is passed on to the growing generation. This imitation takes place entirely in the subconscious, but it is immensely significant, and it becomes particularly significant from the moment when the child begins to learn to speak—a process that is itself learned through imitation. Before learning to speak, imitation is initially limited to outward behavior; once speech development begins, imitation extends into inner psychological qualities. The growing child then comes to resemble those around them. And much more than is usually realized, language instills itself into the fundamental character of the growing child. Language has an inner, unique psychological character, and the growing child absorbs a great deal psychologically from the person toward whom they are developing linguistically. This absorption is very strong, very powerful; it penetrates into what we call the astral body. It is so powerful that it requires a counterpole. That counterpole exists. And in the unbiased observation of this counterpole, precisely that mysterious aspect of the development of nature and being is revealed—an aspect that today’s external observation of nature cannot penetrate.

[ 9 ] If external physical nature—let me put it this way, since we hardly have a term in our language to describe these things—if external physical nature were softer than it is, then by acquiring language, a person would become entirely an imprint of that which he learns to speak about. But a barrier, as it were, is erected against this by the fact that the physical nature of the human being hardens most profoundly during these first seven years. And the peak, the culmination of this hardening, is expressed in the eruption of the permanent teeth. The eruption of a bony tooth marks the completion of an inner consolidation of the human physical body, a process that extends throughout this entire stage of life—from birth, or at least from the emergence of the first teeth (which are purely hereditary teeth), up to the permanent teeth. These are two opposites: the extremely flexible inner development in language, and the outer hardening, where, as it were, the human being rebels against it and says: “I am still here too; I do not want to be merely an image.” — And this hardening is expressed in what ultimately appears as the culmination in the second set of teeth, the permanent teeth.

[ 10 ] This process takes place during a person’s early childhood. What, then, is the most important educational principle for this stage of life? It is who we ourselves are. If we do not pay attention to who we ourselves are, right down to our innermost being, then we are failing as educators, for a child’s development at this age depends not so much on what we tell them now, but on what we model for them. They are imitative beings. You can see this for yourselves; I’ve already mentioned it: A child at this age, before their baby teeth have fallen out, steals, for example. The parents come home and are beside themselves that the child has stolen something. If you look closely at the circumstances, you ask: How did it actually come to pass that the child stole? Well, the child simply opened a drawer somewhere and took out some money. That’s what people tell you. If you look closely at the circumstances, you have to say: Don’t worry about it, because that isn’t theft. The child has seen all along that the mother simply went to the drawer at a certain time of day and took money out of it. The child has no clear concept of it; the child is an imitator, copying what they see; if you forbid it, the child simply doesn’t understand yet. It is not at all necessary to immediately associate this act with the harsh concept of theft. The point is simply that we must be mindful of ourselves and remember that children at this age are imitators.

[ 11 ] Then comes the second stage of life, which extends from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. This is the actual school years. During these school years—as I have mentioned many times before—what is distinctive is that something entirely different enters a person’s life compared to the principle of imitation that characterized the first years of life. One must not be misled by such generalizations as are often casually bandied about: “Nature takes no leaps.” As it is usually understood, this is actually nonsense. Nature is constantly taking leaps. Just think how great the leap is in a plant from green leaves to colorful petals. If one means that nature does not leap across an abyss, that may be true; but there can be no question of a steady development without discontinuity in nature. The same is true, upon close observation, of human development. While a child is an imitator during the first seven years of life, from the time of tooth replacement until sexual maturity, he enters an age in which the principle of authority is the defining factor. During this stage, something in the child is stunted if the child’s ability to trust their educator and teacher is not developed in a healthy way—that is, if the child does not yet scrutinize what the educator and teacher say with their as-yet-unawakened intellect, but rather, out of trust in the educator’s authority, does what they are told to do simply because the other person says so and sets forth what is to be done. These matters should not be viewed solely from the perspectives under which people today treat all manner of things in life as absolute—and under which they would even prefer to make the child an absolutely inwardly free being. If one seeks to do this at this age, one does not make the person free, but rather leaves them without a foundation for life—completely adrift, inwardly empty. Anyone who, between the ages of seven and fourteen, has not learned to have such trust in others that they model their behavior after them will lack, in their future life, the inner strength and willpower they must possess if they are to truly be a match for life.

[ 12 ] All instruction should therefore, in essence, be structured in such a way that it is based on this absolute reverence for the educator. This must not be crammed into the child’s head or beaten into them; it must lie in the very nature of the educator and teacher themselves, and this goes right to the innermost core. These things do not take place in the same sphere as what we, as educators, say to the child, but rather they take place primarily through what we, as educators, are in the child’s presence. The way we speak, the tone of our speech—whether it is imbued with love or mere pedantry, whether it is imbued with genuine interest or merely an external sense of duty—this is something that vibrates beneath the surface of things and is of the utmost importance in the interplay between authoritarian influence and a sense of authority. This relationship between the growing child and the educator or teacher is far more intimate than one might actually think. The child is now free from mere imitation, but must grow into the most intimate, instinctive coexistence with the educator and teacher. This can be achieved even in the largest school classes; the excuse that it cannot be achieved does not hold water. For anyone who observes life knows that there is a great difference between two teachers: one who enters the classroom and another who enters it—regardless of how many children are seated in that classroom. The one who, in the evening—as was often heard in Germany in the past—always felt the need to drink enough beer to feel sufficiently drowsy —that’s a saying one often heard—will, not so much because he drank beer but because he has such inclinations, open the classroom door and step into the room quite differently than the one who perhaps acquired the necessary “bed-heaviness” the evening before by, let’s say, reflecting more seriously on this or that question of worldview. This is just one example, which of course could be varied in a hundred different ways. Only when one fully appreciates the benefit a person receives from having been able—and allowed—to develop a belief in authority between the time of losing their baby teeth and reaching sexual maturity, only then does one truly have the right judgment regarding what can happen in teaching and upbringing at this stage of a person’s life.

[ 13 ] People often ask: What should you do with children? People then say: At this or that age, it’s good to tell children fairy tales and let them retell them. Or they say: At this age, one shouldn’t talk to children so much in abstract terms, but rather in symbols and allegories. And I have pointed out that one can discuss even the most intricate matters with children—for example, the question of immortality. You point out to the child the insect pupa, how the butterfly emerges from it, and explain that just as the butterfly emerges from the pupa, the human soul passes through the gate of death, leaving the physical body to enter another form of existence. Yes, it is good to tell a child this. And yet, one often fails to achieve any significant goal by doing so. Why is that? Because in many cases, one demands that the child believe it, while one does not believe it oneself—one regards it as a mere metaphor. But this plays a significant role in the subconscious. These things are not meaningless. There is something else in the relationship between one person and another beyond what can be conveyed in external terms. There is a relationship between the whole person and the whole person. If you yourself do not believe in such a symbol, then there is no authority for the child; then you are not a role model for the child, even if you otherwise do everything to secure your authority. Of course, you will say: “Yes, but I can’t possibly believe that the transition to death, to the postmortem state, is somehow realistically expressed by the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis.” - Well, I believe in it because it is actually true, because the things of reality are indeed real symbols, because it is in fact the case that in the physical world the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis according to the very same laws by which, in the spiritual realm, the immortal soul emerges from life through the gate of death. But present-day humanity does not know such laws; it considers them nonsense. It believes that it must teach children something that the older generation has already outgrown. But then we cannot educate; then we cannot teach.

[ 14 ] We can only gain a sense of authority if we convey to children what we ourselves can fully believe in—even if, of course, we must present it to them in entirely different forms; but that is not the point. No human relationship, however, can be established without sincerity—and not deceit—reigning deep within. And truth must prevail among people in all relationships. Only through this turning toward truth will we be able to bring into the world what is now lacking in it. And because it is lacking, that is why misfortune has come. Do you not see untruth at work everywhere in the world—indeed, even the tendency, the longing for untruth? Is the truth still spoken in world politics? No, not at all under the present circumstances! But we must begin with the humblest human being to cultivate the truth once more. That is why we must shed light on the mysteries of the developing human being and ask: What does the developing human being demand of us as educators and teachers?

[ 15 ] Anyone who, between the ages of seven and fourteen or fifteen, has not developed this ability to look to another person—rather than to an authority figure—will, in the next stage of life, which begins with sexual maturity, be incapable above all of developing the most important thing there is in human life: the feeling of social love. For with sexual maturity, not only does sexual love arise in a person, but also what is, in essence, the free social devotion of one soul to another. This free devotion of one soul to another must develop from something; it must first make its way through devotion mediated by the sense of authority. This is the embryonic stage for all social love in life: that we must first pass through the sense of authority. People who are loveless and antisocial arise when the sense of authority is not fostered through teaching and upbringing between the ages of seven and fourteen or fifteen.

[ 16 ] These are matters of the utmost, of the greatest importance in today’s world. Romantic love is, in a sense, a specific aspect, a fragment of universal human love; it is what stands out as the individual, the particular, and what is more closely connected to the physical and etheric bodies, whereas universal human love is more closely connected to the astral body and the I. But the capacity for social love also awakens—without which there would be no social institutions in the world. This capacity first awakens on the basis of a healthy sense of authority between the change of teeth and sexual maturity—that is, precisely during a person’s school years. No matter how much people may talk about a unified school system—which is, of course, entirely justified—no matter how much they may still talk today about that one should develop individuality, and whatever all the abstractions are called with which people today delude themselves with pedagogical pretensions—what matters is that we regain the ability to look into the innermost nature of the human being, and above all, develop a sense that the human being is, in fact, alive. Today, people have absolutely no sense that the human being is a living being that develops over time. Today, people have only a sense that human beings are something timeless; for today people speak of human beings without taking into account at all that they are beings in the process of becoming, that with every stage of life something new is drawn into their entire development.

[ 17 ] If people today were told in full about the ideas contained in the program for the threefold social organism, many would still regard them, even in the broadest circles, as a kind of madness. For you see, self-governance is called for, for example, in the educational system—a separation from state and economic life with regard to the truly spiritual aspect of education. Only through this will it be possible, within an emancipated spiritual life, to restore people to their rightful place. For today, no one takes into account that the inner developmental impulses in the first years of life, up to the change of teeth, are different from those in the period that follows, up to sexual maturity, and yet different again after sexual maturity; nor does anyone realize today that when a person’s life begins to decline—when they are in the second half of life—they once again go through various stages of development. Who thinks today that a person matures over the course of life, and that someone who is, for example, in their late forties or fifties has more to say, based on their life experience, than someone who is only twenty years old? The course of life is, after all, a reality. Yet for many people today it is not, because they are raised and educated in such a way that they are no longer capable of truly gaining new experiences in the second half of life. People today, as it were, do not grow older than twenty-eight; after that, they merely vegetate, living on the experiences they gained up to the age of twenty-eight. But it does not have to be that way! A person can be a learner—someone who learns from life—throughout their entire life. But to do so, they must be raised accordingly; during their school years, the inner strengths that can only become robust during this time must be developed within them, so that they are not broken again later in life. Today, people go through life in such a way that they all, in one way or another, suffer a setback from life. Why do they suffer this setback? Because they were not made strong enough between the ages of seven and fourteen to withstand life’s challenges. These connections must certainly be taken into account, and other connections must not be forgotten. As we grow quite old, we develop within ourselves qualities that are connected to our very earliest childhood. What we imitated back then develops on a higher level precisely in our later years. And what we went through during the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity occurs somewhat earlier, as early as our forties. And so it is precisely what a person experiences in the very earliest childhood that develops in the very latest stage of life. Human life, in its development, is a real fact. And we will not achieve true socialization until we treat human beings as human beings. If all we know about human beings is that they come of age at twenty-one and are then capable of being admitted into all kinds of organizations and discussing everything, then we will never establish socialism; then we will only end up with the leveling of an abstract concept of humanity. Therefore, the actual democratic state—where every person of legal age stands face to face with every other person of legal age—must be limited to everything that concerns human beings in terms of the equality of all people, that is, to what derives from mere legal concepts. Precisely for this reason—so as not to stifle reality—the possibilities must be restored for that which is bound up with human development to be left to free development: intellectual life and economic life. It will become evident that we will once again have councils of elders in spiritual and economic life, because those who have grown old will be trusted with greater administrative skill than those who are still young. The path forward must not be, as it is now, for the state to oversee schools, but rather for spiritual life to be based on self-administration. One often has the feeling that when a person has grown old, they are no longer suited for certain tasks for which they were once suited. In Austria, for example, there is a law under which university professors may lecture only until the age of seventy; after that, they are granted at most one additional year of grace, but then they are no longer permitted to lecture. I believe this law is still in effect. I would even go so far as to say that it would be good to lower this age limit even further. But then, if a person is a university professor, they would first have to enter the office of care and provision, the administrative office of education. That intimate bond—which people today either rant about or ramble on about—I believe that’s how one says it—that intimate bond between spirit and nature would have to be sought in earnest once again. We should not establish institutions that are created without any consideration for natural development—for example, without taking into account the fact that a human being is not an absolute being who is born at the age of thirty-five, remains that age, and never grows older than thirty-five—but rather, everything must be built upon the human being’s process of becoming.

[ 18 ] Let us suppose the following scenario: we establish a socialist institution today that is entirely to our liking, such that we are fully satisfied with it according to our current understanding of what takes place between people in social relationships. And let us assume—which would indeed happen if one did not at the same time conceive of socialization in the spiritual sense—that socialization would take place entirely on the basis of today’s worldview. Then something would have to occur that has not yet occurred in the course of human development: the next generation would be a generation of nothing but rebels. They would be the worst kind of revolutionaries, and they would have to be so for the simple reason that they would all want to bring something new into the world, while all of us here would have merely preserved the old. This shows how much one must take into account the process of human development—how one must not merely assume that a human being is simply a human being, but must remember that a human being is a creature born as a small child and who dies with white hair, or even without any hair at all. Modern science does not yet look into these matters, and it is from modern science that we learn for all other branches of life.

[ 19 ] Marxism is a very good—indeed, ingenious, magnificent—reflection of the scientific way of thinking as applied to social concepts; it is natural science that has become entirely social science, and is therefore, in essence, absolutely unproductive. For Marxism teaches that everything will come about on its own. People are particularly annoyed by how much is written about “new formation” in the sense of the threefold social organism. They say that they fully agree with my critique of the current capitalist order, that the threefold social order itself has their full approval; but, they go on to say, they must fight it fiercely in every way. These are the fruits of the current state of mind: people actually agree with something entirely, but they feel compelled to fight it fiercely. This stems from the fact that we apply the scientific way of thinking to all branches of life. This scientific way of thinking has become so dominant precisely because, in its nature, it has limited itself to the study of the inanimate. People believe, in fact, that it is an ideal—one that will one day be realized—to bring about a living being in the laboratory through all manner of synthesis. But this will never happen through today’s scientific methods, because today’s scientific approach leads only to dead concepts and is only truly suited to understanding the dead. But through this understanding of the dead, one can never gain concepts for the living. We must achieve this possibility: to find concepts, ideas, sensations, and impulses of will for the living; and this is particularly necessary in the field of education.

[ 20 ] There is—as I have already explained several times elsewhere today—a very witty philosopher who saw the purpose of his discipline in something quite peculiar. Above all, this philosopher wrote a thick book many years ago: *The Whole of Philosophy and Its End*. In it, he demonstrated that there can be no such thing as philosophy. That is why he became a professor of philosophy at a university. Then he wrote a very witty book on the mechanics of mental life—a very witty book. This is a man named Richard Wahle, who has adopted and put into practice the scientific way of thinking in the most astute manner, and who, fundamentally, never encounters anything spiritual in his way of thinking. He merely says that he does not wish to deny the spiritual, simply because he himself does not wish to speak of the spirit to such an extent that he would deny it; but he sees only the well-known primary factors. He constructs the world entirely according to the scientific way of thinking. He is very intelligent; he is witty. That is why he has also come to realize—and this is a significant point in the book *On the Mechanism of Spiritual Life*—what the scientific worldview actually means for people today. He asks himself: What do I have, then, if I adopt the worldview that today’s scientists can construct for themselves? And he arrives at the answer: Then I have nothing but ghosts in my head; I gain no reality; I have only notions of a ghostly nature. — Strangely enough, this is true: natural science produces nothing but ghosts. When it speaks of the atom, it is actually an atomic ghost; when it speaks of the molecule, it is a molecular ghost; when it speaks of natural laws and natural forces, these are all ghost-like. Everything is a ghost, even the law of causality. For the law of causality, as it is understood today, thrives on the great delusion that the subsequent always arises from the preceding—which is not the case at all. Imagine a first, a second, and a third event: these need not arise from one another; the second need not arise from the first, nor the third from the second. Rather, the successive events can be like waves surging up from an entirely different element of reality, and for each subsequent event, you would have to seek the deeper causes somewhere entirely other than in what merely preceded it. I have also proven all of this philosophically over the course of decades. You need only truly study my work *Truth and Science* and my *Philosophy of Freedom*, and then you will see that all of this can be proven philosophically and strictly scientifically. Wahle then summarized this with the following judgment: The natural-scientific worldview is fundamentally rooted in the conception of a ghostly worldview. And that is true. Humanity today does not have a conception of reality, but only a conception of ghosts, no matter how much humanity today may wish to avoid cultivating a superstition in ghosts. This cultivation of ghosts has, in fact, taken refuge in the scientific worldview and misleads people because they believe they are standing within full reality. This is the revenge of the World Spirit. But the nature of humanity is such that one thing never comes without the other.

[ 21 ] What we form today as an image of nature—as a phantom image of nature—is an intellectual construct. But a person’s soul quality never takes on a certain character without the other soul qualities also changing in a corresponding way. As we construct a ghostly image of nature through the natural sciences, our inner character of will also changes, and as a result—something that people today do not see because it is too subtle for today’s coarse observation, but which nevertheless exists— because our external view is ghostly, our will becomes nightmarish, in that this finer aspect of the soul emerges from similar psychological depths as the inarticulate form of movement—and even the form of speech—that occurs under the influence of a nightmare. And such a nightmare afflicting humanity accompanies all social life, accompanies education, as our ghostly image of nature. Our social life today is still a nightmare because our view of nature is a phantom. One thing follows from the other. The convulsive nature of the restlessness that has taken hold of humanity today—across nearly the entire globe—is a consequence of this inner life, this ghostly conception of nature, and the resulting psychological nightmare-like pressure on the world of the will and the world of emotions.

[ 22 ] This is what will lead to the cultural heritage—which has been preserved in the East as a result of its ancient spirituality—turning against the West, which has primarily developed the very qualities I have spoken of today. The further one travels toward the West, the more people live under the unnatural influence of a ghostly image of nature on the one hand, and under a convulsive, nightmare-like antisocial nature on the other. The East, with its ancient spirituality, will rise up against this, and that will define the character of the spiritual war that will follow the physical war. And the coming generation must live amid this turmoil. Yet it is also amid this turmoil that what is called social organization must take shape. Therefore, there is no other remedy than to allow the capacities inherent in the human soul to develop to their fullest through social life. But this is possible only if the social organism is structured into distinct parts. For only by allowing each part—the economic, the legal, and the spiritual—to develop in its own way can they attain a higher unity in the future. The worst mistake would be to believe that a dichotomy would lead to anything. Some people today talk about developing economic life and political life separately. That would lead to nothing other than these two—the economic and the political spheres—sabotaging one another; for within both would lie the restless element of the spirit, which can develop independently only when set apart as a third component. The spiritual force of economic life would undermine the spiritual force of state life, and the spiritual force of state life would undermine the spiritual force of economic life. That is why it is essential to truly focus on this threefold division and not believe that one can make do with a compromise in the form of a dichotomy. What matters is the threefold structure of the social organism. In the near future, the most individual aspects of life will unite with the greatest aspects of life. Even today, anyone who wishes to can encounter the following phenomena.

[ 23 ] In Anglo-American circles—as I have mentioned before—people were already speaking of this global conflagration, of this world war, as early as the 1880s, because, even if in a Western, self-centered way, they were nonetheless far-sighted and took the driving forces of history into account. I have not traced it any further back, but it is enough to know that as early as the 1880s, people in England were speaking in similar terms about a world war—not only that it would come, but that it—I am quoting the words that were spoken verbatim— —would lead to socialist experiments in Central and Eastern Europe, which Western Europe would not tolerate because it did not want to provide the groundwork for them. These are all facts. I am not speaking here of guilt or fault, and one must stick to the facts. Everything that has come to pass to this day has, after all, developed out of quite significant underlying currents. The beginning of the socialist experiment in Russia is, after all, a reality. It has failed today, as you know; it can be regarded as a failure. Its defenders are, as people generally are, always more papal than the Pope—always more Leninist than Lenin himself; for Lenin already knows quite well today that he cannot make any further progress with what he has brought upon himself. And why can’t he make any headway? Because he failed to establish a free intellectual life in its own right. If one wishes to take social life as far as Lenin has taken it, one needs a free intellectual life alongside it; otherwise, the rest of social life becomes bureaucratically ossified into impossibility. Today, the Russian experiment has already proven that intellectual life must be free. But one must understand this fact. And if Central Europe refuses to understand the necessity of emancipating intellectual life—especially the school and educational systems—then a very terrible war of ideas will break out between the East and the West.

[ 24 ] Today, the English—who have dealt relatively easily with Central Europe in their foreign policy but have failed to reflect on historical possibilities and impulses—must ask themselves: How will we deal with India? — That need not be our concern, but it will be a very significant concern for Anglo-American policy in the near future, for the Indians will demand socialization—but of a kind the Europeans can scarcely imagine. For one thing, the stomachs of an enormous portion of the Indian people are growling; for another, among a large portion of this people—mysteriously supported by all the demons that accompany the legacy of ancient spirituality—there lives the cry: “Away with England!” And England ceases to be England the moment it no longer has India. But this will not be a simple process; it will be a process that will unfold in a very significant way. Sleepy souls may well sleep through it. One cannot sleep through a physical war, but people may well manage to sleep through the spiritual war; for today’s so-called cultured people have such a strong tendency to slumber that they sleep through the most important things. But the matter will unfold nonetheless. And with all the forces that lie deep within the soul, humanity will stand at the very heart of this struggle.

[ 25 ] The educator and teacher must be the first to realize that we are heading toward such times. And from this realization, from this sense of what is to come, the strongest impulses must emerge—impulses that pedagogy, education, and instruction will need in the near future. It is not from sophistical speculations about pedagogical and methodological minutiae, but from an understanding of the great cultural currents of the present that what must shine into the educational and instructional systems of the very near future must be born.