The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eleventh Lecture

[ 1 ] It seems that at this present moment, the question should arise in every soul: Where is humanity headed? Where is humanity headed within the so-called civilized world? It is, after all, the events of the present that must undoubtedly plant this question in every soul. Therefore, in the first part of our reflections today, we will address this question: Where is humanity headed?

[ 2 ] We have, after all, often spoken of purely human distinctions—of the differences that exist between the spiritual dispositions of people in the West and those of people in the East. And I have already hinted at this in a public lecture at the Siegle House: how the current armed conflict—which is by no means over—will be followed by the great spiritual struggle between the West and the East, and how this struggle will be one of the greatest and most significant struggles that humanity will have to wage in the course of its earthly existence.

[ 3 ] A truth that has often been expressed here and throughout our anthroposophical movement should be awakened again and again in the soul so that we may come to understand the human being and his tasks, and that is the truth that in the fifteenth century a radical transformation took place within European humanity—a radical transformation that was initially scarcely noticed by people, but which is very clearly evident in spiritual life, in soul life, and in the outer physical realm—in the human body and in the prevailing laws of economic life. In all three areas, the emergence of human independence—the emergence of the human conscious soul—is clearly discernible around the middle of the fifteenth century. Since that time, humanity has had to gradually break free from earlier patriarchal conditions in order to fully grasp its humanity, to rely on its own judgment, its own feelings, and on the will born of its own judgment and feelings. Since that time, however, human development has—if I may use the expression—essentially forked; that is to say, humanity stands at a crossroads. Whereas up until the mid-fifteenth century humanity had more or less proceeded straight ahead, as if guided by its instincts, from that point onward in the fifteenth century, humanity can turn either right or left; the path has forked. Such developments do not take place overnight; they cause old legacies to flourish in particular. And there are certainly old legacies remaining from those stages of human development that were experienced before the fifteenth century. But alongside these, certain characteristics of humanity have also developed—characteristics that are, in fact, natural traits which have only really entered into human development since the fifteenth century.

[ 4 ] We can, however, describe in a very specific way what this turning point in the fifteenth century actually consists of. As you know—and I have often emphasized this—the history taught in schools is merely a fable convenue, something that has very little to do with the inner development of humanity. One must look beyond that to what actually happened if one wants to understand the development of humanity. If we now wish to describe what was actually unique about the mid-fifteenth century, we must say: Up until the mid-fifteenth century, human beings lived more or less instinctively, carrying within their blood all manner of ancient, atavistic abilities from the dawn of humanity. This instinctive life must be replaced by a life of soul-spiritual consciousness. And this soul-spiritually conscious life was actually meant to become the characteristic way of life of modern humanity. The purely animal instincts, which arise from physicality, were to be transformed into soul-spiritual instincts. There are many forces that seek to thwart this development of humanity toward the soul-spiritual. I have often emphasized that, for example, in the year 869 at the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, the Catholic Church, by establishing a dogma, forbade people—specifically Catholics—from reflecting on the spirit at all. At that time, the spirit was effectively forbidden to European humanity, insofar as it belonged to the Catholic Church. This was, in a sense, the first act of resistance against what is most essential for humanity—the emergence of spirituality for civilized humanity. This is also why this civilized humanity must work its way toward the Spirit, must struggle against all those forces that oppose the Spirit—forces that, in a sense, would like to hold humanity back in the dullness of the old, instinctive life. What will befall humanity if it seeks to continue living solely on the legacy of the old—of what has actually been overcome—manifests itself in a wide variety of ways. It manifests itself in various ways in the West, in Central Europe, and in the East.

[ 5 ] We must first ask ourselves, however: What actually lies in store for humanity if it refuses to turn toward a spiritual life, toward an understanding of spiritual life? And as I have already mentioned in earlier lectures, one particularly characteristic aspect of human development is that in ancient times—for example, during the era of pre-Christian cultures—people remained capable of development well into a much later age than they are today. Today, as I have often indicated, a person is capable of development only up to about the age of twenty-seven. That is the outer limit of their capacity for development. They then retain the powers they have developed up to the age of twenty-seven and allow them to vegetate on in their physical body. Just consider how capable of development a human being is in the first years of life. During this time, they go through everything that leads them to the important phase of teething, around the age of seven. People simply become numb to what is happening within them; they do not pay attention to it. But inner revolutions are taking place within a person as they approach teething around the age of seven. Internal revolutions take place again within a person as they approach sexual maturity around the ages of fourteen or fifteen. External history makes no mention of such internal upheavals in human beings. The thoroughly Catholicized external history of Europe says nothing about it, and it knows why. Such upheavals took place in ancient humanity—in pre-Christian humanity—well into much later stages of life. Human beings were capable of development for a long time; and thus could use the developed powers of his later years to penetrate, with clear vision, into realms of the world that he cannot penetrate at all today if he wishes to remain within the ordinary methods of education and ordinary external life—because he is capable of development only until the age of twenty-seven, after which he allows what has developed within him to become encrusted and ossified. As a result, people actually grow old prematurely in their inner souls and simply vegetate. What has been taken from human beings by natural forces—and has clearly been taken since the mid-fifteenth century—must be replaced through conscious work on their souls. And if they do not replace it, human beings can only rush headlong toward a state that, time and again, ossifies and mechanizes their later lives, and so on. These are inner laws of development just as much as the laws of development in the external natural world; it is just that people today shy away from truly developing such strong thinking and insight that they can penetrate to these inner laws of human development. But they must penetrate them if certain things are not to occur in the development of humanity—things that will otherwise most certainly occur.

[ 6 ] According to this law of development, if humanity continues to develop as it has, it faces ongoing catastrophes—catastrophes of such a nature that the current catastrophe, which has been unfolding since 1914, is only the beginning. These catastrophes cannot be averted with the means that humanity has developed as part of its ancient heritage. For humanity is heading toward a development that, in the future, would render its entire spiritual life useless for the later years of its existence. Gradually, people would come to dominate the civilized world who, in their youth, display all manner of spiritual and soul-related enthusiasms and passions, but which then fade away, leaving them to vegetate soullessly into old age. Humanity would become soulless; humanity would become mechanized.

[ 7 ] Anyone who has taken the time to reflect on life, especially in our time, has been able to make observations in everyday life that point in this direction. I can tell you that, particularly during the last third of the nineteenth century, I was able to observe time and again how emerging talents—and even geniuses—developed. No phenomenon was more common than that of people who developed as poets, artists, and even scientists at a young age, only to fade in their twenties and then produce nothing of significance thereafter. Such things are not usually observed, but they are there; we simply do not train ourselves to make such observations. Such observations, however, reveal what threatens humanity in our time if it fails to grasp that which can arise only from spiritual and psychological development itself. And this manifests itself in the most diverse ways across the geographical territories inhabited today by civilized humanity.

[ 8 ] The peoples of the West, in a certain sense, possess strong instincts. Thanks to these strong instincts, the peoples of the West will be spared from this withering away of the spiritual-soul aspect for quite some time yet. I would say that instincts still arise from the animal nature of the peoples of the West, which protect them from soullessness and ossification. That is why these peoples of the West have less need to cultivate spiritual and soul life than the peoples of Central Europe and the East. The peoples of Central Europe and the East could do nothing worse than to imitate Western culture in any area. For if they seek to imitate, they imitate something for which they have no instincts—something that can never flourish within them. And it was, in essence, our misfortune—our self-inflicted misfortune—that we have gone so far in imitating the West in the most diverse areas of life. And in certain circles in the West that are initiated into these matters, people are well aware of everything I have just told you. That is why great importance is attached to forcibly de-spiritualizing and de-spiritualizing the East, which, due to its spiritual characteristics, naturally resists such de-spiritualization and de-spiritualization. Hence England’s efforts toward India, working there toward the greatest possible de-spiritualization and de-spiritualization.

[ 9 ] You see, this is the course culture takes when humanity does not take charge of its own spiritual and emotional well-being. Then we will witness certain democratic and social ideals flourishing instinctively in the West, while in the East, the process that has already begun will continue. This development in the East must surely inspire us to reflect deeply. We, who for decades have consistently emphasized that the future of Europe has its source in the Russian national spirit, in the national spirit of the East—we, who have always pointed to all the fruitful forces that must arise in Eastern Europe—must now take special care to observe this East. We can only observe it correctly if we take a good, hard look at ourselves.

[ 10 ] We in Central Europe, emerging from the developments that followed the Thirty Years’ War, entered into a certain intellectual idealism that flourished in the works of Lessing, Herder, Schiller, and Goethe, as well as in the German philosophers, and which also found its reflection in German music. With this, what is commonly called German Idealism flourished. This German Idealism reached its peak in Flegel’s philosophy. What, then, is this philosophy of Hegel, which developed out of Goetheanism in Central Europe as the most intrinsically sound system of thought—what is this philosophy of Hegel? Well, Hegel’s philosophy merely takes to its highest point what was already alive in Lessing, Herder, and especially in Goethe. And this must be clearly recognized, particularly today, in this time of crisis. What was alive in this German idealism? Yes, it came to life one last time—it came to life one last time in a magnificent way—something that, in the form in which it came to life back then, must not remain within humanity. German Idealism must, in a certain sense, be regarded as a very beautiful, magnificent, and powerful sunset. And anyone who views it as anything other than a magnificent, powerful sunset is viewing it incorrectly; such a person is sinning against the spirit of human progress. This becomes particularly evident in Hegel.

[ 11 ] It is difficult for people to delve into Hegel’s system of thought, which has been driven to the very heights of abstraction. But anyone who does so as a human being—not as a university professor, but as a human being—can form their own judgment as to where the human spirit has actually been driven by developing Hegelianism out of Goetheanism. Hegel explains, on the basis of Goetheanism, human reason—which reigns in phenomena—as the truly divine-spiritual. Hegel places human reason on the highest throne; he places the reason that reigns in reality on the highest throne. Essentially, he is merely carrying out what Goethe had already done. Now the peculiar thing—if one truly immerses oneself as a human being in Goethe and Hegel, one realizes this—now the peculiar thing is that spirit reigns in Lessing, in Herder, in Schiller and Goethe, in Hegel, but that this spirit reigning within them knows nothing of the Spirit. This is something people will have to understand; yet today it still sounds so foreign to people’s ears that they understand absolutely nothing of it. It is Spirit that reigned in this German idealism; it is Spirit, but it knows nothing of Spirit, it does not deal with Spirit, it does not speak of Spirit.

[ 12 ] Hegelian reason is first developed in logic—that is, in ordinary human thought, which becomes a way of thinking about the world; it is developed in the philosophy of nature, where all natural phenomena are governed in accordance with reason; it is developed in the qualities of the human soul, in the qualities of human history, in what humanity has produced as religion, as art, as science—but then it ends. This philosophy does not speak of the Spirit as Spirit. It is entirely Spirit; it speaks of everything that is not Spirit in a spiritual way; but it says nothing about the Spirit. It is the last twilight, the last beautiful, magnificent twilight of that which, for all of humanity, had already set as sunlight by the middle of the fifteenth century. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt a very special stance toward German idealism in particular. Anyone who wishes to preserve it, who simply wants to take in what Lessing, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller thought, or what Hegel later expressed in magnificent abstract formulas—anyone who merely wants to reflect on this, who, so to speak, wants to be a student of this era in the ordinary sense, is sinning against the progress of humanity. We cannot simply carry over into the culture and development of modern times—as knowledge, as something absorbed, as something digested—that which shone as the twilight of humanity, which still bears within it the last vestiges of the light of Greek and Roman civilization, unless we wish it to have a destructive effect. This thought already penetrated my soul when I was a very young man. That is why, in the 1980s, I did not pursue Goetheanism in the same way as others—by writing about Goethe or by historically processing what Goethe scholars, for example, had historically processed—but rather I tried simply to take in Goetheanism and develop it further. I wrote my epistemology of the Goethean worldview for the purpose of demonstrating how one can think and feel about the world in the spirit of Goethe. Yes, this takes into account everything I just mentioned. It takes into account that we can learn from the twilight of German idealism how to develop further, but that we do not have to continue this twilight in the form in which it has been historically handed down. We must develop something else spiritually and emotionally from this German idealism than what it directly presents to us. We must learn from it to gather strength to move forward. Therefore, Goetheanism today is not a cult of Goethe, not a veneration of what Goethe directly created, but rather Goetheanism is the reshaped, transformed continuation of what one can develop within oneself by studying Goethe and allowing his ideas to permeate one’s inner being.

[ 13 ] This is even more true of Hegel. Anyone who were a Hegelian today—who sought to spread Hegelianism among humanity in one form or another—would have a stifling effect on the progress of our culture. But whoever makes Hegel’s subtle mode of thought his own innermost spiritual possession and, from there, takes the step that Hegel could not take—into the spirit—is doing the right thing; is doing what serves the progress of humanity. You see, this is our difficult position in the world: that we are least of all Goethian, for example, when we merely parrot Goethe; that we are most Goethian when we can rise to the level of saying: We must do everything differently from how Goethe did it, if we wish to act precisely in Goethe’s spirit; we must do everything differently from how Hegel did and said it if we want to act most effectively in Hegel’s spirit. History already shows us this in a certain way. For Hegel, the Prussian state was the most rational institution in the world, because it seeks reason in all things. “The real is the rational.” Therefore, the state into which he himself had merged as a person was the most rational of all. All universities were good in his eyes; the Central European universities were the centers of the world, and the University of Berlin was the center of the center. These are certainly things that are mysteriously connected to those forces in human development that I have often described in such a way that one cannot surrender to them if one wishes to live a comfortable spiritual life, because these forces lead one inwardly toward all manner of cliffs and abysses, toward transitions and inner upheavals. This is misunderstood by those who today measure the true against the false in Goetheanism and Hegelianism. And such people are certainly not few in number today. And one must become aware of how these people hinder the real progress of humanity.

[ 14 ] A book has been published that is truly written in the spirit of the present, written from the most enlightened spirit of the present, by a man of keen insight and artistic sensibility, Ernst Michel. The book is titled *The Path to Myth*. There is even a willingness to return once again to a spiritual and psychological understanding of life. But how does Ernst Michel assess the path of Goetheanism? You see, there is one passage I must share with you, because it is intrinsically connected to our discussion today. On page 38, he says: “The highest knowledge granted to human beings, according to Goethe, is the intuitive penetration to the primordial phenomena—that is, the intuitive grasp of the formed and manifested world as the moving, surging effect of divine forces. These forces themselves, however, remain hidden from us in their metaphysical essence. Human beings can neither add to nor take away from this; they cannot influence the spiritual realm; they can only enter—or fail to enter—its sphere of influence through contemplation. Not even the greatest human being can transcend this fundamental law of human existence. Theosophy, even in its form as anthroposophy, would have been unreservedly rejected by him (Goethe).”

[ 15 ] So you see, here a person is examining Goethe’s way of thinking. He points to the instinctive element, to the penetration into primordial phenomena, and then says: Theosophy, even in its form as anthroposophy, would have been unreservedly rejected by Goethe. — What thoughts should one have about such matters today, if one truly thinks in the spirit of progress? One must say to oneself: Certainly, theosophy—even in its form as anthroposophy—would have been rejected by Goethe. But to drum it into humanity today in the way it is done here in this book—that is to sin against the progress of humanity. For the issue is not what Goethe would have rejected in his own time and up until his death in 1832, but rather what must take effect today and what Goethe, in his enduring spirituality, wishes to bring forth from within himself. Those, therefore, who look back in such a way are sinning against the true progress of humanity.

[ 16 ] This is the fear of today, but also the hatred of today toward the vibrant, dynamic spiritual life into which we must enter if we are truly to strive for the evolution of humanity. It is therefore no wonder that people who view world evolution in this way fall into one error after another. This is how the author views today’s Expressionist art, and he finds something about this Expressionist art—he speaks very unclearly, after all—but he fails to realize how this Expressionist art, in all its clumsiness, is nonetheless a beginning of something new, a beginning above all of something that Ernst Michel would never even dream of. That is why Ernst Michel says: “Symbolism was followed by Expressionism as the second movement that consciously sought to lead artistic creation back to its highest purpose: to be a shaped confession, an expression of a spiritual worldview.”

[ 17 ] Expressionism is very difficult to understand today; at times it is anti-artistic—not merely unartistic—but it is a clumsy way of seeking an artistic embodiment of the inner spiritual realm. In light of this, Ernst Michel finds the following judgment justified: “Transcendentalism, as the new worldview manifests itself, does not, however, draw upon a new religious revelation, but rather upon the philosophical teachings of Henri Bergson and the new gnosis of Rudolf Steiner, which proclaim that intuition is a latent spiritual power within human beings, destined to take the place of religious revelation. Through the power of intuition—of contemplative consciousness—human beings are to be enabled to overcome the intellect and its illusory knowledge and to penetrate directly to the spiritual essence of things.”

[ 18 ] At a point like this, one must, so to speak, catch the person red-handed as he grows out of the present in a skewed way. For here, what our anthroposophy is is conflated with what amounts to the clichéd rhetoric of Henri Bergson—a rhetoric brought to the final stages of its development—who muddles everything that constitutes a worldview, and who strikes one as resembling that well-known figure who is always revolving around himself, trying to catch his own ponytail, who refers everywhere to intuitions, but never arrives at an intuition, who always talks about the need to penetrate to the soul, but takes no step toward advancing to a true knowledge of the spirit. This is how difficult it becomes for people today to distinguish the fruitful from the fruitless. We in Central Europe have the opportunity to make this distinction if we adhere to the great distinction between Goethe as he was until 1832 and Goethe as he must work within us. And the same applies to Hegel. For when they work within us in a transformed form, their spirituality becomes a source of inspiration for us to take the path into the spiritual world.

[ 19 ] What I have just explained to you is at the same time the key to understanding a very, very important phenomenon of the nineteenth century—one that has not prompted people to reflect on it more deeply precisely because people today are averse to deep reflection. But isn’t it peculiar that Hegel—the dialectician who always spoke of the “Spirit” in abstract terms—should have as his most brilliant student Karl Marx, who was entirely materialistic and concerned only with the material and the economic? Right in the middle of the nineteenth century, extreme idealism suddenly gave way to the most spiritless materialism, and it is not Hegel but Karl Marx who has become the guiding spirit to which the most forward-looking people of the present day adhere. We have not yet been in a position—because we have been slumbering in the heart of Europe—to truly examine this underlying fact at its very foundations. One can only examine it by asking oneself: Suppose the spirit of Karl Marx were to spread throughout all of Europe—what would become of Europe?

[ 20 ] One must now begin with the East. There, the East—from whose national soul the true spirit of modern civilization is to emerge—would be heading toward a fate that can be described as follows: The mechanization of the spirit—in an economic papacy, the complete mechanization of the spirit—the stifling of all productivity and freedom of the spirit within a vast accounting system spanning a vast territory. Furthermore, the “vegetarianization” of the human soul. This “vegetarianization” of the soul would make itself felt particularly in the realm of legal philosophy and political life. Oh, it is interesting how, in our age, the vague but genuinely Russian doctrine of the 7o/stoi has recently emerged from the spirit of the East—a spirit that strives to move forward—along with Dostoevsky’s profound insight into the soul, but also that which has been less observed in Central Europe, and which I would like to call the Russian heroism of the legal ideal. This Russian heroism of the idea of justice was widespread among many people before the catastrophe of the World War broke out. These Russian heroes no longer thought of their own personal selves at all; they thought only of humanity itself, of what ought to be just in human relations. And they would have gone not only through fire but also through physical death for the realization of this ideal, and to a large extent they did indeed go through death for the realization of the concept of justice. And so, even in other areas of Russian life before the outbreak of the catastrophe of the World War—oppressed by the horrors the world had experienced under tsarism and imperialism—one finds a certain heroism of the soul in the Russian people. And now there is a flood of forces seeking to mechanize the spirit and reduce the soul to a vegetative state; so that, if this were to continue, the Russian East would live through the course of human development for centuries with a sleeping, numbed soul. It would also sleep through what it itself could have given to the world. Furthermore, in this European East, there is a rush toward the animalization of bodies, the birth of animal instincts within them. |

[ 21 ] That is what the ancient spirit of humanity would impose upon this unfortunate Europe—first in the East—if people did not bring themselves to embrace the spirit of progress. For it is not progress that is now to be carried eastward; it is the most reactionary of currents, born entirely out of that which was already destined to perish for humanity by the middle of the fifteenth century. What lives on today in Russian Leninism is the continuation of the spirit that dogmatically abolished the Spirit at the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in the year 869. One must see through this. And whatever rebels against this out of a true democratic-social spirit is precisely what counts on the real progress of humanity. For this most reactionary force—even if it is not conscious of it—seeks the mechanization of the spirit, the vegetation of the soul, and the animalization of bodily instincts, which would find ever greater expression in views concerning blood. It does no good to close one’s eyes to these things. Anyone who wishes to speak today in the spirit of truth must look these things squarely in the face, whatever the consequences; they must also unreservedly look squarely in the face those things in which even a large number of people, in a deluded manner, seek salvation. And I would like to say: only in the most extreme case does this Russian East show where humanity is rushing toward. It wants to steer, with the old spirit, toward the mechanization of spiritual life by allowing the state to completely take over the school system. It wants to hurtle toward the de-spiritualization, the “vegetation” of the soul, by seeking to dull the true sense of justice and replace it with the bookkeeping of a state that is seemingly, but not truly, socialized. And it believes it is leading people toward a natural human life by unleashing the most savage, animalistic, physical instincts that human beings carry within themselves.

[ 22 ] This is the task that must arise from our deepest distress in Central Europe: to see clearly on this point as well. To see clearly how we must internalize the great era of German idealism, how we must transform and reshape what that great era of German idealism represents, so that people will not—as would begin to happen in Russia—walk around like living corpses once they reach a certain age. In the future, individual human abilities would flare up only in young people, and all the elderly would wander about like living corpses. And culture would die out, for since the fifteenth century, the earth, in its own way, has had nothing more to offer humanity; people must seek it out for themselves if they wish to flourish on earth. We in Central Europe have the task of showing humanity—to the West, which can achieve only the development of body and soul, and to the East, which can achieve only the development of spirit and soul—we in Central Europe have the task of showing humanity how development proceeds through body, soul, and spirit. We must once again reestablish that realm of the spirit which was undermined by dogmatic Catholicism in 869 at the Eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople. Otherwise, along with the spirit of humanity, the soul will also be lost, and humanity will become a living corpse on this earth, since the earth would no longer be able to provide any life force. Hence the constant search for the spirit, hence the necessity of a true worldview of freedom—not the kind of freedom that can be associated with the blackest reactionaryism, but the freedom that is born of the spirit of modern humanity.

[ 23 ] Central European humanity was predisposed, in the most extreme dilution, to bring forth the Spirit in Hegel and Goethe just enough for the Spirit to function as Spirit, but could no longer grasp the Spirit; at most, it could symbolically allude to it in Goethe’s “Fairy Tale” and in the second part of “Faust,” in Hegel’s case, by describing the world in spiritual terms, yet in such a way that this spiritual description of the world remained spiritless. If one regards Hegel as a man who can speak of the world entirely from the standpoint of the Spirit, yet at the same time as the most spiritless man ever born, then one has understood Hegel correctly. But this legacy of spiritlessness is precisely embedded in Central European development. That is why, toward the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, we have slipped into absolute spiritlessness. We had entered a state of affairs that no longer reflected on life at all. And out of this failure to reflect on life—out of the fact that people had weaned themselves of all thoughts about life—what occurred in 1914 could be described as follows: in July 1914, by the end of the month, it was as if all thought in Central Europe had been confiscated by demonic spirits, so that these confiscated thoughts would not take effect in people’s souls, and so that what then arose could spring forth from the desolate subconscious. For Central Europe, with its two empires, did indeed give the impression in late July 1914 of people acting as though all their thoughts had been confiscated. It is not enough today to delude ourselves about these matters. These things must be viewed today in the spirit of truth, and this spirit of truth must at the same time be nourished by what is necessary for the further development of humanity.

[ 24 ] Therefore, one must also recognize what consequences a worldview of humanity—one derived solely from the scientific worldview—would bring, from that scientific worldview that seeks to comprehend the entire world and which has since produced its absurd, its idiotic offshoots in the monistic associations, where nothing but empty phrases were spoken, because there was nothing else to say. Let’s suppose this scientific worldview, which has crept into all social thought and feeling, were to take hold of humanity. What would be the consequence? Well, one must understand what the distinctive feature of the scientific worldview is. You see, Haeckel was a magnificent man—truly a magnificent man, full of life, a brilliant fellow. I may have already told you this story from my own experience: We were sitting once in Weimar—I was at one end of the table with the old publisher and bookseller Hertz from Berlin, and Haeckel was at the other end. Well, Hertz, who was a man of the old school, said something along these lines during the conversation: “Yes, what Haeckel teaches is leading humanity to ruin; it’s a disaster for humanity.” — Haeckel, as I said, was sitting at the other end of the table. Hertz continued speaking, then Haeckel’s charming, handsome appearance caught his eye, and he asked, “Who is that over there?” — He was told that it was Haeckel. “No,” he exclaimed, “that can’t be—evil people can’t laugh like that!” — You see, in such manifestations, the forces that came from the past clashed with those that were striving toward the new. But a peculiar phenomenon must be noted: such people, who first engage in natural science in the laboratory or with nets in the sea, examining jellyfish as Haeckel did so extensively, who conduct first-hand investigations in the laboratory—these can be inwardly lively people; they can be fully present with their soul and even with their spirit. The students, however, already in the third generation, reveal themselves to be people utterly devoid of spirit and soul. This is the peculiarity of the scientific worldview: it drains people of spirit and soul, and it numbs them. But because it cannot yet drive this depletion so far in those who conduct the research firsthand, the original natural scientists are often highly likable fellows. The next student, who still has the teacher’s image before him, is not entirely devoid of spirit; the third, who is the student’s student, is usually already a spiritless and soulless fellow, a monist.

[ 25 ] But there is something else connected to this monism. If one allows this monism to permeate one’s soul—if one allows the spirit of modern natural science to permeate one’s soul at all—then one becomes a stranger to other human beings, and antisocial impulses develop within one. Sympathies between people fade, while antipathies grow ever stronger. That is why I have had to state it here so often: No matter how great the triumphs of natural science may be on the basis of nature—it ruins human nature, the human being, from its very foundations, for it generates antisocial impulses and creates chasms between people. We already stand today at such chasms between human beings, as evidenced by the fact that today people can only to a very limited extent understand one another, or truly immerse themselves in one another.

[ 26 ] What must take the place of what has just been described? It must be replaced by that spiritual development which makes its way through the assimilation of what you will find described—perhaps in a somewhat limited way—in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. This is also a book on the education of humanity. This is what should have been the starting point at the beginning of the twentieth century: speaking to people about how they should rely on themselves, on their own strength. Such a matter must also be made pedagogically fruitful. Such a matter is the foundation of Central European pedagogy.

[ 27 ] Well, it is impossible that the powers described in *How Does One Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* could be cultivated in any public school.

[ 28 ] Establish public schools of any kind, and people will be driven away from precisely what is meant to develop within their souls and minds. This can only flourish if spiritual life is placed on its very own free foundation, if spiritual life is placed under self-governance. Therefore, this return of spiritual life to self-governance is the fundamental question facing humanity at the present time. For through this return of spiritual life to self-governance, what has been lost most of all in humanity’s scientific education will be restored: the prevalence of an artistic perception of the world, from which an imaginative perception of the world will then emerge. For human development has reached a certain point: when people face one another today, they can no longer recognize one another at all, because physicality has already withered away too much for that. They can only recognize people if they can form an image, an imagination, of them. And direct personal interaction—and everything that is meant to be there for human beings—will increasingly have to be based on images, on the imaginations that people can form of one another, and on perceiving the soul-spiritual aspect within the human being. The very impulses driving human development must undergo a fundamental change. And this must also be stated clearly: Suppose the way of thinking that dominates all of humanity today—the materialistic way of thinking—were to prevail—we are now at a cultural crossroads—suppose this materialistic worldview were to prevail: then, starting from Russia, all of humanity would become mechanized in spirit, vegetative in soul, and animalistic in body, because the development of the Earth itself is driving this forward. Earth’s evolution gave rise to the life-giving human forces; you can trace this all the way into the fifteenth century, when even prices in Central Europe were normal—the prices of individual economic goods. This is merely obscured by history, which is a conventional fable. The Earth could provide humanity only up to the fifteenth century with what people could find within themselves unconsciously; only up to that point could it serve as a catalyst for human development. Since then, human beings have been dependent on working their way toward a pictorial, spiritual vision of the world and of other human beings in order to once again achieve genuine human interaction. If the materialistic worldview were to prevail, what I have just described would come to pass; desolation would flood across the earth, and the war of all against all would be accelerated.

[ 29 ] There is only one way out of this state: if people turn toward spirituality—that is, toward pictorial contemplation, toward the imaginative; if they are able to replace that which came from Greek culture and was beautiful in it—the birth of the spirit—with the recognition of the spirit in the world; if they replace what was lived in Roman culture—and what spread devastatingly throughout Europe from Roman culture—namely, the bureaucratic mindset; if they know how to replace this with free, lawful human interaction; and if they know how to replace what flourishes particularly through instincts in the West with an internally organized economic life.

[ 30 ] But for this to happen, it is necessary to understand, from the perspective of the humanities, what is recognized through the natural sciences. After all, the world could not move forward if there were no free intellectual workers in it. Just imagine: if nothing intellectual were produced anymore, how could the world possibly progress? Things must be invented; people must live through art, through a free worldview—otherwise, humanity would become stagnant. Under the mechanization of the spirit, humanity would become stagnant. But on what, then, is free intellectual creation based? Free intellectual creation is based on our preserving for our entire lives certain qualities that we otherwise develop normally only in childhood. When someone is as old as the elderly Goethe and is still finishing *Faust*, he is writing with the very soul forces he acquired in the first third of his life; these must remain, they must be preserved. In the normal course of development, these qualities fade away today. In Goethe’s time, and in German Idealism, this was still a legacy, a twilight, a final stroke of good fortune in the development of humanity. Now it must be nurtured—nurtured within a spiritual life that truly focuses on people’s immediate individual abilities and develops them appropriately through spiritual pedagogy.

[ 31 ] And on what, then, is all economic life based in spiritual and psychological terms? This may still sound strange today, but all economic life is based solely on economic experience and on having been immersed in economic life; and it is therefore best developed by those soul forces that have been present in life the longest—namely, the soul forces of the last third of life. Just as one develops true art only through the very earliest soul forces, so one develops a true economic life through the final soul forces. But if people cannot, through so-called normal development, enter an age in which we all decline and can no longer be young, we will not be able to engage in economic life—no matter how socialist a state or how socialist a form of social organization might be. For this, it is necessary that we consciously immerse ourselves in nurturing the qualities of old age in human beings—not so that we ourselves grow old with them, but so that we can don them like a garment. To do this, we must grasp them in our imagination; we must grasp them in a mental image. We are called upon to grasp, on the one hand, the forces of youth in imagery and imagination, and, on the other hand, the forces of old age in imagination. Humanity is compelled to educate itself toward such a goal. And it cannot educate itself unless it takes the whole of life completely seriously. Today, people treat life as if it were, in essence, already over once a person approaches their late twenties. For when a person reaches their late twenties, they are incredibly wise; they cannot become any wiser, they can do everything, and they can judge everything so well that one could not judge better. Humanity knows nothing of the fact that later life still holds possibilities and draws upon new forces, because it does not want to develop these forces—because it renounces them. But we will all have to learn how to make use of the forces of youth, of middle age, and of old age. But we will only learn this within the threefold social organism, when we separate these things, and not when we jumble everything together and melt it into a chaotic mass, as the most reactionary developments of recent times have done, and as is often desired—to the detriment of humanity, as a transgression against the spirit of human progress. Our education must spring entirely from a genuine understanding of spiritual life. We must, for example, come to completely eliminate hasty judgment within ourselves, especially when it comes to life itself. Quick-wittedness is certainly nice; it can certainly be present, but it should only be there so that we can make jokes and be amusing. One must be aware that quick-wittedness finds its purpose and goal in the expression of the phrase. Irony and wit can indeed be lovely, but they must, of course, be phrases. We certainly do not wish to despise the phrase where it is justified. We should appreciate artistically crafted phrases, but they must not appear in the wrong place; they must not appear where the word is meant to be imbued with life. We can only accustom ourselves to this if, for example, we look seriously at the following: There is a person who tells me something that I don’t like—or even something I do like. A certain revelation takes place from person to person. We are quick to judge this. If people could get into the habit of, the next day—after twenty-four hours, when they have slept in the meantime and their mental and emotional state has thus become entirely different—if people could get into the habit of picturing the whole situation again: This person said this and that, you are standing opposite them—and then judging, then something important would happen. Then what is valuable is not primarily that one judges differently; rather, the soul power that always allows what happens to a person between falling asleep and waking up to play a part—that is cultivated, and developing this power little by little is what is particularly necessary for the development of imagination. This conscious immersion into an unconscious life will bring forth within humanity the imaginative world and the world that can actually form the foundation of social life.

[ 32 ] Likewise, it is necessary to recognize certain things that must be recognized at some point. You see, as strange as it may sound today, people usually fail to grasp what is for the good or the harm of humanity when it manifests itself within humanity. If I tell someone today about the law of corresponding boiling points in physics, he believes me not because it is logical, but because he has been accustomed for a few centuries to believing in scientific laws. But if I speak today of a spiritual law that is just as well-founded as a scientific law, they do not believe it, because it must first have been known for a few centuries. Yet we do not have time to wait that long. People must consciously accustom themselves to the upheavals of living life. “People need discoveries and inventions; that is a law of nature. When such discoveries—and especially inventions, including those of a technical nature—are made by people who are not yet in their forties, then these inventions have a retarding effect on humanity as a whole; in fact, they hold humanity back in some way, above all hindering humanity’s moral progress. The most beautiful inventions can be made by young people: this does not contribute to the progress of humanity. If a person has reached their forties and preserves their inventive spirit up to that point for what is to be accomplished in the physical world, then they imbue the invention with moral content as well, and it thus contributes to the moral progress of humanity. When something like this is stated, it seems like madness to humanity, since humanity does not recognize spiritual laws at all. But it is a spiritual law that a person only becomes mature enough to contribute to the progress of humanity through their inventive power—in the spiritual and, in particular, the technical realm—once they have reached the age of forty. We must take the laws of human development into account to this extent. Only when humanity resolves not merely to ask, “How do we organize this or that economic institution?” but when it resolves to ask, “What must be cultivated spiritually and emotionally among human beings? What must be taken into account?”—only then can salvation for humanity be expected.

[ 33 ] The church has long enough operated out of people’s selfishness. They have worked together quietly, this church and this state. I said just the other day that people today are actually only allowed to develop freely when they are very young children, because at that stage they are still too “unclean” for the state. But as soon as they are “clean,” they are accepted by the state and groomed—not to become human beings, but to become civil servants. Yet people find consolation in this by having their selfishness exploited to the utmost. They are guaranteed a pension until their death once they can no longer work. For these civil-servant souls, this is a very powerful driving force behind their aspirations. And then, when the state no longer provides for him, the church takes care of the individual by making his soul immortal without any effort on his part. The individual is first assured of a pension; his soul is assured after death. All of this is built on selfishness. In the future, things will not be built on selfishness. Why did Aristotelian Catholicism conceal from people the fact that their spiritual nature also exists before it enters into being through birth? This Aristotelian Catholicism sought only to capitalize on people’s selfishness, on their fear of death, and on their desire for assurance that they would be immortal souls after death. But people are too comfortable with the idea: I have descended from the spiritual world, and what I have received as spirit, I must carry out here on Earth. — This is the most radical idea that must take hold in present-day humanity: that human beings must not view their physical life merely as preparation for life after death, but must also view it as a continuation of a spiritual life prior to birth. Then a person will transform from a lazy individual who wants to do nothing into someone who is conscious that they have a task to carry out on Earth—that they have a mission. Until this idea can take hold in people, there is no way to avoid humanity sinking into materialism.

[ 34 ] With these documents, I ask you to consider what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is actually meant to be for people today, what it is meant to offer them, and how it is meant to function as an ingredient in the contemporary soul for the development of human culture as a whole. With what I have presented today in the first part, I wanted to set before you the picture that would emerge if humanity were to continue living in the traditional way: the picture of the mechanized spirit, the vegetative soul, and the animalized body. I wanted to present this picture first. And in the second part, I wanted to present to you what must happen in order to ascend to a spiritual life—a spiritual life that the old Earth can no longer provide, one that human beings must seek out of their inner freedom. Anyone who reflects on this course of our spiritual life will have the foundation to contemplate the significance and essence of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.