The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Twelfth Lecture

[ 1 ] Eight days ago today, I attempted here to analyze, from a certain perspective, why European culture today stands on the brink of an abyss, why it is heading toward decline. Undoubtedly, the most important thing at present is to gain a full awareness of the forces of decline at work within this European culture. Precisely on this point, it is necessary not to succumb to any kind of illusion, for it is precisely this indulgence in illusions that has brought us into the current European situation—an indulgence in illusions that have always been regarded as an outgrowth of real practice, yet are nothing more than illusions because they are drawn from very narrow contours of experience, from very limited spheres of experience, and because they disregard a truly penetrating experience. However, it would be a completely mistaken view to think that a critique of these facts is sufficient. There can be no question whatsoever that a mere critique of these matters is enough today. Rather, one must see what the actual historical context is. For in a certain sense, through this historical context, one will come to recognize that a temporary decline of European culture is, in a sense—at least in terms of the current of that culture—a necessity, a completely lawful necessity. And one will not achieve reconstruction in any other way than by recognizing this necessity and not stopping at mere criticism. But, as I said, one must also possess the inner honesty to truly strive beyond illusions. Illusions are convenient for everyday life, but they are often destructive to the genuine further development of humanity. And today I would like to present a certain reflection to you, which will, so to speak, serve as a kind of summary of what we have been able to internalize over the years here in the field of spiritual science, and which may be suitable for leading us beyond such illusions of the present and toward reality. For what we must constantly remind ourselves of—when we observe the true character of our contemporary culture without prejudice or bias—is that this contemporary culture is based entirely on the kind of thinking, sensing, and feeling that can flow from the scientific worldview. This scientific worldview has, on the ground for which it is suited, brought about great and tremendous advances for humanity, and it would be utterly foolish to somehow denounce or disparage these great and tremendous advances. Only those who fully acknowledge it—who, from this perspective, stand firmly on scientific ground—have the right, as I have often said, to also look toward what the scientific worldview cannot provide. What natural science gives us—and what, in essence, it seeks solely and exclusively—is a worldview that encompasses nature itself, that encompasses everything one takes into one’s soul when surveying nature through sensory perception and when forming intellectual combinations from individual sensory perceptions. It is precisely through its separation from the human being—through the separation of everything that arises from human nature itself—that this scientific worldview has come to dominate. You will find this discussed in greater detail in my two books, *The Mystery of Man* and *The Mysteries of the Soul*.

[ 2 ] On the other hand, however, one must also recognize that everything that can be gained in this way from scientific observations—no matter how precise it may be (and its precision should by no means be underestimated)—cannot provide any insight into the true nature of the human being. You will find the reasons for this explained in the two books just mentioned. But I want to emphasize just one point here: Those who believe that, in the future, they will be able to achieve something through the mere observation of nature that will also make human beings themselves comprehensible—they believe that by perfecting scientific methods, they will one day be able to understand not only the dead, the inanimate, but also the living. People simply think: So far, we have only succeeded in understanding physical and chemical laws through scientific methods—that is, in understanding what was present in inanimate matter; but they believe that by continuing this kind of research, we will succeed in understanding the structure of the living from its constituent parts, and then we will have grasped the living in a scientific way. The opposite of this is actually true. Anyone who looks closely at precisely what makes scientific methods great—and they are great—knows that they are great precisely because they are limited to understanding the inanimate, the inorganic, and that the more they are perfected, the further they will also move away from a conception of the living. This means that the more we advance on the ground of the natural sciences, the more the living—and with it the very first step toward understanding humanity—slips from our inquiring gaze. That this fact is not merely a scientific matter in the present, nor merely a theoretical one, so to speak, but that it is today a matter of culture—this is precisely what I would like to address in today’s reflection. And I would like to begin with certain historical facts. When we look back at ancient ways of shaping worldviews, when we look back at what lived on there as a legacy of even older worldviews—what lived in Egyptian culture or in the Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian culture, not to mention what lived on as an ancient heritage in the ancient Indian culture, people today find it difficult to grasp this ancient way of knowing from their own inner being. We have wonderful research in this field by Assyriologists and Egyptologists, but all this research is not enough to present anything other than the individual facts to human perception. It is not enough to revive the essence of the ancient way of knowing within us. This is precisely what we have sought on anthroposophical ground, and in doing so, modern humanity will have to free itself from certain prejudices that, as I said, are inevitably attached to it today with a certain inevitability. What confronts modern people when they delve into pre-Christian worldviews appears to them, quite naturally and understandably, as something they can only regard as having been overcome, as nothing more than the outgrowth of a childlike stage of human culture. As I said, for modern people this is not only understandable but even self-evident. But for those who, through a certain inner spiritual development—as you will find outlined in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*—are able to survey the facts brought to light by Assyriologists and Egyptologists with regard to the question: How did the human soul actually relate to the universe, both theoretically and practically, in ancient times? — it becomes clear to them that what existed back then arose from an entirely different inner state of the soul, that it was not merely something childlike, but simply a completely different kind of knowledge. And because it is so completely different—because it is based on something so entirely different from the way we actually view the world—it therefore appears to people as a childlike stage of culture or as wild superstition. In those ancient worldviews, human beings were much more deeply embedded within the cosmos, within the universe, than they are today in their own worldviews. Today, one might find ridiculous everything the ancients said about humanity’s connection to the universe. But one no longer finds it ridiculous when, through a new kind of research, one penetrates certain mysteries that simply cannot be revealed to the scientific worldview.

[ 3 ] Of course, it seems strange to people today when they hear or read that these ancient people saw a connection between the individual forces of our planetary system and what goes on within human beings themselves, or that they saw a connection between the position of the Sun in relation to the individual signs of the zodiac and, in turn, what goes on within human beings. Today, people can certainly conceive that their existence depends on the composition of the air in whatever region they find themselves, on the nature of the soil, and also on the social order within which they live; but they can no longer imagine a more far-reaching dependence of human beings on the great processes of the universe. These great processes of the universe have become for them merely the subject of a mathematical-mechanical analysis. This is how it has come to be since modern times have extracted from Kep/er’s even more comprehensive worldview only that which is subject to a mathematical-mechanical analysis. Indeed, one might say: In a sense, beneath the surface of human culture—which is considered appropriate for our time—lies all manner of things that recall those ancient views. Just look at how many old ideas about humanity’s connection to the universe are being revived today. We are seeing a resurgence of astrological endeavors, theosophical endeavors, and so on. All these endeavors, as I have often described in detail here, are nothing more than the utterly misguided old traditions that have sunk below the level of education required of humanity in the present day. At best, they are crude forms of dilettantism, driven by people who perhaps sense that there is still a truth, that there are mysteries beyond what can be explored by the natural sciences, but who are unwilling to engage with what can emerge from the human capacities of the present age itself. We must not see the revival of old pre-Christian truths as a goal for our present-day culture, and the more we strive to keep reviving the old, the more we harm true progress. We must be able to ruthlessly reject what, as sectarianism, reigns with human obstinacy under the guise of true culture; otherwise, we will not earn the right in our time to cultivate genuine spiritual science alongside natural science.

[ 4 ] But one must still examine it, precisely because it must be overcome as it is. One must examine, impartially and without prejudice, what the ancient people regarded as the content of their knowledge. Today, those who rehash these ideas in the manner just described treat the subject in a rather amateurish way. For example, it dawned on the ancient person that, in the innermost depths of their soul, they felt differently—simply felt differently on a subconscious level than usual—when Saturn, Jupiter, or Mars was positioned somewhere above their head, particularly at the zenith; and that they felt differently in their soul than usual when Venus or Mercury was invisible below the horizon. Based on these inner experiences, he told himself: There is an influence from above. And by the influence of the heavens on human beings, he meant that which radiates from Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars—what he simply experienced and knew, just as we know when a gust of wind blows against our side. Humanity has simply lost this sense. He knew that the radiations from Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars are strongest when these three planets are visible high above the horizon. And he knew that the strongest influence on the human organism comes from Venus and Mercury when these planets are below the horizon. Thus, the world with which he associated human beings was structured for him into an upper world—the world of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars—which constituted this upper world for him even when Venus and Mercury were visible above the horizon, for he told himself: above the horizon, these two planets do not exert their true effect—and into the lower world, which for him was realized in outer space when the two planets, Mercury and Venus, were together below the horizon.

[ 5 ] In short, human beings used to see themselves as part of the entire universe. Today, we’ve already lost the ability to view ourselves as part of even the very closest part of our universe. Just think about it: the air you just breathed in, which is now working within your body, will soon be outside your body again. That is to say, what is outside will later be inside, and what is now inside will later be outside. You can only seemingly separate yourself from the outside world by taking the boundary of your skin as reality. But in reality, you are nothing other than a part of that outside world. For what is now inside you will later be outside, and what is outside will later be inside you. We hardly ever give this any thought. In any case, we do not apply any real, reflective consideration to this eminent, significant fact. Ancient people conceived of this interdependence in a much broader sense, because they possessed a finer sensitivity, because they were still able to perceive things other than the inhaling and exhaling that modern people hardly even notice anymore. Just as modern people can still feel, when breathing, that they are a part of the Earth’s atmosphere—though only if they reflect on it a little—so did ancient people feel that they were a part of the entire universe as they could comprehend it. He believed that everything in the universe outside had an effect on the human being—whom he therefore called the microcosm—and for everything that manifested itself in any way within this microcosm, he also conceived of a corresponding phenomenon out there in the vast cosmos, in the macrocosm.

[ 6 ] The phrase “The microcosm corresponds to the macrocosm” is often heard today. But the way it is spoken today, it is nothing more than a cliché. For it is a cliché only if it is not grounded in the living inner feeling that underlay the ancient person’s finer sensibility—a sensibility that modern people no longer possess. A wonderful picture emerges of the connection between the individual human being and the universe; regardless of whether one regards it as superstition or as ancient wisdom, as ancient science, a wonderful picture emerges when one contemplates what lies within this ancient wisdom—or, if you will, within this ancient “superstition”—as the true mysteries of humanity. Historically, however, the situation was as follows. Even in the eighteenth century—and extending somewhat into the nineteenth—there existed, albeit beneath the surface of academic scholarship—what is called “education”—a continuing tradition of this ancient wisdom, or, if you will, ancient superstition. There could not have been such minds as Paracelsus, Jakob Böhme, or even Taler, Eckardt, or Valentin Weigel, had it not been for this enduring old tradition. These masters would have been entirely impossible. But the peculiar thing is that human receptivity to these ancient matters grew increasingly dull as the nineteenth century progressed. As I said, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, many things had still been preserved. Then human receptivity—the human capacity to grasp these things—became dulled. And the consciousness of earlier humanity—that I, as a human being, do not stand alone on my two legs or on the soles of my feet, but stand as a member of the entire universe—this consciousness was no longer present for modern humanity, having vanished from the depths from which it had blossomed so exuberantly in ancient times. Hence the historical necessity that modern humanity, based on its own sensibilities, regards what has been handed down from earlier times as an old superstition, as a childish view of human development. This is what is so misunderstood today: that humanity is also undergoing a genuine development with regard to its capacity for knowledge. It is remarkable how, in this area, people fail to notice the contradictions in which they live. On the one hand, everything today speaks of evolution on the basis of Darwinism, but little is said about the evolution of humanity itself. That our way of viewing the world was not, so to speak, born with the emergence of humanity, but rather is a product of evolution—this is something people will readily admit in theory; yet, when it comes to actually living in accordance with such a truth, people today are unwilling to stand on the ground of that truth.

[ 7 ] But this raises the question: What is actually real in this old worldview compared to our current way of understanding? What is actually real within these things? What is truly real in these things is that we simply had to make progress in the realm of the inanimate universe—the mechanical, physical, and chemical universe. This progress, which we have made over the last three to four centuries, and increasingly in the nineteenth century, would not have been possible if the old way of viewing the world had continued to prevail. One truly grasps these things when one, I would say, sees through them at their crux.

[ 8 ] The mid-nineteenth century, in particular, represents such a turning point in human development. At the end of the 1850s, a whole series of human advances coincided, and their unique interrelationships reveal to us what was truly important and essential—and what remains unrecognized even today—about this mid-nineteenth century within the course of human development. Certain things escape the attention of the observer in this field because they are not considered part of general education. The fact that a book on “Psycho-Physics” by Gustav Theodor Fechner was published in 1858 usually escapes the observer in this field because it is not considered part of general education. But anyone who delves deeply into human development will see that this Psycho-Physics expresses a fundamental trait of the entire modern way of viewing the world. Psychophysics: viewing the psychological solely through its external physical manifestations—this is presented in this book as a distinctive feature in a witty manner; for Gustav Theodor Fechner was a very witty man.

[ 9 ] A second event, which coincides—coincides with that year—is the discovery of spectral analysis by Kirchhoff and Bunsen, through which the unity of the universe is to be substantially proven by looking out into the universe via spectral analysis; that is, if one looks out only through a human mode of cognition that is diametrically, or rather, is polar opposites to the view I described to you earlier as the human being’s sense of standing within the entire universe. Spectral analysis perceives material unity; the old worldview focused solely on spiritual unity with the entire cosmos. Here you have two important advances of modern times that quite clearly point to what marks the turning point in the modern view of knowledge. And other phenomena stand in connection with these, bound together by human nature itself. Just consider the following. I do not know how many people have clearly observed this point; but anyone who has made the effort, anyone who does not speak superficially about these matters but wishes to speak from experience, could make the following observation: One could have sensed the atmosphere in 1859—that is, the time when spectral analysis emerged and when Fechner’s *Psycho-Physics* was published— one could observe—since it was the centennial of Schiller’s birth—what took place at the unveiling of the various Schiller monuments and what Schiller speeches were delivered at the Schiller celebrations in 1859. Anyone observing these events can truly notice how the old veneration of Schiller, precisely during this centennial year, turns into mere rhetoric in the speeches that are delivered; how it no longer exists in its original, elemental vitality; how Schiller’s idealism fades away; and how whatever remains to be said about Schiller becomes mere rhetoric.

[ 10 ] And again, around the same time that year, the first—so to speak, the standard work—the first seminal work on materialist historical research appeared: Karl Marx’s book on political economy. This coincided with many other developments. Here, the threads that run through the development of modern humanity become intertwined. And once one has taken the time to examine the old view of humanity—as it still prevailed, for example, at the end of the eighteenth century (even the standard-bearers of the French Revolution were concerned with it)—and to trace the continuation of this old view of humanity into the nineteenth century, one sees it fading away; one sees how these sparks are dying out. Our friend Sellin recently published a book: Lomzs-Claude de Saint-Martin’s *God—Man—World* in German translation. I believe that as many people as possible should read this book, and that as many people as possible should be honest enough to say to themselves: “Actually, I don’t even understand a single sentence in its true essence, as it appears in this book.” — Those who are somewhat versed in spiritual science—which, in turn, draws on the spiritual foundations in a modern way—will have some inkling of what is truly present in Saint-Martin’s work. But given the state of human education today—and we should be honest about this—one must regard what is written by Saint-Martin as pure nonsense. The fact that people are not honest in such matters, that they believe they understand things that are ancient, is precisely the dishonesty inherent in contemporary human thought.

[ 11 ] And what has brought about this stage of human development? Precisely the need to delve deeper into the mechanical, physical, and chemical order of the world. It is hard to imagine anything more impossible than, for example, arriving at today’s physics, mechanics, or chemistry from the standpoint of the worldview espoused by Jakob Böhme, Paracelsus, or Saint-Martin. That is impossible. You cannot lump everything together—that is impossible. Humanity had to temporarily set aside the entirely different way of thinking it had possessed in order to make the advances in the physical, chemical, and mechanical fields that are urgently necessary for the development of humanity.

[ 12 ] But this progress lies in the understanding of the inanimate, of the dead. And it is precisely through this—and this must be emphasized again and again—that the scientific worldview has grown great: by developing the precise, powerful, and admirable method for understanding the dead. But what, as a result, has humanity temporarily lost? Today, this understanding of the dead lives on not merely in the conception of nature. In every newspaper article, in general education, it permeates people’s thought patterns, so that they perceive everything according to the model of natural science and can no longer help but view everything that exists for them in the world through the lens of natural science, as if natural science were the only source of reality, and as if everything intended to be brought into reality must also be permeated by the natural-scientific mode of thinking. But now this natural-scientific mode of thinking, which is so dominant within the field of natural science itself, has a specific effect when it manifests itself in other aspects of human life. It leads—not yet in the first generation, perhaps not even in the second, not in the researcher himself, but only in the student and in those who then transform scientific findings into worldviews—it leads to antisocial behavior; it gives rise to antisocial impulses. We must not dismiss this in any dishonest, illusory way—that the penetration of our entire soul by scientific modes of perception leads us to develop antisocial impulses—for that which allows us to penetrate most deeply into the mysteries of nature is precisely what distances us from an understanding of our neighbor, of humanity. And no matter how often we say, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”—if we allow our entire human soul to be permeated solely by scientific concepts, antisocial impulses will arise within us that reduce this statement, or all statements of brotherhood, to mere empty phrases. And so we see the peculiar fact that the call for social order arises in an age that, from another perspective, is characterized by the most antisocial “instincts.” This is the most significant aspect of our time, one that every honest person must urgently examine today. In this examination, one must not allow oneself to be led astray by anything—not by clinging to old views, nor by agitational posturing from one side or the other. Here, on this point, one must look honestly and directly. And this is the true inner reason why it is impossible to make progress in the present age without a spiritual renewal, without a rediscovery of the spiritual world from within the innermost being of the human person. In the course of human evolution, the abilities have been lost that, through observation of the outer world, allow human beings to perceive themselves as members of the universe. We must rebuild a spiritual world from within. The anthroposophical worldview sets this as its task, thereby laying the foundation for a truly social structure of the new human order. Certainly, it would be very out of place today to speak of cultivating only the inner self; that would be a form of refined inner egoism. Today we must speak of how external institutions must be rebuilt. But we must always remain conscious of the fact that, even in the best-organized institutions, we would still make no progress unless people acquired the abilities to rebuild a spiritual world from within.

[ 13 ] I attempted to take the first steps toward rebuilding a spiritual world from within and presenting this endeavor to a wider audience through the books *The Mystery of Man* and *The Mysteries of the Soul*. In the book *On the Riddles of the Soul*, I pointed out in detail for the first time that when a person truly looks within, they are not the chaotic unity described by those who today seek to recognize human nature only in the corpse—that is, in the dead. What human beings are in reality—a head organism, a rhythmic or chest organism, and a limb organism—you will find the more detailed connections in the appendix of my book *Mysteries of the Soul* in the appendix—the view of the threefold nature of the human form, arrived at with due consideration of all advances in modern natural science, must become one of the starting points for a genuine understanding of the human being in the future. Human beings must come to realize what a great difference lies within them when they regard themselves as head-human, chest-human, and limb-human—with everything connected to the limbs, namely the sexual organs, which are always merely inward-facing extensions of the limb organs, and likewise the actual metabolic organs.

[ 14 ] If we view human beings in this way as threefold beings, only then can we understand their higher unity, whereas modern science tends to confuse everything about human beings. For whoever has once laid the foundation for this view of the human being as a threefold being comes to understand the human being as standing within the universe—but now not as a spatial being, but as a temporal being. And this is the great difference between our approach and the current way of understanding. Goetheanism has laid the elementary foundation here; one must continue to research along the path of Goetheanism, and then one arrives at a true understanding of the human being. Then we view the human being as he appears to us as a head-being, in such a way that we are able to look at this form, at this structure of the head, with insight. Then one knows how to relate the form of the human head entirely to embryology and observes the fact that human embryology proceeds from the form of the head, and that the other forms—the other organ forms—are actually added more or less secondarily, in terms of form. But then one also discovers how this human head is connected in an entirely different way to what a person sums up when they say, “I”—as the “chest-human,” who is essentially a rhythmic being. The head contains the most perfect human organization—one might say, right from the very beginning of human embryonic development. The head is rounded like the universe itself, and whatever in the head is not rounded deviates from this roundness only because it must be connected to the rest of the organism. The head possesses a certain degree of autonomy, except that certain characteristics of the head then also extend to the other parts of the human organism, because the whole is, after all, a unity, and because what I say about the formation of the head is only developed to the extreme in the head itself, but is repeated in a metamorphic manner in the other parts of the human being; To put it in Goethean terms: If the head, so to speak, represents in the highest morphological perfection what seeks to realize itself in the human being from inner foundations, then the “limb-human” represents that which in the human being—I might say—is formed only rudimentarily as human, that which least perfectly embodies the human form. And the “chest-human” stands right in the middle. The chest-human actually lives through rhythmic movements, for, fundamentally speaking, everything in the human being is moved rhythmically. And I have, I might say, pointed out the most striking rhythm in human development in earlier lectures. Today’s humanity regards such things as coincidence. But if it regards these things as coincidence, this will lead humanity even further into ruinous thinking. I have told you: If you take the number of breaths in a minute, the remarkable thing is that you can discern a certain rhythm in the number of breaths over the course of a day—twenty-four hours—and that in twenty-four hours you take as many breaths as there are “days” in the normal course of a human life, assuming you live to be about seventy-two years old. And that, in turn, is the same number as the so-called Platonic solar year—the number of years in which the sun apparently passes through the entire zodiac.

[ 15 ] This is only a fragment of the rhythmic process through which the human being, by means of his respiratory-chest process, lives within the entire universe. The human being is this threefold being. And now, as we contemplate this threefold nature of the human being, we stand at the starting point of an insight that I need only hint at today, for we have, after all, spoken of the details so many times; today we have examined them in relation to their morphological unity. We stand at the starting point of a scientific insight that is clearly set before us: the formation of the head is a consequence of what the human being has undergone before entering physical existence through birth or conception. The forces that the human being experienced in spiritual life before entering physical existence through conception live within the formation of the head. In all that lives within the formation of the chest lies what a human being can experience and shape here between birth and death. And in the formation of the limbs lives the metamorphosed predisposition to what a human being is in the spiritual life after death. That which was effectively driven out of the consciousness of European humanity by the Ecumenical Council of 869—the pre-existence of the human soul, which alone provides a true insight into post-existence—will be able to be scientifically proven once people have first adopted the appropriate habits of thought. Then it will be only one step toward the realization of repeated earthly lives, about which we have spoken often enough. But this entire understanding must be built from within. What the ancient human being was able to develop from his perception of the universe and his connection to it—because he still possessed a higher sensitivity—must be built up by the modern human being from within through a strong inner force that he can acquire in the manner I have described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. And these forces—which the individual can only derive from knowledge—will be developed socially if we pursue a science of the human being that in turn enables us to recognize the soul and spirit within the physical realm. But not in such a way that we merely prattle on about them in empty phrases. For everything that even today’s philosophy says about the soul and spirit is mere prattle in empty phrases. One speaks of realities only when one can say: Look at your head; it is the reflection, the mirror image of a pre-birth spiritual development. — Therein lies a real fact; only then does one have the right to speak of these things in the sense of the modern worldview. Only when one can say, “Your limbs reveal the metamorphosed precursor to the formation of the head in your next earthly life,” does one stand on solid ground. Then one speaks concretely about these things. And this way of thinking—which, because everything in the human soul is interconnected, will once again instill social impulses in humanity—will in turn give rise to social feeling. For between the old worldview, which relates to space, and the new worldview, which relates to time, stands the impulse that has taken root in humanity as the impulse of Christianity—an impulse that, as it were, signifies: “Away from the mere external view of space”—and which directs us toward the innermost nature of the human being. But one must not stop at merely directing attention toward this confused, chaotic feeling; one must, within that feeling, allow a concrete worldview to emerge—a worldview that now places human beings within the universe in a temporal context.

[ 16 ] We currently find ourselves caught between these two things. We have lost the old spatial perspective; the newer temporal perspective on human development must be born out of social and human suffering. And Europe has, until now, devoted itself entirely to the declining spatial conception. This Europe must learn to let the temporal conception take root within itself. This is the fork in the road along which European civilization has traveled thus far, and at this crossroads we must decide whether we want to rush headlong into destruction, or whether we want to awaken European civilization to a new life. Much is said about destruction; few are yet mustering the courage to speak of a new life. But individual voices ring out strangely from within what is called European civilization.

[ 17 ] The most decadent aspect of this European civilization lies, as I have often explained in detail, in Romanic culture. The Treaty of Versailles is merely the final death throes of the declining Romanic culture, which is sensed unconsciously, behaving one last time as if it were a reality in the world, even though it has long been doomed from within. But this decline gives rise to strange intellectual blossoms. And, I would say, anyone who truly understands human development is left breathless when confronted with something like what is found in a recent book on art by Benedetto Croce. Benedetto Croce gave four lectures on art in Texas, not in Europe. The first is titled “What Is Art?”, and in this lecture there is a sentence that is nothing less than the essence of a comprehensive Romanic view of art—that is, a view of art that emerges from decadent Roman culture like the dawn of a new era, just as a new plant rises from a decaying seed.

[ 18 ] “But this attempt has often been made in the history of thought, consciously and methodically” — he is referring to the attempt to understand art through contemporary thought, and he regards this attempt as futile —, “beginning with the ‘canons’ that Greek and Renaissance artists and theorists established for the beauty of the human form, through speculations about the geometric and arithmetic relationships said to be present in figures and sounds, right up to the investigations of nineteenth-century aestheticians, such as Fechner, and the ‘presentations’ that are typically given at today’s conferences of philosophers, psychologists, and natural scientists to the uninitiated regarding the relationships between physical phenomena and art.”

[ 19 ] When I spoke in Munich about the living apprehension of art—an apprehension of art that eschews the dead, scientific understanding of art—objections naturally arose from all sides at first. But Croce continues: “If one asks why art cannot be a physical fact, the first answer is”—please, listen now!—“physical facts have no reality, whereas art, to which so many devote their entire lives and which fills them all with divine joy, is real in the highest degree. Therefore, it cannot be a physical—that is, unreal—fact.”

[ 20 ] Now I ask you to look, in your mind’s eye, at the bewildered face of European philistinism—that bewildered face that makes one say: “Yes, but everything out there in space is, after all, the real; art is the unreal.” And here a person, speaking from the finest artistic sensibility, cries out: Art cannot be a physical fact, because physical facts are unreal, and art must, precisely, strive toward reality.

[ 21 ] This is precisely the kind of thing that, in a certain sense, must be reversed. And beyond art lies that which is attained through a path whose first elementary steps I have described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. Therein lies the living perception of the true world, of true reality. But it is a magnificent thing to see how a person—like Croce—already senses that art is more real than what the staid philistine recognizes as the only reality. For, when all is said and done, this philistine would like to say, when he sees a person being killed in a play: “Well, thank God, it’s not really real.” — It is precisely in such things that the fierce clash between the old and the necessary new becomes apparent, and it will surely be art itself that serves as the arena for the most formidable struggles of the present. For the worldview that has taken its model solely from the dead—the one that has led to such great triumphs in the natural sciences—is also sailing in social life toward a mere representation of the dead, one that is bound to perish. Marxism is structured according to the model of the natural sciences. It seeks to understand the social order in the same way that one understands the external natural order. What has it achieved? A beautiful, magnificent, and brilliant critique of the modern economic order. But it faces the impossibility of now offering anything to replace this modern economic order it has criticized. And anyone who can delve deeply into the question: What kind of structure could have been achieved through Marxism, through the full implementation of Marxism? — will say: Nothing, only destruction; realized criticism—that is, destruction—was the only thing that could be achieved. — Isn’t it strange that where the extreme consequences of Marxism have been carried out in external life—in Eastern Europe and Russia—a peculiar critique emerges, a critique that was truly able to draw the ultimate consequences of Marxism, which shaped external social life in the way it had to be understood as a consequence of Marxism, and when it then, in a curious way, arrives—only through experience—at such things as are set forth in my book *The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and the Future*! For in *The Key Points* you can find that, in fact, what still lives on in individual ideas within Marxism is nothing other than the legacy of the bourgeois worldview.

[ 22 ] Everywhere, people are confronted with a dead worldview whenever they try to build anything based on Marxism. And isn’t it strange, then, when a critic of what is happening in Russia utters these peculiar sentences: “We were dependent on the help of bourgeois specialists who were thoroughly imbued with bourgeois psychology, and who have betrayed us and will continue to betray us for years to come. Nevertheless, it would be childish to pose the question in such a way as to ask whether we should build communism solely with communist hands and without the assistance of bourgeois specialists.” And further: “Without the legacy of capitalist culture, we cannot build socialism. Communism can be built on nothing other than what capitalism has left us.”

[ 23 ] In other words: Simply because we have no real substance for communism, we are carrying over the bourgeois philistinism. — Well, a strange confession: Communism can only be built on the legacy of what capitalism has left behind. And further: “In practice, we have to create a communist society with the hands of our enemies”—that is, with bourgeois hands. This means we have to establish a reversed class society; it means not abolishing a class state, but turning those who were once at the top into helots. “In practice, we must build a communist society with the hands of our enemies. That seems to be a contradiction, perhaps even an insoluble contradiction.” Please, listen to that sentence just as it is! “In reality, however, the task of communist construction can only be solved in this way.”

[ 24 ] It therefore seems to be an insoluble contradiction, but in reality, it is only with the help of this insoluble contradiction that the construction of communism can be achieved.

[ 25 ] And further: “This presented enormous difficulties, but this was the only way they could be resolved. Organizational, creative, collective work must corner the bourgeois specialists to such an extent that they are forced to march at the forefront of the proletariat, no matter how much they resist it, and no matter how much they may fight against it step by step. We must elevate them to the level of technical and cultural forces in order to retain them for ourselves and to transform the uncultivated and savage capitalist land into a communist cultural land.”

[ 26 ] Well, here is a blunt statement of what must be done if no new ideas, no new spirit, are born: We can only continue to manage our affairs based on the legacy of capitalist culture. But since this way of thinking extends only to what is dead, it can only lead to the destruction of European civilization. And this destruction, emanating from the East, will surely come and spread across the West if a new way of thinking does not take root among the people of Europe, if we are unable to view reality in a completely different way than it has been viewed over the last three to four centuries—and, at its culmination, in the present day.

[ 27 ] Now let us ask ourselves: What about the one whose legacy is to be inherited? What about him? We have just heard a voice explaining how the East is to be built upon the legacy of the past; for up to now, everything has been built entirely upon the legacy of the past. There is not yet anything new for the outside world; that must first come out of a renewal of the spirit. But what has the old achieved in terms of spirituality? This can be recognized from certain symptoms. I spoke recently in Heilbronn. I am completely indifferent to what the hack writer says about my lecture—that is not what matters—but this hack writer finds it appropriate to express the current worldview in a short, pithy sentence. He says: “The banality of his entire presentation, which is strongly reminiscent of American propaganda, was most clearly demonstrated by the way he incorporated the old slogans of the French Revolution—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—into his threefold division.”

[ 28 ] So, in today’s civilization, there is the possibility that these ideas will be spoken of: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity are catchphrases—old catchphrases. Engrave this in your souls, engrave it in your hearts. As Hamlet said, “Give me a writing tablet, give me a writing tablet! That a man can always smile and smile and yet be a scoundrel!” Write this in your souls: In today’s culture, there is the possibility of calling freedom, equality, and fraternity “old catchphrases”! And then people ask, where do the forces driving the downfall of this culture lie? Don’t be too complacent, my dear friends, don’t be indifferent! Tell people that this is possible—that the noblest values of humanity are being dragged through the mud these days by what calls itself “European education.” Then perhaps you will be able to pass on this spiritual essence after all, if only you can make it clear to people what they are overlooking in their souls. For today, people skim over these things; they take them for granted. But these things must be looked at closely. And until people see how powerful the forces of decline are, and how trivial is that which ultimately steered us into this catastrophe of world war, there will be no salvation. And if there is to be salvation, it will only be possible if it arises from humanity’s renewed immersion in its spiritual depths. We cannot see our goal today in a mere revival of old spirituality. Today we must find within ourselves the strength to create a new spirituality. The fate of Europe hangs on this: either this new spirituality, or Europe will become a grave for its own culture! There is no third option, and humanity must decide between one or the other. Either into ruin, or courageously into the new spirituality!