The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Thirteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Eight days ago today, I presented a kind of reflection here before you, which concluded with words similar to those of my last public lecture at the Siegle House on Friday. I pointed out how humanity today faces two possibilities, one of which must inevitably lead to the decline of Europe’s current civilization, while the other is the only path to salvation from this decline. Now I would like to show you that such statements are by no means mere assertions; they are not, for one thing, because they can be derived from genuine spiritual insight and the resulting understanding of the circumstances of humanity’s present development. But even for those who do not wish to engage with this spiritual insight, there are many, many opportunities to see what has been perceived confirmed by the external facts of contemporary life. A few individual facts from the abundance that could be cited will now be presented today.

[ 2 ] A small booklet has been published in Münster, Westphalia, titled *Christianity and Socialism* by Johann Plenge, who, from his own perspective, has already published several works aimed at helping readers understand current trends. This booklet contains a lecture by Plenge, which he delivered based on the impressions he had gained from two other lectures. Max Scheler, a contemporary philosopher who is, in fact, already quite well-known, had spoken on April 8 and 9 of this year in Münster in a two-part lecture series on the question: What is Christian socialism? And immediately afterward, on April 11, in the concluding lecture of his introductory seminar on social sciences at the Münster Academy, Johann Plenge offered his response—from his own perspective—to Scheler’s lectures on “Christianity and Socialism.” It is interesting to note what Plenge recounts about the brief events that took place between these two lectures. Scheler, who is undoubtedly one of the most astute thinkers of our time, had delivered his two-part lecture on Christianity and socialism on April 8 and 9, and Plenge had already offered his response just two days later. Plenge recounts that, in the intervening time, a personal conversation took place between him and Scheler, during which, as Plenge says, they reached agreement on various issues. However, if one really follows what Plenge subsequently said in response to Scheler’s remarks, one does not get the impression that these two gentlemen—who are, in a certain sense, representatives of contemporary thought—have reached an understanding; rather, one has the distinct feeling that, at a fundamental level, these two gentlemen have thoroughly talked past one another, to such an extent that this failure to understand one another is downright characteristic of certain psychological and social phenomena of the present. It is characteristic for the reason that what I have often described here is taking place today on a vast scale: that people today have such strong antisocial impulses that, even when they have the best of intentions to understand one another, they actually always end up talking past one another. Talking past one another and thinking past one another—this is so prevalent today that one can have conversations of the following kind:

[ 3 ] Someone comes to you, and you present them with certain views—let’s say, on pedagogy or something similar—that stem from the requirements of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. These views are such that they actually differ from the views that are commonly held today—views that are also regarded as exceptionally good. The person in question often listens and says in the end: “Yes, I completely agree. I’ve thought the same thing for a long time; I consider that to be the right approach.” — But they have said exactly the opposite of what was actually stated, simply because we have now reached a stage in human development where one can utter the same sentences and phrases, and yet they mean the opposite from one person’s mouth than they do from another’s. In a certain sense—and this is a characteristic social phenomenon of the present—we have distanced ourselves so far from the inner content of language that we can use the same words and phrases to express one thing and also its opposite, the other. Faced with such a contemporary phenomenon, the issue cannot be to look away from it simply because it is convenient; rather, the issue must be to focus our attention precisely on it and ask ourselves: What does such a phenomenon actually reveal? Now I would like to cite this characteristic example of Scheler and Plenge, because here we have, on the one hand, Scheler—a man who strives for a system of thought that is meant to provide the present with socialism, socialism as he conceives it; as he conceives it from a Catholic-tinged Christianity that, in his case—in Scheler’s—arises from a truly inner enthusiasm, from the truly inner emotional orientation of a Catholicizing Christianity that rises up to the level of the will. From this Catholic-oriented Christianity, he combats contemporary capitalism—specifically the capitalist spirit—and he sees the possibility, only through the spread of his Catholic-Christian sensibility, that contemporary humanity might be imbued from within, from the heart, with a social spirit, and that a social order of life might then emerge from this social spirit. Thus, Scheler stands on ground where only that which human beings develop from a certain inner knowledge—a sensuous knowledge—can truly flourish. From this perspective, he advocates his Christian socialism for the present.

[ 4 ] Johann Plenge takes a completely different standpoint. He does not start from what, so to speak, arises from within as a social insight; rather, Plenge wants to start from what is present in social life. He wants to start from the phenomena that manifest themselves in social existence. He therefore seeks to observe how people relate to one another, how groups of people come together socially, and so on. In contrast to Max Scheler’s kind of “science of the will,” he thus advocates a certain “science of society,” a kind of social science. And from the standpoint of this social science, he in turn attempts to characterize those institutions which he believes will bring about a certain social order in our human life. Now, as I have already told you, these two gentlemen have completely talked past one another, and Plenge even still believes—Scheler probably does not, though I do not know—that they understood one another to a certain degree. They simply did not understand one another at all. And this stems simply from the fact that today, in the widest circles, the element is missing through which people can truly communicate with one another on an inner level. And this element is none other than that which is asserted here as an understanding of the spiritual world itself—an understanding that can have a harmonizing effect on the various currents of thought and feeling in our time, as well as on the currents of the will—and from which minds like Scheler and Plenge still wish to keep themselves entirely at a distance. A phenomenon such as that which arises in the dialogue between Plenge and Scheler pervades our entire present-day human existence.

[ 5 ] Now, our primary interest here is to examine this development specifically in relation to Central Europe. And here I ask you to recall how I elaborated on this last time I was here, last Sunday—that within Central European intellectual culture we have Goetheanism, and that we also have what I recently characterized for you, in a way that is somewhat paradoxical for our times, as Hegelianism. Isn’t it true that Hegelianism—Hegel’s worldview—also has something highly peculiar about it historically? As presented by Hegel, it is the purest idealism, a conception of the world based on reason—that is, on the most diluted form of the spirit, yet still rooted in the spirit. Now, what is peculiar is that, first of all, Hegel had a large number of students, and these students were grouped across the political and religious spectrum—from the far right, from reactionary thought, to the farthest, most radical left. There was the most lively debate among these students. And as you know, the saying has been coined that Hegel himself is said to have remarked before his death, in reference to his students and those who would or were to claim to understand him: “Only one has understood me, and he has misunderstood me.”

[ 6 ] But now something else has come along. Among Hegel’s students was Karl Marx, the founder of the contemporary socialist worldview in one of its forms. Under the influence of Hegelianism, this Karl Marx became a thoroughgoing materialist, even with regard to his view of history. Developing quite naturally out of Hegelianism, Karl Marx became an anti-Hegel. Hegelianism has, to use its own terminology, completely turned into its opposite.

[ 7 ] Yes, where does something like that come from? It stems from the fact that a way of thinking such as that which Hegel developed from within himself—and which is the most purified, most diluted form of spirituality in the guise of logical human reason—can remain healthy in the course of historical development only if it develops within a single, personal individuality. Even a student can no longer develop a healthy spirituality, and by the third generation, such a worldview already becomes a completely unhealthy element if one dogmatically swears by it. That is why I told you last time that, with regard to such matters, a grotesque demand arises: for example, that one should immerse oneself in Hegelianism, but should learn from it—as well as from Goetheanism—only how to fertilize one’s own spirit, to enter into this element of thinking and perception oneself, and then one must leave that path and continue one’s education along the same path.

[ 8 ] Anyone who swears by Goethe or Hegel today—meaning that they simply adopt their dogmas—harms both themselves and others. Anyone who truly wants to be a follower of Goethe today must not swear dogmatically by Goethe, but must further develop what is already present in Goethe as a potential. And this is even more true of Hegelianism. Hegelianism reveals what is actually at work there. This Hegelianism in German development is a highly, highly characteristic phenomenon. For there is something at work here that is a hallmark of logical thinking in general. No one can truly understand what logical thinking means for human beings unless they have some understanding of spiritual science. For it is spiritual science that first reveals to them that there is also another, supersensible human being—not merely the human being who appears to us as physical, sensory existence. These two aspects—the supersensible and the sensory human being—blur together into a single chaotic jumble in the eyes of humanity, for what current anatomy and physiology teach us about the human being is a chaotic jumble. But if one learns to properly distinguish the supersensible human being—about whom I also spoke twice recently in a public lecture—from the physical human being, then one comes to know the strange, paradoxical fact—spiritual facts are, for the most part, paradoxical to physical perception —that logical thinking would not exist at all in human evolution if human beings were not born into the physical body and developed there. For logic, especially when it is developed to the highest degree, the physical body is the appropriate instrument. Therefore, anyone who develops supersensible knowledge, anyone who truly immerses themselves in supersensible knowledge, must inevitably experience that it is extraordinarily difficult to put these supersensible insights into words at all; but if they attempt to grasp these supersensible insights with ordinary logic—that is, with what is bound solely to the instrument of the outer physical body—then this supersensible insight is stifled within them. Then it is all over for this supersensible insight. Supersensible knowledge dies on the ground of logic. It must be brought into our human life as a mirror image, as it was with Hegel. But then one must not live within this mirror image; otherwise, one is immediately outside the spirit. Therefore, it is not the case that Hegel brought German thought to the highest level of spiritual development, but rather that what Hegel offers contains the very essence of spiritlessness—that there is no spirit left at all in Hegelianism. This means: in Hegel, the physical body grasps spirituality and simultaneously squeezes it out. Hegel, the supreme logician; this thinking—produced by the greatest effort of the German spirit—is the most spiritless philosophy! No wonder it turns into conscious materialism, into Marxism, and thus becomes an actual phase of development in the nineteenth century.

[ 9 ] You see, that is how serious things are at present. And one cannot understand what actually constitutes the essence of our present reality if one is unable to engage with such things. Humanity today is such that it wants so badly to believe in something that it is immensely happy when it can set something before itself, or hear something, to which it can then swear as the ultimate truth. And when it swears to that, it does the greatest harm, for the most important demand of the present is this: that human beings must develop their free spirituality. And the moment they sin against the freedom of their judgment, they simultaneously make themselves sick. In the present day, human beings have no other choice—it is a historical fact—if they wish to reach human greatness, they must free themselves inwardly. It is more than a vision to say the following: Imagine the content of Hegel’s philosophy as a kind of spiritual schema, as a kind of etheric body entering the world, working within its purely logical substance. If one imagines this specter of the spirit sweeping across the world, one would have the model for what has physically occurred in the last four to five years as the European world catastrophe. What was at work in the soul as the highest principle in Hegelianism manifests itself in physical life as the horror of the world war catastrophe of the past four to five years. One must have the courage to look into these spiritual connections; otherwise, one will understand nothing at all of the events of the present. People today would like to make it as easy as possible for themselves to approach spirituality. But they are prevented from doing so by the demands of the times themselves. When we gather scientific experience today and develop it into the highest logic, we thoroughly drive the spirit out of the human being. Plenge does this, though of course only to a certain extent. He develops a purely Ahrimanic way of thinking, as we call it in our spiritual science, and he presents this to the world.

[ 10 ] The opposite is true when people want to develop something from within, as Hegel’s peculiar philosophical twin, Schopenhauer, did—in contrast to Hegel. When people want to develop something from within, from the volitional element, then the opposite occurs. Then what happens is that, time and again—not for themselves, but for their students, for those who dogmatically follow them—they seek to force people into a mere faith in revelation, where it is said: “Conceptual thought can no longer achieve anything at all; one must arrive at the truth from an entirely different foundation.” This leads one into a certain element of faith that is not human, but at most Königsberg-Kantian, and which appeared to a particular degree in Schopenhauer. But the original spirit never has the tendency to fall into these errors; rather, it is those who follow—namely, the third generation—who do so. This is a universal law. And Schopenhauerianism is related to the belief in revelation that has become so popular in our time. The mere acceptance of a revelation, as it is particularly developed in the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages—insofar as it is orthodox Catholic—and as it reached its culmination in the proclamation of the dogma of infallibility: that is the opposite element. Spirituality rising from within drowns in this element. Just as the inner self is killed by logic, so too is that which rises from within and seeks to embrace the outer world drowned by mere belief in revelation. We see this today as a particularly characteristic phenomenon. And we live right in the midst of these currents. These currents unconsciously permeate everything that is demanded today from both the left and the right. What do the people who today praise or denounce this or that worldview actually know about the forces inherent in these worldviews? They know nothing about them. People on the far right have no idea what lies behind the emotional impulses that make them conservative and reactionary. The radicals—even the most radical Bolsheviks—have no idea what lies behind their instincts, and how their logic has long since killed off precisely what they seek to bring to light in external life. Unconscious life is very strong in humanity today, and from it develop those things that are actually effective and that are to become active in consciousness by spiritually illuminating one’s knowledge with what can be drawn from the supersensible. In no other way can what is at work in the present be illuminated.

[ 11 ] Now, in the present—in the immediate present—there are three currents, but they, too, are merely the surging waves on the surface of what is seething beneath, and which I was able to characterize for you only in broad strokes, drawing on Max Scheler and Johann Plenge to show you what logical thinking—which was driven to its highest heights in the nineteenth century—and what the faith in revelation—which was driven to its highest heights in the dogma of infallibility—mean for the depths of the human soul.

[ 12 ] From what is seething and swirling down there in human souls—and which is very comprehensive—three things rise to the surface, but by no means in such a way as to already reveal the true inner essence to people today.

[ 13 ] First—let us not delude ourselves—what is spreading across the world, deliberately spreading, is Anglo-American world domination, which is spreading its wings over contemporary civilization. Consider all the individual phenomena during the war years and in today’s so-called peace treaties. It is called “peace” because today, all too often, people use words to mean exactly what they should actually be describing with the opposite terms. Everything that has unfolded in this way reveals itself as an individual manifestation of one of the great contemporary waves of the expansion of Anglo-American domination—the Anglo-American path to world domination. That is one aspect. This is evident in its expansion; it will be shrewd and cunning, drawing on its group-soul nature to counter various forces that oppose it.

[ 14 ] The second element emerges in a completely abstract form, so that in this abstract form it is impossible to show that anything rational can arise from the ideas and impulses of the will in which the thing appears today. This is the striving for a so-called League of Nations. This striving for a so-called League of Nations—as it arises in particular in the mind of Woodrow Wilson—is, as it presents itself to people today, still a complete impossibility, because it is one of the worst abstractions, and because, as it is conceived there, it has no foundation in real human life. But the fact that it exists, that it is being discussed, shows that people nevertheless yearn, from within this human life, for something international—about which they merely talk past the point—just as they talk past everything today—by developing the theory of a League of Nations.

[ 15 ] The third element is the social aspiration of the present. These are the socialist impulses—these social impulses—which can be said to arise from the legitimate, subconscious depths of a large part of today’s civilized humanity, yet which assert themselves as utterly chaotic instincts. For what is spreading today through socialist aspirations across all of Europe and as far as the Far East is this: people say, “I want this, I want that; I set this or that as my ideal”—yet nowhere do they know what they actually want to do or what they are actually talking about. That nowhere does one know how to bring things into a specific way of thinking, into a specific content of thought and feeling. Indeed, this very content of thought and feeling is even hated today. This is particularly characteristic of an article by a certain Seeger, which appears in the first issue of the *Tribüne*, published right here in the neighborhood. There, the threefold social order is rejected in the name of the proletariat, and socialism is demanded. Yes, if one were to ask this gentleman to explain what he actually means by socialism, he would, of course, be unable to say anything that has any real substance. Speaking in this way reveals the most absolute lack of substance. But this stems from the fact that one can no longer arrive at any substantive thought at all, that one has only instinctive sensations and feelings. And ultimately, it makes no difference whether this gentleman calls what he feels and senses “socialism,” or whether he would give it another name—for example, “Europeanism” or “negativism” and the like; he would be speaking with just as much substance. One could always think the same thing about what he says—that is, nothing. Many people today are still unaware of this—unfortunately, still unaware.

[ 16 ] These are the three currents emerging from the chaotic turmoil of the present: Anglo-American world domination, a longing for the kind of internationalism expressed in the quest for a League of Nations, and socialism. But with the kind of thinking that is widely employed today, one will never get to the bottom of what actually lies behind these currents. This will require a completely, completely different way of thinking—one that does not follow the ordinary logic of the physical body, but whose logic is born at the very moment this thinking springs forth from supersensible knowledge, according to methods that, while contrary to current scientific methods, must nevertheless be discovered in the spirit of spiritual science and anthroposophy.

[ 17 ] Now, what I am saying here becomes evident through characteristic phenomena. As you know, our own analyses, when they take on a historical character, follow a very specific method, which I have often referred to here before you as the symptomatic method. The aim is to recognize what lives within history through symptoms. Not as history is usually viewed in the present—that is, by mechanically regarding what follows as causally emerging from what preceded it—but by viewing historical development as a continuous stream from which, at every point, phenomena emerge from spiritual depths. In this way, what rises to the surface—what manifests in external phenomena—cannot be understood as causal, but rather as a revelation of deeply inner processes. And much of what happens in the present must be recognized in observable phenomena as a symptom of what lies deep within.

[ 18 ] These days, you may encounter a significant symptom. You have all likely reflected, from one perspective or another, on something that initially had a particularly devastating impact on our Central European lives: the Treaty of Versailles. As you know, people have, of course, had the most varied thoughts about this Treaty of Versailles. But one idea—which you can already find in the newspapers—has received less attention, and for those who wish to delve deeper, it is an idea that points to something extraordinarily characteristic. That is, this Treaty of Versailles—which is intended to have a profound impact on modern civilization—is completely incomprehensible; that is, if one approaches it honestly and tries to understand what the individual points are actually intended to achieve, one cannot arrive at a realistic understanding. One cannot understand this document; one cannot fathom what is actually intended by this peace treaty. Precisely when one tries to determine from the various formulations what exactly is meant—it is impossible. No wonder, then, that a Frenchman, Professor Aulard, expressed himself in the following manner regarding this peace treaty in *Le Pays*. So it is a Frenchman whom we wish to quote here. He says: “It is actually my duty as a historian, journalist, and citizen to read the peace treaty and form an opinion about it. So far, however, I have not succeeded, and I must admit that I have been unable to read the entire peace treaty from beginning to end.”

[ 19 ] And he is an honest man. The others read through the treaty and think they understand it. Aulard, however, feels obligated as a journalist and citizen to understand the treaty; he reads every sentence over and over again and has not yet finished because he honestly admits to himself that he cannot understand it.

[ 20 ] He goes on to say: “In my profession, I have studied many ponderous, obscure diplomatic documents; but the Treaty of Versailles is a mind-boggling piece of work, unlike any other of its kind I know. One might think it wasn’t conceived in France; there’s not a trace of French clarity and order in the reasoning, so that one believes one is dealing with a translation. I do not wish to speak of Anglo-Saxon verbiage. Yet the treaty is nothing but verbiage and a jumble of articles. I found the explanation for this fact in the final article of the peace treaty. French, then, is no longer the international language of diplomacy. We have lost this privilege. It has been taken from us. All the major treaties of recent history have been drafted in French.”

[ 21 ] Now it must be said: It is not for nothing that the French language has become the language of diplomacy—that is, the language in which what has been agreed upon on a diplomatic basis can be set down. It has become so because, as the language of a declining modern cultural element, it possesses great conciseness. This treaty is in English, conceived in English words and sentences, and it makes this impression on anyone accustomed to thinking with old-fashioned clarity—and it must make this impression. It is true to say that the English language lacks the precision required to express exactly what is intended here. But that is the defining characteristic of the English language—that is, the language spoken by the peoples who are now assuming world dominance. This language of the peoples who are now assuming world domination has, for one thing, the peculiarity that in it one cannot directly express everything that is to be intellectually grasped in the way it arises when one takes the language just as it is today. The English language lacks the capacity to express itself in such a way that what is spoken fully corresponds to the spirit. One must be able to view this without becoming emotional, without, for example, turning it into hatred of England. One must be able to view it as a scientific fact; that is simply how it is. With some study “sine ira,” one must indeed consider what emerges here as the defining characteristic of the future world language. Now, however, this characteristic of the future world language is something extraordinarily beneficial for humanity. In a sense, there can be nothing better for modern humanity than for a language to develop within that national element which is assuming world dominance—a language that cannot correspond to the spirit.

[ 22 ] Consider this fact in connection with another one that I have mentioned in various places, including here. I have often said: Among the writers of the past era—I could not even conceive of them in the present—among the writers of the nineteenth century, now drawing to a close, whom I love most of all for their style and their way of thinking, is Herman Grimm. Herman Grimm shapes what has dawned on him as a worldview into such thoughts that I have always taken great pleasure in lingering over them. Nevertheless, when I once spoke with Herman Grimm and wanted to contrast my view of life with his—albeit only very slightly—he simply replied: “Let’s leave it at that, dear Doctor; we can’t possibly see eye to eye on this!”—It was also impossible to tell Herman Grimm anything about how I viewed the affairs of the world. He simply could not help but brush it aside with a wave of his hand. But if one wants to know how these matters were conceived in the nineteenth century within a certain Central European social context, one must turn to Herman Grimm, who was of Bernese descent on his mother’s side—and thus had not only South German but also Swiss blood in him—who had Jakob Grimm as his uncle and Wilhelm Grimm as his father, and whose wife was the daughter of Bettina Brentano, Gisela von Arnim—and was thus fully immersed in a certain social outlook of the nineteenth century. Today, when I read Herman Grimm, it feels to me as if I were reading from a time long past, centuries ago. What appears in Herman Grimm’s work are documents of the nineteenth century. And it has been very interesting to me—as I have often said—that, when I considered history and read Woodrow Wilson’s literary reflections, I sometimes found in Woodrow Wilson echoes of Herman Grimm that sounded quite familiar to me. Nevertheless, they are by no means copied, for Woodrow Wilson might not even understand anything at all if he were to read Herman Grimm. But anyone with a sense for such things will notice something highly peculiar in Wilson. One notices in Wilson that this man speaks as if something were actually playing back phonographically, as if his consciousness were not fully present while he speaks, and as if a demon reigning in the subconscious were causing all of this to bubble up—suppressing Woodrow Wilson’s actual personality—which then takes on a mechanical form in his words and sentence structures. When one reads Woodrow Wilson, one feels as though one is speaking with Ahriman himself, who reigns in the depths of Woodrow Wilson’s soul. — With Herman Grimm, every single phrase is imbued with his entire personality; with Woodrow Wilson, his personality is entirely absent—a demon in the depths of the human soul speaks through a human mouth. Anyone who does not know this fails to understand the most important and essential connections for our current view of the world.

[ 23 ] But what is expressed in all of this? All of this expresses something of the utmost importance. In the Anglo-American language, that connection between the human soul and the elements of language—as it existed in earlier times—no longer exists. Language has, in fact, become separated from the human being; it has become abstract as language. When one hears English being spoken, certain turns of phrase—particularly the ends of sentences—always strike one as if one were looking at a tree whose outermost treetops and branch tips have withered away. Language allows the inner imbuedness with the soul to wither away. This brings forth the opposite element, the opposite pole of soul life: the necessity to communicate beyond language.

[ 24 ] You see, this is what is so immensely important. In the future, it will not be possible to communicate in English unless, at the same time, we develop a form of understanding between people that is not rooted in language at all—one that is immediately elemental and intuitive—and which alone will then breathe life into language. But this means nothing less than that the supersensible human being—the first supersensible human being—must enter into the historical existence of humanity. Until now, people have spoken only from within their physical bodies. What they have produced as language from within their physical bodies will die out along with the English language. It will, of course, still exist, but it will increasingly become nothing more than abstract clanging. And people must enter into social relationships through their etheric bodies, so that, while they speak, they achieve an understanding from thought to thought—a genuine, not a superstitious, reading of thoughts. Mind-reading—that is a challenge that will extend into the coming centuries. Communicating directly from thought to thought and being aware that language will increasingly become merely a means of drawing the other person’s attention to one’s own thoughts. If language is still fully spiritual, then under certain circumstances—for example, when everything in this hall is buzzing with witty conversation and all sorts of sounds are mingling—I can ring a bell, can’t I? Then it will fall silent. I have announced that I now wish to speak, and through that, people will understand what I am saying. This is what speaking itself will be like in the future. It will, of course, have to accompany the development of thought, but it will be a constant ringing out to the other, and understanding from person to person will have to arise from a much deeper element of the soul. This will be brought about by the development of humanity, in that among the dominant peoples of the future—the Anglo-American peoples—language as such will become soulless, and the necessity will arise to contrast the demonic within the individual with the demonic in another human being.

[ 25 ] There, however, human beings—forgive me for using such a harsh expression—will face each other much more directly than they do today. One can lie with words, but false thoughts will be revealed as such. Yet in this transitional era, their seductive, illusory nature goes unnoticed. That is, after all, the reason why Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points so captivated the world. And now you will understand how to view something like this vague peace treaty as a global symptom of our time. It is very characteristic that this vague peace treaty appears at a time when people are supposed to turn away from language—which arises purely from the physical body, with its conventions and grammar—toward the direct understanding of thought. To the same extent that people come to understand the workings of the spirit from person to person, the various languages of the earth will no longer be an obstacle to fraternal coexistence. And to that same extent, a League of Nations will finally become possible. And to the same extent that spiritual relationships are added to today’s purely animalistic relationships—for these animalistic relationships among people have indeed reached their peak—only then will socialism become possible. Socialism under today’s social conditions, which are antisocial, depends on people absorbing spirituality and the soul within themselves, so that they can understand one another beyond language. Otherwise, it is impossible to achieve true socialism. One can strive for it, one can speak of it, but one is merely engaging in empty rhetoric. And such empty rhetoric is heard constantly today in the marketplace of political life. It is always the same: when one hears a politician of any party affiliation today, one hears words that one could just as well utter oneself; one hears old party platforms, long familiar ones—one need not even listen—yet a dreadful specter rises from within, a black figure that is entirely hollow and empty inside and longs to be filled; filled with what can emerge from the transformation of antisocial instincts through the development of social life—a transformation that must, however, flow from spirit to spirit in the future, whereas language, precisely in the past, was in many respects what first made human beings social beings. Patriarchal and other social structures arose from language and from what language brought about as a bond among people. Now that language is dying out, an inner spirituality must take the place of what was the substance of language. That is the condition for true progress.

[ 26 ] But people like Max Scheler and Johann Plenge have absolutely no desire to address such matters. Plenge was also among those who received our appeal “To the German People and to the Cultural World,” but who did not sign it, explaining that while they actually liked the appeal quite well, they found it too vague and therefore could not put their names to it. I fully understand this, for the entire mental makeup of a man like Plenge is such that he can only focus on the words and the structure of the text; because of the particular nature of the words and their structure, he fails to sense that a new spirit lies behind them. Consequently, he perceives nothing at all of what this appeal is actually intended to convey. Since, of course, one cannot arrange the words or construct the sentences in the way humanity has become accustomed to through today’s “newspaper plague” and the “scientific plague,” these carefully crafted words and sentence structures strike people as peculiar. And besides failing to grasp the spirit, they also find the language unclear. I fully understand both of these reactions, for there is first something to be overcome—which I sought to characterize in today’s lecture—if what is to be said, in a sense, in a new language, is to be truly understood.

[ 27 ] This is something that is meant to permeate culture—the spiritual culture of humanity—today, including in other fields. If you ever come to Dornach to see our building, which is intended to house our School of Spiritual Science, you will find that everything is treated differently than it has been in art up to now. Even the walls themselves are treated differently there. What does a wall essentially mean in all art and architecture up to now? A wall signifies a boundary. One was inside something enclosed by walls, and this had to be expressed through artistic motifs and forms. One had to feel as though one were inside something. In Dornach, this tradition—which is a thousand years old—is broken. The walls are—of course, this must be understood artistically—not such that one feels enclosed, but rather everything is shaped, everything is artistically formed in such a way that the wall becomes spiritually and soulfully transparent, so that one has the inner sensation that this wall ceases to exist. Every curve puts the soul in such a state that it perceives the walls as spiritually transparent. This is carried through to the physical level in the windows. For the windows, I devised the principle of creating glass etchings—that is, single-colored glass panes are treated by scratching them with a diamond stylus—and they become a work of art only when the sunlight shines through from outside, when a connection is established with the outside world. Only the sun’s rays shining through transform the etched surface into a work of art. But the artistic element is also embodied in the form itself: walls that dissolve, so that one sits inside not as if in a closed room, but as if, as a microcosm, one were in direct connection with the macrocosm—as if one were in an intimate connection with the entire universe. — This must be sought in all spheres of existence. Speaking abstractly about the sensory world as if it were a maya will no longer suffice for the future. The sensory world, if one denies its existence, will only truly make itself felt through its very existence. But if one artistically transcends this existence—through the artistic form itself—then what would otherwise have to be achieved through perception, thought, or abstraction is attained through the will.

[ 28 ] This, in turn, supports the idea that language should become something that is, in essence, spiritually transparent—something one no longer listens to, but rather listens through, in order to hear thoughts directly. Language must first wither away, as the English language is doing, in order to become something one can hear through—so that one may hear thoughts directly, so that that connection from soul to soul may arise, which consists of a kind of mind-reading. The English will not be able to do this. English culture will not be able to do this—the culture from which, despite its greatness, Shakespeare, Newton, or Darwin emerged. It cannot achieve this on its own. This can only be achieved if Central European culture returns to its better elements and contributes to world culture in fostering this spiritual sensibility from person to person. We must learn to make a thorough break with what we have cultivated in recent decades as a desecration and denial of our very selves. We must learn once again to connect with the greatness of a Lessing, Schüler, Goethe, and so on, and learn to recognize as “German” that which we have completely forgotten in recent decades—from which we have become utterly estranged. Then we will be able to contribute our share to the development of world culture. And above all, we must learn not to be dreamers and not to indulge in illusions, but to look at reality as it truly is. That is what is most urgently needed today. We must learn to scrutinize people more closely and to judge them from a certain intellectual standpoint. We must have the courage to say: When two people like Scheler and Plenge stand opposed to one another regarding contemporary issues, then one of them—namely Scheler—speaks in a Luciferic manner, drawing from impulses that he allows to be nourished by a Catholicizing form of Christianity. There, Ahriman speaks with Lucifer; the human being in between does not speak. This human being in between must first be found again. But we must have the courage to scrutinize people in this way. After all, people today pass each other by without really getting to know one another. They glance at each other superficially and form judgments about others that are simply convenient for them; they do not form the judgment that is truly true.

[ 29 ] That, my dear friends, is what I mean when I say: We must stop indulging in illusions. We must develop the courage to face the truth in a way that is still unheard of for many people today.

[ 30 ] With this resolve, we must stand firmly between the West and the East, and we must also have the courage to assess the situation in the East in such a way that we say to ourselves: What has often been mentioned here as the element of the people that lies in the East like a seed seeking to develop into the future is currently being drowned out by an anti-Russian—one might even say anti-human—element. For what is developing in Russia is the ultimate consequence of a logical mode of thinking that kills both humanity and the spirit—a mode of thinking that can no longer produce anything creative, but can only exploit the old. It truly seems like a tremendous tragedy, a bitter tragedy, when one surveys what emerged in Russian Eastern culture in the second half of the nineteenth century and what reached its highest peak in the extraordinary spirit—even if it is difficult for the West to understand—in the spirit of Soloviev, which was extraordinary for Russia. In Soloviev, so to speak, everything in Russia that holds promise for the future is philosophically synthesized. In Central Europe, of course, little attention has been paid to Soloviev. A university professor of philosophy, a man of great renown, realized one day that there was a Soloviev and that his ideas were relevant to the present—ideas with which he ought to engage. But since he lacked the inner drive to engage with the subject directly himself, he said to one of his students: “You want to become a doctor; write a doctoral dissertation on Soloviev for me, and then I’ll be able to learn about this Soloviev at the same time as you.” — In recent times, this had more or less become the method by which university professors familiarized themselves with unfamiliar works of intellectual production. The university professor I am speaking of is not merely a university professor, but a renowned philosophical figure of the very recent past.

[ 31 ] There is something in this East that will eventually emerge beyond destructive Leninism. But for this to happen, it is necessary to learn to understand the third element—the true social aspiration of the present in its spiritualized form—and to learn to penetrate it with true spiritual science. Then the tragic and bitter phenomenon that appears in Soloviev will come to one’s consciousness. Then one will say to oneself: On the one hand, there is Soloviev, emerging from this European East, full of new, creative, and fertile seeds of the spirit that can blossom in the East, but which we here in Central Europe simply cannot fully comprehend; and then, sweeping away this phenomenon—the catastrophe of the World War—carrying him along, even in a sealed train, through Germany toward the East: Lenin, the executioner of spiritual life. And the great delusion among many in Central Europe that things need not be taken so seriously!

[ 32 ] The Soloviev disciples appeared like comets as the Russian Revolution began. They longed for a renewal of the dull, twilight-like, paralyzed spiritual life, over which had settled—like the night of the soul itself—spiritual death, the slaying of the soul with all its circumstances. And these people—who, it seems, were true disciples of Soloviev: Kartakhov, Samarin—sought liberation. They wanted to kindle a spiritual movement in Russia from the first sparkling rays of the revolution. In its place came what now appears as a savage eradication of all that is spiritual in Lenin, this gravedigger of all spiritual life, where everything is denied that the great figure of Soloviev had presented to the people of the East. And surrounding this central figure are the proletarian masses, led astray by those whom they follow as their leaders. An infinitely sad spectacle, one that loses its sadness only when a will arises to see the truth amid the confusing realities of the present. An inner will that does not merely wish to rail against what is occurring in this wayward present, but that also wishes to see the truth and to recognize what is emerging throughout the entire civilized world in the just demands of the proletariat. But in the present—if one wishes to see it clearly and without illusion—one must be able to distinguish between what is deeply justified, though unconscious, emerging from the broad masses of the proletariat as seeds of the future that are as yet unborn in thought, and that which is instinct, because it is the last decaying remnant of a declining culture. This is what so often rises to the surface from the minds of the leaders of the proletariat today. Our age is marked by the fate that the most flourishing stands side by side with the most putrid. This is the fate of those times in which something rising seeks to assert itself alongside something in decline. Then the declining force often appears in the form of the rising one, wearing the mask of the rising one. Then one must look closely. Then one must see in Lenin the former tsar, appearing in a different mask—the same mindset that was in the former tsar, only with different, dead words that are useless for expressing what they mean. One must perceive the metamorphosis of the tsarist regime into Leninism in the Russian East of the present day. One must recognize that what appears on the outside may, on the inside, be the opposite of what appears on the outside. That is how difficult it is to fathom the circumstances of the present. What is happening is like this: a person approaches me with a smiling face, with eyes feigning banal sweetness, with expressions meant to charm me, and I am compelled to say to him: “Despite your mask, despite your sparkling eyes, your loving smile, you are a devil!”

[ 33 ] This is what is demanded of people today: to seek the truth under the most difficult circumstances. But this testifies to the fact that our present age must cast aside all the comforts of thought and feeling and be willing to endure hardship in order to arrive at the truth. Everything that is expressed today in the words “childlike faith” or “mere naive acceptance of the Bible—that will lead you to bliss” must be swept away. What this leads to is not bliss; it is merely indulging the soul’s most desolate egoism. Everything that springs from this mindset today must be taken into account and examined. And when, instead of a courageous, genuine penetration into what is necessary for our time, a “auntie-like” understanding of the relationship between anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and the threefold social organism emerges, then one must not be pleased simply because this “auntie-like” understanding appears outwardly smooth and benevolent; one must not believe that it cannot be rejected. Rather, one must call this “auntie-like” approach what it is, and one must know that today this “auntie-like” approach is the destructive force, that this “auntie-like” approach is precisely what produces the Bolshevism it claims to reject. The cure can consist only in a manly, “un-aunt-like” commitment to rigorous spiritual science. This is what must take root in our souls today, what must become an element, a catalyst in our spiritual life. If it fails to do so, humanity will not move forward. If one decides to continue along the old paths of thought and feeling, one is choosing decline. It is comfortable from within, but it will become highly uncomfortable from without. Or, one can rouse oneself through strong inner power to grasp the Spirit; then what is meant to die out will be grasped by the Spirit, and the Spirit will transform it into a new European civilization, just as it calls everything that dies out to new life. The spirit will bring forth a new life, and we will once again have that which is the ascending current of humanity toward a spiritual life.