The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] Now that I have been asked to give public lectures in this city on the social question, it is perhaps not out of place for us, on this particular evening here, to reflect inwardly, so to speak, on the social enigma, which is particularly significant at the present time.

[ 2 ] We know, of course, that when we encounter a person in the outer world—who stands before our powers of perception and sensation, as they are bound to the body—we must recognize the true, deeper inner being. We first become aware of this inner human being when we take into account that, fundamentally, it is connected to everything that we can say permeates and interweaves the world for our knowledge and for our entire life. Just consider how different our anthroposophical view of the world is from the ordinary view, particularly with regard to the human being. Take a look at the attempt I made to summarize the anthroposophical worldview in outline form—at everything you have read in my *Outline of Esoteric Science*—and you will see that it is not merely our Earth’s evolution in connection with humanity; rather, it is our Earth’s evolution viewed as having emerged from earlier incarnations of this, our Earth planet. This Earth’s development emerged from the ancient Moon’s development, which in turn emerged from the Sun’s development, and that Sun’s development from the Saturn’s development. But look at everything that has been compiled to trace this development across planetary systems up to our Earth’s development, and you will say: In everything one considers, the human being is never absent. The human being is present in everything. The entire cosmos is viewed in such a way that all its forces, everything that happens within it, is ordered toward the human being. In the view of the world, the human being is the center of this perspective. — In one of my Mystery Dramas, in a conversation between Capesius and the initiate, I specifically highlighted this foundation of the entire anthroposophical worldview—I would say, with its reference to the human soul—and emphasized the impression it must make on a person when they realize: All generations of gods, all world forces—they are called upon, they are at work, ultimately to bring the human being into being, to place him at the center of their creation.

[ 3 ] I have pointed out how essential it is, precisely in the face of this thoroughly true idea, to assert the necessity of human humility, how necessary it is to tell ourselves again and again: Yes, if we were to experience our entire being—as we carry it within us, upon us, and around us, and as we are placed in the world with it—with full awareness, if we could truly bring our entire being to revelation, it would, in a microcosmic sense, be the whole rest of the world. — But how much do we know, how much do we experience, how much can we reveal through action of what we are as human beings in the highest sense of the word? We therefore hover—if we can truly grasp the idea of what we are as human beings—between pride and humility. We must certainly not degenerate into arrogance, but neither must we sink into humility. We would sink into humility if we did not place our task as human beings—for the sake of what we are in the world, even before a comprehensive view of the world—as high as possible. Fundamentally, we can never think highly enough of what we ought to be. We can never sufficiently appreciate the deeper cosmic sense of responsibility that must overcome a human being when he contemplates how the entire universe is ordered around his very being.

[ 4 ] However, from the perspective of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, this should become less of a theoretical idea, less of mere science, and more of a feeling—the feeling of a sacred reverence toward what we as human beings ought to be, yet in very few cases are able to be. But this feeling should also often be present when we encounter an individual human being: There you stand, expressing many things within yourself in this present incarnation. Yet you pass from life to life, from incarnation to incarnation; an infinite reality takes shape in the sequence of your lives. — And we could expand these feelings in many other directions, deepen them. It is only from this feeling, on the ground of spiritual science, that we arrive at a true appreciation of humanity; it is only then that we arrive at a sense of human dignity in the world. This feeling can permeate our entire soul; when it spreads throughout our inner being, it alone can put us in the right frame of mind when we are called upon to establish our individual relationship from person to person in each specific case. What I have just outlined can be regarded as a first essential achievement of modern anthroposophically oriented spiritual science: a proper appreciation of the human in the world. That is one thing.

[ 5 ] But something else will emerge for us from a truly soulful—not merely theoretical—immersion in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is this: Let us take in all the events of the world—what lives as elements in earth, water, and air; let us take in all that shines down upon us from the stars, all that blows toward us in the wind, all that speaks to us from the individual realms of nature. Consider this: when we view all of this in the spirit of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, it somehow relates to the human being. Everything becomes valuable to us because we can, in a certain way, relate it to the human being. On an emotional level, a relationship between the human being—arising from supersensible knowledge—and all things is established. Christian Morgenstern, the poet, has expressed in beautiful verses a feeling that I have often shared with our friends when contemplating a certain chapter of the Gospel of John—that feeling that comes over us when we allow the progression of the natural kingdoms to take effect upon us. There we can say to ourselves: the plant may look upon the lifeless kingdom of minerals. Certainly, in the hierarchy of natural beings, it must feel itself to be something higher than mere lifeless minerals. But as the plant looks upon the mere lifeless mineral that prepares the soil for it, it can say to itself: I do indeed stand higher than you in the hierarchy of beings, yet it is from you that I grow; to you I owe my existence. In gratitude, I bow before that which is lower than I.” — And so, in turn, we as animals should feel toward the plant as the animal feels toward the plant; and likewise in the human realm, when a human has ascended to a higher stage in the sequence of their development. He must look down with reverence and respect upon that which, in a certain sense, is lower than he is—not merely in a way that can be explained conceptually, but in such a way that one can truly experience, as a cosmic feeling in the soul, that which pulses, lives, and weaves within all things. This is how anthroposophically oriented spiritual science guides us from its true essence. It thus gives us the opportunity to develop a living relationship between human beings and all other things as well.

[ 6 ] And a third point. What spiritual science presents as the Spirit—it does not view it as if it were speaking in pantheistic terms of “Spirit and Spirit” that underlies all things. No, it does not speak merely of the real Spirit; rather, this spiritual science seeks to speak from reality, from the Spirit itself. It seeks to speak in such a way that the one who lives within spiritual science itself knows: as his thoughts about the Spirit take shape, it is the Spirit itself that weaves and lives within these thoughts. The one who is, if I may say so, inspired by the spirit of spiritual science does not merely wish to express thoughts about the spirit; he wishes to let the spirit express itself through his thoughts. The immediate presence of the spirit, the active power of the spirit—these are what spiritual science seeks.

[ 7 ] And now compare what is, so to speak, implanted deep within the human soul through a living engagement with spiritual science, with what I spoke of yesterday—that which passes through time as a social demand and which, in a certain way, is alive in proletarian consciousness, so as to become this demand of the times, this social demand of the times. Consider this: what lives in proletarian consciousness today—what, in a sense, serves as the foundation of knowledge for this proletarian consciousness—is an ideology, a mere weaving of abstract thoughts. Indeed, it is presented as the very essence of all psychological and spiritual experience—that this psychological and spiritual experience is nothing but an ideology; that there are economic processes which are the only reality; these are the processes in which human beings are immersed, as in their struggles for life; from them rises, as it were, like smoke and mist, what they think, what they perceive, what is revealed in their artistic creations, what they regard as custom, morality, law, and so on: all merely an ideological shadow! Compare this spiritual life, regarded as an ideological shadow, with the spiritual life that seeks to enter our souls through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to establish the spirit itself as a living reality in the world through the human soul. This Spirit has been driven out of the conception of time established by the bourgeoisie and adopted by the proletariat to its own detriment—driven out! And that which should live within the human being as the awareness of liveliness—“Spirit is within me”—lives on as a mere ideology.

[ 8 ] And secondly. Consider how much of what is human lies before us in this one earthly life—which we can experience through the senses and ordinary physical perception—that very humanity for the sake of which we must, in order to fully contemplate it, call upon not only earthly evolution but also lunar, solar, and Saturnian evolution? How does the truly human—which, through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, gives us the right feeling, the right sense of true human dignity—fade away before this modern consciousness, so that we may find the right relationship when we, as human individuals, face another human individual? Is it conceivable, then, that in today’s chaos of human coexistence a proper relationship between human beings might be found—one that must, after all, underlie a genuine solution to the social enigma? Is it even possible for such a proper relationship between human beings to arise without being grounded in that cosmic appreciation of the human being which can spring only from spiritual knowledge and spiritual feeling?

[ 9 ] And thirdly. With regard to our relationship to the external world, we need not seek abstract ideas, as economic and social policies today would have it, but rather direct, personal connections to the individual facts of the world, to the individual things of the world. With regard to the external, human things of the world, we must find a relationship to this world. Here again, as I have shown, is this third aspect—what we gain in spiritual experience from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science in our time—this feeling toward all non-human beings, the feelings we have toward everything that stands below and above us in the hierarchical order of nature and the gods.

[ 10 ] And now consider two things. On the one hand, consider what is today known as proletarian consciousness: how far it is, in the realm of spiritual experience, removed from the sense of the living Spirit itself at work within human beings, and how it has reduced all spiritual life to ideology. Consider how far removed from a truly profound, spirit-embracing appreciation of humanity is what today’s proletarian thinks and, above all, feels about his fellow human beings, and incorporates into his views. Consider, finally, how far removed the purely economic value of things—which today is almost the sole criterion for human worth—is from those values of non-human things that we learn to perceive through what I have expressed, based on anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, regarding the relationship of the human being to non-human things.

[ 11 ] Consider two things. On the one hand, consider where humanity has ended up as a result of the non-spiritual nature of the past centuries having spread so intensely within human souls. On the other hand, consider the hopes that can be awakened by the fact that genuine spiritual science can now take root in humanity. Bring these two things together and then ask yourself whether it is not only when the human soul is truly gripped by what spiritual science has to offer that the social enigma is placed in the proper light. — If you perceive what I have presented here as two perspectives—one hopeless and one full of hope—in their true sense, then working for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science will become for you what it must indeed become necessary for humanity today: a necessity of life, a necessity so fundamental that it should permeate all other work and creative endeavor.

[ 12 ] You will say to yourselves: Nothing seems more understandable to me in the entire context of recent human development than the fact that this social problem has arisen; but nothing also seems more understandable to me than the fact that people stand so tragically at a loss in the face of this social problem. — For in the time when this social problem is knocking so loudly and distinctly at the door of worldviews, at the door of life, humanity is also simultaneously undergoing one of its greatest trials—the trial that consists in its having to turn toward the spirit out of its innermost strength. We cannot have revelations today unless we seek them in freedom, for since the middle of the 15th century we have been living in the age of the conscious soul, in which everything is to be brought into the light of consciousness. Let us not lament today by saying: A terrible catastrophe has befallen humanity. Why have the gods brought this terrible catastrophe upon humanity? Why do the gods not lead people out of it, since it is indeed lamentable that humanity has brought itself into such a situation? — In light of all this, let us not forget that we are living in an age in which human inner freedom is to be revealed, an age in which the gods, in accordance with their very own world intentions, may reveal themselves only when human beings face them of their own free will, ready to receive them into the innermost being of their souls.

[ 13 ] With regard to the most important aspects of human development, we are today at a turning point, including with regard to Christianity. Indeed, some figures active in the social movement have pointed out that while we are happy to embrace Christianity, we accept only those aspects of it that remind us of our own social ideals. But this most important earthly impulse—the impulse that gives everything else on earth its true meaning—cannot be treated in this way! We must be clear about this: what has unfolded within humanity so far in relation to Christianity is actually only a beginning. Not much more has been lived out than this: through everything that people have felt in connection with Christianity—namely, in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha—the point has actually been made only that the Christ was once present through the human being Jesus and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. In a sense, these first nearly two millennia of Christianity’s existence on Earth were unable—due to human understanding not yet having progressed to a higher level of maturity—to do more than indicate to humankind that Christ had united Himself with the Earth, that Christ had descended to Earth. Only now, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—the epoch of the development of the consciousness soul—is humanity maturing to the point of not only understanding that Christ passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, but also what actually lives within this Mystery of Golgotha. Humanity will only be able to understand the content of the Mystery of Golgotha on the basis of those spiritual foundations that can be formed within this fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

[ 14 ] I have also mentioned here in this thread on several occasions that I must regard it as an extraordinary triviality when anyone says: “We are living in a time of transition.” — All times are times of transition! What matters is not that one lives in this ‘or that’ time as a time of transition, but rather, in relation to what, a time is undergoing change, is in a state of transition. What matters is to see what is changing. Now, I have pointed out here from a wide variety of perspectives what is currently changing in our time, in the broadest sense, with regard to human consciousness and the development of the human soul. Today I would like to point out, again from a specific perspective, what is currently changing in our time with regard to human development on Earth.

[ 15 ] I said just a moment ago: Through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, we seek not only to have thoughts about the spiritual, but we seek the reality of the spiritual; we seek thoughts in which the Spirit itself lives, in which the Spirit reveals itself. We can also put it this way: Jesus Christ spoke the words: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” — One is, in the true sense, a follower of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science not if one believes that everything that constitutes the content of Christianity is exhausted in the Gospels, but if one knows that Christ is truly present, every day, until the end of time—not merely as a dead force one must believe in, but as a living force that continues to reveal itself more and more. And what is it that he reveals in the present? The content of modern anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It does not merely wish to speak about Christ; it wishes to express what Christ wants to say to people in the present through human thoughts.

[ 16 ] It can be said that even in ancient times, when people still lived instinctively and when a remnant of atavistic clairvoyance still lived in the human soul, the spiritual expressed itself in the human soul; the spiritual lived in human ideas and in the human will; the gods lived within human beings. — Today, the gods still dwell within human beings, albeit in a somewhat different way than in the ancient times of human development. One might say: In ancient times, the gods had a specific task regarding the development of the Earth; they had set themselves a goal—a divine goal—for the development of the Earth. They achieved this goal by inspiring human beings with their powers, by endowing the human soul with imaginations. But as strange as it may sound, these very, most fundamental goals of the divine worlds regarding Earth’s development have been fulfilled in relation to Earth’s development. What the gods sought for themselves from the Earth has, in essence, been fulfilled in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Therefore, today the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies—whom we may also call “gods” in our sense of the word—stand in a different relationship to the human soul than they did in the past. Back then, the gods sought out human beings in order to realize their goals here on Earth with human help. Today, human beings must seek out the gods; today, human beings must, out of their innermost impulses, rise up to the gods. And they must, so to speak, achieve with the gods that their goals—their conscious goals—are realized with the help of divine forces. This is how it should be for human beings from the age of the development of the soul of consciousness onward. In earlier times, human goals were unconscious and instinctive because divine goals lived consciously within them. Human goals themselves must become ever more conscious; then these human goals will contain the power to rise up to the gods, so that human goals can be pursued with divine powers.

[ 17 ] Just think these words through! There is much in these words. In these words lies the necessity that, beginning precisely in our own age, human beings must embark on a primal, elemental striving that arises from within themselves. We can seek this elemental striving in various realms of the soul. Above all, we must seek it in a deeper social realm by considering the relationship between human beings from a spiritual-scientific perspective. Because in the past the gods had their own goals for human development and realized them through human beings, people stood much closer to one another in the course of Earth’s evolution—as it was meant to be at that time—than they do today. Today, people are, in a certain sense, being driven apart from one another, and they must seek one another anew in an entirely different relationship. But people must first learn how to engage in this seeking. Viewed purely from the outside, you can see this everywhere. People today know little about one another. Spiritual science, in its cosmic assessment of human dignity and the human being, is still in its infancy. In real life, people today know little about one another. People do not penetrate to the depths of the soul of their fellow human beings. That is the rule. This is what must be found in a deeper social being: knowledge of human nature in a new form must become part of human development.

[ 18 ] However, since we actually see only the physical human being in the sense of a spiritless view of nature, we must reach a point where we can recognize the workings of the gods in other human beings in order to enter into a true, spirit-filled social organism. We can only achieve this if we also take action toward it. One thing we can do is to seek a certain depth in our own inner life. There are many ways to do this. I would like to outline just one meditative approach for you. For a wide variety of reasons and with a wide variety of goals, we can look back on our own lives. We can ask ourselves: How has our individual life developed from childhood to the present day? — But we can also try it this way: Instead of focusing so much on how we rejoiced over this or that, or how we experienced this or that, we can look to those people who have played a role in our lives—as parents, siblings, friends, teachers, or in any other way—and, instead of focusing on ourselves, we can bring to mind the essence of these people who have shaped our lives. For a while, it will seem as though we could tell ourselves just how little of us is actually our own, and how much is what has flowed into our very being from others. Our relationship to the world will, however, become quite different if we honestly and sincerely engage in such an inner self-reflection. Feelings and sensations remain as the results of such reflection. And these feelings, these sensations, are certain fertile seeds within us. They are seeds for true understanding of humanity. The person who repeatedly looks into his own being in this way—recognizing the part that others, perhaps people long since deceased or who have drifted away from him, have played in shaping his being—will also approach other people in such a way that, by establishing an individual relationship from person to person, the imagination of the true nature of that other person arises within him. This is something that, in recent times and looking toward the future of humanity, must also emerge as an inner—and specifically, soul-based—social imperative for human development. Thus, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must become practical; thus, it must enrich life and inspire it.

[ 19 ] I would like to raise yet another point. In earlier times, all self-knowledge— every act of looking into one’s own soul, was relatively much simpler than it is now, because today—not only in relation to the consciousness of certain people arising from their circumstances of wealth or poverty, or from other sources as well—a deeply inner social impulse emerges, an impulse that manifests itself, for example, in the following way. Today we pay little attention to how a person’s entire life is a process of becoming ever more mature. People as inwardly honest as Goethe felt this process of maturing. Even in his advanced age, Goethe still wanted to learn; even in his advanced age, Goethe knew that he was not yet complete as a human being. And he looked back on his youth and his middle years, perceiving everything that had taken place during those times as preparation for what he was able to experience in old age. People today think very little in this way, especially when they view human beings as social beings. Nowadays, everyone at the age of twenty would prefer to be a member of an organization and to pass judgment on everything—well, as they say—democratically. Thus, people cannot conceive that one has something to expect from life by maturing more and more as one approaches old age. People today do not think about this. — That is one thing we must learn again: that life as a whole—not just the first two or three decades of youth—has something to offer a person.

[ 20 ] And there is yet another thing we must learn. We do not merely see ourselves standing in the world; we also see people of other ages; above all, we see the child being drawn into the world and into life through birth. Just as human development on Earth has unfolded, many things that once revealed themselves spontaneously in the human soul can now be attained only through the utmost effort—an effort toward supersensible knowledge, or at least toward a genuine understanding of life. As is the case with human beings in general, many things that belong to the child’s very nature remain hidden from it. But it is not only that which remains hidden from the child—what it will experience once it has entered its mature years or old age—but also, in general, much of what was revealed to older people who lived instinctively and possessed atavistic clairvoyance remains hidden from us today if we look only within ourselves. And so there is something that, if we seek knowledge only within ourselves, cannot reveal itself to us from the cradle to the grave. This, too, lies among the peculiarities of our age of consciousness. We can strive for the clarity of consciousness, yet much of what is meant to be illuminated by this clarity remains precisely hidden. And so there is something quite peculiar about our time. As children, we enter the world; there is something within us that is important for the world, for the coexistence of humanity, for historical understanding. But we cannot recognize it if we remain confined to ourselves—neither as a child, nor as a man, nor as a woman, nor as an elderly man or woman. Yet it can be recognized in another way. It can be recognized when the mature human soul—the soul of a man, the soul of a woman, the soul of an elderly man or woman—which has been refined by genuine spiritual feeling, looks upon the child and has the sense that: Something is revealed in the child that the child cannot yet recognize—something that the child, left to its own devices, can never recognize, not even by the time of its death—but which can be recognized in the soul of the other, who, as an elderly person, looks back upon this child. There you have something that can be revealed through the child—not within the child, nor within the man or woman whom this child may become until death, but in the other person who, from a more advanced stage of life, looks lovingly upon the youngest human being.

[ 21 ] I draw particular attention to this because, in such a trend of our time, you can see how a social impulse—but in the broadest sense—ripples and weaves through our era. Is it not a profound social trend—this necessity of being able to bring something fruitful into life only by having the elderly learn from the very young that being together is life’s highest purpose—[this togetherness] not merely between Person X 1 and Person X 2, but between a person in old age and the youngest child?

[ 22 ] This social togetherness is precisely what the innermost spirit and meaning of our time points us toward. And so, by addressing people who have already been somewhat prepared by the other branches of this spiritual science, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can delve even deeper into the social problem. You all have a very significant social task if you draw upon all that can be stirred within you—particularly your social feeling—to act within the humanity of our time as those specially chosen by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. If you kindle, within the current social and socialist discourse, a deeper sense of social feeling and a deeper understanding from person to person, then you will fulfill a living mission stemming from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, even in a social sense.

[ 23 ] We'll continue discussing this next week, when we once again have the branch lecture between the two public lectures.