The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today, as I speak to you for the first time in this room about anthroposophical matters, I would like above all to express my gratitude to those dear friends who, during the time when I myself was unable to be here in Berlin, devoted themselves wholeheartedly to setting up these rooms, which are intended to serve our anthroposophical reflections and work. After all, we are living in a time when the human soul must, for the most part, be attuned to the great, far-reaching events in world history and in the development of humanity. These great, far-reaching events and upheavals of the present engage our will so fully—if we wish to understand our place as human beings within world events—that we cannot, as we sometimes could in earlier, calmer, or at least seemingly calmer times, devote the same attention to such beautiful external events as to the creation of a space like this, which is dedicated to ideal goals, spiritual goals—so dedicated that people interact within them just as they do in their social lives. Yet, upon proper reflection, there is indeed a certain connection between the great events currently pulsing through the world and such a space. After all, the significant demands of humanity’s historical development itself will inevitably mean that what people have sought in beauty thus far—in artistic design for their individual private lives—will increasingly be drawn toward those spaces that people do not possess for their own selfish purposes, but rather in which they interact socially. One would have a poor understanding of what aims to set itself as future goals in human development if one were to judge it by what sometimes seems to be emerging today. The social movement of the present not only often has a “more democratic” character—the transient nature of which one need only see through in the right sense in order not to misjudge what lies at the heart of this movement, despite this more democratic character—but this social movement also carries within it something that could already strike fear into people’s hearts: beauty—that which, as art, permeates our earthly culture—would not find the same appreciation in the future as it did in the past, when materially privileged circles were able to devote themselves to the cultivation of beauty!

[ 2 ] A transitional period may cause our receptivity to beauty to recede somewhat. But precisely when a more social organization of our lives begins to take hold in earnest, it will be essential that external spatial and temporal events also be adapted to good taste and beauty; otherwise, humanity would degenerate into philistinism and vulgarity. Thus, in a certain sense, we may regard precisely the simple beauty that our friends here in this space have sought to adapt to the serious matters of life that are to be cultivated here—we may regard precisely this as something symbolic of the great events pulsing through our time. And based on these sentiments, I believe I speak in harmony with all of you when, in these serious times, I express my most heartfelt thanks to our friends for a work such as that accomplished here—a work that also reflects the spirit of our times. It would also be a mistaken belief to judge what is being prepared in the present as if the so-called “objective events” in the world could diminish the value of the personality and the value of that which stems from the personal, from the individual. That will not be the case. It is only the centuries leading up to the end of the 19th—the last three or four centuries—that have, in a sense, had such an effect that, in the overall development of humanity, it seems justified to regard human beings as little more than a cog in the general machinery of the world. The task for the near future will be for human beings to work their way out of this world mechanism. That is why it can already be said: For the most part, the great movement of the present day is thoroughly egoistic in character. Certainly, people are striving for socialism, but out of purely antisocial drives and instincts. One must not fail to recognize that we are actually striving for socialism today precisely because people have become so antisocial in their spiritual development, in their spiritual disposition. If social feeling were more natural, there would be no need for so many socialist programs; these are, in a sense, brought about solely as a reaction to people’s antisocial feelings and sensibilities. But precisely in such a time—in which, because things are so unclear, the social is striving to emerge from the selfish and antisocial—precisely in such a time, the sight of what has been achieved through noble, selfless devotion to an ideal cause, born of genuine, true, unselfish human feelings, exerts a very special effect. And it would be good if, in these serious times, we did not simply celebrate a festival in an outward sense today, but rather turned our thoughts to what I have just expressed: how valuable it is, amidst the pervasive selfish striving of our time, to find the possibility of creating something like what has been created here—albeit on a very small scale—for idealistic, spiritual work. And so it seems to me that the most festive thing to do today is to offer some reflections here that, on the one hand, are connected to the gravity of the times, so that out of this gravity we may bring into our souls those feelings that may perhaps accompany us through the work to be carried out here in these rooms, as long as circumstances allow us to carry them out in these rooms, and, on the other hand, to allow thoughts to take effect upon us which, because they are intimately connected with the development of humanity, may be worthy and fitting—so that when we enter these rooms, arising from the tasks these rooms are meant to serve, they may move through our souls time and again.

[ 3 ] If we look at our times with a critical eye—not maliciously critical, but critical nonetheless—then we would not be being truthful if we tried to delude ourselves about the numerous trends of decline in all areas of life that are prevalent in this era. When we look at our present age, we must not forget—if we are not to lose sight of the seriousness of life—how far removed what people generally carry in their consciousness today—to the extent that they express it in words—is, for the most part, from what is truly and genuinely real within. Even the sense of how far the words we speak today often stray from the truth—even that sense has actually been lost to large segments of our contemporaries; and in place of the natural outpouring of truth from the human soul has come, we might say, worldly phraseology. For what is the defining characteristic of the cliché? It is characterized by the fact that people speak without the words that come from their mouths being inwardly connected—for they can only be connected inwardly—to the source of truth. We need only look at what has been revealed over the course of the last four, five, or six years in terms of widespread untruth throughout the world, and we cannot doubt that this has greatly increased the world’s estrangement from true reality, has led to “worldly clichés,” and—were nothing to counteract it—would continue to lead to them more and more. And nothing, in fact, has flourished as much in recent times—apart from the rise of empty rhetoric and untruthfulness—as tolerance toward this untruthfulness, as the tendency toward untruthfulness. Wherever one encounters empty rhetoric today, one also encounters those people who are lenient toward the use of such rhetoric, this untruthfulness. For these lenient people ask everywhere: What did the person in question mean by that? Did he not always have the best of intentions? Did he not always believe he was acting with the best of intentions? — And how little, in contrast, does the conscientious sense of truth prevail—that whoever opens their mouth is obligated to seriously examine the grounds for a claim and to refrain from making the claim unless they have examined it. The time must come when it is not enough to say of a person, “He meant well,” if he has spoken an untruth. Rather, the time must come when people feel the most intense sense of responsibility toward the verification of truth, and when—even if they were to discover that they had stated something in good faith that does not correspond to the facts—they would not be able to forgive themselves for it, but would be mindful of the fact that, for objective knowledge of the world, it is irrelevant whether we subjectively believe we have spoken the truth or not; but that for objective knowledge of the world, it is by no means the same whether, in a particular case, we say something that is true in the objective sense—that is, corresponds to the facts—or something that does not correspond to the facts. Precisely in the face of the gravity of the times, we will have to learn what is truly mere rhetoric.

[ 4 ] Today, many people actually feel—though they are not clearly aware of it—that one should be allowed to say whatever makes one feel comfortable. This has been particularly evident, and continues to be evident, in the stance that a great many people take toward current events. Something serious has passed us by. Yet people judge this seriousness only in terms of what is pleasant to them, not according to the significance it holds for the overall development of humanity. We have had contemporaries who stood at the center of what has happened over the last four to five years—people who, due to circumstances, have been propelled into leading positions with regard to world events. These people—their fate has overtaken them! But how few people are inclined to form an objective judgment about what actually happened. How few people are inclined to ask by what process of selection, by what criteria, at that decisive moment, the very leading figures came to occupy their positions of power—to the detriment of humanity. Yet nothing is more necessary today than to work through all subjective opinions to arrive at a certain objectivity regarding these matters. Some people believe it is easy to speak the truth today. It is not easy to speak the truth, because the truth has so many enemies today, and because, naturally, those who speak the truth quickly wear themselves out. For the truth is often taken amiss today.

[ 5 ] In recent months, since I have often been told that what I advocate in the social sphere is so difficult to understand that people cannot grasp it, I have had to insist time and again that, indeed, grasping this very social impulse requires a different state of mind than the one that has prevailed in Central Europe—particularly in the last four to five years, and even long before that, though it has reached its peak especially in the last four to five years. People have understood a great deal in these last four to five years; they have understood things that I truly have not understood. One could find all sorts of sayings framed beautifully in many people’s homes; people have understood them. With a straightforward sense of truth, one could not grasp such sayings, but people did grasp them. For they were commanded to grasp them: the order came from the Great Headquarters. Then they understood everything. Now, however, what is needed are things that one grasps not out of obedience, but from one’s own free soul. Perhaps people must first reacquire this ability. The last four to five years have seriously demonstrated that people must reclaim this ability. And compared to what people have become accustomed to over the last four to five years, telling the truth is truly no pleasant duty—first, because the truth is serious, and second, because people take the truth so badly.

[ 6 ] There will come times that will look back on our era in a very special way. But people today have many other obligations than they did in the recent past. Therefore, even now, we must, in a certain sense, try to imagine how future generations will view what is happening in our time.

[ 7 ] In our time, people will have to learn to turn their gaze—their spiritual gaze—back upward toward the great transformations, toward the great impulses of human evolution on Earth. Such a great transformation began in the middle of the 15th century according to the Christian calendar. In our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, we call this the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, and we know that it has a completely different character compared to the earlier, Greco-Latin cultural epoch, which began in the 8th century B.C. and ended in the 15th century A.D. Through what people today have accepted as conventional wisdom—and call “history”—they fail to perceive the immense difference between the human soul states of, say, the 10th century and those of the centuries that began in the mid-15th century. New states of mind and spiritual dispositions have swept over humanity, and we can only understand what has actually entered into human development if we turn our spiritual gaze upward to the forces at work within human history itself—to the forces at play, for example, during the upheaval in the mid-15th century. In our time—several centuries have, after all, passed since the mid-15th century—what came upon civilized humanity in the mid-15th century is, in a sense, reaching a crisis; it has developed slowly up to now and now stands at a decisive moment, because human consciousness must seize this decisive moment.

[ 8 ] Today is the time when human beings—we will discuss how they do this later—must take into their consciousness the fact that: Here I stand within the events of the Earth as a human being, and outside of me are the three kingdoms of nature: the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. But when a human being utters this sentence today, he is, from the standpoint of present-day consciousness—the consciousness of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—speaking only a half-truth. A human being who lived before this epoch could still say, “Outside of me are the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom,” because he understood something different by these terms than does today’s consciousness. People of ancient times still understood the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom in such a way that spiritual forces reigned within these kingdoms. Modern human beings have lost this awareness. They must first reclaim it by looking at the three kingdoms and knowing: Just as we are connected downward to the three kingdoms—the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms—so are we connected upward to the three kingdoms of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai. And only then are we speaking not a half-truth but the full truth—not merely by saying that we look downward toward the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms, but also by being able to look upward toward the realms of the Angeloi, the Archangeloi, and the Archai. Just as our physical body has a certain relationship to the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms, so too does our spiritual-soul aspect have a relationship to what constitutes the three hierarchies above us. But especially in our time, it is the case that while, on the one hand, we are greatly altering our relationship to the three kingdoms of nature, we are also altering our relationship to the three kingdoms of the hierarchies that stand above humanity. Today I would like to draw your attention to this serious matter concerning human development, and by keeping this in mind, we can best celebrate the dedication ceremony for this branch hall.

[ 9 ] When we look back on what took place in the development of humanity during earlier periods—which, in a sense, came to a close around the middle of the 15th century—we must say, setting aside for the moment the higher hierarchies: The beings of the Angeloi, the Archangeloi, and the Archai have always been concerned with humanity—with humanity as it passes through its existence between death and a new birth, but also with humanity as it passes through its existence here on the earthly plane. But the involvement of the beings of these three hierarchies with humanity has, in a certain sense, come to an end in our age. Among the manifold activities to which the beings of these three hierarchies have been devoted is this: to collaborate in shaping the archetype that underlies the physical human being on Earth, the physical organization of the human being on Earth. We enter our physical existence through birth and grow up within this physical existence: the archetype of humanity is imprinted within us. In the most ancient times of human development, this image was quite different; it has undergone many changes. You need only recall what emerges when we look back to the ancient Atlantean era or even to the time of Egyptian culture: people were still different in their physical build. The image of humanity has changed, and it was the task of the beings of these three higher hierarchies to work on this image. One might even say that it was among the tasks of these beings to develop the image of the human being so that it first took the form it had in the ancient Lemurian era, then the form it had in the Atlantean era, and finally the form it had in the post-Atlantean periods. In this way, the beings of these three higher hierarchies gradually came to bring forth the image that underlies humanity today by transforming older forms.

[ 10 ] But now we come to the peculiar aspect of the matter, and a genuine spiritual observation of human evolution reveals this: the beings of these three hierarchies have essentially completed the actual formation of this image of humanity in our age. This image of humanity, insofar as it underlies the physical organization of the human being, is in fact complete. Feel the significance of this fact: The beings of the hierarchies of the Angeloi, the Archangeloi, and the Archai have worked for millennia upon millennia to develop an image, and this image is the very one according to which the physical human organization has taken shape. And we are living in the age in which these beings of the three higher hierarchies say to one another: We have worked on the image of humanity, but we have finished. We have placed human beings into this earthly world as physical human beings, and we are now finished!

[ 11 ] Anyone who contemplates this fact through spiritual insight finds it particularly shocking that the interest of the beings of these three higher hierarchies in the creation of the physical image of humanity has not only diminished in this age, but has vanished entirely. If one looks back to the Greco-Roman era, one finds that the beings of these higher hierarchies took a keen interest in bringing about the physical form of humanity on Earth. Today, these beings of the higher hierarchies actually have no interest in this anymore. They feel they have done their part for physical humanity on Earth. From this perspective, their interest has waned. People could regard this as a particularly significant fact, one that cuts deeply into human nature, if only they would take the time and make the effort to observe the external facts of human development today as well. Let us look back, for example, to earlier times. From much of what has happened and has been handed down to us in a way that allows us to judge it, we can say to ourselves: Certain thoughts arose almost instinctively in the people of earlier times. After all, it is precisely those people in whom certain thoughts arise instinctively who are described as geniuses. Today, at most, people believe that such thoughts arise in some individuals. Today, there is little genius to be found in the people of the Earth. For the forces of genius no longer rise up from the physical organism, because the beings of the three higher hierarchies no longer work on this physical organism. They have lost interest in the physical constitution of human beings.

[ 12 ] This is precisely what makes modern humans so arrogant in a certain respect—that they actually consider their physical form to be complete. They will no longer be able to undergo the remainder of Earth’s evolution through the perfection of their physical earthly form. No further perfection of their organization will arise from the body itself. What once arose instinctively and brilliantly in the human soul came from the body and, at the same time—because it was the work of the gods—exerted an organizing force upon the body. When Homer composed poetry, for example, he did so with a force that was at the same time an organizing force within the Greeks, shaping the Greek body. Whatever arises—or can arise—with such a concrete force possesses, at the same time, body-forming powers. What, on the other hand, appears among us today as the laws of nature we have established—of which we are so proud—are, by and large, abstractions; they possess no body-forming power. We therefore form abstract thoughts that are incapable of governing social life, and abstract laws of nature, because the beings of the three higher hierarchies no longer work within us, because we no longer have thoughts rising within us that are organizing. Our soul being has become abstract. Our soul is, in fact, such within us that it has been abandoned—even by the body itself—to the activity of the beings of the three higher hierarchies.

[ 13 ] And this is what is important now: that we must once again seek, on our own initiative, to reconnect with the activity of the beings of the three higher hierarchies. Until now, these beings have reached out to us as human beings; they have worked on us. Now we must work on our own soul-spiritual life. And what we accomplish in our soul-spiritual life—what we reveal from the spiritual world through spiritual scientific research—will become something within our human soul that will once again interest the beings of the three higher hierarchies. They will be present in the thoughts and feelings we draw from the spiritual world. Through this, we will reestablish our connections with the beings of these hierarchies. What is happening in our present era is so significant that we must describe it as a shift in the relationship between the world of the gods and the human world. The gods have been working right up to our time on perfecting the physical form of the human being. Human beings must begin to work on the content of their souls so that they may find their way back to the three higher hierarchies. This is why our time is so difficult: because people are so proud of an external physical form that has reached completion, and—independently of this physical form— that is, independent of any higher world, they develop abstract thoughts that have no connection to the spiritual world; and because our true task is actually to seek this connection within ourselves through devotion to spiritual knowledge and the feelings arising from spiritual knowledge, and to will from within spiritual knowledge. Only those who feel and sense this great transformation—which, admittedly, has been unfolding over centuries—with the utmost intensity can today attain a proper stance within their own time. Today, one cannot gain a proper stance toward the times through external observations; today, one must have the opportunity to attain this stance through inner work on what lies within. We have just entered the age of the soul of consciousness; we have emerged from the age of the soul of intellect or feeling, which was the Greco-Latin age. And this soul of consciousness must also develop more and more in such a way that the beings of the higher hierarchies no longer work their way into the human being—for that would cloud his consciousness—but rather he must consciously work his way up to them. What constitutes his full, bright, clear daytime consciousness is that he works his way up toward the beings of the higher hierarchies. Spiritual science is the beginning of such an ascent, for it has not arisen out of mere whim, but out of an insight into this turning point in our time.

[ 14 ] But human beings must also consciously develop many other things. Human beings have always had to live according to karma, according to the great law of destiny, but they have not always acquired knowledge of this great law of destiny. How surprising it actually was when, through Lessing’s *The Education of the Human Race*, the awareness of repeated earthly lives emerged from recent spiritual development. Today marks the beginning of an era in which we can no longer relate to one another in the same way as before. We have seen how we can no longer relate to the beings of the three higher hierarchies in the same way. But we can no longer relate to human beings themselves in the same way as before either. Their lives do, of course, extend into our time as they were previously lived, but we are neglecting our obligations toward the present if we do not draw attention to the fact that a new relationship between human beings must also come into being. One might say that this has not mattered until now, because human consciousness was not obliged to develop in the past. Thus, in earlier times, people approached one another without the awareness: “You, human being, have a soul living within you that has gone through a time before birth and, before that, another earthly life.” — A time will come—and it is already dawning—when it would be a failure of spiritual awareness if we did not recognize in another person that something lives in their soul that has carried over from a previous earthly life. Until now, it did not matter if one was unaware of this. Now the time is beginning when we must not ignore this. I want to illustrate this with a specific example.

[ 15 ] Among the initiatives we have begun to develop in our social life, we have sought to establish a school rooted in a truly new spirit of humanity—a school that is initially affiliated with the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Factory: the Waldorf School. We held a festive opening ceremony last Sunday. This was preceded by a seminar course for teachers, which I took the liberty of conducting. The primary aim there was to establish a pedagogy—an art of education and teaching—that takes into account the fact that a soul is growing within the child, a soul that comes from another earthly life. Until now, even if a teacher considered himself very advanced pedagogically, he could tell himself: “You have a child’s soul before you, from which certain abilities arise that you are obligated to develop.” — But he could, more or less, only observe what emerged from the physical body. The educator of the future will not be able to fulfill his task in this way. He will need to have a keen sense of what is developing within the growing child from its previous earthly lives, and the great achievement of future education will be that this must be brought to the fore. In this interaction, the social relationship must first take shape, one built upon the spiritual connection to other people in the awareness that: when you have a person before you, you have the reincarnated soul from the previous incarnation before you. To hold this merely as a theory derived from a conceptual worldview—as a doctrine of repeated earthly lives—is not enough; rather, this doctrine must become practical, so practical that it could serve as the foundation for something like an art of education and instruction. That is what makes this doctrine viable in the first place. It is therefore only natural that there is still little receptivity to such things, and that people look askance at the spiritual disposition of those who recognize what our times need. And what is needed is not merely to blare it out in the form of some spiritual worldview, but to place concrete life activities in the light of insight—not merely to profess adherence to this or that formula, but to carry this insight into the very life of humanity itself. It is precisely at such a point—as in the foundation of a new pedagogy—that one sees how the old and the new eras clash in rhetoric.

[ 16 ] I have made an effort to learn as much as possible about what is currently being emphasized in educational circles from one side or the other. Often—to give just one example—the question is discussed: Should education focus more on form or more on content? Should the focus be more on preparing a person for this or that profession, so that they can properly integrate into public or other aspects of life, or should the focus be more on the essence of the human being, so as to bring out what is universally human in the humanistic sense? — People in the field of education have argued a great deal about this question. In reality, it is a cliché precisely because the difference is so great between what a person says and what is the truth grasped inwardly. Is a person anything other than what they grow into? Take people today who have professions dedicated to public life. How did they come to be dedicated to this life? It is because earlier generations brought this and that into the world. Today’s public life is merely the result of what earlier generations have brought about. Did the teachers of earlier times, therefore, educate in a substantive way, rather than in a formalistic one? Certainly, they did not educate in a formalistic way. But it is one and the same thing! People argue over things that are one and the same. Yet something else is important: that we instill in the children born today the inclinations that are to develop in the next and the generation after that—that we, in other words, educate prophetically. Whether we educate people in a material or humanistic way is a mere phrase. But the fact that we must educate prophetically—that we must foresee the tasks facing the next generation—that is serious. This is part of the world itself.

[ 17 ] People today still find such things difficult to understand. They will have to make the effort to understand them; otherwise, they will fall further and further behind the course of history. This is important—it is extraordinarily important. We must become conscious in the most serious sense of the word, both because we must connect with the activity of the beings of the higher hierarchies, and because a new relationship between human beings—even in the field of education—is necessary; for in the person standing before us, we must awaken not the soul that is now before us, but the soul that has come over from earlier earthly lives. We will have to carry this in our consciousness. It is so important that we establish a concrete relationship with the spirit. If one knows only a little about karma, about repeated earthly lives, about the constitution of the human being, and holds these as concepts in one’s mind, that is certainly a worldview, a theoretical one. But this theoretical understanding does not get us very far today. Only when this theoretical worldview comes to life will it be what humanity needs for the near future.

[ 18 ] These would be truths about the relationship between human beings and the higher hierarchies, truths about karma. We can add a third one. From my description in the book *How Does One Gain Insight into the Higher Worlds?*, you know that when a person looks into the spiritual world, they must, in a certain sense, have the experience known as “crossing the threshold.” I described this crossing of the threshold in that book by pointing out how the three mental faculties of human beings—which interact in a rather chaotic jumble during this physical life—become structured, and how the powers of thought, feeling, and will become independent. As a person crosses the threshold, these faculties become independent. In many respects, the entire course of human development is similar to the life course of the individual human being. The only difference is that the timing is shifted. What a person consciously goes through when seeking to gain insight into the spiritual world—the crossing of the threshold—is what all of humanity must unconsciously go through in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Humanity has no choice in the matter; it goes through it unconsciously. Not the individual human being, but humanity—and the individual human being together with humanity. What does that mean?

[ 19 ] What interacts within human beings in thinking, feeling, and willing will take on a distinct character in the future and assert itself in various spheres. We are in the very process of humanity unconsciously passing through a significant threshold, something that the power of clairvoyance can perceive very clearly. Humanity is experiencing this crossing of the threshold in such a way that the realms of thinking, feeling, and willing are diverging. But this imposes obligations on us—the obligation to shape our outer life in such a way that human beings can undergo this inner transformation in their outer lives as well. As thinking becomes more independent in human life, we must lay a foundation on which thinking can have a healthier effect; we must also create a foundation on which feeling can develop independently, and a foundation on which willing can be specifically cultivated. What has hitherto been chaotically intertwined in public life, we must now divide into three spheres. These three spheres of public life are: economic life, political or legal life, and cultural or spiritual life. This call for a threefold social order is connected to the mystery of humanity’s evolution in this age.

[ 20 ] Do not think that what is presented as the threefold social organism is some arbitrary invention. It has emerged from the deepest understanding of human development, from what must happen if the goal of this human development is not to be denied. That is why we found ourselves in the midst of this terrible catastrophe of the World War in recent years—because it was difficult to recognize a goal of a spiritual nature, and because people had strayed so far from even acknowledging goals of this kind. We must work our way out of this chaos. The course of human development itself dictates that we work our way out of this chaos. Therefore, I do believe, however, that the necessity of social threefolding can be truly and thoroughly understood only by those who proceed from anthroposophical insights, from the knowledge of what is actually happening in human development. But people today do not like to acknowledge such things. People today prefer to turn their attention to the most immediate tasks, rather than engaging with the deeper mysteries of existence.

[ 21 ] This is what weighs so heavily on the heart of the person who looks into these mysteries, because humanity is most averse to precisely what is most essential to it. But it is impossible to simply stop at the thoughts just expressed. One could say that all pessimism is wrong. Of course, that does not mean that all optimism is right either. But what is right is the call to will. It is not a question of whether something happens one way or another, but rather that we must will what is in the direction of humanity’s development. We must make this clear to ourselves again and again. The old era is over; we must settle accounts with it. We can only arrive at a true understanding of the present if we properly settle accounts with the old era. But the new era does not allow us to settle accounts with it in any way other than spiritually. We must not delude ourselves into thinking that we can carry over into the new era what we have come to love from the old; rather, we must begin to turn toward the effective new ideas in our outer lives. Humanity has two paths today. One leads through the mechanization of the spirit. The spirit has become very mechanical in recent times, especially in the abstract laws of nature, which have then been carried over into social life as governing laws. Mechanization of the spirit—vegetalization of the soul! Plants sleep; the human soul, too, tends to sleep. The most important events are experienced in a state of slumber. The most important events of recent years have literally been slept through. Even today, the most important events are being slept through.

[ 22 ] From the podium where I am speaking today, I would like to say: People in Central Europe have allowed themselves to be misled day after day by their leaders, and now they are continuing down this path without even realizing it. People see in today’s exchange rate list that the mark has already fallen to 2.15 centimes. To this day, I have not found a single person who understands the connection between the fall in the mark’s exchange rate and other obvious events. Today, one really only needs to point to three syllables—I won’t reveal them now—and then one can find the answer to the question of why the mark’s exchange rate is falling. But souls love to sleep—so much so that in present-day Central Europe we have been met with the great disappointment that people, I might say, had been looking forward to it even before it happened—we have witnessed it: women will participate in public parliamentary elections, and reason will be doubled compared to the old days. And then we witnessed the National Assembly. But reason had not doubled compared to the old German Reichstag. We witnessed the continuation of the old parties at a time when the parties should have disappeared completely. One has no idea what has become of them, for the souls are asleep. Mechanization of the mind—vegetation of the souls!

[ 23 ] And when we look to the East, we see the animalization of the body very much on the rise there. Just as the Americanization of the spirit entails a mechanization of spiritual life, so too does what is seeking to spread in the East as Bolshevism entail an animalization of the body. Driven by their emotions, these people criticize this and that, but they do not want to understand true life. And so humanity today has a choice: to succumb to what it finds on the one hand—the mechanization of the spirit, the vegetation of the soul, the animalization of the body—or, on the other hand, to try to find the path to the awakening of the spirit, to find this awakening of the spirit in the impulses corresponding to the age of the consciousness scale, in the connection of the human soul to the activity of the higher hierarchies, in the recognition of the conscious human soul arising from earlier earthly conditions, and in the threefold social order. These things belong together. And the people who unite in the movement we call the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science should see themselves as a core from which the power for social renewal radiates. For what may come from other quarters toward social renewal can be very useful. But work must be done on this: True social transformation can come only from spiritual impulses. That is why one might have expected that the best understanding of these conditions could have arisen from this circle, which belongs to this movement.

[ 24 ] I have now described a few moments that may give you some insight into the necessities of our present-day life, here today as I speak in these new rooms. I would like our celebration to consist of this: that whenever we spend time in these rooms, we maintain an awareness of these truths, which are so important for the development of humanity. For the more we bring such an awareness into our anthroposophical work, the more deeply we consecrate that work. And these rooms will be best consecrated when we dedicate them through our feelings, which are drawn from such sources.