The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] What I presented here yesterday seems to be something quite remote. Nevertheless, anyone who truly wants to form an understanding of what is intellectually and socially necessary in our time must also familiarize themselves with such ideas. Our thinking and feeling—our entire human being—must be permeated by feelings that arise from such ideas. I would like to briefly summarize once more what, in a sense, formed the main theme of yesterday’s discussions. It is what we already knew, albeit more abstractly from other perspectives: that human beings essentially have a twofold organization; we could also say a threefold one, but let us pay less attention to the third, the middle element, today.

[ 2 ] First comes the organization of the head—the nervous and sensory system—and then comes the organization of the rest of the human being. For the thoughts of the present, which are driven by a desire for convenience, such a concept is difficult to grasp because people today want everything neatly, almost spatially, compartmentalized. When one speaks of the organization of the head and the organization of the rest of the human being, people tend to imagine the head extending down to the neck and then the rest of the human being. Of course, this is not what is meant; rather, the point is that, in a certain sense, the whole human being is, in a sense, the head—only that this “headness,” this being the head, is most clearly expressed in the head itself. And the whole human being is also a being of torso and limbs—only that this “torso-and-limb-ness” is most clearly manifested in the torso and the limbs. The senses are, so to speak, distributed throughout the whole human being; but insofar as they are distributed throughout the whole human being, we count them as part of the head’s organization, because those senses that are localized in the head are the most highly developed senses. |

[ 3 ] From these hints, you will understand what I actually mean by the aforementioned structure of the human being. But now we have seen that not only is there a necessity for this structure arising from inner forces and processes within the human being, but that the human being is in fact ordered within the cosmos in one way as a “head-human” and integrated into the cosmos in another way as a “trunk-and-limb-human.” Our head is, so to speak, the most highly developed part; but in reality—and this is shown not only by occult knowledge but also by embryology viewed from a truly rational perspective—our head organization does not belong to the Earth and Sun spheres, but to the Moon sphere. The forces that are inwardly active in our head organization are lunar forces. And in the rest of our organization, the Earth and Sun forces are at work.

[ 4 ] The entire earthly evolution of humanity is connected to this essence of the human being. And now the time has come to recognize how to take a step forward—a step that depends on our ability to put our human organization into action. After all, human development on Earth consists primarily of what has taken place in human spiritual and soul life—let us say, up to the Mystery of Golgotha. That is the great turning point in the entire history of humanity on Earth. And if one excludes from all of this—that is, from what developed up to the Mystery of Golgotha—the ancient Hebrew and ancient Jewish development, one can say: What developed up to that point has a thoroughly unified character.

[ 5 ] The ancient pagan culture, which—as I have described in my *Outline of Esoteric Science*—derives in various ways from the mysteries of antiquity, exhibits a unified character in a certain respect. What is this unified character? This unified character consists in the fact that there is a primordial wisdom of humanity, that a primordial revelation did indeed take place across the entire Earth. Why was this primordial revelation able to take place? It was able to take place because, in the early stages of Earth’s evolution, the human head—if I may put it that way—had not yet advanced as far as it has in our time, or as it already had at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. It was still alive, in the sense I explained to you yesterday. It was still filled with the possibility of having dreams that were not connected solely to what earthly experience and earthly perception provide. It was capable of evoking within itself what human beings had in ancient dream experiences—that is, with a consciousness that was more subdued than our own—during the ancient Moon era.

[ 6 ] All of this was used by the revelators of ancient times to guide humanity, so to speak, to the point of development where it was meant to be at the dawn of the Mystery of Golgotha. What was revealed there—and what humanity was able to receive through the organization I have just described—was such that, compared to what humanity knows today, there existed in ancient times a vast store of wisdom that gradually diminished more and more. We would not be satisfied with that store of wisdom today, for in many cases it consisted merely of old, atavistic clairvoyant visions and dream images. Today we want to have accurate, clear ideas, but we have not yet progressed very far in these clear, lucid ideas.

[ 7 ] An ancient wisdom had been poured out upon humanity. From this wisdom, much was said about the beings that rule nature, about the forces that rule nature, but very little about human beings themselves. After all, human beings had not yet attained their earthly consciousness. In a sense, he was still entirely guided by the hand of higher powers. He could become wise, but self-consciousness had not yet dawned. The Apollonian maxim, “Know thyself,” is implanted in humanity like a longing, like something that was called forth into the future by the leading spirits of Greece. There was a wisdom that dealt with nature—and indeed with the nature of the cosmos. Into this life of humanity was placed the ancient Hebrew revelation. If you bring the ancient Hebrew revelation to mind, you will see that it has a certain peculiarity. It differs entirely from the pagan revelations of wisdom that spread around it. In a sense, it eschewed the idea of containing wisdom about nature and the universe within itself. Essentially, it contained only this one truth about nature and the universe: God created them together with humankind, and humankind is to serve God in the world. The entire ancient Hebrew revelation is directed toward the goal of showing humankind how to serve its God, Yahweh. To what, then, does this ancient Hebrew revelation appeal? — That to which it does not appeal is found in the ancient pagan revelation: the primary organization that could still evoke memories of the ancient lunar era. The Hebrew revelation could not appeal to that. It had to appeal to the rest of the human organism. But remember what I said yesterday: this rest of the human organism can understand and absorb—precisely because it is sun-like—that which comes from the moon. What comes from the moon is that which, taken to the extreme, leads to illusions—to what can reveal itself within the human being. But that is the content of the ancient Hebrew revelation. At first, it deals entirely with the human being. In this ancient Hebrew revelation, the human being stands entirely at the center.

[ 8 ] But in the time before the Mystery of Golgotha, humanity had not yet attained self-awareness or self-knowledge. One had to seek a path that was, in fact, a detour. And that path led through the Jewish people. Therefore, the Jewish religion is not, at first, a religion of humanity. It does not address the individual human being, but rather the entire Hebrew people. It is a national religion. It speaks of the human being, but only indirectly through the people.

[ 9 ] These two things were present when the Mystery of Golgotha intervened in the evolution of the Earth: the fading wisdom of the ancient pagan world and human consciousness in the form of collective consciousness. The Mystery of Golgotha was placed within this context. It could only be understood through what was already there. One must distinguish between the fact of the Mystery and the means of grasping and experiencing it. The pagans could only comprehend it through the remnants of their ancient world wisdom. The Jews could only comprehend it through what had been revealed. And that is how it was initially understood. The remnants of the ancient wisdom manifested themselves in the Gnostic interpretation of the event at Golgotha. That which was owed to Jewish revelation increasingly became the content of the Catholic understanding—the Roman Catholic understanding—of the Mystery of Golgotha. And in order to grasp anything at all of the Mystery of Golgotha, it was now necessary to take a detour through these two world currents.

[ 10 ] However, the following became apparent. Because it was a fading wisdom, and because its origins lay far in the past, the ancient pagan wisdom increasingly lost its ability to be understood by people. People became far too complacent to continue passing on the wisdom—which took Gnostic form—concerning the mystery of Golgotha. Only very faint remnants of the ancient pagan worldview remained. That is one current.

[ 11 ] The Jewish message was fresher and more intense. But it lacked worldly wisdom. It spoke only of human beings and of commandments for human beings. It placed human beings entirely at the center of its worldview. It took root in the churches of the West. The last remnants of pagan wisdom, whose origins were no longer recognized, remained as concepts for what is now scientific experience. Drawing on these last remnants of ancient pagan wisdom, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and Copernicus grasped the new experiences of the world that were emerging. No wonder that this gradually had to become something very unsatisfying. After all, people had only known how to apply the last abstract remnants of ancient pagan wisdom to what was gained through the new methods of natural science. And from what was known about human beings through Jewish revelation, no bridge could be found leading to this wisdom. And so it continued, and life went on in this way right up to the present day. On the one hand, we have a science that works only with the very last crumbs of ancient pagan wisdom and that, on its own, finds no means to understand human beings; this culminated in the nineteenth century in the decision to forgo understanding the human being as such and to understand only what apparently follows when one regards the human being as the ultimate consequence of the animal kingdom. Not to understand human beings, but to understand the highest animal and call that “human”—that became the ideal of this science working with the last remnants of paganism.

[ 12 ] What followed the Jewish revelation gradually lost the ability to say anything about nature based on what it had to say about human beings. Try to examine the history of theology as it has developed to see if there is anything in it that could provide an explanation—even for the simplest natural phenomena—that would satisfy our contemporary sense of time. Certainly, moral reflections can be drawn from this tradition in relation to natural phenomena. But today’s contemporary consciousness is not satisfied with the moral notion that God caused the Messina earthquake to punish people, and theology has gradually become incapable of bridging the gap between the workings of the gods and what occurs and erupts in nature. It has therefore become, in many respects, mere rhetoric, while our natural science has, on a grand scale, an abundance of material before it that holds infinite mysteries, yet knows not what to do with it because it lacks the concepts to connect the things with one another. It was amid this dichotomy that the entire modern consciousness developed, giving rise to movements such as agnosticism, for which it became a hallmark of an enlightened mind to be able to say: Human beings are incapable of knowing anything about the nature of things. They are simply not organized to know anything about the nature of things.

[ 13 ] What lies deep within human beings as a longing must struggle against such a view. It struggles in what human beings seek to know about the world; it struggles in the external social order. And we will have to recognize how we must move forward, because in certain matters our conceptions and ideas are still stuck in a bygone era. What, then, did the Jewish revelation bring forth? The most distinctive feature of what it brought forth is Jewish national politics. This Jewish national policy, having exerted its influence on Roman civilization, has continued on its course right up to the present day. And what do the most significant nations of the present day strive for in the political arena? — To pursue national policy! But that is ancient Hebrew politics. With regard to our public life, we have not yet advanced as far as Christianity. We are still in the Old Testament. And the task of the present is to advance toward Christianity in the realm of public life. It will not advance unless it is supported, on the other hand, by scientific progress toward Christianity. For this, however, it is necessary to truly come to know human beings.

[ 14 ] Take—in terms of its approach—my *Secret Science*; it discusses cosmic evolution at length—the evolution of Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, and so on—to the extent that people who are considered “very clever” today are either filled with fear and anxiety or are moved to smile or become annoyed. If you look more closely at what is written in my “Secret Science,” you will find: What is presented there as knowledge of the world is at the same time knowledge of humanity. For in truth, humanity is present throughout all knowledge of the world. It examines what was predisposed in human beings during the Saturnic era and subsequently developed, as well as how other beings became connected to them. You cannot possibly distinguish between knowledge of the world and knowledge of humanity there.

[ 15 ] However, from the perspective of the realm of knowledge, this is a Christian demand. Likewise, from the social perspective, it is a Christian demand that we learn to set aside all other human contexts and focus solely on human beings themselves. From a rhetorical standpoint, these matters have long been the subject of speculation; from the standpoint of reality, however, they have received little attention. For from the standpoint of reality, national contexts still exist as overwhelming forces in the political life of the world—contexts in which human beings today are, for the most part, completely subsumed. What must take the place of these national contexts is a relationship built on a sense of what it means to be human, from person to person across the entire civilized world. But establishing such a relationship requires a certain inner strength of the spirit, a certain inner strength of the human soul. And when we ask ourselves: Has humanity actually become spiritually stronger in the so-called “blessed” 19th century? — then, wherever one looks, if one is sincere and honest, one finds everywhere that, in terms of the intensity of concepts and ideals, humanity has not become stronger, but weaker. Those who know me will understand what I mean by this.

[ 16 ] I’d like to interject a personal remark here. It’s been decades now since I was in Vienna having a conversation with a man who has since made a name for himself as a historian. We were talking about German development. The man held an abstract view, which he expressed at the time as follows: “Well, this German development—it’s there, and it’ll just continue the way it is.” — I said: “That’s an abstraction; it’s not something drawn from reality. It strikes me as similar to someone saying: ‘Here’s a plant; it’s already borne fruit. Now new blossoms will appear, then fruit again, then blossoms again, and it just keeps growing like that.’ — Once the plant has reached the stage of flowering and fruiting, you can’t say: “It will just continue as it is.” — Of course, something new—a new plant—can emerge from the seed produced by the flower; but you mustn’t imagine that the old plant will reemerge from the flower in a new form and that things will continue just as they were. I said: That which is the substance, the essence of the German spirit, reached its bloom and fruition in the time of Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and Hegel. That is a high point. It cannot simply be continued. Since then, we have been in a state of decadence; since then, we have been in a downward spiral. — I expressed these ideas at the time. As you can imagine, I found little understanding; for we had already entered an era in which such ideas were too intense to have gripped the human soul, and I had to reflect on how things had been quite different up until the middle of the 19th century. There was, for example, a man within the context of German development who wrote a history of literature: Gervinus. One may have much to object to in him; the entire work of this literary history is imbued with an immense radicalism. It concludes, in fact, with Goethe’s death, and it denies subsequent generations the right to continue writing poetry in the old style, as if new blossoms were sprouting from the leaves of the plant. Back then, people were still radical enough to say: “It’s over with Goethe; if you want to continue developing, you must seek new approaches!”—Gervinus could not provide those; but he drew a line under the old, he put an end to it.

[ 17 ] Certainly, many fine works have been written in the German language since that time, but they are mere imitations. They lack the essence found in Herder, Goethe, and Schiller—the philosophical essence of Hegel and Schelling, the essence of Fichte. The only exception is _that Hamerling, at the height of his maturity, introduced a new tone in his *Homunculus*, which, however, turned out to be a satire.

[ 18 ] Even back then, the call was already at the door to embrace something new, to develop a true sense of a new approach to the entire new civilization. This call for a new approach should resound throughout the world today. For only from that starting point can any hope for the future development of humanity be found. Everything that does not connect with the individual’s inner experience must be eradicated. You can see an outward sign of this in how desperately old ideas are being trotted out again today. Just to have something to say in the present, old ideas are being brought back. In one of the leading minds of Central Europe today, one finds a view expressed precisely out of this decadent sense of the times, which shows what humanity cannot hold onto today. This man asks: How, then, do we return to a moral life? — He realizes,

[ 19 ] Over the past five years, the obsolescence of the old morality has become apparent; lies have triumphed among all peoples. The ancient Hebrew “Yahweh” policy has taken such a firm hold on all nations that one might be tempted to believe that there was once a Judaism in Palestine, and that now all nations wish to pursue for themselves a policy similar to the one the Jews pursued in Palestine. They all want to become like that; they all want to conduct world politics while excluding the achievements of Christianity. Content is lacking. Therefore, people resort to things that actually have no substance. Instead of seeking new sources of morality from spiritual, new, and fruitful perspectives, they ask: Where are the sources of a new morality? — and give the following answer: Power is an indispensable means for creating the good. Therefore, if one does not already possess it, one should strive for the power necessary to bring about the good in question. — One wishes to see good in the world and offers this fine advice: Seek the power to bring about that good. — The second principle of the new ethics is: With the power one has, one can create the good. Therefore, one should also use that power everywhere to bring about the good.

[ 20 ] But one must first have the good; one must first recognize the good! To speak in this way is the opposite of what must spread throughout modern human civilization through the spiritual science referred to here. For the point is not to base anything on power. One can base something on power only when bringing groups of people together. When one human being is to face another, nothing can be based on power, but only on that which develops within the human being, so that the human being has value. The human being must work to attain a value through which he accomplishes deeds for the sake of humanity, and at the same time he must develop a receptivity to recognize such human value.

[ 21 ] This is the only possible foundation for any morality of the future: developing human dignity and the ability to recognize human dignity. Put another way, this means: All morality must be built on genuine trust! — Because people were unwilling to embrace such views, they could not grasp the moral demands contained in my *Philosophy of Freedom*. There, a so-called individualistic morality is established, based on the premise that if what can be developed in each individual is developed, there is no need for legislation; instead, we can simply wait to see what people will do in their interactions with one another. And at that time I had to say to many people: Look, when we walk down the street—one person this way, another that way—do we need a law to make us avoid each other? That one person walks on the left and another on the right—this is done out of the demands of existence, which one reasonably recognizes. — That is how one acts morally when all the qualities inherent in human nature are truly allowed to develop. Without that, there can be no morality of the future.

[ 22 ] But this is the only morality that will truly be built upon a renewed Christianity. It must be built upon this: “Whatever you do for anyone as a human being, you have done for me.” — Christ came into humanity so that every single person might recognize the value of other human beings. And when people treat one another in this way in the world, then the foundation is laid for what constitutes a new morality. Only then, however, will the Mystery of Golgotha be understood anew from our present perspective. This Mystery of Golgotha is a fact. It must be understood in a new form by every age of the world. It is not the existing teachings that are decisive; those must change from age to age. What is decisive is that the Mystery of Golgotha took place once and for all. For the religious denominations of the present, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Mystery of Golgotha is of ever-decreasing importance to them. They attach no value to its being understood from within the consciousness of the times; they care only that their teachings be perpetuated. But these teachings will be incapable of grasping the Mystery of Golgotha. And so we already have today a form of theology that no longer speaks of the Christ at all, but only of the man Jesus of Nazareth, the “simple man” who walked in Palestine—a sort of Socrates. And one cannot then understand why those who speak of this Christ actually speak of him as the center of human development. The questions facing our age are already that serious. And it is precisely this seriousness that will have to be recognized. But work will have to be carried out in harmony, on the one hand, with the scientific realm, and on the other, with the social realm. After all, these things are thoroughly intertwined. I believe that it will seem strange to an academically trained scholar today if, for example, one were to make the demand that botany must become “Christian.” But it must become Christian—that is, the spirit that has taken hold of humanity through the soul must also take effect within botany. And socialist-minded people do speak a little—but only a little, and only certain segments of this socialist-minded mass—about the fact that a Christian attitude—an “early Christian” attitude, as one might say—must take root in the way people relate to one another. Nevertheless, no particular emphasis is placed on infusing social ideas with Christian principles.

[ 23 ] There is, of course, a third aspect as well; but it involves, on the one hand, learning to find Christ in the world, and on the other hand, learning to awaken within ourselves the abilities to understand this Christ. What must work together—on a large scale as well as in the details of social life—is the development of a certain sense of human dignity and the development of the ability to recognize this human dignity with confidence and to actually act in accordance with it in our relationships with one another!

[ 24 ] In the 19th century, when people understood the least about how a new spirit was seeking to enter in order to grasp the mystery of Golgotha anew, they spoke of “practical Christianity,” because they had become as impractical as possible with regard to Christianity. Now that the events of recent years in human development have passed, it would indeed be necessary for as many people as possible to rouse themselves to realize how a new spiritual revelation is indeed seeking to enter into human development—and how it must be grasped by human beings. As long as we keep our entire spiritual life bound to external powers—to state powers, or whatever forms they may take in the world—there will be no possibility for this spiritual life to truly receive what is seeking to enter humanity as spiritual revelation. For this to happen, it is necessary that spiritual life be truly set on its own feet, as called for in our threefold social order, so that it develops out of its own impulses. Out of these inner impulses, science will be imbued with spiritual methods, and the spiritual methods developed for science will kindle the power to morally permeate social life with that which is spirit. In our social activities, in the social life of human beings, we must learn to realize and actualize the spiritual. To do this, however, it is necessary to move beyond what we today must call empty phrases. After all, we live a spiritual life in empty phrases, in clichés. One can experience today that someone says beautiful things whose content may appeal to us; but when one gets closer to them, one finds their soul empty of spiritual content. Why? — Because today one can pick up clichés everywhere. After all, one need not be connected today to the empty phrases that swirl about in human life. There is no other way to regain the connection with the Spirit than first to seek the Guide, so that the human soul can truly reach the Spirit of its own accord—the Guide who, however, can be found only by seeking him in the conviction that that a human being can become what he is meant to be in the world today only by not merely remaining with what is present within him in terms of heredity and vital forces, but by developing within himself something that goes beyond what is merely inherited, beyond what is merely absorbed from the external world. Today we are born into a world with certain predispositions; these predispositions are developed in us at school, but in such a way that the only driving force behind this development is the traditions that have been handed down. We must come to realize that within every human being lies a hidden seed that is not there merely through heredity, nor is it there through the impulses inherent in education today. We must have faith that within every human being today lies something that can be awakened only through spiritual forces and through the conviction of the existence of those spiritual forces. Based on the way people are educated and live today, only the Yahweh consciousness can be experienced. Christ-consciousness can only be awakened if one has faith not only in human development but also in human transformation—if one believes that a person can become something that is not predisposed within them simply because they have inherited a body from their ancestors, but rather something that resides within them because they have lived through previous earthly lives in earlier human world cycles. At that time, however, the principle of heredity predominated and overshadowed within the human being that which had come over from repeated previous earthly lives. Now the inherited traits have grown weak, and those shadow aspects within the human being are growing ever stronger—those that come over from earlier incarnations not through the blood, but through the soul.

[ 25 ] This can be brought into consciousness. And when it lives in one person’s consciousness, that person encounters another person with feelings quite different from those people generally have today.

[ 26 ] With this, I have—albeit in a perhaps stammering manner, given that this is a truly far-reaching topic—set forth for you something of what must inevitably come into play in our human development. When this demand arises in life, it still encounters today the most severe prejudices that exist in the world. It is met with opposition. And I have recently had to tell you of some of the opposition directed against precisely what is sought by the anthroposophically oriented worldview referred to here. Today I would like to mention just two more points in this regard. I recently read to you a letter from our friend Dr. Stein, which showed in a heartening way how one had to confront a churchman whose assistant, when asked to point out passages in the Bible that sounded somewhat anthroposophical, even went so far as to declare: “Then Christ is simply mistaken”—in his opinion! So it is not he, the churchman, who is mistaken, but Christ! — When I arrived in Stuttgart, I was informed that all sorts of judgments had been voiced within our circles about how harsh it was to confront an elderly gentleman—who had even read some of my writings—in such a manner. One must, after all, show consideration for, first—second—third... Unfortunately, this is still widespread even within our own ranks: that precisely when it comes to taking a serious stand on any given point, one is stabbed in the back by those people who would most like to preserve our movement from a sectarian perspective. That is the one thing I must mention.

[ 27 ] The other point is that I must inform you of the accusation that has now been circulating in the German press, whose dubious sources—and I mention this explicitly here—are very well known to me, and in which it is quite irrelevant what the content actually says; because for the people who spread such things, the point is not to inspire belief in the claims they are making, but simply to fabricate anything at all that might disparage an inconvenient figure or current of thought. So, despite the fact that this audience is not particularly enlightened, I will read aloud these “unenlightened” remarks that are now circulating in part of the press:

[ 28 ] “Theosophist Steiner as an Accomplice of the Entente. — The *Mannheimer Generalanzeiger* reports from Berlin: ‘Theosophist Dr. Rudolf Steiner, who influences a following of several million men and women’ — I would like to expressly note: this sentence will be extraordinarily revealing to anyone who takes even a cursory look into the inner workings of the present, and in the time to come, when such attacks will intensify significantly, people will see why such attacks are made, alongside other fabrications —, “founded the League for the Threefold Social Order in Stuttgart in the spring of 1919, which was originally intended to be merely a religious-communist community, but then came into political contact with the Bolsheviks and Communists and is now engaging in a strange and repugnant political agitation. The has learned the following from Dresden: ‘Reliable reports clearly indicate’—please note the tone—‘that the League for the Threefold Social Order is compiling a list of the names of all officers allegedly acting in a reactionary manner and is gathering evidence, based on witness testimony, of their actions in violation of international law, which is then to be forwarded to the Entente for the purpose of extradition. Mr. Steiner and his comrades are completely indifferent to the accuracy of such accusations, and the fact that they do not even shy away from deliberately false statements is proven by a passage in a letter that reads: ‘Accusations of theft are to be avoided, since falsehoods are easier to prove in this case.’ Likewise, one must not make accusations that are too implausible, such as the mutilation of children.”

[ 29 ] Well, it goes without saying that every sentence, every word—forgive me for using this expression in this context—is a “fabricated” lie. But these things are being fabricated right now. They prove that what comes from the spiritual current represented here is taken seriously enough to deem such malicious means necessary in the first place. You can be certain: small sectarian movements—that is, those that are supposed to be small in number—are not bombarded with such things. One can only hope—as I also expressed in the article sent the day before yesterday for our second-to-last issue of *Dreigliederung*—that the number of naive people would grow smaller and smaller, those who still believe that refuting such things would help the people who are working today out of the murky sources in question here. They have very little interest in such refutations; for their concern is not to even touch upon the truth in any way, but rather to fight by any means against everything that is meant to enter humanity as a new spirit. They follow the forces that possess them.

[ 30 ] I also had to present this example to you so that, little by little, a sense of the seriousness that should actually prevail might be evoked in all those who, in one way or another, find themselves seriously drawn to what is described here as an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. One would truly like to find words—words that our worn-out language of today scarcely possesses—to awaken this seriousness in people’s souls. For it is necessary! But people’s souls are often as if paralyzed. What must necessarily penetrate them no longer does so, if the times are not to lead into complete decadence. We cannot continue in the old way. Nor should we any longer call “ideals” what we draw from the old currents. We should become more and more aware that a complete reconstruction of human development is necessary.