The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] If you mentally review the observations we made yesterday and the day before, you will see: It is inherent in the nature of imperialism that, within a community that espouses imperialism, something that was previously a kind of task—an explainable, if not always justified, task—continues with a certain automaticity, I would say. It is the case with historical phenomena in the development of humanity that, simply out of a certain inertia, things are retained that once had a justification or were understandable—that had causes—and that have since lost those driving forces. If a community needs to defend itself for a time, that is certainly justified. Professions are then created for this defense—a police profession and a military profession. But once the danger against which one is supposed to defend oneself no longer exists, the profession in question remains; one must continue to employ the people in those roles. They wish to continue working in accordance with their profession, and something then emerges that no longer has any explainable causes in the actual circumstances. Perhaps something even emerges from what was originally intended for defense—something that then takes on an aggressive character. And this is actually the case with all forms of imperialism, except for the original imperialism of the first stage of human development, which I spoke to you about the day before yesterday—an imperialism that, from the very outset, derives its justification for extending its rule as far as possible from the fact that, in the consciousness of the people involved, the ruler is God. In all subsequent forms of imperialism, the fundamental fact is that an inner drive to expand dominion simply cannot exist.

[ 2 ] For let us once again consider, from very specific perspectives, what is actually evident in the historical development of humanity. We find that in the most ancient times—which we can no longer fully trace historically, but into which the facts that can be historically traced still shed light—the will of the one regarded as a divine being is the indisputable factor of power. In public life, in such imperial systems, there is essentially nothing to discuss; but this impossibility of discussion must be based precisely on the fact that, in reality, a god in human form walks the earth in the person of the ruler. There, if I may say so, is a secure, firm foundation for the order of public and social affairs.

[ 3 ] Now, gradually, that which is perceived as something fixed—founded on reality, on a divine-human will—transitions into the second stage. In the second stage, whatever can be observed here in physical life—be it persons, the insignia of persons, or the deeds of those who govern or rule—all of this is a symbol, a sign. Thus, while in the first stage of imperialism here in the physical world the spirit is conceived as existing directly, in the second stage what is physically present is conceived as a reflection, an image, a symbol of that which is not present in the physical world, but which is represented only through persons, through deeds, and through other things in the physical world.

[ 4 ] Times like these, in which this second stage takes place, are those in which discussion—as it pertains to public affairs—actually begins to make sense within the realm of human thought. In the first stage of imperialism, there can be no real talk yet of what we today call “justice.” Nor can there be any talk of state institutions of any kind. One can only speak of the manifestations of divine power through physical human beings. One can only speak of the concrete, real will of physical human beings at work in social affairs. The question of whether this will is justified or not makes no sense at all. It simply exists. It must be obeyed. It is pointless to discuss whether the god in human form should or should not do what he does. That did not even exist in those most ancient times, when the conditions I have described to you for those most ancient times actually existed. But if, in physical circumstances, one sees only the image of the spiritual world; if one speaks of what St. Augustine still referred to as the City of God, that is, the state that exists here on Earth but is a reflection of heavenly realities and heavenly personalities—then one person may hold the view that what occurs through the personality reflecting the Divine is correct, that it is a true reflection; another may object and say: It is not a true reflection. — That is when the possibility of discussion first arises. People today believe—because they are accustomed to criticizing everything and discussing everything—that criticism and discussion have always been present in human development. That is not true. Discussion and criticism are only a characteristic of the second stage that I have described to you. It is only then that the possibility arises to make judgments within oneself—that is, to assign a predicate to a subject. In the earliest forms of human expression, this kind of personal judgment did not exist at all with regard to public affairs. It is only in the second stage that the groundwork can slowly be laid for everything we call, for example, a parliament today; for a parliament has meaning only if public affairs can be discussed. Thus, even the most primitive forms of public discussion are characteristic only of the second stage.

[ 5 ] Today, insofar as the form characteristic of Western countries is spreading more or less throughout the world, we are living in the third stage—that third stage which I described to you, as far as the life of the soul is concerned, as the stage of the phrase. This “stage of the phrase,” as I characterized it for you yesterday, is precisely the one in which the inner substance has disappeared even from discussion—and where, therefore, anyone can be right, or at least believe they can be right, and where it is impossible to prove to them that they are wrong, because, fundamentally, anything can be asserted within the world of the phrase. However, earlier stages always persist into the subsequent stages. This is essentially what always gives rise to the inner impulses toward imperialism. People observe things only very superficially. When the former German emperor, as an expression of his convictions, wrote in a book that had been laid out for people to sign: “The king’s will is the highest law”—as he did—what does that mean? It means: In the age of rhetoric, he expresses himself in such a way that the statement has meaning only for the first stage. In the first stage, it was indeed the case that the ruler’s will was the supreme law. The concept of law—which always involves discussion and is always accompanied by advocacy—is essentially a hallmark of the second stage, and it can only be understood in its reality within the context of that second stage. Anyone who has followed the extensive discussions on the origin and character of law has already been able to gather from these discussions that there is something iridescent about legal concepts as such, precisely because we are dealing with the symbolic age, in which the spiritual shimmers through the material, glows, and shines, so that if one considers only the external sign—which may also be present in words or in legal customs—then disputes over what is right can arise, and it is even possible to engage in advocacy regarding rights in public life.

[ 6 ] In this age of empty rhetoric, however, we have completely lost sight of the fact that, in order to establish the concept of law at all, it is necessary for social relations to be governed by the following principle: The spiritual realm seems to penetrate the physical realm. And then people come up with definitions of law just like the ones I presented to you yesterday using the example of Woodrow Wilson. Today I want to read you verbatim a definition of law given by Woodrow Wilson, and you will see that this definition is characterized by the fact that it consists entirely of empty phrases. I already cited it yesterday, but I would like to quote it very precisely again today. He says: “Law is the will of the state with regard to the civic conduct of those subject to its authority.” So, the state exercises a will! Just imagine that someone who is otherwise deeply immersed in abstract idealism—not to say materialism, for abstract idealism and materialism are almost the same thing—should say: “Law is the will of the state.”—So the state is supposed to have a will. One must be completely devoid of any concrete perspective to even be tempted to say or write such a thing. This is precisely what is contained in that work I mentioned to you yesterday, in that codex of phraseology: *The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics* by Woodrow Wilson.

[ 7 ] However, there are also other interesting things in it. I would just like to draw your attention, in passing, to one passage—the part where Woodrow Wilson discusses the German Empire in this book, after he has explained how the efforts to establish this German Empire gradually developed until it finally began to take shape in 1870–71. He concludes his description with the following sentences: “The final impetus toward achieving complete national unity came from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. Prussia’s brilliant successes in this conflict—which was waged in the name of German patriotism against French insolence—put an end to the central states’ cool reserve toward their great neighbor to the north; they united with the rest of Germany, and the German Empire was founded at the Royal Palace of Versailles on January 18, 1871.”

[ 8 ] However, this was written by the very same man who, some time later, joined forces in Versailles with those whose “audacity” at the time had led to the founding of the German Empire. Much of today’s public opinion stems precisely from the fact that humanity is so appallingly superficial and does not care about the issues. If one resolves to judge based on factual grounds, then things always appear different from how they currently float about in public opinion and are parroted by thousands upon thousands of people. It would have done no harm at all, back then, when Woodrow Wilson arrived in Paris in that glorious procession, celebrated from all sides, to confront him with this very statement. This is what must be insisted upon—truly for intrinsic reasons—so that attention is genuinely drawn to the facts, which is to say, to the truth.

[ 9 ] So, in the second stage, we are dealing with what gives rise to the discussion—what actually makes the concept of public law possible in the first place. In the third stage, as we have seen, we are dealing with economic life as an essential reality. And yesterday we showed how, in the course of historical development, this age of empty rhetoric is absolutely necessary so that this rhetoric—which no longer contains anything—opens people’s eyes to the fact that they exist in reality only within economic life, and that they need to truly spread the spiritual, the new spiritual, throughout the world.

[ 10 ] At first, people have only a very vague idea of this new spiritual reality. And so it is understandable that this new spiritual reality, of all things, is still the subject of the most severe misunderstandings today. For this new spiritual reality must assert itself right down to the very foundations of human life. And just as much as those secret societies I spoke of yesterday, in substance and content, merely preserve the old in a traditional sense, so much does their outward motto, to be “brothers”—that is, not to carry external class distinctions into the lodges and to attach no importance to individual subjective beliefs—is nonetheless something that, in a certain sense—if something else, which I will characterize shortly, is added—will prepare the future in the right way.

[ 11 ] Today we say—and I ask you to pay very close attention to this—let’s take something quite banal, something ordinary: The tree is green. — That is a phrase that definitely belongs to the second stage of human development: The tree is green. — Perhaps you will understand me best if I ask you to imagine that you are supposed to paint what is expressed by the statement: “The tree is green.” You cannot paint it! You cannot paint: “The tree is green.” — You’ll have some white or other surface, you’ll apply green paint to it, but you’re not actually painting the tree! And if you paint something of the tree besides what is still green there, it will be something that only disturbs the objective. If you want to paint “The tree is green,” then you’re simply painting something that is, in fact, lifeless. The way we combine subject and predicate in our language is, fundamentally, only useful for our worldview of the dead, of the inanimate. Because we still have no conception of how everything in the world is alive and how we are to express ourselves in the face of the fact that everything lives and weaves, we form judgments such as: “The tree is green”—which actually presupposes that a relationship exists between something and the color green, whereas the color green itself is the creative force, the power that acts and lives there. The transformation of human thought and feeling will have to take place right down to the innermost depths of the soul’s life—though this will, of course, take a long time—and this transformation will extend to external social conditions and to the relationships between people.

[ 12 ] With regard to all of this, we are still very much at the beginning today. But one must recognize the paths that lead to enlightenment in this regard. I said: There is something significant in people uniting with one another in such a way that subjective beliefs play no role among them. — And try, from this perspective—but really do try to do this in your mind—to consider the way things are described specifically in anthroposophy. It is not described there as a matter of definitions or ordinary judgments. An attempt is made—though one must, of course, expect that people are not yet able to grasp this at all—but essentially, an attempt is made to provide images that depict things from the most diverse angles, and it is about as nonsensical as it gets to try to pin down something that is truly meant in the sense of spiritual science to a mere yes-or-no judgment. People today certainly still want to do that, but it simply cannot be done.

[ 13 ] It happens again and again—as we grow out of the second stage and into the third—that we are somehow asked: What is good for me, since I am now struggling with these or those difficulties in life? Someone offers some advice. “Ah,” says the person in question, “so in this or that situation in life, one must do this or that.” — That’s generalizing! But the matter has only a very limited significance, for judgments made from the spiritual world always have only an individual significance; they are always applicable only to the specific case. This kind of generalization, to which we have become accustomed from the second stage of human development, must not be carried over into the future at all. People today are simply so accustomed to projecting the things of the past into the future. One can break the habit of what is corrupting the soul by simply surveying things in their full clarity.

[ 14 ] I pointed out to you yesterday that, in many respects, the Catholic Church actually harks back to the first stage. In a sense, it contains something like a reflection or shadow of the first stage of human development—a reflection or shadow that has at times crystallized very strongly into a kind of spiritual imperialism, as, for example, in the 11th century, when the monks of Cluny actually ruled over Europe to a far greater extent than one might think. From among them emerged Pope Gregory VII, the powerful, imperialistic pope. The fact that, according to Roman Catholic dogma, the priest must feel himself to be greater than Christ—because he can compel Christ to be present on the altar—clearly testifies that the institution of the Catholic Church is essentially the image and shadow of what existed in the most ancient imperialism as the first stage of human development.

[ 15 ] Now you know that there is great hostility in the West between the Catholic Church and all those societies that use Freemasonry—or at least a certain type of Freemasonry—as their tool. It would take us too far afield—and I cannot do so in this lecture—to go into detail about how this hostility has gradually intensified more and more in recent times. But one thing can be pointed out: within these secret societies, there is already a very strong belief that the Catholic Church is merely the shadow of the first stage of imperialism, which has actually come to an end. It is, after all, a fundamental doctrine of these secret societies that the Catholic Church is the shadow, the lingering remnant of the first stage of imperialism. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation still made use of this framework; Charlemagne and the Ottonians had themselves crowned by the Pope, using the imperialism of the spiritual realm as a means of legitimizing the imperialism of the external world. They took what was there—what remained from ancient times—and poured into it that which was new. Thus, they poured the imperialism of the second stage into the framework of the first imperialism.

[ 16 ] We have now reached the third stage, which is particularly evident in Western regions: economic imperialism. As I said, this economic imperialism has at its core a spiritual world of secret societies that feeds on clichéd symbolism. But while it is now clearly recognized that the external constitution—the social constitution—of the Church is merely a shadow of something that once existed and now has no further significance, this is not fully grasped in relation to the second stage; and therein still lies the great illusion in which, in particular, the statesmen of the Western nations are ensnared. It is, after all, telling that Woodrow Wilson can speak of the “will of the state.” He would no longer speak of the will of the church, but he speaks of the will of the state as something self-evident.

[ 17 ] Now, the state, as the bearer of law—when considered as a totality, as a whole—only acquired the significance attributed to it in the second stage of human development. While in the earliest times the Church was everything—or rather, that which the Church became was everything—in the second stage, it was everything that the state became. In the case of the Church, one observes this phenomenon, particularly in the secret societies; in the case of the state, one does not observe it, does not wish to observe it. For the time being, the state is being infused—just as the church was infused in the Middle Ages—with whatever is new; the state is being infused with whatever has, so to speak, coalesced under a certain concept of freedom. The entire economic imperialism of Great Britain has been poured into the state. And those who are raised properly in Great Britain see the state as something self-evident, something to which they can quite easily ascribe some kind of will.

[ 18 ] But this is precisely what must be understood: that this conception of the state must follow the same path that the conception of the church has taken. One must recognize: If one retains this concept of the state—which is merely a legal institution—for the entirety of the social organism, and forces everything else into this legal institution, then one is simply perpetuating a shadow, just as a shadow has been perpetuated within the church—now already consciously for the secret societies. But there is still little awareness of this. For just consider that virtually everything that inspires people today in public affairs is crammed into the concept of the state. There are people who are nationalists, chauvinists, and so on; everything that is called “nation,” “national,” or “chauvinism” is incorporated into the framework of the state! Nationalism is crammed into it, and the concept of the nation-state is constructed. Or one might have certain views on, say, socialism—for my sake, let’s say quite radical socialism: one takes the framework of the state! Instead of forcing nationalism into it, one now forces socialism into it. But people have no concept of the fact that this is bound to become nothing more than a shadow construct, just as the constitution of the church has become a shadow concept.

[ 19 ] In certain Protestant circles, the idea has taken hold that the church is merely an external institution, and that the essence of religion must be rooted in the human heart. This stage of human development has not yet been reached with regard to the concept of the state; otherwise, people would not be trying to squeeze all manner of nationalisms into the European boundaries—state boundaries—brought about by recent war-torn events. All these forces fail to take one thing into account. They fail to take into account the fact that what unfolds in the historical development of humanity is life, not a mechanical process. And part of life is that it comes into being and passes away. The imperialist view, however, involves something else. It involves not giving the future any thought. Indeed, it is characteristic of the way people today view public affairs that they do not entertain living thoughts about the future, but rather dead ones. They think: Today we establish something; that is good, and it must remain that way forever. That is how the women’s movement thinks, that is how socialism thinks, that is how nationalism thinks: We establish something that begins with us; people have been waiting for us until we became so wise. But now we have discovered the wisest thing for all eternity, and it will now endure for all eternity. — The idea is roughly the same as if I had raised a boy until he turned eighteen and said: “Now I’ve raised him properly; now he’ll stay just as he is.” — But he will grow older, and he will also die, and so it is with everything that arises in human development.

[ 20 ] Now I come to what I mentioned earlier—what must be added to the principle of indifference toward subjective confession or human brotherly love. What must be added is the living perspective that takes death into account as part of this earthly life, a perspective that recognizes: We create institutions in the present that are bound to perish because they already carry the principle of death within them; they do not seek to last forever, nor do they even aspire to be anything enduring.

[ 21 ] But how can something like that be achieved? Well, under the influence of the mindset of the second stage, it will never be achieved. But when that sense of shame I spoke of yesterday sets in—when people realize: We live in the realm of empty rhetoric, beneath which mere economic life, mere economic imperialism, smolders—then they will cry out for the Spirit who, though invisible, reigns in reality. People will call for a understanding of the spiritual that speaks of the spiritual as an invisible realm, as a realm that is not of this world, in which the Christ impulse can therefore truly take hold. People will call for the knowledge of such a realm.

[ 22 ] This can only be the case if the social order is threefold: economic life is administered independently; legal life is no longer defined by an absolute, all-encompassing concept of the state, but rather the state consists only of that which is truly subject to the law; and spiritual life is truly free—that is, it can develop here in reality as a genuine spiritual life. Spirit can reign among human beings only if the spirit is dependent on nothing other than itself, and if all institutions charged with nurturing the spirit are dependent on nothing other than themselves.

[ 23 ] What do we have, then, when we have this threefold organism, this social organism? Then we have an economic life. This is certainly of the same nature as the original imperialism. Everything that prevails within it is also present within the life of the physical Earth. In this economic organism, the administrative forces must truly be drawn from economic life itself. At least, I do not believe that anyone would then be of the opinion—if this economic organism is organized as described in my “Key Points”—that anything supersensory intervenes in immediate economic life. When we eat, when we prepare food, when we make clothes—all of this is reality; the aesthetics involved may be symbolic, but the garment is reality.

[ 24 ] When we then look at the second member of the social organism, we do not, admittedly, have for the future a symbolism such as that of the second stage of human development, where the state—the embodiment of law—was a totality; but we have, in everything that manifests itself in one human being, a reflection of what lives in another human being. We have reconstructed the symbolism from the perspective of the present time. What one person does will always be a sign of the entire nature of the social legal constitution that is taking shape.

[ 25 ] And the third will be neither a sign nor a phrase, but a spiritual reality. The Spirit will have the opportunity to truly live among people.

[ 26 ] Thus, the inner social order can only be established once we truly embrace inner truthfulness. But this becomes particularly difficult in the age of empty rhetoric. For in the age of empty rhetoric, people may indeed acquire a certain refined cleverness, but this refined cleverness is essentially nothing more than a game with the verbal representations of old concepts. Just think of the characteristic example: out of nowhere, as a result of “phrase imperialism,” it was suddenly suggested that it would be a good idea for the King or Queen of England to also receive the title “Emperor of India.” Absolutely nothing has changed. Of course, one can find the most elegant reasons for these titles, “Empress of India” or “Emperor of India.” But just imagine if this hadn’t been done—nothing would have turned out any differently! The Emperor of Austria, who is now also among the deposed, bore—until his deposition—a quite remarkable title alongside his many others. There was—I don’t know—Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Illyria, and so on. Among these many titles was also “King of Jerusalem”! The Austrian Emperor bore—until he was no longer Emperor—the title of King of Jerusalem. That dated back to the Crusades. There is surely no better way to demonstrate the role played by the meaningless. And this meaningless ultimately plays a much greater role than you actually realize.

[ 27 ] So the point is that one must truly rise to this realization of the clichéd nature of the present. And this is made more difficult by the fact that the very person who lives in clichés merely tosses around the verbal representations of old concepts in his brain and believes he is thinking. But one can only truly return to thinking if one imbues one’s inner soul life with substance, and that can come only from an understanding of the spiritual world, from spiritual life. Only through this permeation with spiritual life can a person once again become a human being of full substance, after having become a hollow shell of empty phrases—a shell that has been emptied and is content with empty words.

[ 28 ] From this—which I already hinted at yesterday as a sense of shame—the call for the spiritual will arise. And the possibility for the spiritual to spread will come about only through the spiritual life developing independently. Otherwise, one must always work within small loopholes, as we had to do with the Waldorf School, because the Württemberg school law still had this one loophole that made it possible to establish a Waldorf School solely according to spiritual laws and principles—something that would be impossible almost anywhere else on earth today. But one can truly establish that which is connected to spiritual life only from the spirit itself if the other two members of the social organism do not interfere, if things are truly drawn solely from the spiritual realm.

[ 29 ] For the time being, the trend of the age runs completely counter to this. But this trend of the age will never take into account the fact that, with each new generation, a new spiritual life will indeed emerge more and more on Earth. It makes no difference whether one establishes an absolutist state or a council republic today: if one were to continue with such institutions without the awareness that everything that comes into being is subject to life and must continually transform itself—and must even pass through death and undergo new forms, metamorphoses—then one would be preparing nothing other than for the next generation to become revolutionary each time, for one would be incorporating into the social organism only what is deemed good for the present. Among the principles that are still very much shrouded in rhetoric in Western regions, one must include the view of the social organism as a living entity. One can only view it as a living entity if one perceives its threefold nature. Therefore, it is precisely the heavy, the terrible, the intense responsibility of those who, through economic advantage, are today extending imperialism across nearly the entire world, to become aware that the cultivation of a true spiritual life must be infused into this imperialism. It must be seen as a mockery that an economic empire spanning the entire world is being established from the British Isles, and that when one seeks a particularly profound mystical spirituality, one turns to those whom one has economically conquered and exploited, and takes this spirituality from them. We have an obligation to allow spiritual substance to flow of our own accord into the outer form of the social organism.

[ 30 ] This is the awareness that I believe our British friends must take with them from here—the awareness that now, at this moment of great historical significance, all those who belong to global organizations where the English language is spoken bear the responsibility to infuse the external economic empire with true spirituality. For there is only one either/or: Either the endeavor remains confined to the mere economic empire, in which case the certain downfall of earthly civilization is the inevitable consequence—or spirit is infused into this economic empire, in which case what was actually intended for the development of the Earth will be achieved. I would like to say: Every morning, one should keep this in mind in a very serious way, and every individual action should be guided by this impulse. The hour of the world is striking with utter seriousness in the present. In a terrible way, this hour of the world is striking with seriousness. We have, so to speak, reached the height of empty rhetoric. At the very moment when all the content that once entered people’s lives in a different way—and which has no meaning today—has been squeezed out of the empty phrase, we must take up that which can once again bring real, substantial content into our spiritual and social lives. We must be clear that this “either/or” is something everyone must decide for themselves today, and that everyone must participate in this decision with their innermost spiritual powers. Otherwise, one is not truly living the affairs of humanity.

[ 31 ] But the longing for illusion is immense, especially today, in this age of empty rhetoric. People are so eager to delude themselves about the seriousness of life. People do not want to face the truth that governs our development. How else could humanity have been deceived by Wilsonianism if it truly had the deepest desire to enlighten itself through the truth? That must come. The longing for truth must grow within people. Above all, the longing for the liberation of spiritual life must grow within people, along with the realization that no one has the right to call themselves a Christian who does not understand the saying: “My kingdom is not of this world.”

[ 32 ] This means that the Kingdom of Christ must become an invisible kingdom—a truly invisible kingdom—a kingdom of which one speaks as one speaks of invisible things. Only when spiritual science prevails will people speak of this kingdom. No external church, no external state, and no economic empire can bring this kingdom into being. This kingdom can be realized solely by the will of the individual human being who lives within a liberated spiritual life.

[ 33 ] It is hard to believe today that much can be done to liberate spiritual life in those regions where people are being trampled underfoot. Therefore, it must be done precisely in those regions that are not currently among those that have been politically, economically, and—of course—soon spiritually trampled. Above all, the realization must take hold that we have truly not yet reached the day when we can say: Things have been going downhill so far, but they will start going uphill again! — No, unless people take action out of the spirit, things will not go uphill, but will continue to go downhill. Humanity today does not live off anything it produces—for production must first be revived under the impulse of the spirit—humanity today lives off reserves, old reserves, and those will be exhausted. And it is childish and naive to believe that one day we will reach the lowest point, and then things will simply get better again, even if we sit idly by. That is not how it works. And one would particularly like such a word as the one just spoken to truly kindle some fire in the souls of those who count themselves among the anthroposophical movement. One hopes that the spirit that has been so strongly at work, especially among those who may have joined this anthroposophical movement, will be overcome by the spirit referred to here. It is certainly true that when an individual joins such a movement, they often want something for themselves, for their soul. They can certainly have that, but only so that they can then place their soul in the service of the whole. They should progress, certainly, for their own sake, but so that humanity may progress through them. One cannot repeat this often enough. This should be added to the other point I mentioned—that one should actually remind oneself of it every morning.

[ 34 ] If the innermost impulse of this movement had been taken entirely seriously, we would surely be further along today. But in many cases, what is being done in our circles is not promoting the future, but is often merely an obstacle. We should reflect deeply on this. That is very important. And above all, we must not believe that today the fiercest opposing forces are not rising up from all sides against precisely what is being strived for as the salvation of humanity.

[ 35 ] I have, after all, pointed out to you here various things that are being done in the world to counter this movement—the hostilities that are being thrown in its path. I simply feel obligated to make you aware of these things as well, so that you can see that one should never say to oneself: “We’ve refuted this or that again.”—We haven’t refuted anything, because with these opponents, it doesn’t matter at all whether they want to represent the truth in any way; rather, they want to have as little to do with the matter as possible, while resorting to slander from every possible angle.

[ 36 ] I would like to read a passage from a letter that arrived in Stuttgart from Kristiania a few days ago. I would like to read just one passage: “One of our anthroposophical friends is working together with a certain Mr. Schirmer at a so-called adult education center in Kristiania. This Mr. Schirmer is, in a certain sense, a very capable teacher, but he is also a fanatical racialist and a die-hard anti-Semite. At a public meeting where three of us gave lectures on the threefold social order, he spoke out against us—or rather, against Dr. Steiner’s “key points”—though without any particular success. The fellow has a certain influence in teaching circles, and in his own way he actually works in the spirit of the threefold order in school, insofar as he advocates freedom and lively objectivity toward the child; and yet he works against the threefold order and Dr. Steiner, for the simple reason that he suspects Dr. Steiner of being Jewish. That is probably not so bad. We must surely expect and overcome more and greater resistance. But now his suspicion has been confirmed: He turned to an “authority,” namely the editor of the *Politisch-Anthropologische Monatsschrift* in Berlin-Steglitz. This purely anti-Semitic journal wrote to him that Dr. Steiner is a Jew through and through. He is connected to the Zionists—in fact, tied to them. And the editor adds that they—the anti-Semites—have long since turned their attention to you. Mr. Schirmer goes on to say that outright persecution of Jews is now in its early stages in Germany, and that all Jews who are currently on the anti-Semites’ blacklist are simply to be shot, or, as they say, ‘rendered harmless,’ and so on.

[ 37 ] As you can see, this is of course not something anti-Semitic in any way; that is merely a superficial aspect. In such contexts, people choose catchphrases that can have the greatest possible impact on those who are somehow swayed by catchphrases. But such things simply draw attention to what most people today do not want to see—what they are increasingly trying to delude themselves about. The situation today is actually far more serious than you are willing to admit, and the point is not to misjudge the gravity of the times, but to be clear that, with regard to such matters—which, after all, run counter to everything intended in the interest of human progress— are only just beginning, and that one should never—without neglecting one’s responsibility—divert one’s attention from all that is now unfolding in our time as a radically evil force within humanity, which is manifesting itself as a radically evil force within humanity. The worst thing that can happen today is to pay any heed to mere catchphrases and platitudes, to believe that the sound of old terms still somehow has roots in human realities, unless one draws a new reality from the very sources of the spiritual itself.

[ 38 ] That, my dear friends, was part of what I wanted to say to you today—first of all to all of you, but especially to those whose visit we have warmly welcomed here; in particular, I wanted to say this to our English friends, so that, based on a certain understanding, when they return to where it will be so important, they may adjust their conduct accordingly. You will have noticed that here we do not speak to please anyone or to offend anyone. We do not speak here to flatter anyone. Here we speak solely to tell the truth. I have also met Theosophists: when they addressed members of a nation foreign to them, they began by speaking of how they considered it an honor to now be able to spread the teachings of spiritual life within that great nation, which has amassed so much glory. We could not have spoken to you here from such a perspective. But I think you have come here to hear the truth, and I believe I have best served you by truly trying to tell you the unvarnished truth. You will have learned from these parts that telling the truth today is no easy matter, for the truth provokes opposition today more than ever. Do not be afraid of opposition, for today, having opponents and speaking the truth are one and the same. These things must be understood. And we will always understand one another best when, at the very foundation of this mutual understanding, we also have the willingness to hear the truth unvarnished.

[ 39 ] That is what I wanted to say today—as I speak to you for the last time before my trip to Germany—both in general and, in particular, to my English friends.