The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] A certain underlying tone has run through the reflections that have also been offered here recently. Time and again, the starting point has been the necessity of facing the gravity of the times when considering the tasks and intentions associated with our anthroposophical movement. What has been shared in these reflections was, in a certain sense, in keeping with this underlying tone, and is also intended to serve as a foundation for developing this tone more and more as a spiritual attitude among a growing number of our members. We wish to continue in this vein, and today I would like, above all, to point out something that can, in a sense, place us inwardly within the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science movement,

[ 2 ] How, then, does one generally gain insight from the entire course of development of Western culture—the decline of which, as you know, has even been scientifically proven today by Oswald Spengler’s book—how, then, does one gain insight within this Western culture, regardless of whether one admits it to a greater or lesser extent? It is precisely those who imagine themselves to be so very practically grounded in life who today regard knowledge as theory rather than as a genuine act of the human soul. And that is precisely what matters today: that we bring ourselves to understand knowledge as an act of the human soul—to understand it in such a way that, in our understanding, we do not have merely some theory or a mere view in mind, but rather something that is an act imbued with will within the entire context of the development of the Earth and humanity.

[ 3 ] I would first like to clarify, in a more methodical way, a fact of the spiritual world: what is meant by “knowledge as action.” I have, after all, often pointed out two opposing currents in the life of the human soul. One current is the abstract-mystical current; the other is the abstract-materialistic current. The abstract-materialistic current is the one that has emerged over the course of the last three to four centuries from the development of the natural sciences and has, in essence, taken hold of all those circles that are today considered relevant to the progress of human development. After all, traditional religious creeds, as they are officially represented, are hardly relevant today to the actual progress of human development. However, these traditional religious creeds, as they are officially represented, would certainly contribute to the further decline of Western culture.

[ 4 ] So, if, for example, Spengler’s idea of the decline of the West were actually to come to pass, then the traditional religious creeds—as officially represented by the Jesuits, the positive Protestants, and so on—might play a part; but they would not be relevant to what is moving forward. As I have often noted, the materialistic current is clearly noticeable today, even among those who are completely unaware of it. This is indeed its defining characteristic, and we must always remember that even the theosophical worldview, when it appeared under the name “theosophical worldview,” was infested with materialism in certain circles. For what, after all, were the descriptions of the human etheric and astral bodies offered by these circles—which repeatedly referred to the etheric and astral bodies as mere rarefactions of matter and imagined them to be nothing more than some kind of mist—what were they, if not materialism in disguise, spiritually disguised materialism? The most extreme form of spiritually disguised materialism is, of course, spiritualism, which, while speaking of the spirit, seeks nothing more than to prove the spirit in material form and to present it in material form. Everything that is disseminated through popular literature—above all through our popular books and newspapers, which instruct people in all manner of articles about what is “right”—everything that reaches the people in this way, whether from the Catholic or Protestant side, is riddled with materialism. This materialism is something that, on the one hand, is connected to advancing culture. We must therefore take it into account by engaging with it in a positive way. What is historically traditional—such as religious creeds—must, of course, combat the new in the most intense way possible if it becomes an aggressor against the new; but this is not something with which contemporary thought needs to seriously concern itself, for it is something that is in decline. Materialism, on the other hand, is something that—albeit with a materialistic slant and in a materialistic interpretation—nevertheless brings to light precisely what one must know in the present. If one wishes to contribute to the progress of spiritual life, one must know what materialistic anatomy, materialistic physiology, materialistic biology, and sociology are revealing in the present; one must be immersed in what can be known through this approach, and one must draw precisely from this knowledge the strength to transform materialistic knowledge and the materialistic way of thinking and imagining into spiritual knowledge. It is therefore valuable in the present day to engage with the content that materialism embodies. One cannot today, in the sense that some imagine—let us say—transform medieval Catholic philosophy. It can be transformed only in the way I demonstrated in Dornach with Thomism; yet even then, it transforms itself. One can, however, metamorphose materialism into a spiritual inner life of the soul. Therefore, it is entirely unfounded for anthroposophists to despise what materialism produces. One must take this into account. One cannot develop anthroposophy out of thin air; rather, one must develop it while standing alive within present-day life, and this life is, for the time being, precisely materialistic life.

[ 5 ] Now, at the very moment when one wishes to perceive materialism in the sense of true human progress, one must develop a fundamental sensibility within oneself—precisely that fundamental sensibility which the broadest circles of our time, namely the current scholarly circles, fail to develop at all. It is the sense that everything that initially surrounds us in the world of perception—what our eyes see, what our ears hear, and so on—is not a reality, and that reality must not be sought there at all; that it is therefore fundamentally wrong to seek atoms and molecules as realities within this external world of perception, even in the sense that they are supposed to be concepts. Indeed, some representatives of science take particular pride in saying that they do not at all assume a reality in atoms and molecules, but only thought-forms—so to speak, points of thought—that exist in space. But what matters is not whether one assumes material points or such “points of thought” within atoms, but whether one proceeds from a living perception of spiritual entities, or whether one rejects this living perception and proceeds solely from what one gains in the material world. And this applies, even as point forces, to the atoms. As soon as one proceeds from atomistic conceptions, one is already mired in a materialism that leads to ruin. One can only come to terms with the world of perception if one conceives of it as a phenomenon, as a world of appearances. What meets us through the senses is something in which matter is not present at all. So we must develop this sense within ourselves—and we can develop it through the insights recorded in our anthroposophical literature—so that when we look out through our eyes and behold the entire starry sky, the configuration of the clouds, the contents of the three kingdoms—the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, but also of the fourth kingdom, the human kingdom; that in all that we find approaching us through our perceptions, we must not seek anything material. There is no matter behind it! These are phenomena, just like the rainbow itself, for example, even if they usually appear more coarse than this rainbow. Just as no one should regard the rainbow as some kind of external reality—as, say, a real bridge spanning the sky in seven colors—but rather as a phenomenon, an appearance, so too should everyone perceive whatever comes to meet them externally through the senses as a phenomenon, as an appearance, no matter how tangible it may seem. Even with a quartz crystal—which we can grasp, whereas with a rainbow we would reach right through it—and even though the sense of touch is involved, we must still speak of the quartz crystal only as a phenomenon; we must not imagine some kind of material reality into it, no matter how today’s misguided view of nature might conceive of it. So what we encounter as “material” phenomena are not material phenomena at all; they are not matter in reality. They are merely phenomena; they are what comes and goes from another reality that we cannot grasp unless we can conceive of it mentally. This is the one insight we must develop: not to seek matter in the external world!

[ 6 ] That is why the very people who despise external materiality—who say, “Oh, what we perceive externally is just matter; we must rise above it!”—are the ones who miss the true goal of anthroposophical development the most. — That is precisely wrong. It is precisely what we perceive externally that is not material; we cannot look for matter there at all. We find no matter whatsoever in the world that makes an impression on us through our senses. This will become clear to you if you read what is set forth in our anthroposophically oriented literature in the right spirit.

[ 7 ] And then you must continue to develop this sensation. This leads you to points that are quite uncomfortable for people today, because they come very close to what are called the experiences with the Keeper of the Threshold. These are uncomfortable experiences; but unless one confronts them, one will not make further progress in inner development. One must accept the discomfort of moving beyond the theoretical and into the real. Knowledge must, so to speak, reckon with the facts. Anyone who holds the view that matter can be found within the world we call the material world—some may already believe that because we say “matter,” it must be matter; such verbal wisdom is how people act today—anyone who says, therefore, that matter can be found within the world of perception is committing more than just a theoretical error. And anyone who thinks that simply saying, “It is wrong to seek matter within the world of perception,” is enough—such a person has not yet entered into anthroposophically oriented spiritual science; for the mere correction of a theoretical view is not yet spiritual science. Spiritual science must take knowledge as an act; spiritual science must be knowledge permeated by the will; it must therefore enter into realities, even when it offers its definitions and explanations. And that is where things become uncomfortable.

[ 8 ] It is easy to say: “You hold the mistaken view that matter can be found within the external world of perception; therefore, correct your view!” — Yes, that is just theoretical babbling. Accepting theories, refuting theories, correcting them—all of this is merely theoretical talk, something with which spiritual science cannot truly be satisfied; rather, the point is to advance through sensation to the realization that anyone who clings to a materialistic conception of the material world is unhealthy in their entire organism. We must move beyond the mere logical designation of something as incorrect to a designation that reaches into reality—that is, into the constitution of the human being. One must be convinced that it is not merely logically incorrect to say that matter confronts us in the world of perception, but that anyone who sees matter in perception is truly on the path to constitutional mental deficiency—that is, that being a materialist in the sense indicated is a disease.

[ 9 ] One seeks to grasp reality through one’s imagination. As long as one remains in the realm of theory, one does not grasp it. And everyone assumes: Well, one just needs to be properly instructed, and then one can change one’s ways. — But spiritual science presupposes living development in every respect; it presupposes that one must heal oneself if one is materialistic in the sense indicated, because straying from the path is an illness, because it is the path to insanity.

[ 10 ] There, things are brought into close alignment with the insights one gains in the encounter with the Keeper of the Threshold. For when, in this encounter with the Keeper of the Threshold, one enters worlds that are different from the physical world—worlds that add something new to this physical world—all theorizing ceases; everything that clouds the intellect ceases; reality begins; every word is imbued with reality. There, one can no longer say: “You are asserting something true or false”—but rather one must say: “You are asserting something out of a sick or a healthy mind.”—That is where one arrives at realities. Nor can one say: “You must correct your view”—but rather one must say: “If you are on the path to illness, to mental weakness, you must redevelop yourself back to a healthy, strong mind.” — You see, it is not enough today to rectify or correct so-called worldviews that cloud our judgment; rather, if one wishes to become a scholar of spiritual science, it is actually a matter of undergoing a real process within oneself and not being content with something intellectual, rational, or theoretical. We live in such serious times today that the pathological nature of a rational view of the world must come vividly before our souls.

[ 11 ] We have attempted to outline one side of the issue, to characterize—from the standpoint of reality—one aspect of what is happening in cultural life today: the materialistic side. The other side—its polar opposite—is the mystical. Many people today, dissatisfied with materialism, seek refuge in this mystical realm. They feel that materialism is something fundamentally flawed, so they must embrace a different worldview and seek a path other than those taken by materialism. People then try to develop along the inner path, to advance toward a grasp of the spiritual. Mysticism has often been described here as a spiritual movement which, in its one-sidedness, is of course just as legitimate—if one sees through this one-sidedness—as materialism is legitimate when one sees through its one-sidedness. Mysticism has been described as a kind of reaction against what has emerged in recent centuries as materialism in American and European civilization. But what has been mentioned repeatedly—and was also mentioned in the little booklet Through the Spirit to the Knowledge of Reality: The Riddles of Humanity, which was published during the war and was indeed sent out to the front lines—must be taken into closer consideration: this mystical movement must be examined more closely, again by not merely focusing on the kind of theorizing that is usually had in mind. When people speak of mysticism, they assume that mystics withdraw from external life, immerse themselves in their inner world, and thereby draw near to the “spark” of which Meister Eckhart spoke; there, they believe, the true spiritual—which cannot be contained in the external material world—is revealed. Yet mystics are often true materialists. Thus, in a sense, it is precisely the mystics who are, for the most part, staunch, uncompromising materialists. They begin to rail as soon as the material world is mentioned, consider themselves too good to concern themselves with it—as has often been said—and feel superior to the material. But the point is not merely to engage with these things theoretically, but to move toward reality; the point is to once again take sight of the real behind this mystical striving. It is a matter of realizing what, in fact, is the active force within us when we become mystics, what is at work within us when we become mystics. You can see this, in turn, in our anthroposophically oriented literature. And there we must say: That is precisely the ground on which we find the material! We find the material at work within us when we become mystics. Even the great mystic—what phenomena does he bring to the fore within himself? He brings to the fore within himself that which bubbles and boils in his metabolism, no matter how refined it may be. Within the human skin we discover the actual matter, not in the external world that makes an impression on us. We discover matter when we allow that which is ignited in the metabolism to rise up within us. If, for example, we turn to Meister Eckhart to see how he described God inwardly, he points out how he carefully brought to consciousness what is bubbling and boiling in his metabolism—what appeared to him to be acting upon the heart center and transforming there into what is perceived as a spark of the divine Self within the human being; this is the little flame that is kindled by the metabolism in the heart.

[ 12 ] This brings us to the very essence of the material world when we engage in mysticism, and just as one must elevate the true results of Goetheanism to a higher worldview, so too must we realize that the results of mysticism are what we must seek in the interpretation of material processes. We do not discover material processes in the chemistry laboratory. No, when the chemist works in his laboratory, what takes place in the retort is merely an external phenomenon, just as the rainbow is an external phenomenon. That, too, is a phenomenon; there is nothing of real materiality there. We come to know what true materiality is when we see the bubbling and boiling of our inner processes—those taking place beneath the skin—ignite just as a stearin candle is lit into a flame. That is what must be interpreted as materiality, and we grasp mysticism correctly only when we realize this: Everything that mysticism, as such, produces as inner experiences in its one-sidedness is a material effect; therein lies the true materiality. We should not seek matter by analyzing chemical processes; we should seek matter in every structure that carries out its complex chemistry and physiology within the human body. Through mysticism, we learn to solve the material enigma. But through mysticism, we also learn only to solve the material enigma. We must not reinterpret the inner materiality of the human organism in the same way that we might say, when we see a flame burning: “That cannot be the result of what is inside the candle; rather, there is a little spirit inside the candle that brings forth the flame.” — That is, of course, nonsense. It is equally nonsensical to seek a spiritual reality in what the mystic experiences.

[ 13 ] One must bring oneself to embrace a very specific concept—a concept that is a threshold truth. What is achieved in mysticism does not take us very far; for we find ourselves immersed in intoxicating phenomena, surrendered to our egoistic desires, which absolutely refuse to be described as materialistic processes of our actual inner processes. We do not penetrate through the intoxicating abundance of phenomena that surround us in the world of perception to the realization that, in fact, there is no matter at all within it. But let us consider what we actually see when, for example, we look at a distant planet or a fixed star out in outer space. What do we actually see there? Indeed, what we see around us on Earth—the green vegetation, the cloud formations, the brown-gray soil, and so on—we do not see when we look out into outer space and see the stars; the stars, and even the Moon, are too far away for that. But what is out there—what lives on these alien celestial bodies—has an inner life everywhere, with transformed material processes. These material processes, which exist within the corresponding highest beings, are what we see when we point a telescope at a star. Likewise, if another star—let’s say the Moon—were to point its telescope at us, would it then see our plants, animals, and so on? No, our Earth is far too far away from the Moon for that. But if it were to point its telescope down toward the Earth, it would look into your stomach, your heart, and so on. This is the essence of what shines out into the world. Because human beings, among the various kingdoms on Earth, belong to the highest kingdom, one can see from the outside what is taking place within the human body. And that which can be seen from distant stars—when it is consciously kindled within—is experienced by human beings as mysticism.

[ 14 ] So you see, even those who are truly and earnestly devoted to the anthroposophical worldview must come to terms with this second, equally uncomfortable threshold truth: that it is precisely mysticism that teaches us about earthly matter. We do not come to know even the simplest earthly force by merely observing the external world. Pick up a physics textbook. You know it speaks of gravity, of the Earth’s gravitational pull; but it always adds that, of course, the nature of gravity is unknown. People are even quite smug when they explain that the nature of gravity is unknown.

[ 15 ] How does one come to understand the nature of the force that causes a piece of chalk to fall when one lets go of it? The force known as gravity is understood in the following way. At a certain point in one’s life—perhaps from the age of thirty, or perhaps even earlier, depending on the loving guidance of fate—one will come to realize something when observing oneself in the spiritual-scientific sense, rather than in the ordinary way—for the methods of spiritual science do, after all, introduce one to the methods of true self-observation— so around the age of thirty-two, one will come to know something. If one does not observe oneself as the abstract mystics do, but instead learns true self-observation, one will come to realize—for example—that when living, say, from the age of thirty-five to forty, one has become physically different. Some notice this because their hair has turned gray; and nowadays it also happens that men go bald during this period. So one has become different. But if one has not acquired the ability to observe oneself, then one does not experience this transformation; one does not experience in one’s inner being how this transformation unfolds. One can experience it by applying to oneself what is said in my book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? . One can begin to experience this inwardly from about the age of thirty-two. And then one learns to recognize, from the way one must carry one’s body differently, how the body becomes heavier. Then one experiences inwardly the heaviness—that which is called gravity. But one must experience this inwardly.

[ 16 ] All the vague talk found in mysticism is not as important as a concrete fact such as how one can personally experience this increasing heaviness within oneself during this time. You cannot learn to experience this increasing heaviness if you have a person here who drops a stone. You do not observe the heaviness in the falling of the stone, for the stone does not contain true materiality. You must observe this within yourself by focusing not on space but on time—that is, on what you experience one thing after another. One must transition from spatial experience to temporal experience. One must first be able to engage in self-observation. One must find, through inner experiences, that which can never be found in the external world of perception. And these inner experiences are the second element of reality.

[ 17 ] What does the person who experiences the external world of perception have? He has only truth, but no science. The one who experiences inwardly—in an abstract, mystical way—has only science, but no truth; for he deceives himself regarding the fundamental phenomenon of the inner world, because inner experience consists of the flames of material processes. The one who seeks only materialities in the external world interprets the world in an Ahrimanic sense; the other, who seeks only truth in an abstract-mystical way within himself, interprets it in a Luciferic way. What must be sought as a true anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is the balance between the two—the interweaving of truth and science. We must seek truth at one pole and science at the other, and become aware of how living realities polarize as we interweave truth with science and science with truth. There, knowledge becomes an act; something happens. It is not merely a matter of logically defining or correcting something; rather, something happens when a person strives to experience science inwardly and to grasp truth outwardly, and strives to have both mutually permeate one another.

[ 18 ] This is what the present age must understand. The present age must understand that human beings must maintain a balance between the two extremes, the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. Human beings always tend toward one side or the other. That is why the Trinity Group in Dornach is depicted with the Luciferic aspect at the top, the Ahrimanic at the bottom, and Christ in the middle, maintaining the balance. One can express these things in ideas, can distill them down to their essence; then they become truth and science. But one can also represent these things artistically; in that case, one must set aside all mere ideas and look instead to the line, the form, and the figure—and then it becomes, for example, the Trinity Group in Dornach. But the whole is permeated by the spirit.

[ 19 ] Mysticism is one-sided, and materialism is also one-sided. And one must realize that both must be woven together in living action, and that the true inner life of human beings must be sought in this living action. Our age, on the other hand, wants to befriend materialism in a one-sided way and is thereby actually on the path to insanity. I have shown that one must not stop at theorizing, but must know in the real, in the actual: As soon as you encounter the Keeper of the Threshold, it becomes clear to you what materialism is—a path to insanity! One must restore one’s health; one must not merely refute in order to arrive at something else. The other extreme is abstract mysticism. One must be able to sense that it is, in reality, the path to infantilism—or, to put it in German terms, there is no other German word for it—childishness, a way of perceiving the world in a manner appropriate only to a very young child—infantilism! Thus, the child, not yet touched by the world, living purely within physical materiality and physical organic processes, represents the archetype of the mystic; only, as a mystic, one will later have the same experiences as the child. Of course, these experiences take on a different form, but the child also feels this concentration of organic activity in the heart, and when it feels this concentration, it kicks; then we see how the peripheral kicking, the outward movement, represents the opposite of the concentration within the heart. If a person remains childish throughout their entire life, if they are too complacent to immerse themselves in what only materialism can provide, then they reject external matter; to them it is nothing, it is the base, which they must still strive to transcend. But then they also kick, and in kicking, they give rise to their mysticism. That is the threshold truth, the uncomfortable threshold truth. But all abstract mysticism—which, as people practice it today, smacks of sensual indulgence, so that they lick their fingers when things are printed that are actually nothing more than mental flailing—that is infantilism. And one must be clear about this: just as materialism leads to insanity, so does abstract mysticism lead to the disease of infantilism, of childishness. But true life consists in finding the balance, the equilibrium, between materialism and mysticism.

[ 20 ] Here, the matter becomes somewhat difficult again, because that’s when it gets even more uncomfortable. But when you’re seeking balance on the scales, you mustn’t disregard what’s on one side, because if there’s too much of it, it will upset the balance again; rather, you must try to place on both pans of the scales that which truly maintains the balance. So it is necessary that you not disregard what leads into the substance of the matter and not simply tell yourself, “That leads to nonsense.” On the contrary, whoever wants to delve into the matter must boldly advance into reality and tell themselves: “I must indeed take the path that, if taken one-sidedly, leads to nonsense, but I am prepared for that.” I am also prepared against getting stuck on the other path; I retain what is necessary from childhood, but I do not remain stuck in childhood. — So one must find the balance between materialism and mysticism: that is the true meaning of life. The meaning of life is the balance between insanity and childishness. And if one is unable to see through this, then one is simply incapable of penetrating reality. People only become feeble-minded when they fail to realize that the normal person must overcome, day by day, hour by hour, the feeble-mindedness that constantly threatens them, and that they remain merely human only if they remain childlike—that is, genial. For if one maintains childishness in the right balance, then one is a genius. One is only as much of a genius as one has managed to preserve that childishness well into one’s thirties; but it must be maintained in the right balance. So one must simply say: In everyone lies the danger—yes, how shall I put it now—of becoming a genius or remaining childlike. One can actually say both. As soon as one approaches threshold truths, ordinary ways of expression no longer apply; there, things that are otherwise separate intertwine. All words take on a different meaning, and one might say it would be quite humorous to depict this scene in a painterly or sculptural way: There is the threshold to the spiritual world; here stands one person, and over there stands the other; one weaves within the spiritual realm and the other within the material, and they shout at each other. The one from the spiritual world shouts: “Childishness!”—and the other from the material world shouts back: “Genius!” Just as a tree looks different from one side than from the other, so things look different depending on whether one views them from a spiritual or a material perspective. From the spiritual point of view, one must speak of genius, because one has preserved the childlike quality of playful imagination—of childishness—since one sees precisely what childishness is when standing on the spiritual side. For there, one views childishness differently. There one knows that the human being descends from the spiritual world, that he settles into a physical body; there one sees how the child is still clumsy, yet how the highest spirituality already lives within what is still undeveloped.

[ 21 ] It has particularly annoyed some people—such as that fool Dessoir—as I have explained in my little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity, that the wisdom at work in shaping a child’s brain is far more intelligent than the wisdom a person expresses later in life. Fools like Dessoir cannot comprehend this; for them, the extent of wisdom is what they express when they write their books. But the fact is that when one speaks from the spiritual perspective of “childishness,” one sees how the human spirit—a ray of the divine essence—has descended, fully developed within itself. It has entered into a still undeveloped human body; it has taken hold of it and is working through it, so that after just a few months the brain is already different from what it was, and the entire body becomes something different by the seventh, the fourteenth year, and so on. So we speak of childishness not as a term of abuse, but rather to describe childishness as the descent of the spirit into the physical world, as the spirit’s first taking hold of the body, the state of still being a child, of still being a-human-state, where the human being, due to the development of the rest of the body—which, after all, develops the fastest—while the head contains the most spirit, is not yet purified of spirit in the head. This is what it looks like when one speaks of childishness from the supersensible perspective. For there is much spirit in the child’s head, and—this is an uncomfortable truth—as we grow older, the spirit becomes less and less; we become more and more petrified in our heads. The child still has a great deal of spirit. It gradually evaporates. I may use the word “evaporate” in the sense that the spirit evaporates out of the head and down into the rest of the organism. You can see from this that it is an expression of the highest when I speak of childlike-mindedness as viewed from beyond the threshold, and that it is an expression of stagnation when I speak of childlike-mindedness from an earthly standpoint, But the language of Earth and that of Heaven are, after all, different from one another, and that is the tragedy of our time: that people do not even want to understand the language of Heaven. Ever since it has become customary to demand that sermons from the pulpit be as earthly as possible, people have lost the ability to understand the language of the Hereafter. And so it stands to reason that when one has something to say in a particular context—which one naturally expresses and states within that context, having first prepared, for example, the concept of the world beyond the threshold: “The beings of the spiritual world evaporate downward”—the following can happen today. I’d like to mention an actual incident that took place. So it can happen that someone writes down: “Steiner said that things do not evaporate upward, but downward.” — Then a professor of anatomy adopts this and reads it aloud to his audience, whom he has prepared himself by asking them to show up with children’s trumpets and rattles whenever genuine anthroposophy is to be presented by a speaker! Then anthroposophy is presented. Afterward, the professor speaks and reads aloud something he has appropriated, and then the students begin, with their trumpets and children’s rattles—which they have brought along—to apply the scientific arguments commonly used in such circles today. This is an event that actually took place in Göttingen just a few days ago. Read the supplement that has just been printed for the new issue of our Dreigliederungszeitung. You’ll find it there.

[ 22 ] We are indeed living in serious times, and that is why I would like to continue on Friday what I have begun today—by describing to you how materialism on the one hand and mysticism on the other truly appear—and show you what our tasks are. For our tasks today are not to gather in sectarian circles, but to intervene actively in the processes of life and to introduce anthroposophical impulses into the entire cultural life of the present. Today, if we understand our task for this age, we must not remain one-sided materialists or mystics; we must set out on the path to reality, as I attempted to characterize it in the little booklet that was printed through the efforts of Mr. Molt for those out in the field who should learn something of the anthroposophical spirit. We must always bear in mind that we are living in serious times and that we can only feel up to the task if we allow ourselves to be touched by that which can no longer even be properly described in the old forms of language, but which compels us to find new forms of language ourselves if we are to arrive at today’s truth. Knowledge must not remain mere speculation; knowledge must become action. Then we, as humanity, will not sail toward the decline of the West, but we will once again find a new dawn. But as long as the materialism of childishness makes use of symbols—such as drums and rattles—to refute anthroposophy, that is, as long as the materialism of childishness and mysticism make use of materialism by attempting to dress up material processes as spiritual ones as much as possible, we will continue to sail headlong into the decline of the West with all our might. This is not a matter of speculation, but of concrete action.