The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Today I need to build on some of what I have already said here in my previous reflection, because it is particularly important—and indeed necessary—to emphasize the connection between what I have said and what I intend to add today. I explained recently that the path leading to spiritual science requires the recognition of two facts. The first fact is this: one must realize, based on the wide variety of insights that can be gained from spiritual science, how impossible it is to conceive of matter or substance as existing in the external world surrounding human beings. We see the external world through our eyes, hear it through our ears, and build up a certain understanding of nature when we connect what we see, hear, and perceive through our other senses by means of our intellect, and then believe that we know something about external nature. As long as one thinks this way and believes that in this external nature—through some science of it—one can find matter and its laws, one remains in error. And the error of materialism did not lie in the fact that it spoke of matter at all, but in the belief that matter and its laws, its inner structure, and its essence could be found in the external world. Therefore, anyone who says, “I want nothing to do with the external world, for that is, after all, the material world; I want to seek a spiritual world mystically within myself”—such a person becomes just as much a materialist as the one who simply interprets this external world in a materialistic sense; for he believes, after all, that the material can be found in the external world. And this is the main error of modern times: that people seek the essence of the material in the external world. The essential correction will consist in no longer seeking the essence of the material in the external world, in being clear about this: no matter how far we extend the realm of our sensory observation, we can find nowhere anything of what matter and its inner structure, its laws, actually are. We must be clear that what presents itself to us in the external world is only what is called “maya” in the East—what we call the world of appearances, the phenomenal world—and that, no matter where we look, we cannot find anything material in this external world.

[ 2 ] In contrast, another fact must be clear: that we find this material aspect—which materialism mistakenly seeks in the external world—within ourselves, and that we find it precisely when we become mystics in a one-sided, abstract sense. For what rises in our consciousness as the content of a certain mysticism—what we believe we are experiencing there—is nothing other than, I would say, the flame that is kindled within us by our material organic processes. And those who interpret the mysticism of Tauler and Meister Eckhart in such a way that these thinkers, endowed with a special capacity for inner experience, were able to interpret the material within themselves—as it ignites into the flame of consciousness—and that they found the material through mysticism, are actually correct. Until one realizes that through external observation one finds only the phenomenal—the Maya—and through internal observation only the material and its flame, one cannot attain true clarity regarding the nature of the world and humanity’s place within it. We must not seek the material in the external world through the natural sciences; we must seek it internally through mysticism, for that is where its laws lie. Anyone who wishes to seek the nature of gravity should not seek it through Atwood’s falling-body apparatus, but should try—let us say in the thirty-second year of life, though it could also be at another time—to arrive at an inner awareness of gravity, so that, through inner experience, they know what it means to truly experience weight. Through concrete inner experience, they should learn how, from the age of thirty to forty, one becomes inwardly heavier and heavier, how one inwardly experiences a quality of the material world that finds expression only in what is mystical consciousness. And I have tried to interpret what is at stake here by saying: If one stands right in the midst of a planet’s chaos, as today’s scientists do, one cannot possibly gain a clear understanding of these things. — We see what is there as plants and animals, as a blanket of clouds; we see the light the stars cast down upon us, we see rivers and mountains and valleys, and so on. But none of that comes into play at all if, for example, one were to observe what is on our Earth from Mars. A Martian who were to observe our Earth through some instrument of any kind—one could imagine, as is indeed the case in reality, albeit in a different way, that the Martian is organized in such a way that he can observe the Earth—would perceive nothing of what we see in terms of cloud formations, rivers, and mountains, or of the phenomena of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms; what he would perceive on our planet would be taking place within the bodies of the people living on Earth. Everything else would vanish from the Martian’s sight. He would perceive only what takes place within the inner organic life of human beings; for that is what he would experience as the material world of Earth. And when one brings this inner mystical reality to consciousness, it is not what many mystics believe, but rather the flame that burns within us. That is the place where one comes to know earthly matter. This kind of self-knowledge leads us into the essence of matter and force, and in this regard, the views of Westerners have taken precisely the opposite course over the last few centuries.

[ 3 ] This shows the extent to which our thinking must change if decline is to be transformed into a new rise. Today, people believe that whether one is a materialist, an idealist, or a spiritualist depends on the content of one’s worldview. That is not the case. One is far from being a spiritualist simply by saying that one devotes oneself to the contemplation of the inner rather than the outer. For it could happen that one devotes oneself to one’s inner self and then observes matter all the more keenly—namely, as it becomes a flame within. One is on the right path only when one grasps, in an inner attitude, what I mean. When we survey the external world of perception, we find only phenomena, only appearances, and not something in which these phenomena, these appearances, are rooted; for what they are rooted in lies within our own skin. What we see on the outside is to be evaluated in exactly the same way as what we see in a rainbow. Just as the person who believes that the rainbow is something other than a phenomenon—something that extends there as a material entity—is mistaken, so too is the person who believes—because the other perceptions surrounding him affect the sense of feeling as well as the other senses, whereas one can reach through the rainbow— that the appearances surrounding us are not appearances but material reality. They differ from the rainbow only in that they also affect other senses; but material reality is just as absent in them as it is in the rainbow. Outwardly, everything is an appearance. That in which these appearances are rooted therefore lies within the human skin. Within this human skin take place the processes that carry the events of the Earth from one age to the next.

[ 4 ] As improbable and paradoxical as it may seem to people today, it is nevertheless true that the phenomena that surround us outwardly today, and the laws of nature manifested in these phenomena, is not the outward consequence of what happened materially about three millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather the consequence of what took place three millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha within the bodies of the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and so on. This has moved from the inside out. And what was once the outer world has vanished, has sunk into oblivion. Within the bodies of human beings lies the seed for a future that can already be calculated in terms of millennia. This is something that can perhaps already be recognized today from the outer phenomena of nature—albeit through a bold, yet valid, inference. People speak of the properties of radium. To those who perceive the spiritual world, this talk sometimes seems as if children were speaking of what has long been clear to the spiritual understanding of adults based on other facts. Physics knows today that the radium that was present on the Earth’s surface before the year 140 A.D. has now vanished; it is no longer radium. The radium that exists today has only been forming since the year 140 A.D. These are things that physics already teaches today—things that are now coming to people to, in a sense, compel them to finally let go of what they, as a mistake, had to pursue for centuries in the name of human liberation.

[ 5 ] All of this, however, compels us to view what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science brings to people in a completely different way than things are usually viewed. It compels us to move from mere theories to realities, to move everywhere from abstract intellectual knowledge to practical knowledge—to that which is an action, a real action within the context of the world. For as I have already said—but it is necessary to emphasize this with particular clarity—people today believe that one person is a materialist and another is a spiritualist. The spiritualist says: “That person is a materialist; one must refute him, for it is not true that the soul is a product of matter. Therefore, what the materialist claims is false, and it is enough to have refuted him. The materialist is in a logical error, and one must refute him.” — No, that is not the point. This is not a matter of logic; it is not a matter of theorizing, and people merely assume that spiritual science is theorizing. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is grounded in reality at every turn, even if it sometimes seeks that reality where it truly must be sought: in that realm where the spirit reigns and dwells. Anyone who looks at the external world and seeks matter everywhere according to the method of modern molecular and atomistic theorists—regardless of whether they view it as points of force or as tiny blocks—is not merely committing a logical error that must be refuted. True spiritual science has nothing to do with such things, which are merely theoretical concepts. It deals with realities. Anyone who seeks anything other than phenomena in the outer world is on the path not merely to a logical error, but to the organic disease of their entire being. And one must not say that pursuing this path is a logical error; rather, one must say that the person who seeks in this way is on the path to organic disease, on the path to mental deficiency. This is why, in the field of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, we must often transform things that are meant theoretically into things that are meant in a real sense. Explanation in the spiritual realm has nothing to do with mere agreement or refutation, but rather with what constitutes health and illness, and what constitutes realities in life. And so we must say: Anyone who searches in such a way that they seek not merely the phenomena themselves but the substance within the phenomena is on the path to mental deficiency, to organic disease. This is something that takes place within reality.

[ 6 ] Likewise, it is not merely the one who seeks the abstract spiritual within himself who must be refuted; but rather, the one who seeks the spiritual through the path of mere one-sided inner mysticism—and fails to realize that, when he sees through the fabric of this mysticism, he arrives precisely at materiality—is on the path—I have called it what one might well call it when describing it from beyond the threshold—toward the illness of his organism: infantilism, childishness. If this is the threshold between the sensory and the supersensory world, and the guardian of the threshold stands there, then on this side of the guardian lies what we here call genius; but on the other side of the threshold, this can rightly be called childishness. For if it finds improper expression here in the sensory world, then it is childishness throughout one’s entire life, whereas genius is the preservation of a certain reserve of childlikeness throughout one’s entire life. We attain genius only by carrying into old age the kind of soul that is otherwise present in childhood, and this is seen in its true form from beyond the threshold. But if this carrying forward of the childlike nature of the soul into later life is one-sided, what—when properly placed within the human world—becomes genius turns into childishness. This, in turn, is something that shows us how, as soon as we enter the realm of spiritual science, we must replace purely logical concepts with real concepts—with that which not only leads a person to different views but also changes them internally according to their organic structure.

[ 7 ] This is the seriousness of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which is so little appreciated because people bring their ordinary mindset into the fields of spiritual science. They want to agree or disagree in the same way as is customary in the outer world; they want to carry the customs of the outer world into the fields of spiritual science, whereas anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can only be taught correctly when one speaks in terms of the world beyond. There, the words have a completely different meaning; what here is heaviness, what pulls downward, is an upward pull there. In the spiritual world, one must speak of what pulls us down in such a way that it is exactly the opposite. Therefore, one should not be surprised if those who take spiritual science seriously are initially completely misunderstood by those who wish to carry into the realms of spiritual science the conventions that have simply developed in the age of materialism. This is what always leads to things like those I dared to bring up yesterday being misunderstood.

[ 8 ] Anyone who were to present an argument against Oswald Spengler would simply refute him. The humanities scholar, however, is compelled not to refute him in the usual way. He must adopt different perspectives rather than a stubborn stance; he must say: What Oswald Spengler asserts is asserted from a different perspective—one that is unproductive for the immediate future. One does justice to these phenomena not by simply refuting them, but by demonstrating their genius and speaking with genuine engagement about what one wishes to overcome. There is far more of the spiritual-scientific in the way one approaches these matters than in the trite presentation of any mystical generalities, which those who put them forward believe to be particularly divinely inspired truths. These matters must be considered, for we are moving toward an age in which we must go beyond the mere content of intellectual life. And this is something I would like to emphasize again and again, time and time again: that we must move beyond the mere content of intellectual life.

[ 9 ] Today, if one considers only the content, it is relatively easy for any foolish person to refute Oswald Spengler. That is not difficult, but that is not the point; rather, the point is to identify what in Oswald Spengler is concretely and truly alive, and by what means he can be concretely and truly overcome. And in the future, it will matter more and more that, when we wish to characterize a personality, we focus more on what they put forward than on whether what they put forward happens to please or displease us in terms of content. One must not focus on whether one likes or dislikes something in terms of content, but rather on whether it possesses intellectual qualities. It is far more important for the overall course of world evolution that there be a brilliant materialist who brilliantly advocates materialism—this requires intellect, and sometimes it takes very little intellect to advocate shallow mysticism. Under certain circumstances, the shallow mystic can contribute far more to the materialization of the world than the brilliant materialist. What matters are the qualities of the spiritual. In the future, it will depend far more on this being recognized than on the content itself. This is what must be learned; for we do not wish to strive for the spirit as a logical system, but in its reality, and so I ask you: Can you not imagine that the spirit lives more fully in the spirited materialist than in the shallow spiritualist? These things must be understood and penetrated by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science; for what matters is the reality of the spirit, not the abstract assertion of one side or the other. People fail to recognize precisely how much it really depends on realities and not on theories!

[ 10 ] That is why we must view certain phenomena of everyday life today precisely from the perspective of spiritual scientific insight; otherwise, we cannot gain clarity through them. Consider, for a moment, that in the ordinary world in which we live today, in public life, we find this or that political party. Let us first consider the ordinary political parties. You know that what is most disheartening, most odious, and most banal is what prevails within these parties; but to a greater or lesser extent, almost everyone today is compelled to be a part of them—anyone who does not wish to withdraw entirely from external life, or who, due to a lack of a sense of belonging, is not immediately forced to abstain from voting because they have not managed to secure the right to vote anywhere; thus, everyone who has the right to vote is today under the compulsion to cast their vote in a certain direction, that is, to act in accordance with these parties. So parties exist. These trace their origins back to better times in party life, to the well-known British seesaw system of the Conservative Party on one side and the Liberal Party on the other. And we can say: All the parties that exist today are, in a sense, expressed within these two shades. Sometimes liberalism from the left blends with conservatism from the right, and conservatism blends with liberalism from the left, as in social democracy; or conservatism shifts toward radicalism, as we have indeed witnessed today. But on the whole, one can say that this classic seesaw system of conservative and liberal is the one to which our parties trace their origins. Yes, that is the picture one sees from the outside. Within these party structures, as everyone must admit, one experiences the very worst. But it is there, and the question now is: Why is it there? What is it, really? What are parties, anyway?

[ 11 ] Everything that appears here in the physical world is, after all, a reflection of the supersensible world. What, then, are political parties a reflection of? What exists in the supersensible world that corresponds to the existence of political parties here in the sensible world? Only those who have grasped the prerequisites for this can truly understand what is at stake here; they understand that one arrives at something entirely different—namely, at realities—when one crosses the threshold into the spiritual world. Here in the physical world, one is an idealist or a skeptic or a realist or a spiritualist—or whatever all these “-ists” are called. One is something that can be summarized in a platform, in a political or sociological system—in short, one is an “-ist.” There, one is guided by an abstraction. For everything that underlies political parties consists of such party platforms or systems or the like—they are all abstractions. As soon as you cross the threshold into the spiritual world, you are no longer dealing with mere logic and abstractions, but with realities. This is just not usually taken very seriously. But you cannot swear allegiance to party banners once you have passed the Keeper of the Threshold; instead, you can only align yourself with beings—there, everything becomes essential. There you can only align yourself with a being from the higher hierarchies and say: This is the one I follow, with whom I unite. The other may advocate his cause in his own way; I am united with this one; I take his side. There, the phrase “I take the side of this one or that one” takes on a very real, not merely abstract, meaning. For us humans, it is natural to say to ourselves: As soon as we look beyond the threshold, we find the threefold kind of beings: the Christ Being, Ahriman, and Lucifer. One can, of course, at first—having carefully prepared oneself to perceive the spiritual world—say: “I take the side of Christ, or that of Ahriman, or that of Lucifer.” But one can also disguise the matter; one can be ill-prepared and choose Ahriman while calling him Christ. Yet one is following a being—everything becomes essential beyond the threshold! One is always dealing with realities, not with some programmatic or systematic concepts!

[ 12 ] This is a weighty statement I am making here, one that characterizes the human relationship to the supersensible world. And there is a point where—because it is so troubling—it is not yet possible today to have the final say; but very few people here on Earth today know that everything that stems from party banners and party abstractions is, in essence, not reality at all, but an illusion; and that when one begins to follow something real, one must actually follow something that lies beyond the threshold in the supersensible world. But you can characterize a party right away in such a way that it is well aware of this secret and also follows it. And the fact that this was publicly stated in the Karlsruhe Cycle of 1911 has earned me the hatred of this party. For these are, in fact, the Jesuits. They know full well: Following a party program—forgive me for using an expression common in Germany—is nonsense. One follows a being from the supersensible world! That is why you see the Jesuit exercises begin with the Jesuit first having to imagine the one whom he then follows as the Society of Jesus, for whom he forms a military corporation. And when I say that the final word cannot be spoken, I would like to refrain from revealing what it is that is christened “Jesus.” But what matters to us is to characterize that Jesuitism forms a party by following a spiritual being, and that it therefore knows this secret very well: that following any factionalism that is limited to a program within the earthly world is nonsense. And the effectiveness of the Jesuit Order rests on the fact that it trains its members to be followers of a spiritual being. It does not say: “Something is right or wrong”—but rather: “It is part of the mission of the spiritual being I follow; that is what I defend.” Whatever does not belong to the mission of the spiritual being I follow, I oppose—even if it can be defended logically, for the teachings of Ahriman and Lucifer can be defended just as logically as those of Christ. There are exactly three such logical defenses, all of equal validity.

[ 13 ] That is why we are now witnessing the strange spectacle of Jesuitism waging a campaign against anthroposophy, while knowing full well that anthroposophy follows a spiritual path in which these things can be defended. It knows full well that things cannot be defeated simply by logically refuting them, for it knows all too well that a logical refutation is merely a game of logic; it knows that it is simply facing an opponent in a spiritual struggle, and any means are acceptable to it. That is why it is so nonsensical to merely seek to wage the struggle by refuting the Jesuits’ refutations. The Jesuits are well aware of the objections raised; but the fact that they know them and consider them valid is no reason for them not to fight against them, because they follow a different essence than the one Anthroposophy must now follow for the salvation of humanity. When it comes to spiritual matters, what matters are realities; it is essential to truly comprehend the spiritual paths; it is indeed essential to apply the whole human being—not that stunted version of a human being trained today in our conventional educational institutions—to the task of comprehending these spiritual paths, which is, however, entirely possible with sound common sense.

[ 14 ] So what, then, are political parties here in physical life? They are caricatures of that which has its rightful place in the supersensible world; they are distorted shadows of things that have their rightful place in the spiritual world. That is the difficulty of the matter: what appears in the physical world can be the reflection of something that has a perfectly valid meaning in the spiritual world. In the physical world, it is corrupting and reprehensible, for all worlds have their own laws—and today we are heading toward the necessity of working our way back up to the spiritual world. But the first stage begins with the fact that here in physical life, caricatures of spiritual life appear; that people first raise party banners here and follow party idols, whereas they should be following spiritual beings. It is truth when it happens in the supersensible world; it is a lie and an illusion when it happens here in the physical world. You see, it is no mere cliché when we speak of the importance of transforming the merely theoretical into reality as soon as one wishes to speak of the truths beyond the threshold.

[ 15 ] Merely refuting materialism is not enough, for the situation regarding human beings is this: Human beings truly consist, in their entire constitution, of a spiritual-soul aspect. This spiritual-soul aspect already exists before our conception, before our birth. It has developed from our previous earthly incarnation; it has passed through the spiritual world; but here, by taking on flesh, it creates for itself a physical image consisting of the nervous system, the skeletal system, and the circulatory system. And now we have two things here: the spiritual-soul human being, and its image, the physical-bodily human being. When we now form ordinary abstract thoughts, what is thinking within us? It is not the spiritual-soul human being who is thinking. Precisely when we form abstract thoughts, when we are working most with earthly logic, it is the physical brain that is thinking within us. And the important thing is to realize that the materialists’ assertion that the brain thinks is entirely correct in the case of abstract thought, for the physical brain is a reflection of the spiritual brain, and this reflection creates a reflection, and abstract thought is merely a reflection. So one can say that, in the case of abstract thought, the brain thinks.

[ 16 ] This is merely a specific aspect of what I said earlier. Materialism has simply concluded that, in the mode of thinking that has become common in the West during our cultural era—namely, since the mid-15th century—it is the brain that thinks. And what Moleschott, Büchner, and the stout Vogt have asserted as materialism is not simply refuted by saying that it is false; rather, it is true for humanity, which has been turning more and more—particularly since the mid-15th century—toward mere materialism. Western humanity is simply on the path to becoming a being that thinks solely with the physical brain. The prophets of this physical brain-thinking—Moleschott, Büchner—have merely proclaimed what will become of Western humanity. Thus, the materialists are correct in what they assert about Western humanity; it is only false when they assert it about humanity in general. What they say is true only for people since the mid-15th century, but for them it is true. And people have now become accustomed to thinking solely with the brain; that is the way of thinking common today. Everything found in our common literature and throughout our modern science is materialistic thinking—that is the nature of such thinking. In this respect, the materialists are indeed correct, and one could say that Büchner and Vogt acted uncollegially toward their materialist colleagues if they had accused them of thinking with the spirit. That is not true; they think solely with the brain. The point here is not to refute this, but to acknowledge that the path to materialism is indeed not merely a false worldview, but something that has a real effect. That is why, however, when something like anthroposophically oriented spiritual science arises, these people say: “These ideas are incomprehensible; they cannot be grasped.” — Yes, they want to think with their brains; but these thoughts of spiritual science are conceived with the spiritual-soul aspect, which has first torn itself away from the brain. Therefore, people must strive, through the thoughts that have arisen in this way, to tear their own spiritual-soul aspect away from the brain by reflecting on these thoughts. People must make an effort to reflect on these thoughts, to make use of the possibility that still exists today to detach the spiritual-psychic from the material aspect of the brain. For it is on the path to becoming chained to the material aspect of the brain. People must detach themselves from it. So we are not dealing with a matter of right or wrong views, but with a process. By presenting the thoughts of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to the world, we hope that people who are still capable of exercising within themselves the old possibilities of detachment will actually do so and seek to understand the body-free thoughts, so that their souls may become free of the body. So understanding anthroposophy is a matter of will; it is something that is meant to detach the spiritual-soul aspect from the physical-bodily aspect. Therefore, we are not merely faced with the task of refuting a false worldview, but with the fact that a large part of humanity wants to sail headlong into becoming mere matter and to think, will, and feel from within it, and that we want to present to the world, as a reality, the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, so that spirit and soul may be torn away from matter. People must be protected from the possibility of losing their spiritual and soul aspects, for these are in danger of being completely swept away into the Ahrimanic. People face the danger of losing their spiritual and soul aspects and, along with the material, losing themselves as human beings—as I have already described to you earlier, that the material disappears.

[ 17 ] So it is not a matter of replacing an old insight with a new one, but rather of gaining an active insight through which the soul is preserved from drifting into mere materiality, from the spiritual-soul aspect—which would lead to the annihilation of the “I”—drifting into the Ahrimanic. So it is not a matter of refuting materialism, but of protecting humanity from materialism becoming true; for it is on the path to becoming a truth, not a falsehood. When people speak of false materialism today, they are not speaking at all of what really matters; rather, one must speak of the fact that materialism is becoming true and increasingly true, and is becoming more and more true every day in our culture. We can already see, as we enter the third millennium, that humanity will have developed to the point where materialism is the correct worldview. The point is not to refute materialism—for it is on the march toward becoming true—but rather to render it false, because it is on the way to becoming a fact, because it is not merely a false theory.

[ 18 ] Those who wish to make life as comfortable as possible for people would like to keep these things hidden, saying: Just recognize the falsity of materialism! Turn to an abstract mysticism, and you’ll have it all! — One can devote oneself to such an abstract mysticism; but in doing so, one promotes real materialism, not materialism as a mere “theory.” We must not overcome this materialism—not because it is false, through words that remain mere theory—but because it is true, and because we must specifically combat the fact that it is presented as true. This gives things a different perspective; yet in the reality of the spiritual world, one does not stand there with theories, but with a realization that, within the cosmic context, is an act. It is extremely uncomfortable for people today to hear these things, yet everything—including what happens in individual cases—should actually be viewed in this light. Truly, the old methods of struggle are obsolete; everything that may once have been customary is obsolete. Things must be seen in the light of the spirit.

[ 19 ] What is conservatism? What is liberalism? Here on Earth, these are caricatures of the spiritual world. The conservative is a follower of Ahriman; the liberal is a follower of Lucifer. And whoever passes by the Guardian of the Threshold sees how all of conservatism follows Ahriman, and all of liberalism follows Lucifer. To today’s very intelligent people, this appears to be a paradox; but the fact that it appears as a paradox is precisely why anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is so difficult to understand. One never truly understands spiritual science by merely thinking about it; rather, one understands it only when one can suffer and rejoice with each of its ideas, when one experiences moments of elation and despondency, when one is tempted to despair at a single word, or can believe one will be redeemed by a single word, when one perceives the fateful nature of what is usually regarded as a shadowy theory, just as one does in external deeds; when that which seems to be merely a word in the proclamations of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science becomes reality. But only then, when the inner impulse of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is understood and felt, only then is it seen in the proper light why it is necessary today to transform that which for a time could only be cultivated as theory —because people first had to become aware of it—into reality and to take seriously what lies as reality in the words of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, and how, out of the necessities of the times, it follows that we must bring into reality what follows from the substantial, essential content of those words.

[ 20 ] Even now, what is actually meant by such a Waldorf school is still seen far too little in the light of reality, far too little in the sense I was just trying to describe. Truly not to tug at your heartstrings, and truly not to engage in even a little bit of promotion, but to say what must be said today—because humanity needs to know it—I am speaking here of the things I have spoken of today. And one can only hope that the opportunity might arise to truly speak these things before a sufficiently large number of people, so that these people may have the inner impulse to take words as realities and not merely listen to them and believe they are merely theories.

[ 21 ] This is what I have sought to present to you through these two reflections. And it will inevitably come to pass that external events will follow not the external content of the proclaimed spiritual science, but its inner impulses. Those who fight in this way—such as the Jesuits, for example—know very well what many followers of anthroposophy do not yet know: that there is a reality in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, and ever since they realized this—which was, admittedly, a long time ago, around 1906— 1907—ever since they realized this, they have been fighting this spiritual science with ever-increasing intensity. And the way in which they fight it—its particular subtlety—is something a large number of our anthroposophists do not even suspect yet, because they do not want to truly convince themselves inwardly of the seriousness of the situation. After all, words can only ever convey a tiny fraction of what one actually wishes to bring to people’s hearts; but I wanted to convey even that tiny fraction to you in these two reflections. If we reflect on what has been said, if we take it from reflection to feeling, to a permeation of our entire human being, then it will not be abstract mysticism or natural science; then it will become the inner essence of the human being; then it will become the force that in turn detaches the spiritual-soul aspect from the material; then it will become the conqueror—not of false materialism, but of the materialism that is, unfortunately, true.