The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] In the reflections we have presented here, we have characterized from a wide variety of perspectives the forces at work in human development that one must become acquainted with if one wishes to correctly understand what is happening today, what above all has led to the current catastrophic era, and what is necessary if one wishes to position oneself correctly within it, acting powerfully in the spirit of genuine human progress. Unfortunately, far too little attention is paid to how the forces at work in human development have changed in recent times compared to periods not so long ago.

[ 2 ] Perhaps I may once again begin today with the great catastrophe of recent years, precisely in order to draw attention to that event to which I alluded briefly at the end of my last reflections delivered here—that particular Christ event which, as has already been mentioned on several occasions, belongs to the first half of the 20th century.

[ 3 ] If we truly observe the catastrophic events—with all their consequences, which extend into our present time and will continue for a long time to come—with an unbiased eye, we cannot help but notice how different, I would say, the fabric of fate for civilized humanity has been in these most recent times compared to earlier eras. At the same time, however, we would also like to point out that among a large number of influential people, an awareness of what has been unfolding has not yet taken hold, so that the behavior of even influential figures today—and especially in recent years—still corresponds to that of earlier times, even though it no longer corresponds at all to our present reality.

[ 4 ] We have—I’m mentioning all this today merely by way of introduction, as an example, so to speak—a, well, what is called a “war” behind us that was greater than any war in the history of humankind. We have seen that in the ideas people held at the outset of this war—and indeed in the ideas most people still hold today—there actually lives something like a specter from the past. It has become clear that from this specter of ideas, which still looms from the past into the present, judgments have arisen regarding what was supposed to happen. People acted in accordance with such judgments; this or that measure was taken, and they had no idea that, in reality, something entirely different was happening than what lived on in people’s conceptions of these events.

[ 5 ] In this war, just as in earlier wars, human beings—fighting human beings—certainly faced off against one another. But what was absent in earlier wars and present in this one were energies and forces that originated from something entirely different than the human characteristics from which the forces in earlier wars had arisen. In recent times, we have witnessed the rise of a vast, powerful technology, and this rise of a vast, powerful technology has altered the entire situation within the fabric of human destiny. And events in recent years have unfolded in a manner consistent with this change. But people’s perceptions have not changed in the same way.

[ 6 ] Let us briefly mention the most important facts in this area: In the period leading up to the catastrophe of war, human technology—as it had developed in recent times—had reached a significant turning point. Human labor—or perhaps, to put it better, the way humans work—had taken on forms entirely different from those that existed in the past, without humanity having had the chance to properly reflect on it. One can get a sense of these different forms by considering something that must be regarded as the foundation of modern technology: for example, coal mining in the various nations of the civilized world. To the extent that large quantities of coal are brought to the surface, what is then transformed through technical processing into labor forces—which then work more or less independently, directed only by humans—means, I would say, that in recent times human labor has receded significantly into a directing role, while the machine does the work.

[ 7 ] When one surveys this situation, one comes to the conclusion, for example, that in the period leading up to the outbreak of war, within Germany, energies of this kind—which were directed by human beings but actually derived from coal mining, and were thus not the result of what arises from within a person, but rather of entirely external processes— entirely external measures—that 79 million horsepower-years of such energy were expended in Germany. The amount of energy used is calculated based on the work a horse performs in one year. Thus, in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of war, Germany had 79 million horsepower-years of technical energy derived from coal.

[ 8 ] What does that actually mean? If you compare this, in a very superficial sense, to the population of Germany, it means that every single person in Germany had, on average, a horse at their side—that is, the population of Germany, in the realm of technology, produced as much work as if every person had had a horse working alongside them throughout the entire year. This results in 79 million horsepower-years, just as there were approximately 79 million people. In other words, the output of machines—machines of all kinds—equaled what would have been achieved if a horse had been placed beside every person to perform the work. This capacity to perform such work existed when the war broke out. And by putting a large part of this work in the service of the war, the situation was such that, in a sense, what was sent to the front was the result—the purely technical result—of 79 million horse-power-years.

[ 9 ] Let’s look at some other figures. For example, I’ll just add this figure for now so you can get a clearer picture: in 1870—a year in which, in people’s view, a major event took place (and rightly so, in their view)—it wasn’t 79 million horsepower-years that were produced, but merely 6 and 7/10 million, which was hardly significant at all compared to what humans were capable of. 6 1/2 million in 1870, 79 million horsepower-years in 1912. This, of course, represents a fundamental transformation of the entire human condition.

[ 10 ] And now consider a few other figures: In the period immediately preceding the catastrophe of the war, France, Russia, and Belgium together had 35 million horsepower-years at their disposal. Great Britain, however, had 98 million horsepower-years. But due to Great Britain’s unique situation, these 98 million horsepower-years could not be immediately concentrated on the front in sufficient quantities; rather, this could only be achieved over the course of several years. Thus, at the outbreak of the war, it was not only people who faced off against one another, but 79 million horsepower-years from Germany and just over 90 million from the Central Powers had been deployed to the front lines; a large portion of which had, of course, been put to the service of the war industry—and thus, in a sense, indirectly deployed to the front; this was countered, gradually as it became available, by 98 million horsepower-years in Great Britain, and a combined total of 35 million horsepower-years from Belgium, Russia, and France. Now you can get an idea of why it is true when someone says: Essentially, what human beings were capable of initially yielded only a provisional result. The General Staff was really responsible only for the deployment; that could be devised in a certain ingenious way. But after the fronts had developed over the course of several years, technically generated horse-power-year energies—entirely independent of human agency—stood opposed to one another. And the fate of this human development depended on the relative magnitude of what had thus been extracted from human activity. And if you now add the following to what I have said, you will see how, through forces independent of human beings—namely, through what technology has brought to light in recent times—the events that have just taken place have come about.

[ 11 ] Through what human beings were able to bring about—after all, they could only direct events, or at most prevent them—but through what was directed or not prevented, forces objectively detached from human beings were then brought into play, some of which were able, in a sense, to overcome the others according to objective laws independent of human beings. Consider what actually happened: America intervened in the entire course of development. America was in such a position that, at the very time when the others were able to mobilize the aforementioned horsepower-years, it could mobilize 179 million horsepower-years. There you have the mutual relationship between the forces that could be mobilized through technology and those that are entirely detached from what flows from human beings—naturally, indirectly connected to what people have devised, and so on. But what people have devised has been directed precisely in this direction, so that ultimately the situation was such that objective force stood opposed to objective force, which in the end, quite naturally, had to tip the scales. In recent times, human beings had steered their destiny so completely in this direction that, when something like this occurred—something that used to unfold in an entirely different way—they had, quite naturally, surrendered this destiny to the forces at work in their own products, in which they are dependent on the earth’s productivity and on factors entirely outside themselves.

[ 12 ] Here we are pointing out something that is characteristic of modern times. And what I have cited is, after all, only the most striking example. One can, so to speak, illustrate the point with these striking cases. But what has taken place on a colossal scale—one cannot even say on a large scale, but on a colossal scale—happens every day on a small scale in the course of our entire existence: we are at the mercy of what technology does. For in Germany, by the year 1912, things had reached the point where human beings, through their intellectual productivity, had created something that worked as much as if a horse were working alongside them. This is the defining characteristic of modern civilization, and we must take a close look at this characteristic. For what lives within those objectively active forces that human beings have brought into being within modern civilization—forces that work for them daily and determine their fate—what lives within them? Within them lives—when we consider the relationship of this force to human destiny itself—the very force that we have come to call the Ahrimanic force in our reflections. The Ahrimanic forces live within this. When you consider the matter in this light, you will have to say that the power of these Ahrimanic forces has increased at a tremendous rate. For you need only compare these two figures: in 1870, 6½ million horsepower-years were in operation in Germany—which is not much in relation to a single human being; in 1912, 79 million horse-power-years were in operation in Germany. There you have the total sum of what influences our economic life, but which also influences the rest of our lives. There you have what is happening in a world that, although constructed by human beings themselves, stands independent of what human beings actually possess within themselves. These forces stand in the sharpest contrast to everything that was at work, for example, when people faced one another as in the ancient Oriental battles, where only Luciferic forces were at work, or when people faced one another as, say, during the Tatar invasions of Europe and so on. People often fail to realize what a new world humanity faces today and how rapidly, relatively speaking, this new world has emerged. But anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has the additional task of grasping the full significance of such a fact. For what I have described to you here is, after all, only the outer aspect. We begin to enter the inner realm when we grasp what used to be called Luciferic forces and what is now called Ahrimanic forces—forces that are asserting themselves, with human beings standing right in the midst of them. But first we must form a concrete conception of what we call the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic.

[ 13 ] Consider for a moment what was taking place in the life of the human soul in those ancient times, when Luciferic forces predominantly asserted themselves in the great struggles of humanity. At that time, people looked upon the phenomena of the world, and you know that they viewed these phenomena in such a way that within them appeared a certain number of—let us say—elemental beings, demonic beings. Materialistic science says that this was the age of vitalism, and that people projected all sorts of nymphs, gnomes, and so on into natural phenomena. But we know, of course, that spiritual beings do indeed live within natural phenomena. Just as people today see only the sober, dry aspects of natural phenomena, so the people of those ancient times saw spiritual entities—the spiritual and essential nature—within them. Today we call this superstition. That is in keeping with contemporary tastes. But we know that under this name, people were pointing to what they spiritually perceived in natural phenomena—that is, to something real in their perception. In everything that nature offered to human beings, these people saw such elemental beings. One can therefore say: In their consciousness—however instinctive, obscure, or dreamlike it may have been—something shone forth from these elemental beings. |

[ 14 ] Then came the times when consciousness became clouded regarding this perception of the spiritual in natural phenomena—in what arises as nature around human beings without their intervention. And thus arose our modern intellectualistic conception of what is today called “scientific thinking,” in which one wishes to concern oneself only with those forces that can be drawn from nature—forces that can be conceptualized through abstract ideas; in short, that which can be the content of the human intellect.

[ 15 ] But I would like to say that, without people even realizing it, and indeed in a relatively short period of time—take, for example, the period from 1870, when 6”/ io million horsepower-years were at work in Germany—up to 1912, when 79 million horsepower-years were at work—a new world develops, a world that did not exist before, a world that now surrounds human beings, and upon which human destiny depends—even in such major events as those of recent years—just as human destiny once depended on natural phenomena. And within these forces, which are also present and at work independently of human beings—just as the forces of nature act independently of human beings—there are now, in exactly the same way, the demons, the elemental forces; only they act upon human beings in a different way than those that were formerly observed by people in natural phenomena. People looked at natural phenomena and concluded: Elemental beings are at work there. — This had an effect on consciousness; it was how the soul came to terms with natural phenomena, establishing a connection of consciousness with them. Today, human beings are “enlightened,” and just as they regard it as superstition to perceive spiritual forces in natural phenomena, so too do they fail to suspect that demonic beings are at work within what they themselves have now created—the entire realm of technology. And it is not so easy for them to realize this, for these beings now act upon the will—which, as I have told you many times, lies dormant. They work in the subconscious; they take hold of the human being in the subconscious. And the consequence of this is that, whereas the human being of old, when contemplating natural phenomena, at least took something of these demonic forces into his consciousness, today these demonic forces are at work within the technical devices; they continue to act upon the human will, and the human being has not yet brought himself to acknowledge this. For, first of all, it lies in his subconscious; secondly, it seems like superstition to him to say that demonic beings are at work in the machines he creates. Yet they are at work nonetheless. And while the beings that people saw in natural phenomena in ancient times were of a Luciferic nature, the beings at work in machines and technological devices are of an Ahrimanic nature. Humanity thus surrounds itself with an Ahrimanic world that becomes entirely independent.

[ 16 ] You can see what the purpose of human evolution is. From the Luciferic world—which, however, still exerts its influence on human consciousness and determines human destiny there—humanity is sailing, and indeed at a certain speed in the present, into an Ahrimanic world. There is a great danger that this Ahrimanic world—because it acts upon the human will, which cannot be brought directly into consciousness through intellectualistic science—will seize hold of the human will, leaving the individual completely adrift within the demonic forces of technicism.

[ 17 ] What is happening in Eastern Europe—where, based on contemporary thinking, there is a desire, so to speak, to militarize the economy into a vast machine, where people are trained much like machines, and where human labor is completely detached from the human being—what is being sought there is the summoning of demons of the will, into whose realm one is sailing.

[ 18 ] The path from the Luciferic to the Ahrimanic is also something about which one must say that this is the course of human development. And we are, in essence, right in the midst of this process of moving away from the Luciferic and sailing into the Ahrimanic. The Luciferic is naturally present in many ways. The Ahrimanic, on the other hand, takes hold of people. The Luciferic lives more in feelings. The Ahrimanic works more through the human intellect and finds its realization and embodiment in technological developments.

[ 19 ] It is into this context that the Christ Event—which we are to expect in the first half of the 20th century—now steps in to give humanity a direction. This Christ event will consist in the fact that, through objective experiences, more and more people will come to know: The etheric Christ is walking on Earth—the Christ who, in an etheric form, represents the power that once walked on Earth in the physical Christ Jesus. And in becoming acquainted with this Christ-power, in allowing this Christ-power to permeate them, lies the possibility of properly allowing the necessary rise of the Ahrimanic forces to take effect within them. The misfortune of our time lies in the fact that people are sailing headlong into the Ahrimanic without being sustained by the Christ-power.

[ 20 ] So when we speak of this turning point in human development in the 20th century—which I already alluded to in my first Mystery as the reappearance of Christ—we are pointing to something very positive, something very concrete. And one can, I would say, trace what will unfold in human souls as these souls live in anticipation of this Christ event.

[ 21 ] I was even able to suggest in a recent public lecture that the West’s scientific approach—which lacks any worldview—stops short of understanding human beings. We tend to understand the inanimate. We systematize it and so on. We theorize about it and about living things. Darwinism, however, goes no further than the evolution of animals. It then places humans at the top. It actually stops short of humans. Our understanding does not extend all the way to humans.

[ 22 ] But even the understanding of social concepts comes to a halt there. I have shown how practitioners have actually become mere routine workers, how they remain stuck at the Ahrimanic-technical level. This is what they have in their books; assets and liabilities are recorded based on it. But they stop short when it comes to the people they work with. These people are precisely asserting their human dignity, yet no bridge is built from the supervisor to the worker. Practical life, too, actually stops short of the human being. Knowledge stops short of the human being; practical life stops short of the human being.

[ 23 ] On the one hand, this is still more or less theory today—or let’s not call it theory: rather, the inadequacy of theory and understanding; on the other hand, it is something that plays a very significant role in social life. For what has not been written in the books is precisely what is making itself felt today in strikes and revolutionary movements. This was not anticipated. It has not been recorded in the books. In real life, it emerges and develops just as naturally from work in industry, from work in commerce, and so on, as any manufactured goods do. It’s just that what is stirring among people today has not been included in the ledgers and so on. But life has incorporated it, and in life it is making itself felt.

[ 24 ] One can certainly say that very few people actually give much thought to what I have presented to you—including what I discussed recently in a public lecture. In this regard, the 19th century actually brought about quite a bit of confusion regarding human nature. In the 18th century, some—at least the more radical minds—began to see the light regarding what was gradually taking shape. The 19th century then brought about these events and caused tremendous confusion. Pierre Bayle uttered a remarkable statement in the 18th century. He was one of the materialists of the 18th century, who were, however, already the true precursors of 19th-century materialism. This Pierre Bayle uttered the following words: In states, honor and shame will prevail, as will ambition and egoism and so on, but there can be no state in which the Christian disposition of the soul is effective; there may be a state in which the old pagan virtues and vices prevail, but there can be no Christian state.” — So says Pierre Bayle, the radical materialist, and he was more right than any of the idealistic minds of the 19th century, for those idealistic minds deluded themselves into believing that states were Christian. In reality, they were not. Study the Christianity of the Middle Ages—the very Christianity that Pierre Bayle has in mind. It was based on the idea that one essentially denied the earth, that one saw virtue in rising to a life that was not earthly. In the 18th century, a way of life developed that sought above all to cultivate the earthly. “There can be no Christian state,” said Pierre Bayle, and in fact he spoke the truth. And in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, people told a lie by trying to convince themselves and others that what had gradually emerged as modern states could be thoroughly Christian. They simply cannot be. But something else arose as a result: when one stood in the pulpit, or when one listened to what resounded from the pulpit, one was imbued with the conviction that one was truly Christian. Or, again, when one took up one’s office, or donned one’s orders, or made use of the titles the state had bestowed, one also deluded oneself into believing one was a Christian. In reality, one was not, for the very fact of standing there was due to the fact that one was not a Christian. People became so accustomed to a life of pretense that they lost the ability to view the most important facts of life truthfully. And this created that foggy atmosphere that prevented any unbiased view of what was gradually emerging: the Ahrimanization of the world.

[ 25 ] Much has been said about the campaigns of lies in recent years. But these campaigns of lies are, after all, what people have become accustomed to in recent times when it comes to the most important matters. They have, in fact, become accustomed to lying about the most important things! Why, then, should the truth be told about the very things that were lied about during the catastrophe of the war, when people have become accustomed, in the 19th century, to no longer allowing the truth about the most important matters of their lives to enter their innermost being?

[ 26 ] It is uncomfortable to look these things in the face, but that is precisely the problem: that we do not look them straight in the face. Thus, modern man finds himself, among other things, in a predicament that has arisen from inner insincerity. And out of this atmosphere, a very specific mood will develop. What in many respects has so far been merely theory, merely insight—the failure of human beings to reach one another, the stopping short before the other human being, and also what develops in social life as this failure to reach one another—will settle upon the human soul. That which acts upon the will in the form of external technicalities will, in a sense, rise up from the subconscious into the conscious. Of course, it will not be possible to generate a conscious awareness of it, for it lies precisely in the subconscious, but it will create a mood. And more and more over the course of the coming decades—indeed, over the course of the coming years—this mood will arise among a large number of people. When children are taught in schools, people will notice: These children are expressing feelings that their elders never had. Something like this has, relatively speaking, existed in various eras, but it will be the case to a greater extent in the near future. And only through a deep spiritual-scientific understanding of the present will it be possible to assess what is actually developing from the depths of the souls of these growing young people. A great longing will develop—something like a yearning deprivation. For what is at first merely the inability of theory to recognize human beings—the inability of social life to incorporate human talents into business calculations—will crystallize into feeling, into sensation. And people will arise—and we will see them in the younger generations—who will feel: Yes, here I stand; I have a form, different from the other beings around me; I do not look like the animals—like an ox, a donkey, a weasel, or an eagle—I look different, but I do not know what it actually is that looks different; I do not know what a human being is; I do not know what I myself am. — Melancholy and hypochondria will settle over the souls of the younger generation. One will be able to notice this in schools, in education and in the classroom, as a prevailing mood of the times. It will be a mood that, in a sense, takes on grand proportions. People today are so terribly superficial that it is difficult to talk to them about such things. But to help you understand what I mean, I’d like to point out that in the 18th century, those who understood something of the spirit of the age spoke of “Werther fever.” Goethe wrote his Werther precisely out of this general mood shared by a large number of people. Then a novel titled Siegwart was published. It was written out of the “Siegwart fever” of the second half of the 18th century. These were moods of the times that, admittedly, prevailed only among a limited circle of people. But in the broadest sense, such a general mood will arise in people’s souls—one that can be expressed as: Yes, what am I as a human being? What is the essence of who I am, this being that walks on two legs? I have a science that I have brought to greatness; I have a social life—but both actually stop short of what I myself am. — This mood, which will be the great question mark of our time regarding our own human nature, will prepare the eyes of the soul to perceive that which is difficult to describe, but which is emerging as the new Christ event. For out of the power that arises from this longing, people will see the appearance of the Christ. Outward distress will transform into inner soul distress, and out of this soul distress, vision will be born—a vision of the Christ, who will walk supernaturally among humanity, and to whom they must cling so that they do not sail, in an impossible way, from the Luciferic into the Ahrimanic.

[ 27 ] What good would all science do us if it did not lead us to grasp human life in such a concrete and immediate way! We must be clear about this: The human being standing here today has already lived through a whole series of earthly lives. After all, we live through repeated earthly lives. Those people who saw the elemental forces in natural phenomena—we ourselves were those people in our earlier earthly lives. We bring the results of these earlier earthly lives into this one. Back then, we knew: all around us are nature spirits who determine our fate. We carry these within us. Today, we look out at nature—and even at the technological devices we ourselves produce—with our bare intellect, with our minds alone. We see nothing other than what constitutes the content of our intellect. And that which stirs within us from the many earthly lives we have lived—but which we now refuse to see—is ultimately what I have just described as a great longing, as a yearning deprivation. We were, after all, once people who looked into nature and saw the spiritual, through which we could feel within ourselves what a human being truly is. Now we have a science and a social sensibility that stop short of the human being. We carry within us the capacity, from our earlier way of perceiving our surroundings, to feel ourselves as human beings. Today we look into a nature devoid of human beings, yet we stop short of the human being. This will give rise to the great spiritual distress of the coming decades. This spiritual distress is a positive force, and out of this positive force will arise the ability to behold the Christ.

[ 28 ] The old way of relating to Christ has been destroyed by the most modern theology. For what has become of Christ under the influence of modern theology? The “simple man from Nazareth”! Can a relationship between human beings and the Christ event even take place today unless a renewal of our spiritual life takes hold?

[ 29 ] The Catholic Church knew full well why it never wanted to let the Gospels reach the masses. For believers in the Catholic Church, reading the Gospels is, in theory, still forbidden today. And the Albigensians and the Waldensians, who refused to submit to this prohibition, were declared heretics, because it was, of course, well understood what would happen if the Gospels were handed over to the masses. First of all, there are four Gospels. It is in this fourfold form that the Divine can speak to humankind. But one cannot convey an event to people in four different ways—as described in the Gospels—simply through the intellect. That is when contradictions arise. The very moment one denies the reality of the Gospels—the moment one regards them as products of the human intellect—one is bound to find them contradictory; they are, in fact, full of contradictions. What has emerged here is, after all, a destruction of any conception of the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 30 ] And once again, people live under the lie that they should remain Christian, yet they bury and deny the source, because modern theology no longer contains any Christianity within itself. To return to Christianity, one must arrive at a new spiritual perspective. Once again, we must be able to unearth the treasure we have accumulated in our souls, the treasure we have carried through many earthly lives.

[ 31 ] Given where we stand in this present life, this life is, after all, the starting point for the subsequent earthly lives as well. But just as what we carry within our souls—both abstractly in mathematics and concretely in various inner moods—lives on as a legacy of our previous earthly lives, so too does what we absorb from the external world in this present life carry over as a predisposition into our subsequent earthly lives. The old human being absorbed from the external world a view of nature permeated by elemental beings. When we were on Earth in the past, we observed nature and received impressions from the elemental beings; we carry that within us. Today, our lives are essentially shaped by what arises from the “horse” that is beside us—as I described earlier—namely, technological devices. This flows into us. We shape this within ourselves into a reservoir for our subsequent earthly lives, if we do nothing else. Within this reside the new demons, the Ahrimanic demons. We are, after all, preparing ourselves well for our next earthly lives when we surrender ourselves to the Ahrimanic forces! What the machines represent within us, we prepare as our scientific life for our next earthly lives. What the thunder of cannon fire was like on the battlefields, what lived there in the machines—we incorporate that into ourselves. This is how we actually intend, unconsciously, to be reborn in our next earthly life. But human beings are not merely intellect; they also have other aspects to their being: they have sensations, they have feelings. These must come to terms with what is coming in from technological processes, from machines.

[ 32 ] There is another feeling here, different from what I described earlier. I spoke earlier of the feeling of longing for what is lacking, of longing in the face of deprivation. What unites the soul in the subconscious—arising from technicalities, from the Ahrimanic forces—reacts and rises up, entering consciousness as thoughts and ideas, but it rises as something akin to fear. And alongside this yearning deprivation, you will see emerging among the children who will be in school in the coming years and decades an indefinable—but no less vivid—fear of life, which will manifest as nervousness, which will manifest in a fidgety, nervous disposition—I mean this quite literally. The seeds of what I am describing are already present today.

[ 33 ] There is only one thing: that souls be filled with that which provides the power here—a power that the Earth itself cannot provide, a power that came to the Earth from outside through the being of Christ, who will now appear again. This is a power that cannot come from the Earth itself. From the earth comes the power of technology—the 79 million horses that walk alongside us. We must develop within ourselves that which comes from the power of Christ, so that we are not filled merely with the power of technology in our next earthly life. There is no other cure for the nervousness that is bound to manifest itself in the younger generation than preparation for the Christ event of the first half of the 20th century.

[ 34 ] One must not describe our time based on outward appearances, but rather based on what asserts itself as the most prominent feelings within people. The truly important thing in our time would be for people to develop an inner eye for what lives within them. Most often, only what is external is described. In regions such as Eastern Europe today, for example, people like Paquet and others travel there—people who are completely unable to describe what the people there are experiencing, people who are already experiencing much of the future—while they merely describe mere externalities and so on.

[ 35 ] If spiritual science is to become something alive, then it must be able to lead us into an understanding of the sensory realm and the emotional realm in particular. For it is not by describing, in a few abstractions, what the Christ event will be like that one truly comes to know life, but rather by describing the human souls who, on the one hand, yearn for this Christ event and, on the other hand, fear it as they live toward it.

[ 36 ] How can people today understand something like the sealing of the outcome of the catastrophe of war by Ahrimanic forces, quite apart from what people were able to do at that moment? Certainly only through what people have conceived and what has become an objective reality. How can people today properly assess this, correctly gauge its effects, if they do not engage with spiritual science? Just consider what a fact like this means: that in addition to Germany’s 79 million horsepower-years, Great Britain’s 98 million horsepower-years, and the 35 million horsepower-years of Belgium, France, and Russia, there are America’s 179 million horsepower-years! So, by speaking of something that is entirely independent of human beings, we are actually speaking of the decisive causes of the present human destiny. Humanity has, after all, completely surrendered itself to that which is no longer human. And now consider it in a new light when it is said that human beings, with their knowledge, come to a standstill before other human beings. Humanity comes to a standstill only in the inhuman—even in the social realm—because it cannot find the bridge leading back to what is human. In this way, humanity fulfills its destiny. It also makes its destiny dependent on that which is no longer human; it creates as destiny-determining that which, as a human being, it no longer has any part in. One must no longer speak of the bravery, the spirit, or the genius of the General Staff and the like when discussing the outcome of a fate-determining event, but rather of the conditions regarding horsepower-years in the various countries. One must be able to look beyond the human being when speaking of human destiny. It will require a powerful force for human beings to rise up once more and cry out against this human destiny determined by the non-human: The destiny of humanity must once again be determined by human beings! — But this can only happen if human beings are filled with the Christ-force that is drawing near, which will restore their human powers to them. Only those who walk upon all that has been established in the realm of technology, yet do not allow themselves to be dominated by these technicalities, but are able to perceive that which can penetrate them—namely, the Christ-force that can triumph over all these technicalities—can once again become certain of themselves as human beings.

[ 37 ] These are lessons we must take to heart today. These are the words that point to how we should prepare ourselves for the Christ Event. With all the trivialities that dominate public literature today, with all the idle chatter that is the order of the day, humanity is not moving forward, but only backward. Humanity moves forward solely through what is drawn from spiritual depths. And until we once again feel the gravity of such matters, we will not move forward. And it is essential that we realize this: Humanity has now brought about a situation in which it is surrounded by a world—a completely new world—that is developing forces upon which its destiny depends. And it is certainly not just a matter of war-related events. For when we go out onto the streets and see the factories that determine our fate, this applies just as much to everyday life as it does to the fates of 1914. What is present in all those steaming factories are the Ahrimanic forces—within them, the human being no longer has any standing.

[ 38 ] And if we walk a little further from the factory, we’ll find the church. What is handed down in the church has become an abstraction. It has long since lost any connection to life out there. It deals with something that people cannot relate to when faced with the practical realities of life. This is just as Luciferic as what goes on in the factories is Ahrimanic.

[ 39 ] This, in turn, is something that is connected—terribly connected—to the fate of humanity today: that, when speaking of the spiritual, the ability to point the way into life through this spiritual realm has been lost. I recently spoke in a public lecture about the American pastors and orators in Switzerland and other neutral countries who say something along the lines of: The League of Nations must come into being, for it will bring salvation and blessings to humanity; but the League of Nations cannot develop from the ideas of statesmen alone. Therefore, we must win over people’s hearts so that they will commit themselves to the League of Nations. Anyone with an open mind will know that the gentlemen deliver very fine speeches; but anyone who is satisfied with that and content merely to praise the beauty of these speeches does not understand the times either. For no matter how honeyed these words may be, this sweetness does not penetrate people’s hearts. People’s hearts today are full of worries about economic life, and there is no bridge to what emerges as words from the old creeds. One can form a League of Nations just as little with these words as with those spoken by Woodrow Wilson, Clemenceau, and others. What is at stake today is the bringing together of the two—the permeation of life with the Spirit and the bringing of life to the Spirit. Just as the extraterrestrial Christ-being took on flesh in the man Jesus and united with the physical earth, so the Christ who will appear in the first half of the 20th century will not speak in the language of abstract religious creeds—oh no—but will speak in the language of practical life. And those who always seek the edification of the soul only in otherworldly, mystical realms will not understand him. But he will speak of the Spirit, even when he speaks of practical life. It will be the Spirit who connects with practical life just as the supermundane, supersensible being of Christ connected with the physical human being Jesus. We need such a new understanding of this Christ event; otherwise, we will not be able to appreciate it when it comes upon humanity.

[ 40 ] One can already ask today: How will those who officially preach Christianity actually respond to the Christ event of the first half of the 20th century? In this regard, however, a kind of model has been established through a proper understanding of the Gospel. The Gospel speaks of the “scribes and Pharisees.” One does not judge correctly if, in the present day, one places Adolf Harnack on the side of those who profess Christ; one judges correctly only if, following the Gospel, one places him on the side of the scribes and Pharisees. And more people like him must be placed on that side. For it is necessary to arrive at a correct judgment. We must come to the truth! The maternalist Pierre Bayle said: A state cannot be Christian; honor and dishonor reign in a state, ambition and selfishness reign in a state, but a Christian state is not possible. — But a Christian social community will be possible, provided one does not insist on it being entirely state-run, provided one establishes a free spiritual life. That can be imbued with Christ. Then this free spiritual life will also be able to radiate the Christ impulse into that which can never be Christian—into the very fabric of state life. Then an economic life of associations will also be able to assert itself—one that, as such, cannot of course be Christian; but the people involved in it will be Christian. They will be imbued with the Christ impulse; one must simply allow people to enter into this free spiritual life. In this way, the whole of social life will be able to be Christian.

[ 41 ] But one must first arrive at the truth; one cannot live well in a lie. These are things one must take to heart today, things one must engrave deeply within one’s heart. For if one does not do so, one will stand on the side of those who follow Spengler’s disciples in the belief that we must descend into barbarism. Yet a flippant declaration that Spengler is wrong will not get us any further either. That is merely self-deception. One will stand in the truth only if one tells oneself: The strength to move forward must be generated. But this can be generated only from the living spirit—the spirit sought by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It possesses that which must permeate the impulses of our time so that we may attain a spiritual life that is, in turn, Christian, and a political life, that is once again human, that does not stop at the human being, and to an economic life that is once again guided by human beings, not by the “horse-power years” that stand beside them and that express precisely what, out of technicalities, out of the non-human and inhuman, determines human destiny.

[ 42 ] What we have experienced in recent years cannot be discerned from the state of the human soul; it must be discerned from the “horsepower years” of technological progress, from that terrible script that Ahriman is beginning to inscribe into the development of humanity. That which is to lead people out of this must be drawn from a new understanding of Christ.