The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Twelfth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today I would like to speak to you once again about something that has indeed been discussed here on several occasions, but which one can only truly grasp—in the way necessary to fully comprehend it—by considering it repeatedly and from a wide variety of perspectives. Anyone who today consciously participates in the spiritual—and ultimately also the material—life of the present, and who has truly immersed themselves inwardly and spiritually in what we here call anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, must feel a deep concern for our culture weighing heavily on their soul in the face of current events. This deep cultural concern can be described roughly as follows: On the one hand, one sees the necessity that what we call the science of initiation—a spiritual science that can ultimately be fathomed only through the method of initiation—must, if possible, spread among all thinking people, at least in its essential aspects, if we do not wish to sink further into decline. People simply need to take this into their emotional lives and allow themselves to be inspired to engage in mutual interaction and mutual action with one another through this science of initiation. On the other hand, among the vast majority of people—we need only look at the few who profess an interest in spiritual science—that is, among the vast majority of humanity, there is a feeling that they reject this initiatory wisdom, that they should continue to live in the same way they have lived until now, without being influenced in any way by what this initiatory wisdom might offer them. One might therefore say that, on the one hand, there is the most urgent need for the revelation of spiritual worlds, and on the other hand, the radical rejection of this knowledge.

[ 2 ] We must not delude ourselves into thinking that, fundamentally, the way in which people have hitherto been encouraged by traditional creeds to think about the spiritual realm bears much of the blame today for this radical rejection of wisdom from the spiritual worlds. Let us be clear that, above all, the traditional faiths tend to acquaint people only with one aspect—let us say, of the eternal in the human being—namely, the aspect that lies beyond death, and that there is a decisive refusal on the part of the traditional creeds to point people today toward that which pertains to the eternal-spiritual aspect of the human being prior to birth—or, let us say, prior to conception. Much is spoken of—albeit in a highly vague manner and always referring not to knowledge but only to faith—regarding the existence of the soul after death. In contrast, any discussion of the soul’s existence before birth or before conception is rejected. This has significance not only within the theoretical realm we have just mentioned—within the pure judgments of knowledge that say: “Let us look to the time after death; let us not look to the time before birth”—but it also has significance for the entire being of the human being. For the way in which one speaks of the immortal in the human being depends on this rejection of the pre-birth realm. Just consider for a moment how people are generally addressed in the creeds concerning the immortality of the soul. An appeal is made to people’s finer egoistic instincts. These finer instincts in people are, after all, directed toward a longing for existence after death. The desire for this existence after death is present in people in the most varied forms, and when speaking of this existence after death in the customary way, one must repeatedly appeal to these selfish instincts in people, to this desire for an existence after death. So, in a certain sense, one must appeal to the human desire for immortality. And by appealing to it, one finds a way into people’s belief in this immortality after death. One would not readily find the same belief with the same kind of language if one were to speak of the eternal nature of the human soul as it exists before birth or before conception. Just consider one thing: We speak of immortality. We do not speak of anything that, in the same sense, extends beyond birth, for we do not even have a proper word for it in our language. Immortality—that word exists; pre-birth existence, becoming unborn—those do not exist; they would first have to be coined so that people could become familiar with them. From this alone you can see how one-sided the discourse on immortality is on the part of traditional creeds. And why is that so? Well, it is quite different when one is to speak to people about the fact that they should regard their present life—which they have led from birth and will continue to lead until death—as the continuation of a spiritual life, just as they wish to regard spiritual life after death as a continuation of this earthly life. For one thing, this is true of human beings: learning about life after death is, in a certain sense, a pleasure for them; learning about life before birth is not a pleasure in the same sense, for what has become part of us as human beings through birth—that is what we have, what we possess; therefore, we do not desire it. Thus, one cannot speak of the eternal before birth by stirring up a desire for it; and so, if one wishes to speak of this eternal before birth, one must first awaken in human beings the impulse to look toward such a thing at all, to declare themselves open to knowledge of it.

[ 3 ] This is related to the fact that spiritual science must, in fact, presuppose a certain readiness before any understanding can take place. What I referred to yesterday in my public lecture as “intellectual humility”: to feel, in the face of nature’s great revelations, like a child—if that child could feel, or were compelled to feel—at the age of five when confronted with a book of Goethe’s poetry, which it cannot make sense of until it has been educated to understand it—that is how a human being ought to feel in the face of nature as it unfolds. One cannot make sense of it until one has prepared oneself to penetrate it. Therefore, we must already speak of this preparation in terms of intellectual humility. And we, as human beings, must find ourselves inwardly ready to transform ourselves into something other than what we are—if we have not yet taken our inner selves in hand to advance them in the spiritual and soul life. For this, however, it is necessary to look at certain things that, in the general slumber of the world to which we have surrendered, we would actually prefer not to look at at all.

[ 4 ] As human beings, we have the ability to educate ourselves through our ideas and our thinking about the world. However, we do not give much thought to what this thinking actually has in common. This thinking does indeed have a special characteristic, for it is actually unnecessary in relation to external life. We usually do not realize this. Aside from the fact that animals can also live, seek out their food, and carry on from birth to death without thinking in the human way—and aside from the fact that we can already infer from this that we, too, can perform certain basic tasks of life even when we are not thinking in the human way—we need only engage in a somewhat more thorough reflection on life, and we will immediately see how thinking is actually unnecessary for external physical life. With regard to certain things, we cannot rely on thinking at all. After all, we engage in science. Take any science, for example physiology, through which we learn about the way human organs function. In physiology, we learn—as far as is possible in the materialistic or spiritual realm—to recognize the nature of the digestive process. But we can never wait for a conceptual understanding of the digestive process; we must first actually digest our food. We wouldn’t get anywhere in life if we had to wait until we’d thought about digestion, until we’d understood it. We must carry out the act of digestion without thinking, and the same goes for the other activities of our organism. Especially when it comes to what we do as human beings, thinking always lags behind. So, for life in the sensory world, we could essentially do without thinking.

[ 5 ] This is where the big question arises for the scholar of the humanities: What is the true nature of this thinking, which, in our ordinary physical-sensory body, cannot actually be of any use to us? — Of course, one must point out something important. What we encounter in external technology would not be present to us if we did not first consider it. But fundamentally, thinking, in its positive sense, only begins with external technology and everything that external technology demands. In everything that external technology does not demand, thinking is something that actually comes into play later and proves to be superfluous in relation to our sensory existence. We therefore carry within us an element that makes no contribution to our sensory existence. This is what the scholar of the spiritual sciences tells himself, and then he proceeds to investigate what this thinking actually is. Then he discovers, as I have often explained to you, that this thinking is actually an inheritance from our pre-birth existence; that thinking, in particular, is what we developed most intensively between our last death and this birth; that we bring the capacity for this thinking into this sensory existence; and that this thinking was actually developed for the supersensible world. We cannot understand the significance of this thinking at all unless we know that it is our legacy from the supersensible world.

[ 6 ] Thus, the humanities scholar gradually comes to view thought as the legacy of the life he has lived between his last death and this birth. What, in fact, has been shed since the last life? What has been shed entirely is the desire-driven relationship to the environment, for when we perceive the world through thinking and cognition, we are, after all, free of desire. This is the distinctive feature of cognition: that desire does not permeate it. Therefore, human beings must be educated in cognition. They must first be guided to make use of cognition. For, fundamentally speaking, they do not initially desire the things that come to them through cognition. But spiritual science reveals something different to us in this regard. It shows us that, in possessing cognition—thinking cognition—we have a completely useless faculty for the sensory world; that this thinking within us humans must therefore serve a purpose other than mere sensory life; and that we misuse this thinking if we leave it unused, if we do not apply it to penetrate not only the sensory but also the supersensory. We have thinking as a gift, as an inheritance from the supersensible, and must recognize that we must also use it to appropriate the supersensible.

[ 7 ] What I have just told you is expressed in life in a wide variety of ways. If we look at life correctly, we can arrive at such things as those just mentioned. How do we actually enter into this life? By the ability to think gradually emerging, as it were, from the dark depths of our inner being, and by developing within ourselves, more and more, the power to survey the world through thought. How do we enter into it, and how do we place ourselves more and more within this world? Ask yourself this question thoroughly, with self-awareness: Ask yourself what kind of consciousness you connect with as you become more and more capable of thinking. You directly associate this growing capacity for thought with the need to communicate. When you think, you cannot help but want your thoughts to reach the souls of other people, to be able to share your thoughts with them. In a certain sense, this desire to share our thoughts with others grows along with our thinking.

[ 8 ] One need only imagine, hypothetically, what it would mean to have to keep one’s thoughts to oneself, to find no one with whom to share them! But for most people, this is certainly a need that exists solely within the realm of thought. This does not apply to most people when it comes to other possessions, and even if one does find people who are happy to give of their other possessions—perhaps just as happy to give them—though “just as happy” is really an overstatement—everyone is more than happy to share their thoughts, whereas they are not always so willing to share their other possessions; after all, that is a well-known fact! But there are people who truly love to give. But then one must analyze this willingness to give a little more closely, and one realizes that this willingness to give is, after all, connected to one’s thinking. The thought: “What will the other person think of you? What common ground will emerge when you give to them?”—this is something that strongly influences the giving of other goods, so that even when giving a gift or working for someone else, the need to communicate plays a very significant role. The striving for common ground in thought—that is what comes into play here.

[ 9 ] If one thinks quite a lot about a question that a number of our anthroposophists have recently had to study thoroughly—namely, the pedagogical and didactic question that had to be discussed at length when the Waldorf School was founded or continued, a school that will soon have completed its first year of existence— then one comes to realize that, in fact, the person who has the greatest need to communicate is the one best suited for the teaching profession. If someone enjoys being a teacher, it stems from the fact that this need to communicate—this life of shared thinking with others—is particularly strongly developed within them; it is brought with them in a particularly strong way from the world from which we come when we enter this sensory existence through birth. And since it is easier to share thoughts with children and to find receptiveness in them than in adults, the teaching profession is one that arises precisely from an intense longing for success in fulfilling this need to communicate.

[ 10 ] But once one recognizes this—once one recognizes, so to speak, the spiritual aspect of teaching—then another question arises, the question that has played the greatest role in the development of a pedagogy for the Waldorf school. To people today, this other aspect of teaching still sounds paradoxical, and yet, in the development of the Waldorf school’s pedagogy, this other aspect has played the greatest role—namely, that we come to realize that each child entering the world is an enigma in and of themselves, and that we can truly learn from the children. By being teachers, we satisfy not only our need to communicate but also, at the same time, our need for knowledge, as we say to ourselves: You have grown older, but those who are now entering bring you news from the spiritual world from a later time; they reveal to you what has taken place in the spiritual world since your own birth, for they have remained in the spiritual world longer. In a wide variety of ways, this was taught specifically to the teachers of the Waldorf School: to receive messages from the spiritual world through the growing child, to truly keep this in mind at every moment, and above all to feel: In the child who is entrusted to you, what is sent to you from the spiritual world is revealed.

[ 11 ] In this way, giving is paired with receiving, and through this process one practically grows into a life lived in harmony with the spiritual world. The pedagogy of the Waldorf school is based precisely on this actual reception of things from the spiritual world. It is not merely a matter of theoretically analyzing some pedagogical approach based on the abstract principles of anthroposophy. That is not what matters; rather, it is about the practical teaching that finds direct expression in the way children are guided. It is one thing to assume that the child brings you a message from the spiritual world into this world—and that you must solve the riddle brought to you from the spiritual world—and quite another to regard the child as some kind of malleable substance that simply needs to be shaped. Solving this riddle leads to what emerges as a way of life from anthroposophical spiritual science—one that is vividly observed and deeply internalized. And this anthroposophical spiritual science exists not merely to advocate principles or theories, but to be truly integrated into the individual spheres of life. That is what it is all about.

[ 12 ] In doing so, however, we have pointed out how this work of education, of communicating one’s thoughts—and ultimately it is a communication of thoughts, whether I am telling someone something, or writing a novel, or, if we consider the idea in a broader sense, producing another work of art— how this entire life of thought is a coexistence with the spiritual world, a bringing into this world here of what we experienced before birth. This particular characteristic of what is called spiritual experience, what is called spiritual civilization, must first be taken into account by anthroposophists. For it is this that gives this spiritual life its distinctive character: that, as we stand within this spiritual life, we become aware that we are connected to everything that lies before our birth and everything that lies after our birth—as our children bring it to us from the supersensible worlds. —But it is this that gives this spiritual life its distinctive character. There is, first of all, the fact that the anthroposophist should view the world much more realistically than other people do today, that the anthroposophist learns to look for these subtleties of life. So they should recognize how external civilizational life, in the workings of the spiritual realm, is connected to the pre-birth realm, and how something actually unfolds there in the spiritual realm that is richer than the individual human being, something that extends beyond the individual human being. Isn’t it true that when we are dependent on communicating our thoughts to others—that is, on finding them also in the hearts and feelings of others—spiritual life points us toward a sense of community, toward something we can only experience together with other human beings? Spiritual life endows us with something we do not wish to possess alone.

[ 13 ] In a sense, we know more—if I may put it paradoxically—than we are allowed to keep to ourselves, and in this regard, our needs intersect. Whoever shares something with another person should, in turn, receive something from yet another person. It simply cannot be any other way. So we shower one another with spiritual life; we pour out these gifts to one another. This, in turn, is a distinctive feature of this spiritual life. We have too much. We simply bring too much with us for this physical existence, because this spiritual life—which we bring with us as thinking beings—is at the same time destined for the supersensible. Because the supersensible finds its full expression within it, it floods this physical world, as it were, like a torrent. It is quite different when we turn our attention to economic life. There, we do not so readily share our thoughts with others. For one thing, we often do not want to. If we were to share thoughts about economic life with others as readily as we do thoughts about purely academic life, no one would ever apply for a patent, and no one would keep a trade secret. The need to share information is not nearly as great there as it is in the realm of intellectual culture. And you need only imagine what economic life is like to see immediately that there is no such flood of ideas flowing from one person to another—rather, things are quite different there.

[ 14 ] Lately, I have often been able to point to an example that clearly illustrates what I actually mean. In the mid-19th century, among those who had a say in such matters, there arose a desire to speak out in favor of free world trade and to make free trade—that is, the absence of tariff barriers—the universal norm, the standard mode of economic interaction among people across the globe. Alongside this thinking about free trade, another trend emerged: to replace bimetallism—the gold and silver standard—with the gold standard. This drive toward a uniform gold standard originated primarily in England; but it also spread to other countries, as you know. And if you look at parliamentary reports or other sources from a certain period in the 19th century where such matters were discussed, you can see everywhere how people—believing themselves to be highly practical—spoke out about the effects of the gold standard. They said: Free trade will develop under the influence of the gold standard; the gold standard will bring about free trade all on its own! — And after this theory had been championed by the most respected parliamentarians and practitioners well into the 1870s—what actually happened? Under the influence of the gold standard, tariff barriers were erected everywhere! The exact opposite of what the greatest theorists and practitioners had predicted!

[ 15 ] This is a very interesting example of thinking in the economic sphere. Anyone who actually looks into economic matters today—though practitioners tend not to notice this—will see that this is how things work in all areas. In business dealings, the opposite of what people predict usually comes to pass. One need only study specific cases—ignoring what so-called “practical people,” who look down on everything idealistic from their lofty heights, might claim—and instead really look at what is actually happening; then one will find that this is indeed the case.

[ 16 ] So I’m saying—as you will assume—that all of them were fools who predicted in parliaments and in debates that the gold standard would lead to free trade, whereas in reality it led to the establishment of tariff barriers. No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I don’t mean to say at all that they were fools. They were very, very intelligent people—some of them, of course; there were extraordinarily intelligent people among them. And anyone who merely goes through the arguments they put forward, without looking more deeply into the entire fabric of human coexistence, cannot help but be astonished at first by the intelligence with which such people were guided as they proclaimed a completely false prophecy.

[ 17 ] Where does this come from? Precisely from the fact that, in more recent times, we have grown accustomed to individualistic thinking, to the idea that everyone wants to think for themselves in such matters. Just as we possess—for the benefit of everyone else—what we bring with us as true spiritual thinking, and can thus bestow it upon others, so too do we not possess that very thinking—which we must first extract from life—in a form that can simply be poured out. We can only acquire it in life in such a way that we possess it only very partially, and that we always distort it into a caricature whenever we try to apply it generally. The judgment with which we are born is not merely something that allows us to judge the world; rather, it is sufficient to impart something to others so that they, too, can judge according to our judgment. Our economic judgment—and that which is similar to economic judgment—is more limited. It is not sufficient to simply communicate it to others; rather, to make it effective, it is necessary for associations to form, for groups of people to come together based on shared interests—whether consumer interests or the interests of a particular type of business, and so on; for only groups of people together can bring about the living experience of what the other can contribute to them—that is, what he knows and what the other must believe, must believe on trust, when he is part of the association with him.

[ 18 ] This, in turn, raises a major question for those who now—I would say—view the world with the clear eye of the soul. They tell themselves: We bring with us a certain set of judgments that we can bestow upon, that we can share with, other people. These connect us to life before birth. But then we acquire useful judgments in the realm of external, specifically economic, life only when we form lasting partnerships with others, when we form associations with them, when we judge together with them, when we, so to speak, piece together our judgments and theirs. We cannot simply communicate our judgments to them; rather, in order for our judgments to exist at all, we must piece them together with theirs. Where does this come from? That is the big question. It comes from the fact that we, as human beings, are truly at least dual beings. We are actually triune beings, but I do not wish to go into that today; you can read more details about it in my book *On the Mysteries of the Soul*; but for now I want to focus on the dual nature by grouping the second and third aspects together. — What we bring from the spiritual world into this world, what we can pour out upon human beings—this forms in us the head, which is truly more than a mere expression or a mere tool; it is truly a reflection of what we were before birth, expressing our soul life physiognomically as well, and thus does more than the rest of the organism, which—when we are not moving—does not exactly bring our soul life to life through movement, nor does it directly express our soul life in the same way that the face and the head do.

[ 19 ] On the one hand, then, we are truly “head-people”; through our heads, we carry into the world the outward image of what we became before birth. And the rest of the human organism is structured around this. It is this organism that must judge matters such as economic life solely with the help of the head. We do not judge economic life with the head at all, for the head is not particularly interested in economic life. It does, of course, need to be nourished as well, but it makes this demand only of its own organism, not of the outside world. The head itself, with its nutritional needs, is merely in harmony with the rest of the organism. Indeed, it is positioned atop the rest of the organism in such a way that, in a sense, it is truly carried by the rest of the organism. Just as a person in a horse-drawn carriage sits atop the rest of the organism and does not participate in its movements, so too does our head sit atop the rest of the organism and does not participate in its movements. Just as we, when riding in a carriage, do not need to exert ourselves—for example, by using our arms and legs to help propel the carriage forward—so, too, does our head not participate in the movements of the legs and feet. Our head is something that rests upon the rest of the organism. It is an organism of a completely different kind than the rest of the body, and it judges in such a way that it brings the power of this judgment into physical existence at birth. The rest of the body is built up from this world. This can also be demonstrated with the help of embryology, provided one truly practices embryology—not the caricature of embryology practiced by modern science. The way embryology has developed directly proves what I am saying here. This remaining organism is what now enters into interaction with the rest of the world, including the social world; it is dependent on the structures we encounter in the external world.

[ 20 ] We can say that human beings bring two entirely different aspects of their being to bear on the world. They bring their head to bear on spiritual life, and the rest of their organism to bear on economic life. The rest of the organism, however, already reveals its dependence on the external world through its purely natural nature. Just consider this: with regard to the rest of the organism, the human race is divided into men and women, and the fact that the world as the human race endures stems from the interaction between men and women. So here you already have the archetype of social interaction. The head—as the primary organization—is not in any way dependent on interacting with others in such a way that activities are joined together; rather, we pass on what the head produces to other people, showering them with it, as it were. This formation of associations, this living together with other people in associations, is, I would say, merely a further manifestation of the communal life into which the human being enters through the rest of their organization, apart from the head. Here something entirely different emerges in the world than what arises through our head organization. Here comes into play what we must say: We only truly acquire it in the highest sense by integrating ourselves into this physical world. — At first, this other part of the human organism is actually born in such a way that it exists in its astral form: desire without wisdom. While the head does not develop desire—it must first be educated to desire the world through knowledge—the human being develops desire through the rest of their organism; however, this desire is not imbued with wisdom and must first seek its wisdom through coexistence with the head.

[ 21 ] On the one hand, you have the spiritual world, with characteristics entirely different from those of the world we have on the other hand—the world of economic life: I have characterized the spiritual world for you by showing how it is brought in from our prenatal life; the world of economic life is formed, but it cannot be fully formed by individual human beings; rather, it is formed only through living together with others, in association, which actually extends primarily to desire, in which wisdom does not at all encompass what is desired within a single human being. We want to relate this completely different world to the other world in the right way within the threefold social order. But we can look at these two worlds, and something will become clear to us—something we mentioned at the beginning of our reflections today. Desire is addressed by whatever exists in economic life and in external life in general. But traditional creeds also address this; they address desire. They thus address that which is subject to human selfishness. They stir up selfishness in order to make people receptive to the idea of immortality. Our spiritual science aims for something else. It does not seek to stir up human selfishness in order to arrive at the idea of immortality; rather, it seeks to develop within the human being that which the person brings with them at birth from their pre-birth existence. It seeks to speak to that which in the human being stands apart from desire, that which is not subject to human selfishness. It seeks to speak to human knowledge—not to human desire—regarding the immortal or pre-birth human soul. It thus seeks to speak to the purest aspect of the human being, to luminous knowledge, and wishes for people to rise, through this path of luminous knowledge, to grasp the eternal within human nature. Through this, however, a new element is introduced into life as a whole. As a result, this earthly life appears to us as a continuation of prenatal life. But then earthly life becomes permeated by an element of responsibility that it otherwise lacks. One then becomes aware that one has been sent into this earthly life from higher worlds, and that one has a mission to fulfill in this earthly life.

[ 22 ] One can also put it this way: other beings are watching over our human life on earth, and we actually refer to these beings as our gods, as the spiritual beings who stand above us. They live together with us between death and a new birth. In a sense, we are in living communion with them. Then the moment comes for every human being when, so to speak, these spiritual beings, these divine beings of the worlds, say to one another: Here in this world of the spirit, we can only bring the human being up to a certain degree of perfection; we can no longer allow him to enter our world. We would not achieve through human beings what is meant to be achieved through them if we were to allow them into this world. We must send them out. There, they will also attain for us, the gods, what they cannot attain here within—what we gods cannot attain ourselves—if we do not send human beings out into the other world. — So we have been sent out from the gods so that we may develop within the earthly body that which could not be developed in the spiritual world.

[ 23 ] Thus, immortality after death—which is certainly all too justified, as we know and indeed describe—appears to be something that human beings wish to enjoy. At the very least, they wish to savor the thought of it throughout their lives. Immortality is connected to a certain responsibility and obligation toward life, to a mission whereby we should strive to understand this life in such a way that, upon death, we truly return to the gods what they expect of us. Through spiritual science, our life thereby gains substance. Our life acquires significance for the spiritual world. We do not live on this earth in vain. We experience on earth—not only for ourselves but also for the gods—what must be experienced so that the gods may also have it. Life gains meaning precisely through this, and without such meaning, one cannot live.

[ 24 ] Once one has become accustomed to the scientific approach to contemporary issues, one can certainly say that it is not at all necessary to ask about the meaning of life. One simply lives and does not ask about the meaning of life. But certainly, one would not need to ask about the meaning of life if one were to take the matter so simply that one asks about the meaning of life merely out of caprice. One does not ask about the meaning of life out of caprice at all; rather, when one realizes—or ought to realize—that one cannot find a meaning to life, then life becomes meaningless. Not asking about the meaning of life means, at the same time, acknowledging the meaninglessness of life. That is the important point. There is a difference between asking about the meaning of life merely out of human caprice and realizing that not asking about the meaning of life would mean acknowledging life as meaningless. But that means denying the spirit as such, and whoever does not ask about the meaning of life denies the spirit. Only from this perspective does the true meaning of life come into proper light, and we can then say to ourselves: This life has a meaning because the supersensible realm needs this sensible life to complete itself. From this, however, you will see how infinitely mistaken the world’s current thinking is, since—based on the education of civilized humanity that has taken place over the last three to four centuries—it seeks to establish a social existence in which people, between birth and death, would actually like to be completely happy and experience absolutely everything that can be experienced.

[ 25 ] Where does this tendency to even ask the question about the meaning of life come from? It stems solely from the fact that people no longer perceive the meaning of sensory life in the supersensible; that the last three to four centuries have given rise to such materialism that people seek meaning only between birth and death—or find no meaning in life there at all—but actually wish to develop it solely out of desire. This leads to the formulation of such socialist ideals as those evident in Leninism and Trotskyism. They are merely the result of the materialistic mindset and cannot be eliminated except by returning to a spiritual mindset.

[ 26 ] Time and again, we must point out this peculiar fact—and it cannot be emphasized strongly enough—which becomes evident when we answer the question: What, then, is the actual political philosophy of the current Russian Soviet government, of Bolshevism? — If one wishes to answer this question, one need not go to Russia, for the political philosophy of Bolshevism is a philosophy that was in fact founded by a quite respectable bourgeois, Avenarius, and by the students of Mach—the student of Avenarius—who, though he did not live in Switzerland, had many students who did live there. One of them is… the most prominent is Friedrich Adler, who shot the Austrian Count Stürgkh; he lectured in Zurich. At that time, they—not Adler anymore, but Mach and Avenarius—were certainly respectable bourgeois who had not caused any trouble in their public lives. But they developed a philosophy out of materialism, one that was entirely consistent and sharply defined. This philosophy appeals precisely to those who, in the practical, political sphere, think in the Leninist and Trotskyist sense. It is not merely because many Bolsheviks studied in Switzerland that Avenarius’s philosophy, as it was cultivated here in Switzerland—in Zurich—in the 1870s, is now the state philosophy of Bolshevism; rather, it is the case that for those who view things not only according to their abstract logic but also in their real-world context, the lectures delivered in the manner of Avenarius will, after a few decades—when the generation after the next arrives—give rise to Bolshevism. Bolshevism arises in the generation after the next from the materialist teachings delivered from the university lecterns. That is the actual connection. And anyone who wishes to continue fostering materialism in scholarship must be aware, based on spiritual science, that—after two generations, when things will be much worse—he is conjuring up something far worse than what exists now, for in Russia there are [1920] about six hundred thousand people—there are no more Leninists than that—who rule over millions. The others must currently resist them far more strongly than the Catholics ever resisted their bishops.

[ 27 ] All these things develop out of an inner necessity, and materialism, as it was practiced in the second half of the 19th century, is intimately connected with what is now manifesting as social chaos. The remedy lies solely in returning, in thought, feeling, and the impulses of the will, to a grasp of the spirit, to a permeation of feeling with the spirit, and to allowing impulses that come from the spirit to take effect in the will. The call to spiritual life is expressed in such reflections, and this is the concern for culture. This call is all too justified, for on the other hand, there is a rejection of spiritual life itself in the widest circles.

[ 28 ] As we have often reflected together on the development of our present-day culture, we have had to conclude: Materialism gradually emerged in the mid-15th century, took hold of people’s minds, and has now reached its culmination. Previously, other spiritual sensibilities had formed the foundation of that cultural period, which began in the 8th century before the emergence of Christianity and ended around the middle of the 15th century—a period we call the Greco-Latin cultural era. Then we go further back into the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Proto-Persian, and the Proto-Indian periods, until we reach the Atlantean catastrophe. When we consider these cultural currents, we can say that we have, in turn, a Proto-Indian culture, a Proto-Persian culture, an Egyptian-Chaldean culture, a Greco-Latin culture, and then our own, which began in the mid-15th century. It is not the case that we can make do with such a schematic equating of the individual successive cultures; rather, when we look back at the older cultures—written documents actually exist only from the third post-Atlantean culture onward; we can look back at the earlier ones only with the help of the Akashic Records— we gradually develop—precisely by reconquering the spiritual world for ourselves—a profound reverence for the primordial cultures. When today’s external scholars in archaeology, anthropology, and so on collect records of earlier cultures, there is little understanding attached to what is thereby uncovered. These records are treated in a superficial manner. But if one gradually works one’s way into the spiritual world through the methods of spiritual science, one can once again begin to recognize something of the mysteries of the spiritual world, and then look back upon the earlier cultures. Then they appear to us in a different light; then we say to ourselves: True, these ancient peoples had an atavistic way of seeing, a more instinctive way of seeing. We must summon the resolve to even begin to approach the spiritual world, to develop an awareness of the spiritual world. The ancient peoples did not have such a clear awareness of it, but rather a mythologizing, aspirational way of living. But then, when one sees what the manifestation is of this atavistic, this instinctive penetration into the spiritual world, the legacy in the Vedas, in Vedanta philosophy, in the Persian, and even in the Chinese texts, then one feels a profound sense of awe—even without delving into the culture of the mysteries—a profound sense of awe for what was once given to humanity as primordial wisdom and what has, in fact, been steadily diminishing. The further back we go, the more the cultures of humanity prove to be imbued with the spiritual, even if it was only an intuited spirituality, an instinctive spirituality. Then this spirituality begins to fade, gradually drying up, and it has dried up most of all in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which began in the middle of the 15th century.

[ 29 ] Now imagine someone who knows nothing about this spiritual science, who, in all seriousness, does not want to know anything about it either; this person approaches contemporary Western culture, looks at it, but views it with an open mind, without rhetorical clichés or flowery declamations. He looks at it as a connoisseur, but he does not see that what once existed—the primordial wisdom of the divine-spiritual beings—has gradually dried up; rather, he sees only what is there now. He looks at it in the way we have become accustomed to looking at things; in a certain sense, he looks at it with the eye of a natural scientist, and thus also views culture through the lens of a natural scientist. There you have this Western civilization—but it is something that has arisen just as earlier civilizations did, and is passing away just as earlier civilizations did. He notices the analogy with the birth of the outer physical human being, with the maturation of the outer physical human being, and with the death of the outer physical human being. That is what he will say, whereas we say: Not only did this primordial culture once exist in the past, but there was also a primordial wisdom; it simply descended deeper and deeper, and now, in the last cultural period, it has more or less dried up. But if we want to make progress, we must appeal to the inner being of human beings. Then a new impulse of spirituality must be brought forth so that what has disappeared from our culture—the spiritual wisdom of humankind—can be rekindled. A new impulse must come, a new ascent. But this can only come about by descending into our own inner being, by bringing the spirit back from there. — How does someone who knows nothing of all this view Western culture? Anyone who has not adopted this spiritual-scientific perspective, but only the natural-scientific one, will believe: Well, just as an organic being is born, matures, grows old, and then passes away, so too do cultures arise and pass away one after another. — They will look at our Western culture, compare it with others, and be able to calculate how long it will last until its complete demise. But because they do not see that something that has dried up must arise anew within human beings themselves, they have no hope. They see no elements of renewal in culture; they speak only of its demise.

[ 30 ] Such a person is no longer a mere hypothesis today, for he is already present in the most significant way in Oswald Spengler, who wrote a book about the “Decline of the West,” that is, Western civilization. Here you have a person who, one might say, has a complete command of twelve to fifteen contemporary sciences, who views present-day civilization through the eyes of a natural scientist, and who knows nothing of the fact that there once was a primordial wisdom that has dried up, that the source of ascent must now be sought from within the human being—and who therefore sees only decline and predicts it for the third millennium with great genius. The book is written with great genius. One might say that, in addition to what we are experiencing—that we see decline everywhere—a scholar has now emerged who proves that this decline is inevitable, that this Western culture must die a desolate death. I brought back this bitter impression with me when I returned from Germany, for there, among the youth, this book by Oswald Spengler has made the most profound impression. And those who still think—they think under the influence of the proof, which is now also available, that barbarism must spread and must exist until the beginning of the third millennium within the West and its American offshoot; for this has been proven—rigorously proven by the same methods used to rigorously prove scientific facts—by a man who has mastered twelve to fifteen contemporary sciences.

[ 31 ] This already points to the gravity of the situation in which we currently find ourselves, but it also indicates that, just like Spengler, one is imbued with the gravity of life and knows nothing—nor wants to know anything—about the one and only thing that can be our salvation: spiritual science, spiritual insight—that if one speaks honestly and sincerely, one can speak of nothing else but the decline of our civilization. Any clinging to some vague hope—“it will all work out”—does not matter today; what matters is building on the human will, appealing to the human will to take up the impulses of spiritual science. Western culture and the development of humanity will come to a premature end if people do not resolve to save them. It depends on people today, and the evidence shows that what has come down from antiquity—if one chooses to rely on it—leads only into decline; something new must be found from the depths of human nature if the Earth is to reach its destination. Merely believing that powers will already be there to carry civilization forward no longer holds true today. The only thing that matters is what people do to save the declining civilization from within themselves. This must be said again and again.

[ 32 ] That is how serious things are today. I must say, if one takes things seriously today, then one must look at them closely. I was to give a lecture on our spiritual science to the student body at the Technical University in Stuttgart, and I know with what feelings I went into that lecture—thoroughly imbued with everything that can weigh on one’s soul as a result of the impact Spengler’s book has on today’s youth. But all of this points to one fact: the wisdom of initiation must find its way into outer spiritual culture. Without that, we cannot move forward. On the other hand, there are the difficulties that stand in the way. Today, when speaking of the things that are necessary, one is not always able to find the right words easily. I suppose I am also saying something paradoxical with this statement. When would it have been easier to find the right words than today! You need only look through the popular feature-page literature—the very things most people quote from the newspaper today. Where the writing is done professionally, it is truly easy to find the right words; there, one has no trouble finding them. Let me give an example—truly not out of any sense of frivolity, but precisely to characterize the present.

[ 33 ] I recently tried, in a public lecture in Stuttgart before a large audience, to describe the connections that lead to Leninism and Trotskyism, and I searched, struggled to find words that would express what was going on in people’s minds as they sought a transition from the old bourgeois way of life to Leninism and Trotskyism. I tried to point out these instincts, which I have described to you today in a more humanities-oriented way. And indeed, in my struggle to find the right expression, the phrase “Leninism and Trotskyism spring from ‘perverse’ instincts” came to me. I could not find another way to put it. After the lecture, a doctor—who was evidently a communist and who was deeply offended by this expression—approached me. Of course, the doctor, who attaches a very different weight to such expressions than the rest of the world does today—a world too accustomed to literary supplements and fiction—feels the full weight of the expression “perverse instincts” in political life. He felt offended and asked how one could use such an expression. He knew for which pathological abnormalities such an expression was applied. But after some time, I had managed to get the gentleman to the point where he said to me: “Well, I see that you didn’t mean what you said in a literary or feature-page sense; in that case, it’s a different matter.” — That’s necessary today, just to understand one another at all, for someone to learn to feel: There is a struggle for expression; there is a necessity to first search for the right word, whereas public life as a whole allows words to flow easily—but these words are such that, given the way words are used today, it essentially looks like frivolity when one uses such strong words as “perverse” in such a context.

[ 34 ] I wanted to give you this example so that you can see how superficial people’s thinking has become today, and how necessary it is for us to delve into the seriousness of life. This can certainly be perceived in the details of life. Today we certainly need the ability to look at the one-sidedness in traditional creeds, which speak only of immortality but not of being born of the Unborn, and which therefore appeal only to people’s selfish instincts and are unable to appeal to human selflessness when speaking of eternity. This is what spiritual science must do: speak of eternity not merely by reflecting on the selfish instinct to carry existence beyond death, but by reflecting on the continuation that spiritual and pre-birth life experiences here in this life—where it becomes our mission, where we must give meaning to this life by becoming aware that we bring something spiritual into this world.

[ 35 ] But we will not gain a true understanding of the pre-birth realm unless we know how to connect the pre-birth and post-death realms in the proper sense. And we do this only in spiritual science. For when we understand in the proper sense how we spend our lives between the last death and a new birth, and again between this death and a later birth, then the pre-birth and post-death realms merge for us into the realization of repeated earthly lives; then this conviction of repeated earthly lives becomes a self-evident truth of evolution. Repeated earthly lives carry within them the very mystery of pre-existence—that mystery of pre-existence which the creeds are so eager to eradicate, about which they do not wish to speak. The primordial wisdom of humanity has spoken of this pre-existence. It was only during the Middle Ages, with the adoption of Aristotelianism, that this doctrine of pre-existence was lost. But today, the Christian creeds regard the rejection of pre-birth life as a dogma associated with Christianity. This rejection has nothing to do with Christianity; it has to do only with the philosophy of Aristotle. That idea of immortality of which we speak here in the realm of spiritual science is entirely compatible with Christianity itself.

[ 36 ] Things will not improve with regard to the general culture of humanity until people begin to act in social life in ways that are guided by this idea of pre-existence. In today’s contemporary culture, one is honest only if, like Oswald Spengler, one speaks of a decline of the West—insofar as one knows nothing of spiritual science, or wishes to know nothing of it. For only those who attribute the power and strength of this ascent to the Spirit active in the human will—and who now truly say out of their innermost conviction, “Not I, but Christ in me”—are justified in speaking of an ascent. But then one must also incorporate this Christ into the idea of immortality; then one must truly appeal to the transformation of human nature, to the Christianization of human nature, and not merely to the pagan incorporation of the idea of God into one’s creed without the human being having been transformed. More than one might think, the decline of the West is connected to the fact that, in the broadest circles of the Protestant faith, it was accepted that the theologian Harnack could say: Only God the Father belongs in the Gospel of Jesus, not Christ, for Jesus taught only about God the Father, and it was only later that the view of Christ himself as a divine being found its way into Christianity. — This is today’s most modern theology: to exclude Christ Jesus from Christianity. We scholars of the humanities must reintroduce him. We must recognize how he inserts himself into the history of humanity; we must permeate the cultural epochs with Christ. Then they will not merely be what they are in the spirit of Spengler, but they will become, for our time, something that teaches us: We need a “Naissance,” not merely a “Renaissance”; we need the rebirth of the spirit. It is this awareness that truly defines an anthroposophist—not the acceptance of individual teachings, but this awareness that we are called, in our time, not merely to a rebirth, but to the birth of a spiritual element. The more we become aware of this, the more fully we will embrace the anthroposophically oriented worldview. But in order to become aware of this, it is precisely necessary to immerse oneself—through reading what has been offered and through inner spiritual contemplation of these teachings—so that one can thereby concretely familiarize oneself with the anthroposophical way of thinking. Familiarizing oneself with the anthroposophical way of thinking simultaneously encompasses everything else that is to arise from the depths of our consciousness. The threefold social order is nothing other than a branch on the tree of anthroposophy.

[ 37 ] That is what I wanted to convey to your hearts today, now that we have been brought together once again, through these reflections. I hope that through such reflections we will continue to deepen our awareness of what constitutes our true connection to anthroposophy.