The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] With the 15th century, a new era began in the development of civilized humanity in the Northern Hemisphere, one in which, in particular, human individuality—in full self-awareness—is to emerge more and more. The forces that shape this individual sense of self will grow ever stronger, and all phenomena of life—particularly life on a large scale, at first—will unfold under the sign of this development of individuality. But this means nothing other than that even what comes from the spiritual worlds and intervenes in our physical world takes such a course that the human-individual aspect comes to the fore in all of humanity as a whole. For it is not merely a matter of individual human beings being able to think in a self-centered way: we are becoming individualities—but rather that the development of humanity as a whole should take such a course that the individuality of human beings works its way into this development of humanity. Every age, every epoch that we can trace in the course of human development has, depending on whether it has developed one thing or another—such as individuality at this present time—these or those particular characteristics. These characteristics are imprinted on human development by the way in which the spiritual forces influence humanity’s physical life on Earth. But precisely because of this self-contained nature that the individual human being now embodies—at a time when individuality is to emerge, when self-consciousness is to develop fully, and when the conscious soul is, so to speak, to take shape and become unified within itself—the distinctive characteristics of this epoch are not directed from the spiritual world as they were in earlier epochs, but rather very special phenomena are coming to the fore within human development. And the human being, who through the development of his individuality is being educated more and more toward freedom, must also take a conscious stand more and more toward what emerges from this process. In particular, the issue is that a social life—though from our point of view we must say that such a social life must be deeply rooted within—must take shape, even though the strong egoistic forces of the consciousness soul, which oppose social life, are also emerging more and more from the depths of existence. On the one hand, there are the strong egoistic forces of the conscious soul; on the other hand, there is all the more the necessity to consciously establish a social life. And one must consciously take a stand on everything that can promote this social coexistence. Over the course of time, we have already explained from a wide variety of perspectives how different the overall stance of Western people, people of Central Europe, and Eastern people is toward the entire development of humanity. We have pointed out various characteristics that are distinctive to Eastern people today, to people of Central Europe, and to Western people. Now let us draw attention to a phenomenon that can already show us, outwardly, how these differentiations within humanity play out across the civilized world.

[ 2 ] We know that, under the influence of modern scientific thinking, a certain element of worldview has developed in social life—one that is particularly strongly expressed among the broad masses of the proletariat—which has emerged in our age of machinery, in our intellectual age. I have outlined everything relevant to the social question in this context in the first part of my *Key Points of the Social Question*. Today I would like to focus specifically on the differentiation in the views of broad masses of people regarding the social question. Here we have clearly distinguished the social views—let us say, of the proletariat—which then rub off on other segments of the human population; and we have clearly distinguished the outlook on life in Western countries—namely, in the Anglo-Saxon countries—from that of other peoples. In these countries, under the influence of the modern age of machinery and industry, that materialistic outlook on life among the broad masses—which has often been characterized here—has indeed emerged alongside the materialism of other classes of humanity, or indeed as a direct result of it. But this socialist worldview has developed in such a way that it is entirely marked by economic struggles, since it is thoroughly permeated by economic concepts, economic ideas, and economic struggles that are scarcely influenced by ideological struggles. This is the hallmark of what is taking place within the socialist world of the Anglo-Saxon West. Because economic life has been the defining characteristic—the characteristic to date—of modern public life in general, the impulses of socialism also arose from these living conditions of the proletariat among the Anglo-Saxon population.

[ 3 ] What is now manifesting itself, for example, in the great strike movement is significant precisely for the very nature of what is taking shape in the West from this perspective. Even if the existing discrepancies could seemingly be resolved, it would only be an apparent resolution; very significant effects will emanate precisely from the deeper forces at play in these struggles. And even if, given the West’s overall disposition, no actual worldviews develop from these impulses, we can still clearly perceive how the worldviews that are forming—and have formed in recent times—have drawn their impetus from the impulses that are present there.

[ 4 ] Karl Marx, even though he was born in Central Europe and emerged from Central European intellectual currents, had to go to England to absorb the vital impulses that had developed there. But he transformed them into a worldview. Marxism as a worldview did not so much come into being in the Western regions themselves; it came into being as a worldview in the heart of Europe. There, within the goals of social democracy, it fully assumed the character of a worldview. What in the West are economic impulses leading to economic struggles were channeled into legal and political concepts; in Central Europe during the second half of the 19th century and into the 20th century, it lived on as such a Marxist worldview and captured the broad masses of humanity. But it also spread eastward, to the region where the character of the East begins in Europe. And there it manifested itself again in a different form. Economically in the West, politically and statally in the center; in the East, it clearly takes on a religious character. If it were not for that distortion—which existed both during Peter the Great’s inundation of the East and now under Lenin and Trotsky—if it were not for this distortion, which arises precisely because what asserts itself there as Bolshevism is a foreign import, then one would see even more clearly that there is already today a strong religious element within this Bolshevism—one that is, admittedly, entirely materialistic in nature, yet which acts in conjunction with earlier religious impulses and will continue to do so, and it is precisely in this that it will reveal its terrible nature throughout all of Asia: that it acts with the fervor of a religious impulse. Economically, the social impulse is in the West; politically and in terms of the state, it is in the heart of Europe; and with religious fervor, it is already at work from Russia onward and toward the East, extending into Asia. Compared to these impulses, which are sweeping through the development of humanity, much else is utterly insignificant. And anyone who does not see something symptomatically significant in the most intense sense in events such as the current English miners’ strike simply does not understand the workings of deeper forces in the entire course of our historical development.

[ 5 ] But everything that can be described in such external terms has deeper underlying causes, and ultimately, these deeper underlying causes lie in the spiritual world. Modern human life can only be understood if one grasps this division into a Western economic sphere, a political-statist-legal sphere in the center of Europe, and a religious element in the East—a spiritual element in the East that has only a religious character, but which is in fact the spiritual aspect as it can manifest itself there in the decadent East. This is so evident that one must say: For the West, it is natural—and this occurs thoroughly—that it possesses everything of an economic nature; for the center, mere economic striving cannot succeed because in the center every economic endeavor takes on a political-state character; in Eastern Europe, the great external failure arose because, through the traditions of Peter the Great, that which actually stems from a spiritual-religious impulse—Panslavism and Slavophilism—has taken on a political, state-centered character. Behind this state-centered character—which has brought forth all the horrors that have unfolded in Eastern Europe—behind this state-centered character, which has left its mark on all Eastern endeavors since Peter the Great, behind all of this lies, at its core, the spiritual tendency to continue the legacy of Byzantium—namely, spiritual Byzantine religiosity and so on. Even the individual phenomena of historical life become understandable only when viewed in this light. One might say: To a certain extent, everything that still lies within Europe—even extending westward, even into France—can be counted as part of the European center, for what is actually characteristic of the West is Anglo-Saxon culture. And this Anglo-Saxon culture is thoroughly following its instincts in line with the impulses inherent in human development over the last three to four centuries and beyond. These impulses led to a situation where, precisely in the West, everything that was imposed on social life by the modern scientific way of thinking—with all its achievements—was best able to develop. This way of thinking, with its achievements, together with the character of Anglo-Saxon culture, has established the world dominance of that Anglo-Saxon culture. Everything that has emerged from modern natural science—the brilliant boom in transportation, commerce, and industry, and everything that led to the great colonizations—arose precisely through the convergence of the scientific way of thinking with the character of Anglo-Saxon culture. And this was deeply felt in the instincts of the West. One can point directly to a pivotal moment in modern historical development: the year 1651, when the brilliant Cromwell, through the Navigation Acts, brought about the restructuring of the English navy and the entire English trading system—a restructuring that laid the foundation in the West for everything that followed; and one can point out how, one might say, for reasons that are outwardly inexplicable, just as Napoleon’s star was rising, French shipping suffered its greatest decline. What happens in the West happens precisely because of the forces that lie in the very direction of human development. It arises from an entirely economic way of thinking, from economic impulses of imagination. Therefore, everything that comes from the center—conceived not from economic but from legal, political, and military perspectives—must be subordinate to it. We see a striking example of how, from a political-military perspective originating on the European continent, Napoleon opposed what had emerged from Cromwell’s Navigation Acts through the Continental Blockade. The Navigation Act was conceived and created entirely out of economic instincts. Napoleon’s Continental Blockade at the beginning of the 19th century was a political concept; but a political concept is something that extends from earlier times into the modern era—it is antiquated, a veritable anachronism. Consequently, this politically conceived measure cannot hold its own against the modern way of thinking from which the Navigation Act springs. In contrast, in the West—where economic thinking is in line with the spirit of the modern age—political matters, even when they unfold in an unfavorable sense as political matters, have, in essence, no harmful effect.

[ 6 ] Consider the fact that, starting from Europe, France colonized North America. It lost these colonies to England. The colonies gained their independence. The first wave of French colonization in the 18th century was a political endeavor; it bore no fruit. English colonization in North America was driven entirely by economic motives. The political aspect, in turn, could collapse. North America gained its independence. From then on, no political connection existed. The economic connection remained intact.

[ 7 ] This is how things come together in human development. And we can certainly say: History also shows that when two people do the same thing, it is not the same. When Cromwell, at the right time and driven by economic imperatives, created his Navigation Acts—which were, to the other powers, extraordinarily tyrannical, even brutal—these Acts had nevertheless sprung from economic reasoning. When Tirpitz, as part of more recent developments, established German shipping and the German navy, this was conceived politically—purely politically—without any economic impetus, indeed contrary to all economic instincts. Today, this has been swept away from the face of the earth because it was conceived and planned contrary to the course of human development. And so, with regard to all individual phenomena, one could demonstrate how—one might say—this historical threefold structure exists: in the East—though today in a state of decadence—something that harks back to earlier times of Eastern development and has a spiritual character; in the middle, something that is, however, already antiquated today, which more or less takes the form of the political-legal-military, of the state; in the West, the state is merely a decoration; the political has no significance at all, no real significance; there, economic thinking predominates. While Germany has been ruined by the fact that its state has absorbed the economy—that industrialists and merchants went underground and cowered under the power of the state—we see how, in the West, the state is being absorbed by economic life, and everything is flooded by economic life. Viewed from the outside, this is the distinction that characterizes today’s civilized world. But what can be observed in this outward way is, after all, ultimately only brought to the surface from the depths of the spiritual world. Everything in the spiritual development of modern times is geared toward elevating individuality: individuality in the West in the Western manner, in an economic sense; individuality in the Middle in the now antiquated state-political-military manner; and individuality in the East in an antiquated manner, according to the old spirituality, now completely in decline. This must be sustained by the spiritual world. And it is supported by the fact that in both the West and the East—let us speak first of these two regions—a peculiar, deeply significant phenomenon is occurring. This is that an extraordinary number of people, or at least a relatively large number of people, are being born who do not follow the regular course of reincarnation.

[ 8 ] You see, that is precisely why it is so difficult to speak about a problem such as reincarnation—because one cannot speak of it in the abstract sense that is popular today. For while such a problem points to something that is a most significant reality in human development, it also allows for exceptions, and we see both in the East and in the West —we will be discussing the Middle East in the coming days—that people are born today whom we cannot approach in such a way that we can say: In a completely regular manner, an individuality lives within these people—one that was present in a previous life and in yet another previous life, and that will be present in a future life and in yet another future life. — These reincarnations are indeed the regular course of human evolution, but they are subject to exceptions. What we encounter as a human being in human form need not always be what outward appearances suggest. Outward appearances can, after all, be just that—appearances. We may encounter human beings in human form who, in reality, are only such in outward appearance—subject to the cycle of recurring earthly lives; in truth, these are human bodies with physical, etheric, and astral bodies, but within them other beings incarnate—beings who make use of these human beings to work through them. It is indeed the case that, for example, in the West there really is a large number of such people who, fundamentally speaking, are not simply reincarnated human beings, but who are the bearers of beings that exhibit a markedly premature course of development—beings who should actually only appear in human form at a later stage of development. These entities do not make use of the entire human organism, but rather they primarily utilize the metabolic system of these Western people. Of the three members of human nature, they use the metabolic system in such a way that they work into this physical world through these people. Such people also reveal outwardly—to those who can observe life correctly—that this is indeed the case with them. For example, a large number of those who belong to Anglo-Saxon secret societies—we have, after all, repeatedly discussed the role of such secret societies in recent years— these influential members of such secret societies are, in fact, bearers of such premature existences that work their way into the world through the metabolic systems of certain people and seek a field of activity through the bodies of people who do not live in regular reincarnations. Likewise, the leading figures of certain sects are of this nature, and in particular, the overwhelming majority of a very widespread sect that has a large following in the West consists of people of this kind. In this way, I would say, a completely different spirituality is working its way into the lives of people today. And it will be an essential task to be able to take a stance on life from these perspectives. One should not believe in an abstract sense that, without exception, people everywhere are subject to repeated earthly lives. That would mean failing to recognize the outward appearance for what it is: an illusion. To seek the truth means, even in such cases, to continue seeking the truth—the reality—where outward appearances are so deceptive that beings of a different kind than modern human beings incarnate in human form, in a part of the human being, namely through the metabolic system; but they also act in the trunk system, the rhythmic system, and the nervous-sensory system. There are, in particular, three kinds of beings of this nature that incarnate in this way through the metabolic systems of various people in the West.

[ 9 ] The first type consists of spirits who have a special affinity for what might be called the elemental forces of the Earth—spirits who have a tendency, an affinity, toward the elemental forces of the Earth, and who are thus able to determine: How to carry out colonization there in accordance with the natural conditions of the climate and the other conditions of the Earth, or how to establish trade relations there, and so on.

[ 10 ] A second type of these spirits are those whose specific task is, within the realm in which they operate, to suppress self-awareness, to prevent the full consciousness of the conscious soul from emerging, and thereby to induce a certain addiction among the other people in their surroundings—among whom such a phenomenon spreads epidemically—so that they do not hold themselves accountable for the true motives behind their actions. One could say that such a thoroughly untruthful report—or such a thoroughly untruthful document as that of the Oxford professors, which has been made public in recent days—such a thoroughly, I would say, foolishly deceitful document—one might count this among the disciples of this untruthful element, which does not wish to address the actual impulses but instead pours a veneer over them and coins fine-sounding words, while underneath there is, in essence, nothing but untruthful impulses. By this I do not mean to claim that these Oxford professors, who may in themselves be quite decent people—I do not attribute great Ahrimanic impulses to them—are themselves bearers of such premature beings; but the disposition to be disciples of such beings lies within them. So these latter beings incarnate themselves specifically through the rhythmic system of certain people in the West.

[ 11 ] The third type of being active in the West is the one that makes it its task to make human beings forget their individual abilities—those abilities we bring with us from the spiritual worlds when we enter physical existence through conception and birth—and, in a sense, to turn human beings more or less into a template of their nationality. This third type of being has set itself the specific task of preventing human beings from attaining individual spirituality.

[ 12 ] While, then, the first type of being is influenced by the elemental forces of the earth, the climate, and so on, the second type of being has a particular tendency to foster a certain superficial, untrue element, and the third type of being seeks to eradicate individual abilities and turn people, to a greater or lesser extent, into templates, into imprints of their nationality or race. This latter type of being incarnates in the West specifically through the nervous-sensory system. Here we have what we have observed externally from various perspectives as a characteristic of the Western human world in particular; we have characterized it by the fact that we—I would say—encounter a large number of people who are scattered among secret societies, sects, and the like, whose humanity, however, consists in the fact that they are not simply reincarnations, but rather a kind of embodiment of beings who are premature in their development here on Earth, who therefore create special followings or, so to speak, epidemically radiate their particular characteristics onto other people. These three different beings certainly act through human beings, and we can only understand human characters if we know what I have just said—if we realize that what takes place in public life cannot be explained merely as the philistine would have it, but must be explained by the influence of such spiritual forces.

[ 13 ] The fact that precisely these three kinds of forces—of beings—manifest themselves through human beings in the West at this particular stage of development is facilitated precisely by the fact that the West is tasked with developing this very specific economic way of thinking. I would say that economic life is the fertile ground from which such things can spring. And what, on the whole, in their totality, do these beings actually set as their task?

[ 14 ] They have set themselves the task of reducing all of life to mere economic life, of gradually eradicating everything else that constitutes spiritual life—which, precisely where it is most vibrant, has shrunk into the abstractness of Puritanism—and of eradicating spiritual life, to gradually dull political and civic life, and to absorb everything into economic life. In the West, these people, who enter the world in this manner, are the true enemies and opponents of the threefold social order. The first type of being does not allow for the emergence of an economic life that stands as an independent entity alongside the state-legal and spiritual members of the social organism. The second type of being, which makes superficiality, empty rhetoric, and deceitfulness its primary mission, does not want to allow an independent democratic state life to emerge alongside economic life. And the third type of entity, which suppresses individual abilities, which does not want human beings to be anything other than a kind of template of their race or nationality, works against the emancipation of spiritual life and the independent standing of spiritual life.

[ 15 ] Thus, there are forces in the West that work in this way to counteract the impulse toward a threefold social organism. And anyone who wishes to work in a deeper sense for the spread of this impulse toward threefolding must be clear that they have no choice but to also take into account such spiritual factors that are present in human development. For the forces to which one must appeal if one wishes to introduce anything into human development are confronted not merely by the things that the narrow-minded philistine notices, but by things that are accessible only through spiritual insight. What good does it do, after all, that people today regard this as superstition and do not wish to hear about it when one speaks of such spiritual beings who reach into the human realm? These spiritual beings are there, after all! And whoever does not wish to go through life with a merely slumbering soul, but with an awakened soul, can see the effects of these beings everywhere. If only one would allow oneself to be convinced, even a little, of the existence of the causes simply by the presence of the effects! This, to begin with, is the characteristic of the West. The West takes this form precisely because it lives entirely within the most elementary form of expression of the present epoch: economic conception, economic thinking.

[ 16 ] The East once had a magnificent spiritual life. All spirituality—with the exception of what is sought in anthroposophy and what is striving to take new form—all the spirituality of the civilized world is, after all, essentially a legacy of the East. But the true glory of this religious and spiritual life existed in the East in very ancient times. And today, people in the East—all the way to Russia—find themselves in a peculiar state of conflict, because on the one hand they still live within the old spiritual elements drawn from their heritage, and on the other hand they are also influenced by what comes from the present epoch of human development: the drive toward individuality. This results in a profound decadence of humanity in the East, in the sense that people cannot become fully human; the spiritual heritage of ancient times still weighs heavily upon them—upon these Eastern people, all the way to Russia. And this means that today, when the Eastern person’s consciousness is lowered—whether in a state of sleep or dreaming, or when entering one of those mediumistic states so incredibly common in the East—he is not, as in the West, by an entirely different being, but that this being does influence his soul life, so that, in a sense, these other beings appear to him. Whereas in the West it is premature beings of the three kinds I have listed that are at work, in the East it is belated beings who once possessed perfection but have fallen behind, and who now appear to people in the East in a mediumistic state or in dreams, or even come upon them without dreams, without mediumistic influence—simply by entering their sleep—so that the person then carries within themselves, while awake, the inspiration of such beings; in other words, they are, so to speak, inspired during the day by the aftereffects of these beings who come upon them at night.

[ 17 ] And again, there are three kinds of beings at work in the East, and they, too, exert a strong influence. While in the West one must point directly to individual human beings through whom these beings incarnate, in the East one must point to a kind of hierarchy that can appear to a wide variety of people. Again, there are three kinds of entities, but these are not entities that incarnate through human beings; rather, they are entities that appear to human beings and also inspire them from their sleep at night.

[ 18 ] The first type of these entities is the one that prevents human beings from taking full possession of their physical bodies, that prevents them from connecting with economic life and with the public conditions of the present in general. These are the entities that seek to hold back economic life in the East, as it is needed within the threefold social organism.

[ 19 ] The second type of beings are those that give rise to a nature that is already supra-individual—a kind of—if I may use this paradoxical term—“un-egoistic egoism,” which is all the more subtle because it is so frequently encountered, particularly among people of the East, who imagine themselves to be capable of all manner of selflessness, yet this selflessness is in fact a particularly subtle form of selfishness, a particularly refined egoism. They want to be completely good; they want to be as good as one can possibly be. That, too, is an egoistic feeling. It is something that can certainly be described with the paradox: a non-egoistic egoism, an egoism driven by imagined selflessness.

[ 20 ] The third type of beings that appear to the people of the East in the manner described are those beings who keep spiritual life away from the Earth, who, in a sense, spread a dull, mystical atmosphere among people, as can be found particularly in the East today. Again, these three kinds of beings—which now, however, act down from the spiritual world without incarnating in human beings—are enemies of the threefold social organism. Thus, the impulse toward threefolding is constricted from the spiritual side by the East and, from the human side, in the manner described, by the West. Here, then, we see what underlies this differentiation from spiritual foundations.

[ 21 ] We will also have to add what, from the heart of Europe, underlies the opposition to the threefold social order, so that we may gradually gain an understanding—from a spiritual perspective—of how we must equip ourselves to ensure that the idea of the threefold social order can truly counter the opposing forces — whether these forces originate from the spiritual world, as in the East; from human beings, as in the West; or in yet another way, as I will describe tomorrow, emanating from the heart of Europe — can truly provide an impulse that is as necessary as anything else for the development of humanity. One must be equipped with the necessary thoughts regarding how to respond to these matters.