The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Based on what we have discussed here recently, I would now like to bring up a few specific points that may be useful to you, as members of the anthroposophical movement, in defending the movement when, in particular cases, it is attacked from this or that quarter—along with everything that is bound to arise in its wake. Lately, attacks have been popping up everywhere—there are certainly plenty of them, but today I want to focus on just one particular type—that are directed against our practical endeavors, against what must grow out of the anthroposophical movement as a way of life. Yes, one hears this, indeed on a widespread scale: People are founding a “Kommender Tag,” people are founding a “Futurum”—what do they want with these? — Through these initiatives, they want nothing other than to establish such practical things for people who profess the anthroposophical worldview. — So, in a sense, economic initiatives would also be undertaken precisely to give those who profess the anthroposophical worldview a certain power—even if, at first, it is only economic power.

[ 2 ] If one were to take a closer look at what underlies such undertakings—as they arise from the very spirit of the anthroposophical movement—such a reproach simply could not arise. On the other hand, however, it cannot be denied that even people within the anthroposophical movement often say things that contribute significantly to the emergence of such misunderstandings. However, given the very nature of how what is called anthroposophy here seeks to relate to the world, it is utterly impossible for such a judgment to be made with any justification. This, of course, becomes clear only to those who grasp the entire spirit of this very anthroposophical movement.

[ 3 ] This anthroposophical movement fully takes into account all the forces at work in the development of humanity. How often has it been emphasized that human development undergoes certain turning points, and that we must observe these turning points? I would like to begin by drawing attention to one such important turning point, precisely to demonstrate how unfounded the judgment can be that we wish to impose a particular doctrine or dogma on people.

[ 4 ] Certainly, a certain doctrinal stance may assert itself among one or another anthroposophist—I would say as a kind of “anomalism,” a kind of outgrowth of fanaticism; perhaps this anomaly even manifests itself among many; but this is not in the spirit of the anthroposophical movement. For when we look back at human evolution from the perspective of this movement, we find that in those earlier times, when instinctive vision was widespread among people, the entire constitution of the human soul was different, and that human beings related to the world in a completely different way.

[ 5 ] What, then, was the purpose of those places in the early stages of human development that we have often referred to as “mysteries”? — Let us set aside all the details and grasp the essence of the mystery tradition.

[ 1 ] Those who were deemed mature and suitable for initiation into the Mysteries were, during their earthly life—that is, in the time between birth and death—once partakers of a certain instruction given to them by the leaders of these Mysteries, which stemmed from what these leaders had to convey about the supersensible worlds. No such leader of the Mysteries made any secret of the fact that, in his opinion, the teaching within the Mysteries did not originate solely from human beings, but that through the special ritual acts performed in the Mysteries, superhuman, divine-spiritual beings were present during the Mysteries, and that with the help of these—let us say—present gods, the instruction and everything connected with it was carried out. The essential point here, then, is that the structure of the Mysteries was such that it, so to speak, attracted divine-spiritual beings who, through the mouths of those who were the leaders of the Mysteries, imparted the teaching to those who were the initiates of the Mysteries

[ 6 ] In earlier times, human society was organized in such a way that this entire system was accepted as a social institution—not only by those who were leaders or initiates of the Mysteries, but also by those who were outside the Mysteries and could not participate in the life of the Mysteries. It was indeed the case—one need only think of Egypt—that those who governed the state received their directives from the Mysteries. The Mysteries were regarded as the natural centers of guidance for everything that was to take place within social life.

[ 7 ] Today, it is certainly possible to teach esoteric lessons that take forms similar to those of the ancient mystery schools, but they have a different purpose. This is precisely why, with regard to such matters, there is a significant turning point in human development between our time and the ancient past. In those ancient times, human beings were entirely dependent on receiving this instruction—which was to be given to them through the mysteries, and through which they, so to speak, drew near to divine-spiritual beings themselves—during the period between birth and death. Now, however, things have changed. We are living precisely after that turning point in human development at which things have changed. What human beings once learned through the mysteries between birth and death, they learn today before they descend into a physical body through conception or birth. They learn it according to their karma, according to the preparations made in a previous earthly life. So what a human being goes through between the great midnight hour of existence and birth is something that this teaching encompasses.

[ 8 ] You will find hints of what must be said about these matters in other contexts in a lecture series I gave in Vienna in 1914 on life between death and a new birth. But what was only hinted at there—what was only touched upon with a few strokes—I would now like to describe in somewhat greater detail.

[ 9 ] So today, human beings experience something similar to the ancient mystery teachings before they descend from their pre-existent state into the physical body. This is a fact that anyone who is truly immersed in reality through spiritual insight must take into account. Today, one cannot think of the human being who is born in the same way as people did in ancient times. In ancient times, people viewed the human being, so to speak, in such a way that they said: The human being descends to Earth and is called to be initiated, through the knowledge of the mysteries, into what he actually is as a human being. — That is not how things are today. What I have said applied to people who had undergone fewer earthly lives than people today, who in their previous earthly lives have absorbed much into their souls—which is precisely what enables them to undergo a certain instruction from the divine-spiritual beings in the pre-existent state.

[ 10 ] This is what one must assume today when dealing with a child. Today, our task is no longer to “pour into” the child, so to speak, what had to be poured into it in the old days. Today, our task is to tell ourselves: The child is already instructed; it has merely wrapped its physical body around its instructed soul, and we must penetrate through this shell; we must draw out what constitutes the pre-birth divine instruction. This is how we must think pedagogically today. If we think in the spirit of genuine anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, it becomes clear to us that, in essence, all we can do through teaching is to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of bringing forth what the child brings with it into the world from its prenatal life. That is why our Waldorf school pedagogy places such immense value on the teacher truly viewing the child as something that stands before him like a riddle he must unravel, in which he must discover what lies within. The teacher must by no means place the primary emphasis on cramming anything he has set out to teach into the child; he must never proceed dogmatically in any way, but rather regard the child itself as his teacher—namely, to observe how the child, through its unique behavior, reveals how to penetrate the veils, so that the divine teaching may emerge from within the child itself. Thus, this Waldorf pedagogy and didactics consist precisely in removing these veils from the child, so that the child may come to itself and discover within itself what divine teaching is. That is why we tell ourselves: We have no need whatsoever to impose on the child anything we have devised as theory, no matter how beautifully it may be written in books. We leave that to those who are rooted in old, traditional religious creeds and who want to turn children into Catholics, Protestants, or Jews. But that is not the case. Nor do we want to impose an anthroposophical pedagogy on the children; we use what we know as anthroposophy only to equip ourselves to call into being the living spirit that dwells within the child from pre-existence. We want to derive a method of teaching from anthroposophy, not a set of dogmas that we impart to the child in a didactic manner. We want to become more skilled. We want to develop a didactic art to shape the child into what it is meant to become in the manner described. We are well aware that all other knowledge, which is presented to people today from a wide variety of sources, may indeed instruct the intellect, but it does not make a person a pedagogical-didactic artist, because it does not engage the whole person, but only the intellect. Anthroposophy engages the whole person, making them an agent of those “artistic techniques,” so to speak, that must be applied to the group of students in the manner just described. Therefore, we use anthroposophy to become skilled teachers, but not to teach it to the children. For we are clear about this: the spirit is a living entity, not a sum of concepts or ideas, and it manifests itself in each child in a uniquely individual way when we are able to bring into consciousness what the child brings with it to this earth at birth. We would impoverish this earth if we sought to teach the child what consists merely of a sum of concepts. On the other hand, we enrich the earth when we nurture and care for what the gods have given the child—what it brings with it here to earth. It is the living spirit that manifests in so many individual human beings, not what a particular form of anthroposophy imposes on these individuals in an attempt to supposedly standardize them. So bringing the living spirit to life—that is what this is all about. Therefore, we have absolutely no interest in imposing any kind of anthroposophical dogma on the children.

[ 11 ] This is the one practical institution that has emerged from anthroposophical spiritual science. This particular pedagogy—the art of teaching—is entirely different from everything people have imagined up to now, because they cannot conceive of anything other than: “I believe in a certain dogma, so it is best to teach this dogma to the children as well.” — We are not at all interested in teaching children a set of dogmas, because we know that the child brings a message with it when it enters existence through birth, and that this message would be corrupted if one were to present it with a set of dogmas. The spirit does not need to be cultivated in an abstract way. If one is able to liberate it through anthroposophy, to bring it into being, then it is present as a living spirit, not as a collection of doctrinal teachings. These doctrinal teachings are merely a means to awaken the living spirit within humanity and to keep it in a state of continuous development. That is why it is unfair to spread the belief that we want to promote dogmatic anthroposophy in Waldorf schools or in any educational initiative we organize. We do not want to promote dogmatic anthroposophy, nor do we want to impose anthroposophy on the individual sciences in any way. On the contrary, we want to bring out the individuality of each science within the individual sciences themselves. We are fully aware that the point of anthroposophy is precisely to create something in the world that eradicates all dogmatism—something that brings individuality into the world everywhere, in every field. From this perspective, this attack—which came from all directions—had to be rejected from the outset, since it was based on the assumption that we wanted to introduce anthroposophy as a doctrine into any scientific field or into the realm of education.

[ 12 ] As for our practical economic activities, it has become apparent in recent weeks—with a remarkable unanimity both in Germany and in Switzerland, as well as in other places, on the occasion of the latest publications of *Kommender Tag* and *Futurum*—that people have been saying: “All these anthroposophists are supposed to be united so that they, too, can have economic institutions and the like; other people will, at most, be allowed access, but they will not be given any particularly significant say in the administration, and so on.” — If we wanted something like that, it would actually contradict the very principle on which we stand: that we truly take the development of humanity into account in every detail and orient ourselves accordingly—not seeking something that is absolutely correct, but asking ourselves: What must happen right now? — And here we must draw attention to the second turning point in the development of humanity. Economic institutions today are still emerging everywhere out of a certain principle of inertia in human nature. They used to emerge from a small circle into small territories; but now, because states have become economic enterprises and because corporate empires have replaced individual enterprises, they have expanded to gigantic proportions and have become enterprises that spring today solely from this inertia. People speak today of the “national economy,” thus fusing two things together. That peculiar group spirit that holds a people together is, after all, outwardly—I would say—embodied in the blood. Now, global conditions have long since become such that, under healthy circumstances, today’s economic activity can no longer have even the slightest connection to that kind of group solidarity expressed through the blood. It is a sign of economic conditions that are pathological in the truest sense when, for example, there is a dispute over the Rhine border because people on the other side of the Rhine want a different economic community than those on this side—and this stems from nationalistic assumptions. These nationalistic premises arose from entirely different forces; they no longer have anything to do with what the global economy is today. These issues actually entered a particular crisis only during the last third of the 19th century. It was only then that it became truly apparent what turning point in human development actually underlies this.

[ 13 ] As we have just discussed, in ancient times human beings entered physical existence, so to speak, uninstructed by the gods, and had to be instructed through the mysteries. Today, human beings enter this existence already instructed, and all that is needed is for them to become aware of what is within their souls. In ancient times, with regard to social and economic coexistence, humanity was simply structured in such a way that a person was born into the social context, into the group. They were born into the group according to the forces that had been at work within them before birth. It was not solely the principle of physical heredity that underlay, for example, the earliest forms of human inequality—the caste systems. In the earliest caste systems, it was certainly the case that the leaders of the social order based their decisions on the way in which a person was predestined, before birth or even before conception, for a particular group among humanity. In times when a person had even fewer earthly incarnations in their previous existence, they were indeed, through those few incarnations, born into groups in a very specific way, and it was only within these groups that they could develop socially. Anyone in ancient India who belonged to a particular caste would have perished had they been forced to live in another caste, due to their previous incarnation and what they had experienced in the spiritual world before their birth. These castes were based not only on heredity but also on spiritual predetermination. Humanity has now outgrown this. In this regard, too, there is now a turning point between our time and that era. Today, people actually bear the characteristics of group identity only as a superficial construct. People are born into nations; they are also still born into a certain class structure; but as they grow up in a particular era, it becomes apparent relatively early in childhood that such a determination from prenatal existence is no longer present. Today, people are instructed by the gods during their prenatal existence. The stamp of a particular group is no longer imprinted upon them. This is something that remains as a final remnant in physical heredity. Belonging to a nationality with one’s consciousness today is, in a sense, a vestige of original sin; it is something that should no longer play a role in the human soul.

[ 14 ] In contrast, a certain factor plays a role in our time: as a person matures, he or she simultaneously outgrows all forms of group formation. But within economic life, they cannot do without group formation, for in economic matters, the individual is never the decisive factor. What constitutes spiritual life rises from the deepest inner being of the human being, where they can not only achieve a certain harmonization of their abilities but should also supplement—and even preserve—it through a certain form of education. Economic judgment, however, can never today originate from a single individual. I have given you examples of how economic judgment is bound to err if it is to emanate from a single individual. I would like to draw your attention once more to an example from the second half of the 19th century.

[ 15 ] I have told you that during a certain period—around the middle and in the second half of the 19th century—discussions about the gold standard arose everywhere in parliaments and other bodies. The arguments put forward by the speakers who advocated for the gold standard at that time were debates among truly intelligent people. I say this not out of irony, but because the people who spoke about the gold standard at that time—both practitioners and theorists—in parliaments and other bodies were truly very intelligent, and what was said about the gold standard in the various countries actually ranks among the finest examples of parliamentary debate. And almost everywhere, one point was emphasized. With great insight, it was pointed out that the gold standard would get free trade off the ground and sweep away all protectionist tariffs. — And when one reads today what was said back then about the effects of the gold standard on free trade, one takes great delight in how intelligent people were at that time. But the exact opposite of what the wisest people said has come to pass: as a result of the gold standard, protectionist tendencies have arisen everywhere. The wisdom in economic life that emanated from individual personalities did not help people at all. This could be demonstrated in a wide variety of fields, for the fact is that while a person, as an individual, may be competent regarding matters of knowledge—whether concerning nature or other human endeavors—a person is never competent as an individual when it comes to economic matters. One cannot form a concrete judgment about economic matters as an individual. An economic judgment can only arise when people come together, form associations, and support one another—when reciprocity prevails within the association. It is not possible for an individual to arrive at such an economic judgment that can then be translated into economic activity. This is the opposite of what occurs when a person forms any kind of cognitive judgment. In a judgment of knowledge, a person is expected to form a comprehensive judgment drawing on their whole being; in concrete economic judgment and action, however, one individual knows one aspect, another knows something else, and a third knows yet another; the producer in a given field knows something, and the consumer in that same field knows something. These must converge; a group judgment, a collective judgment, must emerge. In other words: the old group formations have been discarded; group formations must emerge from economic life through the people themselves. These must be the associations of economic life.

[ 16 ] It follows from the concept of a necessary force of development that associative life must take hold of people; this associative life must replace the old group structures, which today are perpetuated throughout humanity only like an original sin.

[ 17 ] When we consider this, we will surely say to ourselves: In terms of knowledge, people in ancient times descended to Earth uninstructed; they received this knowledge in the mysteries. Today they descend already educated, and we must structure our teaching methods in such a way that we draw out of them what they have learned from the gods. With regard to economic institutions, people used to be predetermined; in a sense, the gods had stamped their mark upon them. They were born into a particular caste or group. That is over. People are born without such a stamp; they are, so to speak, placed into humanity as individual beings. They must form their own groups out of their own spiritual nature.

[ 18 ] It is really not a matter of grouping together those who profess to follow anthroposophy; whether they profess to follow anthroposophy or not will depend on what the gods taught them before their birth, on whether they were mature enough for this divine teaching through their earlier incarnations, and whether they have now descended to a point where we can draw anthroposophy out of them. It is present in far more people than is believed today, and a large number are simply too lazy to draw out what is within them; or, alternatively, school instruction is not structured in such a way that the veils are lifted and people truly come to their senses. In the practical realm—particularly in the economic sphere—it would be downright pointless to group people together simply because they are anthroposophists; rather, one must understand what anthroposophy is in the sense of gaining insights into the way in which people, out of their own consciousness, seek out—and must seek out—groupings based on their past incarnations. The point is to give people the opportunity to form groups—that is, to carry out what is entirely inherent in the history of human development. So here, too, it is out of the question to group together people who live under a particular set of dogmas; rather, it is a matter of giving people who are called to do so through their previous earthly lives the opportunity to come together in groups. As soon as one moves from the abstract to the concrete, these matters contain an extraordinary number of puzzles and, I would say, an extraordinary number of mysterious things. For whether people belong to one group or another is by no means a simple matter.

[ 19 ] The longing that people have for great simplicity manifests itself in a curious way. I have just received a brief note about a lecture that the esteemed Frohnmeyer once again gave on theosophy and anthroposophy, and it states: “The purely personal comparison with Christianity made at the end recalled the well-known fact ‘that, unfortunately, it annoys these people how the Great is so simple.’” He apparently believes that anthroposophists are annoyed that the Great is so simple—just as Pastor Frohnmeyer’s laziness would have it—because he does not want to make the effort to understand the Great in all its complexity. One simply has to translate things into the right language! That is precisely our task: to translate things into the right language.

[ 20 ] Of course, it is not a matter of immediately bombarding everyone with the doctrine that people are taught before their birth, or the doctrine that some were born into groups in the past while others are not born into groups now; but we ourselves can allow these truths to take root within us, and we will then find a way—through the manner in which we proceed—to show people that we are just as far from introducing dogmatism into schools as we are from grouping people who adhere to a particular dogma into economic groups or economic associations.

[ 21 ] This principle was also followed at our Waldorf School in Stuttgart, where, as you can see, we had absolutely no interest in, for example, teaching the children anthroposophy. We want a teaching method that can only be achieved through anthroposophy. And that is a purely objective matter. But for those children who want it—or whose parents want them to be taught Catholic religious education—a Catholic priest comes to the Waldorf School, and for those who are to receive Protestant religious education, the Protestant pastor comes to the Waldorf School. We do not put any obstacles in the way of these people. It was simply necessary in this day and age—when so many parents, particularly those from working-class backgrounds, no longer even consider sending their children to Catholic or Protestant religious instruction—to ask these people whether they might want a free form of religious instruction rooted in anthroposophical education. And it turned out, in fact, that those who would otherwise be raised without any religious upbringing—who today would not attend any denominational instruction at all—are attending the so-called anthroposophical religious education classes in very large numbers; though these classes do not teach anthroposophy, they are simply rooted in it. The fact that these children are now more enthusiastic about their religious education classes than those taught by the Catholic or Protestant pastors is not our doing, but presumably that of the Catholic or Protestant pastors. That the situation has been pushed so far that, little by little, a number of children have switched to the other religious education classes, and that it has come to the point where, I believe, the Protestant religious education teacher said, “Soon I won’t have anyone left in my class at all, because they’re all running away from me”—that is certainly not our fault either. But that was already last year. Was our aim, after all, to impart any kind of dogma to the children? We have absolutely no interest in that. We know that if our method succeeds in removing the shell—as I have explained—the children will receive the best instruction, namely the one they received in the spiritual world before they descended to Earth.

[ 22 ] However, obscuring this teaching—and certainly not omitting it—is very much in the interest of certain religious denominations. For anyone who, for example, can compare the strange relationship that papal encyclicals have today with what is taking place in the spiritual world knows full well that the divine religious instruction children receive before they descend into the world is by no means the same as what certain religious denominations would like to impart to them in the world today. This is particularly noticeable in the Catholic Church, because the Catholic Church, through its worship and ceremonies—in contrast to the Protestant Church—still exerts a supersensible influence; but this supersensible influence can manifest itself in a wide variety of ways, and one can certainly say: Something can be an error simply because it deviates from the truth in a certain way; it can also be an error because it is the opposite of the truth.

[ 23 ] And as for the practical matters—the things discussed in our meetings, which sometimes last until half past two in the morning, and sometimes even longer—I cannot, of course, reveal them to you here; for what is discussed within such meetings is considered to have been discussed only within those meetings. But I can assure you that in the meetings held in this manner to discuss matters of the “Future” and the “Day to Come,” anthroposophy is not the subject of discussion; rather, matters of an entirely different nature are addressed. There are matters that are to be discussed in the most practical way possible: how best to manage this or that area, what needs to be done with this or that, and so on. Anything that is in any way anthroposophical—or theoretical-anthroposophical—plays no role there. Rather, what is discussed there is intended to grasp economic life in just as skillful a way as one grasps it when one’s thoughts are brought into that flexibility, into that correspondence with reality, into which they can be brought through a living grasp of the spirit via anthroposophy.

[ 24 ] All one needs to do is point out to people that neither the bylaws of “Kommender Tag” nor those of “Futurum” contain any anthroposophical doctrines, but rather deal solely with economic matters, and that the only issue at stake is whether these economic matters are better than those of other similar enterprises today. But this is one of the points that must be defended, for, as I said, it is one of the points of attack; and these attacks are now coming from all directions and will, in the near future—if we do not succeed in presenting our cause to the world in a clear and forceful manner—intensify in a terrible way. Everything is pointing in that direction. For it is true, as I had to say recently in Stuttgart: What has not yet been learned within the anthroposophical movement is to be attentive to realities, to hold together in a truly living way, and to truly assert the issues at hand in the world. The opponents, as I stated recently in Stuttgart, are “a different breed” in this regard. They are organizing themselves, and they will demonstrate their organization. We are bound to fail if we do not realize that these opponents are a different breed, and that, when it comes to the good, we can finally make the same kind of efforts that are being made today for the bad,

[ 25 ] So today I wanted to draw your attention to the one point regarding which you will most certainly hear explicit criticism of our practical initiatives. If you keep your ears open—and that is, of course, necessary; I mean this in a figurative sense—then you will be able to hear them, and there will be much to defend in this regard today as well. I wanted to tell you today what, I would say, can inspire your soul in this direction, should it become necessary to mount a defense. And this “inspiring the soul” can come about when we understand what it meant in ancient times that human beings descended to Earth uninstructed by the gods, that they are now instructed in a pre-existent state before birth and that their entire life must be structured accordingly; and, on the other hand, what it means that human beings in earlier times were determined according to the will of the gods—born into castes, classes, peoples, tribes, and so on, but that this has disappeared since the turning point that lies behind us, and that human beings are now called upon to form groups of their own in earthly life out of economic necessity. This takes place in economic associations. It is precisely the correct understanding of earthly development and the spiritual development of human beings—and the connection between the two—that shows how what we call “threefold social order” is by no means merely a political program, but rather the result of what flows from a genuine understanding of human development—what emerges as a necessity in the present and for the near future from such an understanding. We will continue to discuss this tomorrow.