The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] The writer I spoke of here last time should actually give those who identify with the anthroposophical movement a great deal to think about. For we see in Oswald Spengler a figure who has mastered an extraordinary amount of what can be mastered scientifically today. One might even say: Spengler has thoroughly mastered the various ideas that have become the property of civilized humanity over the course of the last few centuries. One might even regard him as someone who has absorbed an entire range of sciences—or at least ideas drawn from the sciences.

[ 2 ] The combinations of ideas he produces are at times dazzling. He is, to the highest degree, what one might call—not in France, but in Central Europe—a witty person. For Western French wit, however, Oswald Spengler’s ideas are too heavy and too dense. But as I said, in the Central European sense, he can certainly be considered a witty thinker. One can hardly call him an elegant thinker in the best sense of the word, for the way he frames his thoughts has—despite all his wit—a decidedly pedantic quality. And one can even see in various places how a philistine’s eye peeks out sharply from the fabric of this witty man’s sentences. In any case, however, there is something coarse in the thoughts themselves.

[ 3 ] Well, I would say these are more like aesthetic reflections on ideas. But the important thing is this: we have before us a personality who does indeed have thoughts—and contemporary ones at that—but who actually thinks very little of thought as a whole. For Oswald Spengler does not consider what arises from thought to be decisive for what actually happens in the world; rather, he regards the more instinctive impulses of life as decisive. So, for him, thinking always hovers above life—one might say—like a luxury; thus, for him, thinkers are people who reflect on life; but nothing from what they ponder can flow into life. — Life is already there when the thinkers come to have their thoughts about life.

[ 4 ] And it is certainly the case that one must say: At that moment in world history when a thinker has mastered the particular form of contemporary thought with a certain universality, at that very moment this thinker actually perceives these thoughts as sterile, as barren. He turns to something other than these barren thoughts; he turns to that which bubbles up in instinctive life, and from the perspective that this affords him, he now views contemporary civilization.

[ 5 ] He actually sees it this way: What this present civilization has produced is on the verge of collapse everywhere. One can only hope that someday something instinctive will emerge once again from what Spengler calls “the blood”—something that does not go along with everything that constitutes contemporary civilization, but rather smashes it to pieces and replaces it with a widespread power arising solely from the instinctive.

[ 6 ] Oswald Spengler sees how people in modern civilization have gradually become slaves to a life dominated by machines. But he fails to see how, within this machine-dominated life—and within technology itself, since it is essentially devoid of anything spiritual—the experience of human freedom can emerge precisely as a reaction to it. He has no idea about that. And why does he have no idea about this?

[ 7 ] Yes, you see, last time I alluded to this—I’d say, more in jest—that Spengler does indeed say: The statesman, the practitioner, the merchant, and so on—they all act on impulses other than those that can be grasped by thought. — I said, half-jokingly: Oswald Spengler seems never to have considered that there are also confessors and similar relationships. — Nor has Oswald Spengler, strictly speaking, observed anything else in which the relationship with the confessor represents merely a decadent, world-historical side issue.

[ 8 ] If we look back at the development of humanity, we find everywhere how the so-called “people of action”—those who are outwardly engaged in the world—turn, whether in later times to the oracles or, in earlier times, to what can be recognized within the mysteries as the counsel of the spiritual world. One need only consider ancient Egyptian culture to see how those who explored the counsel of the spiritual world within the mysteries conveyed what they discovered in a spiritual manner to those who now “wanted to and were meant to become people of action.” So that precisely when one looks back at human development, one comes to realize how, from the spiritual world—not from the blood, for this whole theory of blood is as mystical and nebulous as anything—how, then, not from some dark depths of the blood, but from the spirit itself, the impulses were drawn that then entered into earthly deeds.

[ 9 ] In a certain sense, then, the so-called “people of action” were simply the instruments for the great spiritual creations, the directions of which were recognized within the spiritual research of the Mysteries. And I would like to say that we see echoes of the Mysteries everywhere in Greek history and in Roman history; but we also see them continuing to play a role well into the early Middle Ages.

[ 10 ] I have pointed out to you, for example, that the Lohengrin legend can only be understood if one knows how to trace it back from the external physical world into the Grail castle of the early—or, more accurately, the high—Middle Ages.

[ 11 ] It is therefore a complete misunderstanding of the true course of human development when Oswald Spengler believes that world-historical events somehow spring from the blood, and that what does enter into human beings through thought has nothing to do with it.

[ 12 ] If we go back to earlier times, we find that people were highly dependent on exploring the spiritual world whenever they wanted to do something. In other words—if I may put it that way—the intentions of the gods had to be explored. And this relationship of dependence between human beings and the gods—which we are examining—is what made people unfree in earlier times. People’s thoughts were entirely focused on the idea that they were, so to speak, treated like vessels into which the gods poured their substances—spiritual substances—and under whose influence people acted.

[ 13 ] In order for human beings to become free, this pouring of substances into human thoughts by the gods had to cease. As a result, human thoughts increasingly became mere images. The thoughts of humanity in earlier times were much, much more like realities. And what Oswald Spengler attributes to blood are precisely those realities that were embedded in the thoughts of earlier humanity—those substances that continued to work through people even throughout the Middle Ages.

[ 14 ] Then the modern era dawned. People’s thoughts lost their divine, their substantial content. People’s thoughts became merely abstract mental images. But these alone are not compelling or constraining. Only by living within such mental images can a person become free.

[ 15 ] Throughout the more recent centuries, right up into the 20th century, human beings have found within themselves little else but the innate capacity to give form to such mental images. This was humanity’s education in freedom. Human beings no longer had, as was still the case in ancient times, atavistic imaginations or inspirations. They had only mental images. In these mental images, human beings could become increasingly free, because images cannot compel. If moral impulses are present in images, these moral impulses are no longer compelling, as they were when they were embedded in the ancient substance of thought. Back then, they acted upon human beings just like natural forces. The newer mental images no longer act like natural forces. Therefore, in order for them to have any content at all, one had to fill them, on the one hand, with what the knowledge of nature knows through mere sensory observation. This led to a science of sensory observation that filled the thoughts from the outside; from within, however, they were less and less inclined to be filled with anything. Consequently, if people wanted to have thoughts that were still filled with content at all, they had to turn to the old traditions—as was the case either in the religious creeds that had become traditional, or in the various types of secret societies that had become traditional, which flourished all over the world. The vast majority of people were drawn into the most diverse religious denominations, where they were presented with something whose content originated in earlier times, when thoughts had still been given substance. Or else, in secret societies—whether in the form of rituals or otherwise—people once again cultivated that which, to a greater or lesser extent, had been handed down from ancient times through tradition. Thoughts were filled from the outside with content derived from sensory observation. They were filled from the inside with the old impulses that had become dogmatic traditions.

[ 16 ] This must certainly have been the case from the 16th century up through the last third of the 19th century, for at that time the spiritual principle—which, if one wishes to use an ancient name, might be called the principle of the Archangel Gabriel—was still at work in human cooperation throughout the entire civilized world; that is, the being—it is merely a term; I wish to point to a spiritual power—which, albeit unconsciously in modern civilization, worked within human souls. People themselves had no inner content. They merely absorbed traditional content for their spiritual and soul life. But this meant that people could not have felt this sense of being present within this spiritual content.

[ 17 ] The first person to sense this detachment from spiritual content, yet who was unable to use it to experience a new spirituality, was actually Friedrich Nietzsche. Consequently, he essentially lost all sense of spiritual and emotional connection. And so he sought out impulses that were as vague as possible—impulses of power and the like.

[ 17 ] The first person to sense this detachment from spiritual content, yet who was unable to use it to experience a new spirituality, was actually Friedrich Nietzsche. Consequently, he essentially lost all sense of spiritual and emotional connection. And so he sought out impulses that were as vague as possible—impulses of power and the like.

[ 17 ] The first person to sense this detachment from spiritual content, yet who was unable to use it to experience a new spirituality, was actually Friedrich Nietzsche. Consequently, he essentially lost all sense of spiritual and emotional connection. And so he sought out impulses that were as vague as possible—impulses of power and the like.

[ 20 ] This was possible during the Gabriel era because, in fact, the elemental beings that had remained from the Middle Ages were present everywhere on Earth. However, as the 19th century progressed—and especially well into the 20th century—it became increasingly impossible for these elemental beings, who were present in all natural phenomena, to act as parasites, so to speak, in human social life. There were many factors at work in the unconscious that counteracted this, particularly in recent times.

[ 21 ] You see, if in such secret societies, according to ancient tradition—it’s unbelievable just how “old” and “sacred” all these cults of the secret societies are supposed to be—if, in the spirit of ancient tradition, cults were held there, or teachings were imparted, if what was developed there was presented as a no longer understood echo of the ancient mysteries, then that suited certain elemental beings just fine. For while people were engaged in all sorts of activities—let’s say, while they sat before some Mass being celebrated and no longer understood anything about it—they actually had something immensely wise before them: they were there, though they understood nothing, yet their understanding would have been possible. Then these elemental beings would come, and when people were not thinking about a Mass, these elemental beings would think using the human intellect that people were not applying. People had developed their free intellect more and more, but they did not need it. They preferred to sit back and let tradition lead them astray. They did not think, these people. It is still the case today—even though conditions are certainly becoming quite different—that people today could think an immense amount if they were willing to make use of their intellect. But they do not like it, they do not do it; they are averse to sharp thinking. They like to say: “Ah, that requires effort; it’s abstract; it’s something that requires inner work!”

[ 22 ] If people loved thinking, they wouldn’t be so eager to immerse themselves in all kinds of movies and the like these days, because in those situations you can’t—and don’t need to—think; everything just unfolds before your eyes. That tiny bit one is still supposed to think is written on large screens and can be read off. The fact is that, slowly and gradually over the course of recent times, this aversion to active inner thinking has developed. People have almost completely weaned themselves off thinking. When a lecture is given somewhere that doesn’t use slides and where one is supposed to think a bit, people more or less prefer to doze off a little. They might still go, but they fall asleep because active thinking is simply not something that enjoys extraordinary popularity today.

[ 23 ] And it was precisely this refusal to think, which persisted for centuries, that adapted to the most diverse practices carried out in various secret societies. And such elemental beings, who were still there, who still interacted with human beings in the first half of the Middle Ages—when people were even conducting laboratory experiments, alchemical experiments, in which they quite consciously contemplated how spiritual beings were involved—these spiritual beings had remained; they were everywhere.

[ 24 ] And why shouldn’t they take advantage of this golden opportunity! In modern civilization, people gradually developed brains that were capable of thinking well but were unwilling to do so. So these elemental beings stepped in, and they reasoned: If people themselves won’t use their brains, we can use them. And in those secret societies that loved only tradition, always bringing only the old and the ancient to the surface, it was the case that these elemental beings approached and used human brains for thinking. Thus, an extraordinary amount of brain matter has been used by elemental beings since the 16th century.

[ 25 ] After all, much has come about in the course of human development without human intervention, including good ideas—particularly those related to human coexistence.

[ 26 ] If you look at people who, during this period, wanted to learn a little more about civilization, you will find that this became a major question for them: Yes, what actually influences one person to another? People are supposed to think, but they don’t. What influences one person to another?

[ 27 ] That, for example, was a major question for Goethe. And it was out of this mood that he wrote his *Wilhelm Meister*. There, you are led everywhere to all sorts of obscure social connections that remain unconscious to people, yet which are at work there, and which are picked up and carried forward, half-consciously, by one person or another. All sorts of threads are woven together. Goethe attempts to find such threads. He sought out such threads. And to the extent that he was able to find them, he sought to bring them to life in the narrative structure of his *Wilhelm Meister*.

[ 28 ] But that was something that played out throughout the 19th century in Central Europe. If people today still had any inclination to spend more time with a book than the time between two meals—well, that’s speaking figuratively, because most of them fall asleep between two meals once they’ve read a third of it; then they read the next third between the next two meals, and the third after that between the following two meals, and that, you see, makes things a bit scattered—but it would be good for people if even those novels and short stories that can be read between two meals or between two train stations were to inspire them to reflect. One can’t really expect that of the present day, but if you were to look at how, for example, Gutzkow sought such connections in his book *The Magician of Rome* and in his *The Knights of the Spirit*, and if you consider the extraordinarily social interconnections that George Sand sought in her novels, you will be able to see everywhere how, in the 19th century, such threads at work—threads that stem from indefinable forces and play into the unconscious; that authors trace these, and that they—such as George Sand, for example—are, in a wide variety of ways, very much on the right track.

[ 29 ] But in the last third of the 19th century, things gradually came to pass such that, first of all, these elemental beings—who thought with the human brain and then, by taking control of human minds and shaping the social structures of the 19th century, actually pulled the strings—had finally had enough. They had fulfilled their world-historical task—or, one might better say, their world-historical need. And, in particular, something else arose that prevented them from continuing this kind of parasitic activity. This had gone exceptionally well toward the end of the 18th century, and then especially in the 19th century; but these elemental beings were then able to exercise their true authority less and less. And this was because more and more souls were descending from the spiritual world onto the physical plane with great expectations regarding life on Earth.

[ 30 ] Isn’t it true that when people—after having been small children who cried and fidgeted—have been raised only superficially in more recent times, they have indeed failed to realize that they were endowed with extraordinarily high expectations before they descended into this world? But this has lived on in their emotions, in their entire state of mind, and continues to live on even today. In fact, human souls descend into the physical world with extraordinarily strong expectations. And that is precisely where the disappointments come from—the ones the unconscious in children’s souls has been experiencing for quite some time, because these expectations are, after all, not being fulfilled.

[ 31 ] Exquisite spirits who had particularly strong impulses of expectation before they descended to the physical plane—these were, for example, those who then observed this physical plane and saw that these expectations would not be fulfilled there, and so they wrote utopian works describing how things should be and how they could be achieved.

[ 32 ] And it would be extraordinarily interesting to study how, with regard to their entry into physical existence through birth, the souls of the great utopians—as well as those of the lesser ones and the more or less eccentric ones who have devised all sorts of things that cannot even be called utopias— but which reveal an extraordinary amount of good will to create a paradise for people on Earth—how these souls, who descended from the spiritual worlds, were actually constituted with regard to their entry onto the physical plane of Earth.

[ 33 ] This descent filled with expectation, however, causes distress to the beings who are now supposed to use the brains of such expectant people. They are then unable to make good use of the brain when people descend with such expectations. Up until the 18th century, people still descended with much lower expectations. At that time, the use of the brain by other, non-human beings went well. But just as the last third of the 19th century began, things became extremely difficult for the beings who were now supposed to use these human brains, particularly among the people who had descended with such expectations. These expectations led to subconscious emotions, and the spiritual beings sensed this when they tried to use the human brains. That is why they no longer do so. And it is now the case that, on a very broad scale, a certain mood is spreading more and more among the people of modern civilization—namely, that people have thoughts but suppress them. The brain has gradually been ruined, especially among the upper classes, through the suppression of thoughts. Other, non-human beings who used to take possession of these thoughts no longer come.

[ 34 ] And now, although people have thoughts, they don’t know what to do with them. And the most prominent representative of this type of person—those who don’t know what to do with their thoughts—is Oswald Spengler. He differs from the others in that the others—well, how should one put this, really, so as not to cause too much offense when, as always happens, these things are then recounted to outsiders—perhaps one must say: Well, the others completely neglect their brains in their early years, so that this brain is then capable of letting thoughts vanish within itself; Spengler differs from the others in that he has kept his brain fresher, so that it is not so barren, so that he does not always sink into himself, does not always concern himself only with himself.

[ 35 ] Isn’t it true that a large part of humanity today is, inwardly—if I may use a Central European expression that many may not understand—“versulzt”? Aspic is something made from the various byproducts of pig slaughter—which are good for nothing else—and mixed with the gelatinous components that can’t be used for anything else, not even for making sausage; that’s what’s used for aspic, isn’t it? And I’d like to say: Under the manifold, confusing influences of education, most people’s brains are now becoming “jellied.” It’s not their fault, of course. I’m certainly not speaking in an accusatory sense here, but perhaps even in an apologetic sense—and in the sense that one feels a great deal of pity for these “jellied” brains.

[ 36 ] Well, I mean, if people are like that—if they have only one thought: they don’t know what to do with themselves; they’re all tangled up, compressed, and muddled within themselves, aren’t they?—then these thoughts can sink so nicely into these subterranean realms of the brain, and from there on into the lower regions of the human organism, and so on.

[ 37 ] But that is not the case with people like Oswald Spengler. They are capable of developing ideas. And that is why Spengler is a man of intellect; he has the ideas. But these ideas that a person can have only become meaningful when they are given spiritual content. For that, one needs spiritual content. One needs the content that anthroposophy seeks to provide; otherwise, one has thoughts but doesn’t know what to do with them. This is truly the case with Spengler’s thoughts—yes, I’m almost tempted to say—an impossible image comes to mind—it’s like a man who, in anticipation of a future marriage to a lady, has purchased all sorts of beautiful garments, not for himself but for her, and now she runs away from him before the wedding, and he’s left with all these garments but no one to wear them!

[ 38 ] And so you see: there are all these wonderful ideas—Spengler’s ideas, after all, are all tailored according to the most modern scientific cut—but the lady who is supposed to wear the clothes is missing. Old Capella, at least, as I said a few weeks ago, still had rhetoric, grammar, and dialectic—albeit somewhat leaner versions. True, they were no longer as lavish as the Muses of Homer or the Muses of Pindar, but they were, after all, still the full seven liberal arts that played a role throughout the Middle Ages; there was still someone to whom one could dress them.

[ 39 ] But now the time has come—I would like to call what has emerged “Spenglerism,” if only because it is something significant—the time when, so to speak, the garments have been created, but now all the beings to whom these beautiful garments of thought are to be dressed are truly missing, and so, isn’t that right, the lady isn’t there! The muse does not come; the garments are there. And so one simply explains that one cannot make anything of the entire wardrobe of modern thought. Thinking is not at all meant to intervene in life in any way.

[ 40 ] The only thing missing is the substance—that which should come from the spiritual world. That is precisely what is missing. And so people say: “Oh, come on, that’s all nonsense; these clothes are only there to be looked at.” So let’s just hang them on coat racks and wait to see how, out of this mystical uncertainty, a buxom peasant girl emerges—who, in turn, doesn’t need beautiful clothes; she will simply be, from her very essence, exactly what one would expect.

[ 41 ] This is the state of Spenglerism today: He expects impulses from the indeterminate, the undefined, the undifferentiated—impulses that need no conceptual garments—and he hangs all those conceptual garments on wooden stands so that they are there merely to be looked at; for even if they weren’t there to be looked at, one still couldn’t understand why Oswald Spengler has already written two such thick books, which are, after all, completely unnecessary. After all, what is one to do with two thick books, isn’t that right, if thinking is no longer to be? Spengler simply gives no cause to become sentimental; otherwise, one might find some things rather amusing. That’s where Caesar must come in! But the modern Caesar is the one who has now amassed as much money as possible and brings together all manner of engineers—who, through their very spirit, have become slaves to technology—and now establishes modern Caesarism upon money stained with blood or blood sustained by money. Thinking has no significance at all in this; thinking sits way in the background and preoccupies itself with all sorts of thoughts.

[ 42 ] But isn’t it true that this good man is now writing two thick books that contain some really nice ideas? Yet they’re absolutely unnecessary. You can’t do anything with them after all this. It would have been much more sensible if he had used all that paper to, say, devise a formula for producing the most favorable blood mixtures in the world, or something like that. That would be exactly what, in his view, one should be doing.

[ 43 ] What one is supposed to do doesn’t match at all with what he advocates in his books. When you read the books, you get the feeling that: Well, this man really knows how to speak; he knows what the Decline of the West is like, because he has completely absorbed this whole atmosphere of decline—he is entirely imbued with it himself. If one wanted to hasten the Decline of the West, one could do nothing better than make Oswald Spengler the captain—indeed, the leader—of this decline. For he understands all of this; he himself is, inwardly and intellectually, of this very caliber. And so he is extraordinarily representative of his time. He believes that this entire modern civilization is going to ruin. Well, if everyone acted like him, it would certainly go to ruin. So what he writes must also be true. I simply find that it possesses an immense inner truth.

[ 44 ] That is how things stand. And anyone grounded in anthroposophy should actually take particular notice of a thinker like Oswald Spengler. For taking the spiritual seriously—taking spiritual life seriously—is precisely what anthroposophy aims to do. In anthroposophy, it truly does not matter whether this or that dogma is accepted; what matters is that this spiritual life—this substantial spiritual life—be taken seriously, very seriously indeed, and that this awaken people.

[ 45 ] It is very interesting, you see; Oswald Spengler says: When thinking, a person is awake—he cannot deny that—but what is truly effective comes from sleep, and this is contained in plants and in the plant-like aspect within the human being. What is present within the human being as the plant-like aspect is actually what brings life forth: sleep—that is the living force. Waking brings forth thoughts; but waking merely gives rise to inner tensions.

[ 46 ] Yes, that is really how it has come to this: one of the most brilliant minds of our time suggests something like this: What I do must be planted within me while I sleep, and I don’t really need to wake up at all. It is a luxury that I wake up; it is a complete luxury. I should really just walk around and carry out, while still asleep, whatever comes to mind in my sleep. I should really be sleepwalking. It is a luxury that, while I walk around sleepwalking, there is still a mind up there that continually indulges in this luxury of thinking about the whole thing. What’s the point of that? Why be awake?

[ 47 ] But it is a certain mood. And Spengler, for his part, expresses this mood quite sharply: Modern man does not love this state of wakefulness! Yes, all sorts of images like that come to mind! One might say: When a lecture was given in the early days of the Anthroposophical Society, years ago, there were always people in the front rows who would even make a slight show of sleeping, so that genuine participation would be visible in the auditorium, so that truly devoted participants would be visible. Sleeping—that’s something that’s extraordinarily popular, isn’t it? Well, most people do it quietly, though; on the occasions I mentioned, people were well-behaved in that regard. Unless peculiar snoring sounds are heard, people are well-behaved then, aren’t they—at least quiet. But Spengler—he’s a strange fellow: he rants about the very thing others remain quiet about. The others are sleeping; but the tinsmith says: “One must sleep; one mustn’t stay awake at all.” — And he now uses all his knowledge to deliver a perfectly appropriate speech in favor of sleep. And so what has come to pass is this: that an extraordinarily witty man of our time is actually delivering a perfectly appropriate speech in favor of sleep!

[ 48 ] But this is something one has to be careful about. There’s no need to rant like Spengler, but one should examine this and then come to realize how necessary it is to understand this awakening—this ever-increasing awakening—which is to be brought about precisely through something like the spiritual impulses of anthroposophy.

[ 49 ] It is necessary—and this must be emphasized again and again—that wakefulness, true, innermost spiritual wakefulness, gradually be cherished. That is why Dornach is actually perceived as so unappealing: because it seeks to inspire wakefulness, not sleep, and because it wants to take wakefulness very seriously, to truly infuse everything with wakefulness—wakefulness in art, wakefulness in social life, wakefulness above all in the life of knowledge, wakefulness in the entire practice of life, in everything to which human life is generally inclined.

[ 50 ] And, you see, it really is necessary to draw attention to such things from time to time. For at least in moments like this one, when we are together again to take a brief break from these lectures until our return from the Oxford course, on such occasions, as so often, it must be pointed out that, especially among us, a certain inclination toward this wakefulness must take root—an assimilation of what exists in anthroposophy in order to orient it toward human wakefulness. For that is what we need in all our fields: true wakefulness.

[ 51 ] And wakefulness cannot be achieved without diligence and hard work. If an interest in this state of wakefulness—which anthroposophy actually seeks—does not take root, then we may well organize further conferences, indeed, perhaps continue our nighttime wanderings quite pleasantly, but we will not truly awaken; rather, we will continue to sleep alongside the other sleeping people of our present civilization. And we will not even grasp such significant symptoms that arise in the proper sense—such as this champion of the sleeping state in human development, this Oswald Spengler—for he is the champion of sleep. He is the one who actually always denies that he himself is awake, yet he cries out so passionately for this sleep. It is such a restless sleep. He tosses and turns so terribly and makes such a spectacle out of sleep. He always speaks from within his sleep—and very eloquently, at that—but it is still not right to speak from within one’s sleep. Humanity must awaken.

[ 52 ] And that, precisely, is what we could learn from Spengler: that humanity must awaken; otherwise—otherwise things will just keep going on and on, and more and more people will emerge who are essentially speaking from a state of slumber, uttering wonderful things from that slumber. But this will not lead to any further development of humanity. The only result would be that we continue to develop our Western culture—with its American offshoot—further and further, deeper and deeper into these infirmaries where people no longer want to get up but only want to sleep, and where they speak from within their sleep, delivering beautiful speeches that are then admired by others; but that admiration, too, is merely a form of sleep. That which admires is asleep, and that which is admired is asleep.

[ 53 ] So it is absolutely necessary that we become aware of this need to wake up. Within the Anthroposophical Society, this really ought to be adopted as a kind of most intimate program: We want to wake up! Then we will see people—many people—going about their business in a completely different way, even among the anthroposophists, if they were to be fully, fully awake—awake and refreshed. It is possible to be that way, because anthroposophy can refresh us. Just feel how anthroposophy can refresh us, and how it is not at all suited to people just rolling around in bed and speaking from a state of sleep, but rather how, when we grasp anthroposophy in its essence, so to speak, we can become refreshed—refreshed in all areas: in the realms of art, religion, and science, and in the realm of our entire way of life.

[ 54 ] Try to think about how, during this very time when we are not together, we can now engage in discussions about a sensible awakening, about overcoming Spenglerism. Come up with something better than what Spengler is capable of, and create something that can have an impact on the future, whereas Spengler, with his Spenglerism, only brings about the decline of the West.