The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] First of all, I would like to say a few words of welcome to you this evening to express the feelings stirred within me by the fact that you have gathered here. Your spokesperson has just eloquently described the motivations that have brought you together here. I believe that much of what I will have to say to you over the next few days will have to be a kind of interpretation of what is present within you as more or less intense inner spiritual experiences—and which you hope will be brought to a state of true spiritual clarity—spiritual, as opposed to merely conceptual—among you.

[ 2 ] It is quite true that what has brought you together is to be found in the depths of your souls. These depths have truly been gripped by forces that, in the very special way they are at work today, are of recent origin. One could say that these forces, in the way they are currently at work within you, are scarcely more than a century old; yet they are forces that are already revealing themselves very clearly today to those who are able to perceive them, and that may become increasingly evident in the very near future. In the coming days, we will attempt to characterize these forces—and the opposing forces that preceded them, the outdated elements of the last third of the nineteenth century—in a deeply inner way. Today, I would first like to provide an external description of these forces.

[ 3 ] I think you all feel that you can no longer relate to what an older generation has to say to the world today. You see, as early as the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s—and to a greater extent than had ever been the case before—people pointed out, both artistically and theoretically, the deep chasm that lay between what was then the older generation and the younger generation. But everything that was said back then by poets and others about this gap and this chasm pales in comparison to what is at stake today. Today, the reality is that, fundamentally, the younger and older generations speak entirely different languages of the soul—much more different than people realize. This is not to speak of any kind of guilt that an older generation might bear toward the younger one. To speak of guilt in this way would itself belong to the conceptual frameworks of the older generation—and, moreover, to their philistine ones. So we do not wish to accuse; but we do want to be aware of how thoroughly souls have changed over the past two to three decades, particularly within the context of Western development. For in our present time, many things are coming into conflict.

[ 4 ] I recently gave a series of lectures in England, in Oxford. Oxford, with its university-style education, is something quite special within the context of Western culture. One senses this uniqueness in the fact that in Oxford—a place so deeply rooted in the intellectual development of the West—a piece of the Middle Ages, by no means unappealing but rather appealing and admirable in many respects, extends into the present. We were shown around by a friend who is a “graduate” of the University of Oxford, and it is customary there for a “graduate” to enter the university only in a gown and square cap. After we had walked around with him, I saw him again on the street, and the next morning I had to describe to the English audience the impression I had when our friend arrived in his academic gown and cap, because it really struck me as symptomatic. All of this, in connection with everything else I had experienced, prompted me to use this incident as an illustration and to explain why a social transformation is necessary, reaching deep into the spiritual life of the present. I said: When our friend met me on the street, I thought to myself that if I were to write a letter right then, under the immediate impression of this encounter, I wouldn’t know what date to put on the letter; I would be tempted to write, say, the twelfth or thirteenth century, in order to remain in the style in which such a thing is possible. There, something has truly been preserved that is not of the present. In Central Europe, nothing of the sort is to be found. But what prevails in the dominant intellectual life of Central Europe is, in turn, a product of the development stemming from what I have just characterized.

[ 5 ] Here in Central Europe, people have pretty much stopped wearing tailcoats, except on very formal occasions, when directors and other officials are even required to wear them—much to their chagrin. Our friend, who was also a lawyer, told me: “If I were to show you around London, I would have to appear as a lawyer and wear a wig instead of a beret.”

[ 6 ] You see, something has crept in here—something that has grown old, but which was still alive in past centuries. So it really is the Middle Ages in the present! Here, we have apparently outgrown what has grown old, but which was still alive in the previous generation. First, we cast off the costume; then, in a swift leap, we adopted a somewhat different way of thinking—one that has, however, veered entirely into materialism. These contrasts between Central and Western Europe are extraordinarily great. This is a truly significant phenomenon, which I would prefer to characterize with a fact rather than with abstract words.

[ 7 ] In Central Europe, we have forgotten Goethe and embraced Darwin, even though Goethe grasped in their deepest essence the insights to which Darwin only superficially alludes. I could cite many similar examples. You might object that Goethe has not been forgotten, since there is, for example, a Goethe Society. I don’t think you’ll say that; therefore, I won’t dwell on it any further. Goethe and the Central European spiritual impulse that carried Goethe to prominence were, in fact, already forgotten by the second half of the nineteenth century. But these are all merely symptoms. The main point is that, along the path taken by Central Europe and its spiritual life, the leading centers of learning in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries emancipated themselves from the spirit that still prevailed in the West. Ever since that time, when these Central European institutions—the intellectual leaders of their day—emancipated themselves, Central Europe has lost—not from human beings, but from consciousness—the spiritual, that which storms through the soul and pulses through it. That is why Goethe, too, could be forgotten.

[ 8 ] In the West, it has been preserved in tradition and in external forms; in Central Europe, particularly within the German-speaking world, it has been pushed down into the depths of the soul and has not filled people’s consciousness. This was already very pronounced in the last third of the nineteenth century.

[ 9 ] If you take a close look at history, you can find some curious things in the last third of the nineteenth century. If we examine what appeared in the literature and writings of that time—works read by all those who participated in shaping intellectual life—we find that in the last third of the nineteenth century, extending into the mid-1880s and 1890s, a style quite different from today’s prevailed in journals and even in newspapers throughout the German-speaking world. Back then, the style was one that refined thoughts, gave them form, and placed value on following certain trains of thought; it even placed value on beauty in thought. Today, in the relevant fields, our style has become crude and coarse compared to that of the last third of the nineteenth century. One need only pick up any work—whatever it may be—from the 1860s or 1870s by people who were not scholars but merely generally educated, and you will find this great difference. The forms of thought have changed. But what is crude and coarse today has emerged precisely from what was often finely chiseled and witty in the last third of the nineteenth century within scholarly circles. It was precisely then that we saw something looming on the horizon; and those who today belong to the older generations—without having grown old themselves in the sense of today’s spiritual life—have also experienced it: What back then so terribly permeated all spiritual life is what I would like to call, symbolically characterized, the “phrase.”

[ 10 ] It was from this phrase that thoughtlessness, a lack of conviction, and a lack of will developed—all of which are now on the path to becoming ever greater and greater. First and foremost, these things arose from the phrase. You can also trace, from an external perspective, how the phrase took shape, primarily in the last third of the nineteenth century. You need not find the phenomena that arise here and there in a given era appealing. But even if they are not to your liking, you can still observe them in terms of their significance for the broader human context.

[ 11 ] Take the heartfelt, wonderful tones found in the first third of the nineteenth century—for example, in German Romanticism—and take the discourse on spiritual matters by someone like Jakob Grimm, which at times seems to waft forth like fresh, healthy forest air, and you will say: There was still no trace of empty rhetoric in Central Europe back then. That did not make its way into Central Europe until the last third of the nineteenth century. Anyone with a feel for such things already knows how gradually the age of empty rhetoric came about. And where empty rhetoric begins to reign, the truth experienced deep within the soul dies. And empty rhetoric goes hand in hand with something else: people can no longer find one another in social life.

[ 12 ] My dear friends! When the “sound that comes from the mouth” lacks soul—as is the case with a mere phrase—then we walk alongside one another as human beings yet are unable to understand one another. This is a phenomenon that once again reached its peak in the last third of the nineteenth century—not in the depths of the soul, but in consciousness. People became strangers to one another, and increasingly so. The fact that calls for social impulses and reforms grew ever louder at that time is a symptom of the fact that people had become antisocial. Because they no longer felt the social, they were driven to cry out for it. An animal that is hungry does not cry out for food because it has food in its stomach, but because it lacks it. The soul that cries out for the social does not do so because it is imbued with the social, but because it lacks that feeling. Thus, human beings gradually became the beings of whom we are unaware today; but to the greatest extent, the prevailing reality between people is that they no longer feel the need to connect with others on a spiritual level. People simply pass each other by. Each person is interested only in themselves.

[ 13 ] What, then, became particularly common in the last third of the nineteenth century and carried over from that period into the twentieth century as a social attitude among people? There is a phrase you hear people say over and over again today: “That is my point of view.” — Everyone has a point of view. As if it mattered what point of view one holds! For a point of view in spiritual life is just as temporary as a point of view in physical life. Yesterday I was in Dornach; today I am here. These are two different points of view in physical life. What matters is having a healthy will and a healthy heart so that one can view the world from any point of view. But people today do not want what they can gain from these different points of view; rather, what is more important to them is the selfish assertion of their own points of view. Yet this cuts oneself off from one’s fellow human beings in the most rigorous way. If someone says something, one does not engage with what they say, because, after all, one has one’s own point of view. But this does not bring people closer together. We draw closer to one another when we know how to place our various points of view within a shared world. But this shared world is completely absent today. A shared world for humanity can only be found in the spirit. And that is lacking.

[ 14 ] That is the second point, and the third is: Essentially, over the course of the nineteenth century, we as Central Europeans have gradually become quite weak-willed—weak-willed in the sense that thought no longer has the power to steel the will so that human beings, who are, after all, thinking beings, are able to shape the world out of their thoughts.

[ 15 ] When it is said that thoughts are pale, one should not conclude from this that one does not need thoughts to live as a human being. Thoughts simply shouldn’t be so weak that they remain stuck up in the head. They should be strong enough to flow through the heart and through the whole person all the way down to the feet; for it is truly better when thoughts, rather than mere red and white blood cells, pulse through our blood. It is certainly valuable for a person to have a heart as well as thoughts. But what is most valuable is for thoughts to have a heart. We have, however, lost that entirely. We can no longer cast off the thoughts that the last four or five centuries have brought; but these thoughts must also acquire a heart.

[ 16 ] And look, now I want to tell you, in very concrete terms, what lives within your souls. You have grown up and come to know the older generation. This older generation expressed itself through words. All you could hear were clichés. In this older generation, you encountered an antisocial element. One person would pass by another. And in this older generation, you also witnessed the powerlessness of thought to stir the will and the heart.

[ 17 ] People were able to get by with empty phrases, antisocial conventionalism, and the mere routine of daily life—rather than a community of hearts and lives—as long as the legacy of previous generations remained. That legacy had largely disappeared by the end of the nineteenth century. Thus, there was nothing left for them that could speak to their own souls. But you sensed that deep within Central Europe, there is something that has the deepest need to find its way back to what was once lived beyond mere phrases, beyond convention, beyond routine: the need to experience truth once more, to experience human community once more, to feel the heartfelt depth of the entire spiritual life once more. “Where is that?” a voice within you asks.

[ 18 ] And even if this was not stated clearly and explicitly, one often heard, during the dawn of the twentieth century, when a young person and an old person stood side by side, the older one say: “That is my point of view.” — Ah, as the nineteenth century drew to a close, people gradually all—every single one of them—had their own point of view. One was a materialist, another an idealist, a third a realist, a fourth a sensualist, and so on. But gradually, under the rule of empty phrases, convention, and routine, these points of view had come to rest on a crust of ice. The intellectual ice age had arrived. But the ice was thin, and since people’s points of view had lost all sense of their own weight, they did not break through the crust of ice. Moreover, they were cold at heart; they did not warm the crust of ice either. The younger ones stood beside the older ones—the younger ones with warm hearts that had not yet spoken, but were warm nonetheless. That broke through the crust of ice. And the younger one did not feel, “This is my standpoint”—but rather, the younger one felt, “I am losing the ground beneath my feet.” The warmth of my own heart breaks this ice, which has solidified from empty phrases, convention, and routine. — Even if this feeling was not clearly articulated—for today nothing is clearly articulated—this phenomenon has nevertheless existed for a long time and continues to exist in the present.

[ 19 ] The person who today tries to find his way into the present era based on his scholarly education faces the greatest difficulty in this regard. What presents itself to him are thoughts that are quite deliberately sought after as “heartless” thoughts. With regard to certain things, people have gradually been led to consciously strive for heartless thoughts. — When speaking from the spirit, one must sometimes phrase things somewhat differently than is done today, when people say extraordinarily logical, philosophical, or scientific things about this or that. But this is sometimes something that, from a spiritual perspective, is highly indecent. And among such things—which are highly indecent from a spiritual standpoint—is, for example, the following:

[ 20 ] People say today: “A scientist who does not interpret observations and experiments in a completely logical manner, who does not proceed from one thought to the next—as they are supposed to do only according to properly established methods—is not a true scientist.” Anyone who doesn’t do that isn’t a real thinker. — But what if, my dear friends, reality were an artist and mocked our established dialectical and experimental methods—what if nature itself were guided by artistic impulses? Then, for nature’s sake, human science would have to become an artist; otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to keep up with nature! But that is not, of course, the standpoint of today’s scientists. Their standpoint is: Whether nature is an artist or a “dreamer” is of no concern to us; we dictate how science is to be conducted. What business is it of ours whether nature is an artist? It is none of our business at all, for that is not our standpoint.

[ 21 ] To begin with, I can only describe a few of my feelings to illustrate the chaotic jumble of emotions that was swirling within as the twentieth century approached—that century which, my younger friends, has subjected you to severe inner trials of the soul. The external events we have faced—including the terrible, horrific World War—are, after all, merely the outward expression of what prevails within the souls of today’s civilized world. That is simply the way it is. We must become aware of this. We must also become aware that, above all, we must seek something for which the deepest essence of the soul—as your speaker quite rightly said—longs, particularly in Germany, but which, precisely within Germany, has been denied and pushed out of consciousness the more recent times have approached. We have lost not only Goethe, but also much from the Middle Ages—the era from which Goethe emerged—and we must rediscover it. And to the question: Why have you come here today?—I would like to answer: To find that. For you are actually searching for something that is already there. Goethe answered the question of which mystery is the most important: “The obvious one!” But it can only become apparent by opening one’s eyes to it. — These are primarily inner matters, inner longings, that concern you, if you understand yourselves correctly. And whether the individual must express themselves through education or in some other way is not the point. What matters is that everything people are seeking today—those who, in turn, wish to become fully human—be sought and found from the common center of genuine humanity. To that end, let us come together right here.

[ 22 ] Isn’t it true that it’s quite a different matter when, in earlier centuries, people—let’s take a radical example—burned someone like Giordano Bruno at the stake? After all, that was the customary way of refuting truths back then. Compare that—to take an example from the field of science—with the case of the Swabian physician Julius Robert Mayer. While on a world tour in South Asia, he arrived at a concept through his observation of blood that is today referred to as the equivalent of heat, or the conservation of energy. In 1844, he wrote this down, and his treatise was rejected by the most famous scientific journal of the time, the Poggendorf’sche Annalen, as amateurish and unsuitable! And because Julius Robert Mayer was so passionate about his discovery that he would start talking about it whenever he met someone on the street, his colleagues in the field thought he was suffering from fixed ideas. As is well known, he was declared insane and committed to a sanatorium. Today, you can visit Heilbronn and see the Robert Mayer monument there. People today say he discovered the greatest law of physics in modern times. For all I care, all of that could have happened. Error is, of course, something to which humanity is prone. What matters, however, is how clichéd, how conventional, and how much such things are judged today simply out of the routine of daily life.

[ 23 ] Consider the accounts that describe the terribly tragic case of this man who was so horribly ridiculed. Read what was written about it in the nineteenth century and compare it with a contemporary account. What happened there cannot be dismissed with abstract descriptions. Anyone with a heart who reads or hears today’s accounts will feel all inner strength ebb away, and a terrible impulse will well up in their soul.

[ 24 ] People must once again be able to feel strongly: beautiful—ugly, good—evil, truthful—deceitful. They must learn to feel these things not weakly, but strongly, so that they stand behind them with their whole being, so that there is once again passion in their words. Then empty phrases will shatter, and one will once again feel the other person within oneself, not merely oneself; then convention will shatter, and one can once again let the passion of one’s heart pulse through one’s thoughts. Then the mere routine of life will shatter, and life will become human once more.

[ 25 ] This is what the youth of the twentieth century felt. They sought, but found themselves in chaos. These things cannot be characterized by external history. At the end of the nineteenth century, we have a major turning point in the inner development of humanity. The souls born shortly before or shortly after the turn of the century are internally structured quite differently from those born in the last third of the nineteenth century. One can speak of this and make certain comparisons if, despite the years piling up in the course of life, one has not allowed oneself to grow old.

[ 26 ] So tomorrow, let us first see how the new generation has not joined the old generation, but is separated from it by a chasm. We do not wish to accuse, but only to understand. I do not even wish to accuse when I speak of something like the great tragedy that befell Julius Robert Mayer. Many have experienced the same. So this is not meant to be an accusation; but we must understand. That is the most important thing: to understand what one experiences deep within; for this cannot go on much longer—this state of nothing but an unclear search. What must come is a certain light that seeks to pour out over this vague searching, but without turning it into something dry or cold. One must be able to find light while preserving the warmth of the heart.

[ 27 ] I do not wish to present anything mystical to you in any field, but rather to reveal the truth everywhere—the truth in the Spirit. As you know, among the many catchphrases that gained prominence in the nineteenth century is this one: The great pioneer of the nineteenth century is said to have ended his life by calling out to posterity, “More light!” I will not tell you that, for Goethe did not say it. Goethe lay in his deck chair, breathing heavily, and said, “Open the shutters!” That is the truth. The other is the cliché that grew out of it. Perhaps Goethe’s actual words are more useful than the phrase: “More light!” It was precisely because of what could be found at the end of the nineteenth century that the feeling arose: those who came before us had, after all, shut the shutters! And then the younger generation came along and felt stifled; they felt that the shutters—which the older generation had shut so tightly—had to be opened. Yes, my dear friends, I would like to promise you that, even when I am old, I will continue to speak about how we can now try to pry open those shutters. So let’s continue this discussion tomorrow.