The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Many of you, in connection with your stay here and all the activities you now intend to undertake during this stay, are thinking first and foremost of education; not so much school pedagogy, as it is usually understood, but rather the pedagogy that arises when one considers that in our time some new direction must be introduced into the development of humanity, that the entire relationship of the older generation toward the younger must take on a different character—about which one wishes to form ideas and develop feelings. In a sense, one regards the fundamental character of the age as something pedagogical.

[ 2 ] I simply wish to describe an impression that, I believe, many of you can relate to. After all, if one is to view one’s own era in this way at all, one must not merely consider the relationship between the generation that entered the century in the prime of its youth and the older generation, which still carried over something from the last third of the nineteenth century—as I have characterized it in recent days—but one must specifically ask oneself the question: How will we position ourselves in relation to the generation that is coming after us—a generation that, just like the first one after the last third of the nineteenth century, can no longer tolerate the void that has emerged there in the same way that earlier generations were still able to? The coming generation will not even possess within itself what the present youngest generation has had—arising from a certain stance of opposition to the older generation: enthusiasm, albeit for something more or less undefined, but at least enthusiasm nonetheless. What develops further in humanity will have much more the character of a desire, a longing of an indeterminate nature, than was the case with those who were able to draw enthusiasm from a certain position of opposition to the traditional.

[ 3 ] And this makes it necessary to look even more deeply into the human soul than I have already done. I have, after all, already hinted that in the modern development of humanity in the West, awareness of pre-earthly soul existence has been lost. If we take precisely those concepts that, as religious ideas, are closest to the development of the human heart and consider the past centuries of Western development, we must say: for a long time now, humanity has lost sight of life prior to the descent into a physical earthly body. You must try for a moment to form a sense of how immensely different it is when one is imbued with the awareness that something has descended with the human being from divine-spiritual worlds into the physical human body and has united itself with that physical body. If one lacks such an awareness entirely, this gives rise to a very different sense of things, especially in relation to the growing child.

[ 4 ] If we are aware of this, the growing child reveals to us—from its very first breath, or even earlier—something that manifests from the spiritual world. This revelation unfolds day by day, week by week, year by year. Viewed in this way, the child becomes a mystery that reveals itself to us in a completely different way than if we were to assume that we are merely observing the development of a being that began at birth or at conception and that, as people say today, develops from this starting point, from this embryonic beginning.

[ 5 ] Perhaps we will understand each other even better if I point out to you that all of this is connected to the fundamental feeling one has toward the mystery of the world in general. As you know, in earlier times this fundamental sense of the mystery of the world was expressed by the paradigmatic phrase: “Man, know thyself.” This phrase, “Man, know thyself,” is pretty much the only one that points to the actual mystery of the world in a way that withstands the objections that arise when one speaks of a solution to the mystery of the world. Let me express myself somewhat paradoxically in this regard. Let’s suppose that someone had found something they could call a solution to the mystery of the world. What, then, would humanity actually do from the point in its development when this mystery of the world were solved? It would lose all the freshness of striving; all the vitality of striving would cease! It would actually be something extraordinarily bleak to have to tell oneself that the mystery of the world has been solved in terms of knowledge, that one need only look in one book or another, where the solution is given.

[ 6 ] One cannot really say that there aren’t many people who think this way about solving the riddle of the world. They believe that the riddle of the world is a question—or a system of questions—that must be answered with explanations, characteristics, or the like. But just feel the stifling nature of such a view! One truly feels as if frozen at the thought that, here or there, there might be a solution to the riddle of the world in this sense—that one could study the solution to the riddle of the world. This is a truly dreadful, a horrifying thought, in the face of which all life freezes.

[ 7 ] But what lies behind the words “Man, know thyself” conveys something entirely different. It means: Look out at the world! The world is full of riddles, full of mysteries, and every slightest stirring within a human being is a clue to the mysteries of the cosmos in the broadest sense. — One can now point out with absolute certainty where all these riddles are solved, and there is indeed a very brief formula for this insight. One can say, in fact: All the riddles of the world are solved within the human being—again, in the broadest sense. The human being himself, as he walks about alive in the world, is the solution to the riddle of the world! Look at the sun and sense one of the world’s mysteries. Look within yourself and know: the solution to this mystery of the world lies within you. “Man, know thyself, and you will know the world.”

[ 8 ] But by phrasing the formula in this way, one immediately suggests that the answer is nowhere complete. Human beings are indeed the solution to the riddle of the world; but in order to come to know human beings themselves, one is once again faced with an infinity teeming with life, and one will never be finished. We know that we carry the solution to the riddle of the universe within us. But we also know that we will never be done with what we can seek within ourselves. From such a formulation, we know only that we are not given some abstract questions from the universe that are then answered just as abstractly, but rather we know that the entire universe is a question and humanity is an answer; that the questioning nature of the universe has resounded from time immemorial to the present; that the answer to these cosmic questions has resounded from human hearts; but that the questioning will continue to resound into infinitely distant times, and that humanity must learn once again to live out answers into an infinitely distant future. We are not pointed, in a pedantically broad manner, toward something that might be written in a book, but rather we are pointed toward human beings themselves. Yet in the phrase: “Man, know thyself,” something resonates with us from ancient times—when school, church, and the arts were united in the mysteries—that points us toward a realm where one did not learn from formulations, but from that book about the world which, though it must be deciphered, can only be deciphered through endless activity. And this book about the world is called “Man”!

[ 9 ] If one grasps the richness of what I attempted to explore yesterday, one finds that through such a shift in the perception of knowledge—through the way one relates to knowledge—the spark of life itself strikes into the human being’s entire cognitive being. And that is what one needs.

[ 10 ] If we consider the moral development of humanity up to the point at which it became problematic—that is, up to the first third of the fifteenth century—we find that the most diverse impulses were necessary within human beings in order to follow what I characterized yesterday as God-given commandments. When we consider these drives—which prevailed among the most diverse peoples in the most varied eras—we find a wide range of inner impulses, all of which are characterized by the fact that, arising from certain life circumstances, they were oriented like instincts. We can conduct the most interesting studies into how the impulses to follow ancient moral intuitions arise from the family, the tribe, sexual inclination, the necessity of living together in external communities, the pursuit of self-interest, and so on.

[ 11 ] But just as the old moral intuitions have become obsolete in the course of historical development—a point we had to emphasize yesterday—so, too, all these impulses no longer possess the driving force for the individual that they once had. In particular, they will no longer have any power once these self-developed moral intuitions—of which I spoke yesterday—actually arise within human beings, once the course of world history truly calls upon individual human beings, as it were, on the one hand to discover these moral intuitions for themselves through their own inner work, and on the other hand to find the inner strength to awaken the impulses necessary to live in accordance with these moral intuitions. And this leads one to the realization that the old moral impulses will increasingly transform themselves in a certain direction.

[ 12 ] Today we see two of the most important moral impulses emerging, though they are unrecognized and misunderstood by the vast majority of civilized humanity. They are emerging from the depths of the soul. If one attempts to interpret them, one usually arrives at the most erroneous ideas. If one tries to put them into practice, one usually does not know what to do with them; yet they are emerging. With regard to the inner life of the human being, they are: the impulse of moral love; and with regard to human interaction, they are: the moral impulse of trust between people.

[ 13 ] Just as moral love will be necessary for all moral life in the very near future, it was not necessary in the past—neither in intensity nor in nature. Certainly, the saying “Passion and love are the wings of great deeds” also applied in earlier times. But if one is to be truthful rather than merely rhetorical, one must say: That passion and love which spurred people to do this or that were merely a metamorphosis of those other impulses to which I referred earlier. In the future, pure, great love will have to inspire people from within to do what must be the fulfillment of their moral intuitions; and those who do not kindle the fire of love for morality from the depths of their souls—when their moral intuition presents them with the deed that must be done—will feel weak and lacking in will in the face of those moral intuitions.

[ 14 ] See how the times are divided. This is best seen by contrasting what—I would say—the atavistic elements of the old era so often carry over into the present, with what, on the other hand, is just beginning to stir within us like the first light of dawn. You have surely often heard of that beautiful phrase Kant wrote about duty: “Duty! You sublime, great name, which contains nothing pleasing or flattering, but demands submission,” and so on. It was the most powerful characterization one could give of duty, of those impulses that arise precisely from what I have described previously. Here, the content of duty stands as a moral intuition imposed from without, and here, on the other hand, the human being faces this moral intuition in such a way that he must submit to it. It is perceived as moral when the human being submits in such a way that there is no trace of an inner satisfaction in fulfilling duty, but only the cold, stark reality: I must fulfill my duty.

[ 15] As you know, Schiller had already countered Kant’s notion of duty with these words: “I gladly serve my friends, but alas, I do so out of inclination, and so it often gnaws at me that I am not virtuous.” This is how Schiller responded ironically to this categorical imperative.

[ 16 ] You see, this so-called categorical imperative, as it has come down to us from ancient times, from ancient moral impulses, is countered by the demand that humanity, from the depths of the soul, increasingly develop love for that which is to become action, that which is to become a deed. For in the future, humanity might still so often hear the counter-call: “Submit to duty, to that which carries no flattery whatsoever”—but it would not help! Just as one cannot develop infantile mannerisms at the age of sixty, so too can one not, at a later stage of human development, live in a way that was appropriate for an earlier age of humanity. It may well be that one prefers it that way. But that is not the point; what matters is what is necessary and possible within the course of human development. There is simply no room to discuss whether what Kant—as an epigone of ancient times—said in this sentence should be carried over into the future. It cannot be carried over because humanity has moved beyond it and is developing in such a way that action out of love must provide the impetus for the humanity of the future.

[ 17 ] Thus, on the one hand, we gain an understanding of ethical individualism, but on the other hand, we recognize the necessity of knowing that this ethical individualism is sustained by the love that arises from the vision of the action to be carried out. This is viewed from the perspective of the human subject.

[ 18 ] From the perspective of external interactions and social life, the situation presents itself as follows: Today there are people in whom something is stirring—though no longer as a result of humanity’s ongoing development, but rather through all sorts of opinions absorbed from the outside—and they say: “Yes, if one wants to base morality on the individuality of the human being, one destroys social life.” But such a claim has absolutely no substance; it is about as sensible as if someone were to say: “If it rains so-and-so many times in Stuttgart over the course of three months, then nature destroys this or that in the fields.” — One cannot say anything more devoid of substance if one is conscious of a certain responsibility for one’s understanding. In view of the fact that humanity is developing in the direction of individualism, it makes no sense at all to say that ethical individualism destroys society. Rather, the point is to seek out those forces through which the further development of humanity can proceed, because this is necessary for the development of the individual in the spirit of ethical individualism, under which society can be held together and, indeed, revitalized.

[ 19 ] One such force is trust—trust between people. Just as we must appeal to love when we look within ourselves for an ethical future, so too must we appeal to trust when we look at how people interact with one another. We must approach people in such a way that we perceive them as the mystery of the world itself, as the walking mystery of the world. Then we will learn to develop, in the presence of every person, the feelings that draw trust from the very deepest recesses of our soul. Trust in a very concrete sense—individual, uniquely formed—is the hardest thing the human soul can bring forth. But without a pedagogy—a cultural pedagogy—oriented toward trust, human civilization cannot move forward. Looking toward the future, humanity will, on the one hand, have to recognize the necessity of building all social life upon trust, but on the other hand, it will also have to come to terms with the tragedy that lies in the fact that trust cannot take root in the human soul in the appropriate way.

[ 20 ] Oh, my dear friends, whatever people have ever felt in the depths of their souls when they have been disappointed by someone on whom they had placed great trust, all the feelings of this kind that have ever unfolded in the course of human development will be surpassed in tragedy in the future, when people—precisely after their sense of trust has been infinitely deepened—will experience tragic disappointments at the hands of others. This will become the most bitter aspect of life in the future: being disappointed by others. It will become the most bitter experience, not because people have not already been disappointed by others in the past, but because in the future people’s sense of trust and disappointment will deepen immeasurably, because people will place infinite trust in what is brought about in the soul—on the one hand, by the joy of trust, and on the other, by the pain of necessary mistrust. Ethical impulses will penetrate right down to those depths of the soul where they spring directly from trust between people.

[ 21 ] Just as love will inspire the human hand and arm, giving them the inner strength to act, so too must an atmosphere of trust flow into us from the outside so that action may find its way from one person to another. The morality of the future must be rooted in moral love set free from the deepest depths of the human soul, and the social action of the future must be steeped in trust. For if human individuality is to encounter human individuality in morality, this atmosphere of trust will be necessary above all else.

[ 22 ] Thus, we look toward an ethics, a moral outlook for the future, that will say little about what has always been characterized as “old-fashioned ethical intuitions,” but will speak strongly about how a person must develop from childhood onward so that the power of moral love may be awakened within them. And in the pedagogy of the future, teachers and educators will have to impart much to the rising generation through that which has an educational effect in an unspoken way. Much will have to be revealed in education and instruction through that understanding of human nature which does not merely list abstract facts—such as “Human beings consist of this and that, are such and such”—but rather leads one to other people in such a way that one can gain genuine trust in them.

[ 23 ] An understanding of human nature—but not one that makes us indifferent toward our fellow human beings, rather one that fills us with trust—must become the cornerstone of future education as well. For it will be necessary to take seriously, in a new way, that which was once taken seriously in the development of humanity but is no longer taken seriously in the age of intellectualism.

[ 24 ] Even if you go back only as far as Greece, you will find that, for example, the physician felt an extraordinary kinship in his medical art with the man who practiced a priestly vocation, and the priests felt, in a certain sense, a kinship with the physician. A glimmer of this mindset still shines through, albeit in a somewhat chaotic manner, in the personality of Paracelsus, who was so little understood then and is still so little understood today. Today, the sphere of religion is assigned that abstract instruction of humanity in which, in fact, only instructions are given that lead away from real life; for in religious instruction, people are spoken to about what a human being is when he has no body and the like, in a manner that is utterly alien to life. In contrast, there is the other pole of civilization, in which everything else that this civilization produces is distanced as far as possible from the religious.

[ 25 ] Who, for example, still sees healing and curing today as a religious act—an act in which being imbued with spirituality plays a role? Paracelsus still sensed this. For him, the religious aspect extended right into the science of healing. For him, the science of healing was a branch of religion. That was the case in ancient times. Back then, the human being was still a whole, because what he had to do in the service of humanity was imbued with religious impulses. We must—albeit in a different way: through moral intuitions we have developed ourselves, not those given by God—once again arrive at a state where all of life is permeated by this religious impulse. But this will first and foremost have to become evident in the realm of education and instruction. Trust from person to person—that is the great challenge of the future—must permeate social life.

[ 26 ] If we ask ourselves, “What do you need most if you want to be a moral person in the future?” we can only answer: You must have trust in people. — When a child enters the world—that is, when a human being emerges from pre-earthly existence and unites with their physical body in order to use it as an instrument on Earth between birth and death—when a human being, revealing their soul so clearly to us, approaches us as a child, what, then, is it that we must offer them in the form of trust in humanity? Just as certainly as the child is already a human being from the very first stirrings on Earth, so certainly what we offer the child as trust in humanity is still something different from what we offer to people of the same age. When we approach the child as educators or as members of the older generation, this trust in humanity is transformed in a certain way. The child enters earthly existence from a pre-earthly soul-spiritual existence. But what we observe—what reveals itself in a satisfying way from day to day from the world of the soul-spiritual as it permeates the physical—is, after all, the working of that which—if we use the term in its proper modern sense—we may call the Divine.

[ 27 ] We need the Divine once again—the Divine through which human beings were guided from their pre-earthly existence into the present, just as they are guided forward in their earthly existence through their earthly physicality. When we speak of trust in humanity within the sphere of morality, we must—as soon as we speak of that aspect of morality represented by education and instruction—narrow the focus and say: we face the child, whom the divine-spiritual forces have sent down to us, and to whom we stand as those who are to be the solvers of mysteries, with trust in God. Indeed, in the presence of the child, trust in humanity is even transformed into trust in God. And in the future development of humanity, what—I would say—operates in a more neutral manner from person to person will of its own accord take on a religious nuance when it relates to the child or, more generally, to younger people who are yet to be guided into the world in their development. Here we see how, in earthly existence, morality is directly transformed back into a religiosity that finds its expression in everyday life. We can rightly say that in ancient times, all moral life was merely a special case of religious life, since the moral commandments were, in fact, given at the same time as the religious commandments.

[ 28 ] Humanity has passed through the age of abstraction with such things. Now, however, it must re-enter the age of concreteness. Now it must once again experience, at a specific point, how the moral becomes the religious. And in the future, those moral acts that are acts of instruction and education will have to take on a religious character in the modern sense. For pedagogy, my dear friends, is not merely a technical art. Pedagogy is, in essence, also a special chapter of human moral action. Only those who find pedagogy within morality, within ethics, find it in the right way.

[ 29 ] What I have described here as a particular religious nuance of morality essentially takes on its proper hue when we tell ourselves: Life presents itself to us in an enigmatic way. We find the solution to this enigma when we seek the answer in the nature of human beings. — That is indeed where it lies. But the educator is faced with the necessity of continually working toward the solution of this mystery in a way that is full of life. When one learns to feel that, through education and teaching, one is continually working toward the solution of the mystery of the world, then one enters the world in a completely different way than when one merely searches in one’s own mind for all sorts of solutions to the mystery of the world.

[ 30 ] The essence of that sense of pedagogy with which you may have come here is that you carry this particular character of pedagogy—as a sense—out into the world with you. This sense will enable you to position yourself in the world in such a way that you will not merely look at one side and ask: What tragedy has befallen the youth who had to follow in the footsteps of their elders? — But you will also, looking toward the future, ask: What vital forces must I awaken within myself so that I can properly look toward those who will come after me? — For they, in turn, will look back upon those who came before them. Anything that constitutes a youth movement in any form, if it looks into life with full responsibility, must have a Janus-like duality; it must not only be able to look at the demands we have of our elders, but must also be able to look at the as-yet-undefined demands that are rushing toward us with immense force—demands that the coming generation will place upon us. Not merely opposing the older generation, but also looking creatively toward the future: that is the true motto for a genuine youth movement. Opposition may initially have been a catalyst for enthusiasm. But the driving force will come only from the will to create, to shape the future creatively within the current course of human development.