The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. The Three Main Questions for the Anthroposophical Youth Movement

[ 1 ] My dear friends! I think I can safely assume that you are all aware of this appeal to the members of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany. As you have seen from it, there is a recognition within the circles of the Anthroposophical Society that the course—which until now has been steered primarily from Stuttgart—must now be altered, and that there is indeed an awareness that such a change in direction is necessary. The details involved will, of course, be discussed at the delegates’ assembly. I believe you will be particularly interested in everything that is about to take place. You found the Society in a certain state when, due to the external circumstances of your life, you yourself sought the path to anthroposophy. You imagined that somewhere there must be found what a young person seeks from the depths of their soul but cannot find in the institutions of today’s world. You were placed within these institutions and found that what has emerged from recent history does not correspond to what is actually demanded of humanity from the human soul. Perhaps you sought where this demand for true humanity would be fulfilled, and ultimately you believed you could find this in the Anthroposophical Society. Now, some things did not correspond to the facts as they stood. To begin with, it was certainly not all of you who somehow turned this discrepancy into a conflict. You did indeed find some things unsatisfactory, but at first you stopped short of going beyond merely noting this dissatisfaction. In contrast, even in light of past and recent events within the Anthroposophical Society itself, we must face the fact that the Anthroposophical Society has simply failed to keep pace with the development of anthroposophy, and we must consider to what extent something entirely new must be created, or whether the old Anthroposophical Society should be carried forward with a completely new impulse.

[ 2 ] This was envisaged by the individuals who were involved in leadership to a greater or lesser extent, including some past transgressions—which mostly consisted of omissions and bureaucratic formalities—and to move away from certain bureaucratic formalities, and to make an attempt, in agreement with the representatives of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany, to first lay the foundation upon which the Society can continue.

[ 3 ] The fact is that in Stuttgart, developments in recent years have brought together a large number of outstanding workers. As individuals, they are, of course, exceptional people; but when gathered together, they form a truly great movement in their own right. But as one of the leading figures here has already said, everyone gets in each other’s way. In many respects, that has actually been the source of the lack of progress here. Each individual has fulfilled their role quite well. One can be highly satisfied with the Waldorf School. But the actual Anthroposophical Society—despite the presence of the Anthroposophists—has essentially gradually disappeared; it began to dissolve, not even—one might say—with satisfaction, but rather with discontent. This state of affairs must be brought to an end if the Society is not to disintegrate completely.

[ 4 ] You have obviously noticed this very clearly and have subsequently formed your own views. But it was, after all, necessary for the Anthroposophical Society to reshape itself, moving away from its old foundations. For, after all, the bulk of the Anthroposophical Society represents the work of twenty-three years. Many of those involved are in a completely different situation and do, after all, find something already in place: even if the branch dissolves, the individual anthroposophists remain, and anthroposophy continues to spread on its own; for example, Ms. Wolfram, who led the branch in Leipzig for many years and then stepped down from the leadership, recently founded a local group of the “League for a Free Spiritual Life,” in deliberate contrast to the local anthroposophical circle.

[ 5 ] The fact that simply replacing the old leadership with young leaders is not enough is evident in Leipzig, where the current chairperson emerged from the student body. A balance must therefore be struck between what has been built up over two decades and the new energy brought in by the younger generation.

[ 6 ] The appeal is, after all, intended to represent this in the proper way. Many members of the Anthroposophical Society have sought a source of comfort in this Society; they always found it very unpleasant when it was necessary to speak out against external opposition. Sometimes it was necessary to use harsh words. But this will be unavoidable in the future as well, for the opposition is taking on ever more savage forms. A peculiar defensive stance must therefore be adopted. We must not lose sight of this. It is difficult for the older members to be good anthroposophists now that the soothing element has become a habit for them.

[ 7 ] As soon as one lives according to anthroposophy in such a way that one experiences things as if out of habit, this is a very bad thing. Anthroposophy is, after all, something that must actually be acquired anew every day; there is no other way to have anthroposophy. One cannot simply rely on what one has once set out for oneself. And it is precisely this difficulty—the fact that human beings are, as we used to say when I was very young, creatures of habit—that is the source of the difficulties faced by the old Anthroposophical Society. For anthroposophy must not become a habit. You will, of course, encounter the difficulty that anthroposophy demands that one rise above everything that is merely egoistic in the cognitive sense. Human beings can, of course, be egoistic, just like other living beings. But anthroposophy and egoism are incompatible. One can be a tolerable philistine if one is egoistic—even a tolerable human being. If, as an anthroposophist, one is selfish, then one becomes entangled in constant contradictions. This is because human beings do not actually live on Earth with their entire being. When they descend from a pre-earthly existence to Earth, a part of them still remains in the astral realm, so that when a person wakes up in the morning, what enters into them is not the whole person; for what sinks below comes precisely from the supersensible human being. The human being is not entirely on Earth; he leaves a certain part of his existence in the supersensible realm. And connected to this is the fact that there cannot actually be a completely satisfying social order. Such a social order can only arise from earthly conditions. Within such a social order, human beings cannot become entirely happy.

[ 8 ] I have said it time and again: the threefold social order is not paradise on earth, but it points to an organism that is possible in and of itself; for otherwise it would be a deception, since human beings are not merely earthly beings. It is this fact that one must truly hold fast to in order to truly feel one’s whole humanity; and that is why a person can never be satisfied with a purely materialistic worldview if they feel their full humanity within themselves. Only when we truly feel this—when we feel that we cannot be entirely grounded in the earth, that we need something for our supersensible human nature—are we truly ready for anthroposophy.

[ 9 ] You have evidently sensed something like this quite instinctively, and as a result you have joined the Anthroposophical Society and will have to realize that this fact is, to a greater or lesser extent, the source of your difficulty. For while, on the one hand, anthroposophy can never become a habit, on the other hand it is necessary that anthroposophy not be absorbed into a being that truly originates from the merely earthly. For that which is absorbed into egoism is connected with the earthly. A person therefore becomes worse as a human being if they are both supersensitive and selfish: a supersensitive being is entirely transformed into the character of a sensory being. Spiritual feeling and perception are incompatible with selfishness. That is where the obstacle begins. Well, but that is also the point where the anthroposophical movement converges with what today’s youth are truly seeking, given that all connection with the spiritual world has indeed been lost. And now the external institutions are there. Young people are fleeing them and seeking an awareness of their own humanity. Out of this feeling, you must simply try to make do with what is already there and feel your way through your own inner life. You must hold the difficulties you encounter together with the difficulties others face; then a path will be found so that, in the near future, we may indeed have a strong Anthroposophical Society—including within the circle seeking innerization—and a strong anthroposophical movement.

[ 10 ] If you follow this path, you will have to endure many hardships and difficulties, for humanity does not want such a movement. You still have much ahead of you before you are truly ready—before you are firmly committed to this cause with your whole being. Then anthroposophy will assert itself under all circumstances. The collapse of the civilized world is so severe that Europe will not have much time left unless it turns to the spirit. Only from the spirit can an ascent come! Therefore, the spiritual must be sought at all costs, and in this striving you have done the right thing; you have set out on the right path. The task now is to begin the work for the near future. And we have gathered here today to hear more about your ideas and how your intentions will take shape.

[ 11 ] A participant asks how scientific work should be conducted today.

[ 12 ] Rudolf Steiner: When it comes to science, there is actually nothing present of what will have to be there in the future. That is not to say that there is absolutely nothing there. In all fields of science, there is, in fact, the necessary external knowledge of facts required to penetrate into those areas that must truly exist in the future if uncorrupted human souls are to emerge in the future. There are already a number of scientific fields with significant findings, ranging from the smallest collections all the way up to the London Museum. However, current researchers cannot make use of these findings in the sense of a science of the future, since the people who have attained positions today through the world order or the social order are inwardly dead. They do not know what to do with the factual material, since they have arrived at this material as if through a kind of automatic development.

[ 13 ] The difficulty for anthroposophists is not that it would be impossible to work in an anthroposophical way—the overarching ideas and spiritual insights already exist—but rather that what is needed today for scientific work, namely the factual material, is held by those who cannot make use of the facts. Thus it happens that those who should actually be laying the foundation for cultural content are left empty-handed, and that the factual material is monopolized by people who cannot make use of it. Consequently, the factual material is not presented to young students at universities in a way that teaches them to view it with the proper perspective; rather, when, for example, they are shown a skeleton in zoology or a plant in botany, and so on, they actually learn nothing from it. What they do learn from these examples is: here is the skull bone, here is the shoulder bone, there is the shin bone, and so on. One could describe a table or a machine in exactly the same way. A skeleton, for example, is not shown to young scholars in a way that would give them the sense that it has grown; rather, it is presented to them like a machine that can be taken apart into its individual parts.

[ 14 ] If one first sharpens one’s soul-imbued gaze in the proper way, one immediately sees—for example, when looking at the spine of a dog’s skeleton from back to front— The power of the moon is at work in the rear section, whereas, if one then moves on to the skull, one sees the power of the sun at work there; and in addition, the power of the earth is at work within the flow of the legs. This is something that can be seen directly, provided that people are not prevented from seeing it by the fact that they have not been trained to perceive it in the first place. What I just said—one should be able to see it in the same way that one immediately recognizes a sculpture meant to represent a human being and reminiscent of one: “That is a human being.” In the same way, one should also be able to see in a dog’s skeleton what solar and lunar forces are at work within it. One simply needs to have been given the necessary background knowledge.

[ 15 ] Those who have been given the means to understand the facts, however, cannot make use of them. That is indeed the case. But those who actually need the scientific means do not have them. This is precisely what gives rise to the statement: “There is nothing there.” The opposite parallel is also possible: “Everything is there.” That is the immense difficulty in finding one’s way in this matter. Unless today’s student, through particularly favorable karma—through the very way his soul is guided—comes to realize that a spiritual world exists, he will be led away from the spiritual world, and the very fact that a spiritual world exists will simply seem ridiculous to him. For example, today’s student is perfectly clear that he must look for the germ in the mother’s body, but it does not occur to him that a human germ or an animal germ must be viewed as it arises from the elements of reality—namely, that germination is based on the fact that, at a certain point in the mother’s organism, the protein breaks down, but is immediately halted in its decomposition by the fact that cosmic forces begin to act upon it, and the entire macrocosm expresses itself as a miniature within the protein that is decomposing but immediately reassembling, so that the form of the universe is indeed manifested in the development of the embryo. The mother’s body merely provides the material that must first break down so that the macrocosm can rebuild it. If one views germination through the lens of modern science, it is exactly as if one were to take a paper rose and claim to have just plucked it from a rosebush. These matters reveal how a thorough reversal is necessary in all fields of science, as well as in the arts and religion. After all, the most egregious materialism prevails in the religious sphere as well.

[ 16 ] Conditions in Germany are now particularly difficult. Over time, people are losing all their courage to live. But this courage to live can come only from the supersensible world. Doubt is entirely possible; it arises from the sensory world. The courage to overcome doubt comes from the supersensible world. And it takes courage to view things in the right way. In the course on natural science that I gave in Dornach at Christmas, I pointed out the fact that where atoms come into being, there is death. Atomism is the science of what has died. Today’s science is drawing closer to the anthroposophical view of natural science through the observation of many facts. Everywhere one can find facts that point toward spiritual science. In radium, for example, we have the most striking case of decaying matter, which produces disintegrating atoms. Everywhere there are facts that lead into the spiritual realm, but external science, for lack of courage, rejects this path into the spiritual.

[ 17 ] In the economy, too, it is the case today that since the 19th century we have had a global economy instead of many national economies. The global economy already moves at a much faster pace than the national economy; this slow pace of the national economy can be observed even on the smallest scale. The trains that run through the national economy travel more slowly than those arriving in Stuttgart today—that is, those driven by the global economy. And if one now wishes to return from the global economy to the national economy, this can only mean the destruction of what has already been achieved and what currently exists.

[ 18 ] A participant asks how one might develop a relationship with architecture and sculpture.

[ 19 ] Rudolf Steiner: This depends very much on one’s worldview. Today’s worldview, which is based solely on mere logic and sensory observation, must necessarily imagine that the world is boarded up somewhere. People have set external limits on nature that cannot be transcended. In logic, one has the inner laws that human beings give themselves, entirely independent of nature. All knowledge, even purely scientific knowledge, must flow into the purely artistic. One must train oneself to become an artist, so that one shapes forms as they are shaped in nature. But one learns this as soon as one reaches the point where nature itself becomes an artist. One must also deepen one’s understanding of nature within oneself to such an extent that it becomes possible to view plants, animals, and human beings solely as artists. Only then does one learn to recognize the infinitely fascinating static and dynamic relationships that the human body alone already embodies. Then one will see how every bone, so to speak, constitutes a system of beams; how there is a difference between standing facing forward with legs spread apart and standing with one leg forward in a striding stance. Every human being is, in and of themselves, a most exquisite structure. The ancient religious traditions taught their initiates the marvelous way in which the human being is embedded within the world through their own dynamic and static relationships. When one looks at a Buddha statue, one sees in it the dynamics and statics of the human being. Because the legs are positioned wide beneath the upper body, the structure and statics of the upper body are revealed and particularly emphasized. To the extent that one studies the human being in motion and while standing, one comes to understand the form of architecture. A perfect structure is nothing other than the perfect standing and walking of the human being. Every culture has interpreted and represented this static and dynamic aspect of the human being in different ways through its architecture. Assyrian-Babylonian culture represented the proclamation of the Logos more through the human figure’s forward-leaning posture, while Greek culture did so through calm standing. One need only understand the way in which the human being stands within the world to recognize all architectural forms in a living way. Today, architectural imagination is, after all, very limited. And yet today’s architectural style must be one born out of the human experience of the self, one that flows from “Know thyself.” This has been attempted at the Goetheanum.

[ 20 ] If one moves from the dynamics of the human body to its proportions, one moves from architecture to sculpture. Sculpture is the experience of human proportions. To move from architecture to sculpture means a transition from movement to the human form. The more our understanding of the human being advances, the more art—and the more sophisticated architecture and sculpture—will be possible that is closely attuned to the human being. However, in order to make this transition to the human form possible, a social life built on selflessness and love—one that is self-sustaining—is necessary in today’s world. The ancient Greek could still feel his own form through his inner presence in the world. Modern man must, in observing another human being, find—in a synthetic and constructive way—the plasticity that is necessary in our time. The ancient Greek did not need to observe another human being; he found plasticity through the experience of his own body.

[ 21 ] Art is based on the revelation of secret forces of nature; art is necessary for understanding human beings and nature. Thus, what needs to be brought into contemporary sculpture is a living artistic vision of the human being. One must view the human being in such a way that one sees, on the one hand, how the Luciferic life manifests itself in the form of the head—as I attempted to depict in the group sculpture at the Goetheanum—and, on the other hand, how Ahriman manifests itself as a counterpole in the hardening of the bony skeleton, and how the interplay of both then forms the ideal human being. We must regain the human form.

[ 22 ] Hebrew culture has deeply embodied the moral impulses inherent in its religion. However, it did not dare to create an image of its God. Gradually, through the course of development, people arrived at a logical-empirical conception of human nature and subsequently lost their artistic sensibility. Thus, there is no longer a convergence between worldview and art. On the one hand stands the logical-empirical worldview; on the other, artistic imagination.

[ 23 ] No connection has yet been established between the concept of laws detached from humanity on the one hand and artistic arbitrariness on the other. The architecture and sculpture of the future will have to be created based on an understanding of humanity in its entirety.

[ 24 ] A participant: On the difficulties students face in making a name for themselves through anthroposophical work.

[ 25 ] Rudolf Steiner: The Anthroposophical Society must learn to recognize how important it is that the achievements made within its framework not go unnoticed; it must come to acknowledge these achievements. It must learn to value works such as those by Dr. von Baravalle or Caroline von Heydebrand’s pamphlet “Against Experimental Psychology and Pedagogy.” Gradually, it must also come to pass that—assuming our research institutes have already solved the tasks involved in the courses and cycles in the natural sciences—even our opponents will say that there is something in the work being done within the Anthroposophical Society that commands their respect. We must train ourselves to recognize human achievements. Today, a student writing an anthroposophical dissertation is rejected! The Society must become a place where such matters become “a matter of conscience,” so that it can no longer happen that a professor rejects an anthroposophically oriented thesis for these reasons. The research institutes, staffed by practitioners, must stand behind this effort, so that a student working on a seminar paper or a doctoral dissertation can see it through to completion. The Anthroposophical Society must evolve to the point where a professor is compelled to accept an anthroposophically oriented seminar paper or dissertation—provided it is substantive enough—because he fears that otherwise he will have the Anthroposophical Society on his back.

[ 26 ] Rudolf Steiner asks whether representatives of the youth will attend the Delegates' Assembly.

[ 27 ] A representative of the youth speaks at the delegates’ assembly. Rudolf Steiner: It would be good if, in as concise a form as possible and with the utmost seriousness, something were presented regarding the three main questions that must be addressed here:

[ 28 ] First: What is the current state of the student and youth movement?

[ 29 ] Second: What does someone who experiences their full humanity through anthroposophy do at universities?

[ 30 ] Third: What do academics and younger people expect from the Anthroposophical Society?

[ 31 ] Of course, these things must be made effective by grasping them in a compelling way. Nietzsche vividly demonstrated the state of our educational institutions at the turn of the 1860s. He brilliantly described what these institutions ought to be like and what he expected of them. Unfortunately, Nietzsche has been all but forgotten. Today, we would need to go beyond what Nietzsche described back then. The three questions just outlined are the most important ones. And if we succeed in bringing into the very heart of the Anthroposophical Society individuals who not only have the deepest interest in their own field but also pay attention to everything that is happening in society and everywhere else, then everything will turn out well. Interest and attention have been lacking. This is demonstrated by the fact that the emergence of the religious movement went unnoticed right up until the moment it appeared. Attention and interest in everything must take root in the Anthroposophical Society. For it is indeed true that thoughts do not grow—they remain unchanged—but that attention and interest can grow and bear fruit.

[ 32 ] Above all, one must clearly and resolutely seek and follow the path into the supersensible worlds. Then one will also find the right relationship with other people. And conversely: once one has found the right relationship with other people, one is no longer far from entering the supersensible worlds.