The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] After a work that offered a deep insight into what is currently taking place in the human mind, into the inner tragedy of humanity’s development as it exists today, I am once again able to spend a few days here in this place, which is so closely connected to that endeavor—one that we must believe can provide the strength to gradually steer humanity’s current tragedy back onto a more hopeful course.

[ 2 ] Perhaps at no other time has there been less inclination, in the true and genuine sense of the word, to lift the soul up to the spiritual worlds; and it is especially necessary in this time to lift the soul up to the spiritual worlds. For it is only from these spiritual worlds that what can give present-day humanity the strength to continue walking the path of life as a whole humanity can come. The problems and tasks facing the present day—it is widely believed today that they can be solved with the thoughts and impulses drawn from external human knowledge. How long it may still take before a sufficiently large portion of humanity brings itself to the conviction that true salvation can be attained only through the spiritual path is, in fact, extremely difficult to say today—if only because reflection on this very question is not particularly fruitful. But one thing is certain: progress can only be made if this conviction—that salvation comes only from the spiritual worlds—has truly taken root in a sufficiently large number of people.

[ 3 ] What preoccupies people today on a vast scale, yet about which they lack—above all—the intellectual capacity to reflect seriously, because that capacity is, in the present age, almost paralyzed in a large portion of humanity, are, of course, social problems. And the prevailing belief is that these social problems can be overcome with what is today called knowledge and insight. They cannot be overcome—they will never be overcome—unless they are addressed from the perspective of spiritual insight.

[ 4 ] We have endured a long armed conflict. This long armed conflict will be followed by what is likely to be a rather protracted struggle for humanity as a whole. Many people have said: This armed conflict, as it has unfolded across the civilized world, was the most terrible event of its kind since the very beginning of human history. — One cannot say that this judgment is incorrect. The struggle—which will have to be waged with various means and which will follow this armed conflict—between the East and the West, between Asia, Europe, and America, will likely be the greatest spiritual struggle that humanity will have to wage. All that has flowed into humanity—even through Christianity—in the form of impulses and forces will sweep over civilization in mighty, elemental waves of struggle.

[ 5 ] Today, I would say, one can express in a simple formula the nature of the great contrast between the East and the West. But do not take this simple formula at face value. This simple formula encompasses immense expanses of human impulses. As you know, in my book *The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future*, I drew attention to the fact that, for broad segments of humanity today, spiritual life has become an ideology; that what constitutes humanity’s spiritual goods—law, custom, science, art, religion, and so on— are viewed as being, so to speak, merely the smoke rising from the only true reality—the economic mode of production, the economic foundation. I spoke to you about such things as well when I took my leave of you here several months ago.

[ 6 ] Ideology—that is the response one hears from many quarters today when speaking of intellectual life; it is everything that is reflected in the human soul from the sole reality, from economic reality, from the reality of the economy—nothing but ideology. - Today, there is good reason to reflect on what the word “ideology” actually means in world culture. And it means a great deal. No other word can be more closely associated with it than the word “maya” from Eastern wisdom. “Maya,” correctly translated into Western terms, means “ideology.” And every other translation of “maya” is less precise than the translation “ideology.” So one can say: fundamentally, the very same concept or idea that people in the East have in their mental images when they hear the word “maya” is what a large part of Western humanity has in its mental images when it hears the word “ideology.” But what a tremendous difference! What does the Eastern think of when he hears the word “maya”? He thinks that the external sensory world is maya—everything that reaches our senses and the intellect bound to the senses—that is maya; that is the great illusion. And the only reality is that which arises within the soul. The soul-spiritual realm, to which a person strives, is what constitutes reality; what wells up and sprouts within the human being—that is reality. What presents itself externally to the senses is maya, is ideology.

[ 7 ] And among a large portion of Western humanity, another conviction is spreading: The only reality is that which appears to the external senses. That is reality. Precisely what the Easterners call “maya”—that is reality for a large portion of Western humanity. And what the Easterners call reality—that which springs up inwardly, that which wells up within the soul—is, for a large part of Western humanity, ideology, maya. They see a great contrast. What the Easterners call reality, Europe and America today already call maya: ideology is the same thing. What Westerners—along with America and the American youth—call ideology, call maya, is reality for the Easterners.

[ 8 ] This cuts deep into people’s souls; it divides people across the earth into two entirely different types of beings. If you take stock of what has happened throughout the civilized world, you will say to yourself—and hopefully are already saying today—that, fundamentally, everything that is said about the causes and motivations behind this global catastrophe is actually just skimming the surface; it is a superficial view. What has emerged in this terrible struggle is something that has risen, as it were, from the unconscious depths. People took part in it—as is perfectly clear today—without really knowing why; it is what this conflict, which is far from being resolved, has brought to the surface in the form of elemental forces. The antisocial element is so strong at present that humanity is splitting into these two fundamentally different parts.

[ 9 ] And if you connect what I have just said with other things, you will find, when you look to the West, that the West’s striving is directed toward freedom—whether one understands or misunderstands this freedom is of little consequence—the striving is toward freedom; and, as if rising from the dark depths of the human soul, the need for freedom stirs.

[ 10 ] Look toward the East: What is called “freedom” in the West has no real meaning for the East; it is like something with which one associates no concepts or feelings at all. One does not reflect on the very things one experiences most intensely. Just think for a moment how little people reflect on the natural phenomena that surround them directly in everyday life! People do not reflect on what they experience most immediately. The Oriental, by pursuing the reality that is appropriate to him—the inner reality—lives in the freedom that is made possible for him precisely by his racial, ethnic, and tribal characteristics. He does not reflect on it. The further one looks toward the West, the more freedom has been lost in the course of humanity’s historical development: because they do not have it, they must strive for it.

[ 11 ] And so one could cite many, many examples; in all of them one would find this fundamental contrast between the West and the East. There are already signs of what the coming years may bring. At present, these are merely external symptoms—external symptoms unfolding in Asia—about which Europe remains silent today—silent for well-understood reasons. The fact, for example, that in India nearly more than half the population is half-starved will, out of the very spiritual nature of the Indian people, give rise to something that will be quite different from what has unfolded in Europe. These are external symptoms. But even with regard to these external symptoms, people today are divided into two fundamentally different groups. For the Indian, hunger means something entirely different than it does for the European, for the Indian has undergone a spiritual development over millennia that is different from that of the European. These things must be clearly recognized today by anyone who wishes to understand the course of human development. We must be clear today that what is commonly called the “social question” is something far more complicated than is generally supposed. This social question is, after all, a byproduct of the culture that has emerged since the middle of the 15th century. I have spoken to you here time and again about this significant turning point in the history of civilized humanity in the mid-15th century. Since that time, the newer character of the natural sciences has gradually emerged. But since that time, the new character of industrialism has also emerged. Natural science and industrialism together represent what has swept over modern humanity and what has given modern humanity the particular direction of its spirit.

[ 12 ] I have also spoken to you here in Switzerland about the special nature of the natural sciences; I have told you that intelligent people who today reflect on what the natural sciences have to offer are already saying: What the modern view of nature conveys is not the world; it is a phantom of the world. - Everything that natural scientists have concocted, and what is considered popular education today—far more so than these people realize—is belief, in fact superstition, in a phantom world. And alongside this phantom world stands what modern industrialism has brought upon humanity in terms of spiritual influence. Industrialism—one must consider it in its spiritual significance. Take what primarily characterizes industrialism: the machine. The machine differs from everything else with which a human being may come into contact in their external life. I ask you to consider the animal. No matter how much you may research the animal by applying your scientific or other cognitive insights to it—I do not wish to speak of human beings in this context at all—there will always remain something, I would say, divinely profound in the animal; you cannot exhaust it, you cannot fathom it. Behind what you think about the animal, there is always something that remains unknown to you. It is no different with the plant. And take the crystal itself—take the wondrous forms of the crystal world—and you will have to admit: Certainly, one can comprehend the outermost aspects of the crystal world—its forms and so on—if one is trained in this matter, but there still remains a great deal of what human beings can revere as that which they cannot penetrate with their immediate, non-clairvoyant intellect.

[ 13 ] Take the machine; it is transparent through and through. We know: the force acts in this way, the pin fits into the opening like this, the friction is this much—one can calculate the net effect if one knows the individual elements—there is nothing behind the machine that prompts one to say: There is something here that cannot be fathomed by ordinary, unseeing human reason. This means a great deal for humanity’s interaction with the machine. And when one has once stood before thousands upon thousands of people who deal with the machine, then one knows what seeps into the souls of these people from this spiritually transparent machine—from this machine that has nothing behind it that the unseeing mind might in any way merely suspect or fail to fathom. What makes interaction with the machine so devastating for human beings is that the machine is so spiritually and psychologically transparent; that everything—all the forces and interrelationships of forces within the machine—lies crystal clear before the human senses and the human mind. This is what drains the hearts and souls of human beings, what dries them up, what renders them inhuman.

[ 14 ] And natural science and machinery together threaten civilized humanity with a threefold, terribly destructive force. For what threat looms over this modern humanity if it does not rouse itself to look toward the supernatural? With regard to knowledge, the ideal already articulated by natural scientists—namely, that one strives to understand nature in such a way that this understanding is astronomical, that is, modeled after astronomy—is gradually threatening to gain the upper hand. If you observe today how a chemist reflects on what lies within a molecule, he forms the mental image that the atoms in the molecule are connected in a certain way through forces (this is depicted in diagrams). He envisions this according to the model of a small planetary system with a sun. To explain the entire world astronomically—that becomes the ideal. And astronomy itself—what is its ideal? To view the entire structure of the world as a machine. — And then there is that activity, that human interaction with the machine!

[ 15 ] These are the things that have had an ever-increasing impact since the mid-15th century; these are the things that are currently draining humanity of what is truly human. If people were to continue thinking only in the same way they think about mechanistic astronomy and industrialism—by working within it—their minds would become mechanized, their souls would grow drowsy and vegetative, and their bodies would become animalized.

[ 16 ] Look to America: the pinnacle of the mechanization of the mind! Look to Eastern Europe, to Russia: those wild urges and instincts that run rampant there, and which are terrifying—the animalization of the body. In the middle, in Europe, lies the lethargy of the soul. The mechanization of the mind, the vegetative state of the soul, the animalization of the body—this is what one must keep in mind without delusion.

[ 17 ] It is telling how humanity has lost—as I have mentioned here before—the third of the three elements of life along the way since the mid-15th century. A powerful party today calls itself “Social Democracy,” which means it has fused socialism and democracy, even though they are opposites. But it has fused them, and in doing so has omitted the spiritual. For socialism can relate only to the economic sphere, and democracy only to the state and legal sphere; individualism, on the other hand, relates to the spiritual. Freedom is omitted from the term “social democracy”; otherwise, it would have to be called “individual” or “individualistic social democracy.” Then all three elements would be expressed as human demands in such a catchphrase. But it is characteristic of modern times that this third element has been omitted, so that, in a sense, the spirit has truly become a maya—a great deception—for the civilized humanity of the West, of Europe and its colonial offshoot, America. These are the things one must take as a starting point when considering Spiritual Science in the sense of a major cultural question. What is alive in the demands of the present cannot really be discussed at all. These are historical demands. Socialism is a historical demand; it merely needs to be understood in the right sense. Democracy is a historical demand, but so too are liberalism, freedom, and individualism—even if this last demand goes largely unnoticed by modern humanity. And humanity will no longer be able to have a say unless it organizes its social organism according to the threefold order: socialism for economic life, democracy for legal or political life, and freedom or individualism for spiritual life.

[ 18 ] This must be regarded as the only salvation, as the true salvation of humanity. But we must not delude ourselves into thinking that, precisely because these are intense, invincible historical demands for the present, other demands arise for those who see things more deeply. Adults will have to live in a social organism that must be structured in an economically and socially just, politically democratic, and intellectually liberal manner.

[ 19 ] The big question for the future will be: How should we behave toward children if we want to raise them so that, as adults, they can grow into a social, democratic, and liberal society in the broadest sense? And one of the most important social issues for the future—indeed, even for the present—is the question of education. And it is precisely this question of education that has been addressed within the Spiritual Science in a way that contemporary humanity will have to understand if it wishes to move forward. Otherwise, social demands will always remain chaotic if we fail to recognize at their root the most momentous question of our time: the question of education. And if you wish to become acquainted with the guiding principles regarding the issue of education, you need only pick up this little book: *The Education of the Child from the Perspective of the Spiritual Science*. This little book has brought one of the most important social issues of our time to the forefront of human consideration: the social question of education. The broadest circles of modern humanity will have to learn what can be gleaned from Spiritual Science regarding the three epochs of human youth development.

[ 20 ] You know, it is pointed out there how, between birth and the age of 7—the age at which, on average, children begin to lose their baby teeth—human beings are imitative creatures; how they do what those around them do. If you really observe the child closely, you will find this everywhere: The child is an imitative being; it does what the adults do. The great importance in a child’s life is that the people in the child’s environment do only what the child can imitate—indeed, that they think and feel only what the child can imitate in the child’s presence. When the child enters physical existence through birth, it merely continues what it experienced in the spiritual world before conception. There, as a human being, one lives within the beings of the higher hierarchies; there, one acts in accordance with all the impulses that come from the beings of the higher hierarchies. There, one is an imitator to an even greater degree, because one is at one with the beings one imitates. Then one is placed into the physical world. There, one continues the habit of being at one with one’s surroundings. This habit then extends to being one with beings—or imitating those beings—who are present in the environment as human beings and are responsible for the child’s upbringing, by doing, thinking, and feeling only what the child can imitate. The greater the benefit for the child, the more it is able to live not in its own soul, but in the souls of those around it.

[ 21 ] In the past, because people lived more instinctively, they could rely on this imitation instinctively. In the future, this will not be the case. In the future, care will have to be taken to ensure that the child is an imitator. In the future, education will constantly have to address the question: How can we best shape a child’s life so that they imitate their environment in the best possible way? Everything that has happened in the past with regard to this imitation will have to be examined more and more intensely, and more and more consciously, as we look toward the future. For people will have to acknowledge one thing: If people are to become adults within the social organism, they must be free people. — One becomes free only if, as a child, one was an imitator as intensely as possible. The power that is the child’s natural power must be intensively developed precisely for the age in which socialism will dawn. And people will not become free beings—despite all the rhetoric and despite all the political whining about freedom—if the corresponding power of imitation is not instilled in childhood. For only what is instilled in this way during childhood can provide the foundation for social freedom.

[ 22 ] And you know: from the age of 7 until puberty, until the age of 14 or 15, a child possesses a force that can be called “acting on authority.” No greater blessing can be bestowed upon a child than when it undertakes an action simply because respected people in its environment say: “This is right; this is what should be done.” — There is nothing worse for a child than being accustomed to so-called “independent judgment” too early, before reaching puberty. The sense of authority between the ages of 7 and 14 will have to be cultivated in the future to a greater and more intense degree than it was in the past. All education during these years will have to be guided more and more consciously in the spirit of a pure, beautiful sense of authority that awakens in the child; for what is to be instilled in the child during these years is meant to form the foundation for what adults are to experience in the social organism as the equal rights of human beings. Equal rights for all people will not come about in any other way, for people will never mature as adults to embrace equal rights for all unless a sense of authority is instilled in them during childhood. In the past, a much lesser degree of a sense of authority may have sufficed; in the future, it will not suffice. And this sense of authority will have to be firmly instilled in the child so that people may mature into what, as a historical imperative, must not even be debated, because it presents itself as a historical imperative.

[ 23 ] Everything that ultimately constitutes elementary school education and instruction in this age must be organized in such a way that people can rise to the level of understanding just described. I now ask you: How far is humanity today—and not only humanity, but also today’s teacher training—from an understanding of these things? What must be done if this understanding is to take root? —And it must take root, for only in its taking root can salvation be sought.

[ 24 ] When one visits countries today that have already undergone their first revolution, what does one learn about these matters from the curricula of so-called “unified schools”? Indeed, what do these curricula say! For anyone who understands the workings of human nature, these socialist educational programs are a veritable nightmare—the most terrifying thing one can imagine. And the greatest nightmare conceivable today, the most terrifying thing that can be presented to humanity, is the school programs, the curricula and courses, and the school system associated with the name of Lunacharsky, the Minister of Education in Russia; that is what is being carried out in Russia as an educational program—which is the murder of all true socialism. But even in other parts of Europe, educational programs are truly cancerous, particularly the socialist educational programs, for they are based on a principle that is almost unbelievable; they are based on the principle that schools must be organized in the same way that adults are supposed to live within the social organism. I have read school programs in which one of the first principles states: The position of principal is to be abolished; teachers should be on an absolutely equal footing with the students; the entire school should be built on the principle of camaraderie. If one speaks out against such a principle today—and I am referring only to southern Germany, where things have progressed far less than in other parts of Europe—one is portrayed as someone who understands nothing at all about social life.

[ 25 ] Nevertheless, those who are sincere in their desire to see humanity evolve into a true social organism must, above all, realize that a true social organism can never emerge from a socialist educational program. For socialism can never come to life if it is introduced in schools. People only become mature enough for a socially just coexistence by building their lives on genuine authority, particularly during their school years. Today, we must realize everywhere just how far removed what people are doing—and the mental images they have of it—are from a sense of reality.

[ 26 ] After reaching sexual maturity—from the ages of 14 or 15 to 21—it is not merely that a person’s sexual love life develops, but rather that this sexual love life develops only as a special case of universal human love in general; it is merely a special case of universal human love. And this power of universal human love should be particularly nurtured during the time when children leave school and then enter other institutions or begin an apprenticeship or something similar. For the structure of economic life—which is a historical necessity—can never be imbued with what it is meant to be imbued with—namely, brotherhood, that is, universal human love—unless universal human love is developed during these years.

[ 27 ] Brotherhood in economic life, as it must be strived for in the future, will only exist in people’s souls if education after the age of 15 is structured in such a way that it consciously works toward universal love for humanity; if questions of worldview—and indeed the entire educational system that is to follow the so-called “unified school”—are built upon love for humanity, and upon love for the external world in general.

[ 28 ] It is upon this threefold foundation of education that what is to blossom for the future of humanity must be built. Without realizing that the physical body—which is an imitator—must become an imitator in the right way, one will implant only animalistic instincts into this physical body. Unless one realizes that from ages 7 to 14 the etheric body develops particularly—and must develop under guidance—only a general cultural lethargy will develop in the human being. And the very force that will become necessary for the legal organism will be absent.

[ 29 ] And unless, from the ages of 14 or 15 onward, the power of love—which is bound to the astral body—is meaningfully incorporated into everything that constitutes instruction or teaching, people will never be able to develop their astral bodies, because they will never be able to shape the astral body into a free entity within the human being.

[ 30 ] Things are intertwined. That is why I had to say:

[ 31 ] Imitation, when done correctly, fosters freedom;
authority—justice,
brotherhood, love—economic life.

[ 32 ] But the reverse is also true. If love is not developed in the right way, freedom is also lacking. If imitation is not developed in the right way, animal instincts become dominant.

[ 33 ] You can also see that, when addressing this problem, Spiritual Science is the proper foundation for what must become the substance of culture—precisely because of the great historical demands now being placed upon humanity. Without this cultural content—which can flow only from the Spiritual Science and which must come to humanity—we truly cannot move forward from here on out.

[ 34 ] So the questions before us must be placed within a spiritual context; that is what must take root in people’s souls as a conviction. And I would like to emphasize this once again: One may debate how long or how short a time it may still take for such a conviction to take root in people’s souls; but in any case, whatever people unconsciously strive for—there is no question of it being achieved unless this conviction takes root in their souls. And I believe you can see from this the connection that exists between what has been pursued in our Spiritual Science in the various specific fields and what arises out of the needs of the times as the great demands of the age—as the historical demands and necessities of humanity for the present and for the near future. This was also the underlying reason why I have often said here: Spiritual Science must be viewed in connection with the great historical tasks of the present. People today, however, are far, far removed from judging things as they have been characterized here. A certain tension must arise within humanity—a tension of dissatisfaction—so that out of the opposite, out of purely material striving, the striving for spirituality, the striving for the spiritual, may emerge. For how are people to find their way in the great question that is coming—the question that has led them, under maya, under ideology, to understand precisely the opposite?

[ 35 ] But what was the result? You see, the impulse from which the human souls of the East and the human souls of the West think is different, if one considers it concretely and ideally. But it also has, in a sense, the peculiarity of creating the same spiritual mood over both the East and the West. One must also take this spiritual mood into account. It is an old notion that Easterners have described the external world as maya. The mystical conception of the world as maya truly held great significance in earlier times; it does not hold such significance today. It did in the past. Because the worldview of maya has, in a sense, become outdated, a certain passive surrender to this worldview has taken hold in the East—a fatalism, a fatalism that has found its way into Europe in the most extreme form through Turkish culture. Fatalism, letting whatever is to happen happen: the passivity of the human will.

[ 36 ] The Western view of maya has, in essence, always been characterized by this sense of fatalism.

[ 37 ] This view of ideology was most precisely articulated by Karl Marx and Engels. This view of ideology is the modern socialist doctrine—the view that everything spiritual and psychological arises from the sole reality, the economic process, and is thus merely a maya, an ideology.

[ 38 ] How did it emerge? It entered the world with a fatalistic outlook. What, then, was the outward expression of socialist doctrine up until the catastrophe of World War I? The outward expression of socialist doctrine was this: Capital accumulates and concentrates; ever larger capitalists or capitalist groups emerge—trusts, pools, and so on; the economic process will unfold entirely on its own, with ever-increasing concentration of capital groups, until the moment arrives when control over capital passes to the proletariat of its own accord. Nothing needs to be done; this is an objective, economic, purely economic process: fatalism.

[ 39 ] The East has reached the point of fatalism. The West, too, has arrived at the point of fatalism—and this is especially true of the majority of the population. The majority of the population is fatalistic. To passively accept whatever the course of world history may bring has become the principle of the East; it has also become the principle of the West—except that what one seeks to submit to fatalistically is a spiritual reality for the East, whereas for the West it is the material, economic process. This is a one-sided view of human development in the world. If we survey the course of human development today, as it has emerged from earlier conditions, we find within this development a spiritual element—one which, however, as I said, has already become an ideology for people. Upon what is it built? It is built upon Hellenism. That which, in essence, constitutes the deepest impulse of our spiritual constitution still contains something Hellenic within it. That is why we have the gymnasium—an imitation of the Greek soul structure—for education. In Greece, this particular disposition of the soul was something natural for people who had grown to near sexual maturity, because Greek civilization developed in such a way that the vast majority of the population consisted of the poor—slaves and helots. The conquerors were of a different bloodline. Those of different lineage were the bearers of spiritual life—the rightful bearers of spiritual life. You can see this expressed particularly clearly in Greek sculpture. Look at a head of Mercury—I’ve mentioned this here before—with the ears positioned quite differently, the nose positioned quite differently, and the eyes positioned quite differently. In sculpting the head of Mercury, the Greeks were alluding to the very people they had conquered—the very people to whom they had entrusted the external trade economy. The Aryan, characterized in the heads of Zeus, Hera, and Athena, was the one to whom the spirit had been bestowed by cosmic powers.

[ 40 ] Yes, do not think that what unfolded there as the Greek soul structure is something that finds expression only in the general disposition of the soul! It finds expression even in the word formation and syntax of the Greek language. The Greek language is such that it is based on an aristocratic social structure of the soul. We still have this in our spiritual life. That is why, as the mid-15th century approached, we did not experience a renewal of our spiritual life, but only a Renaissance or a Reformation—not a renewal of our spiritual life, but merely a revitalization of the old. We still carry this within our spiritual life.

[ 41 ] We educate our high school students in a way that is alien to real life. For the Greeks, it was only natural to educate their youth in the same way our high schools do, because that was their way of life. The Greeks educated their children and youth in accordance with their way of life; we educate our high school students in accordance with what Greek life was like. That is why our intellectual life has become alienated from the real world, why it is perceived as ideology, and why it is characterized everywhere by ideas that are too narrow to grasp life—and above all, to intervene in life through action and activity.

[ 42 ] And alongside this element of intellectual development, we possess a remarkable legal tradition. It can be demonstrated everywhere, in all fields, that the mid-15th century marked a powerful turning point in the recent development of humanity. Grain is expensive today, and everything made from grain is expensive today. It is overpriced! If one investigates when it was excessively cheap in European countries, one arrives at roughly the 9th or 10th century. At that time, it was just as cheap as it is expensive today. And in the mid-15th century, it had a normal price.

[ 43 ] It is interesting to see how this period in the 15th century emerges as a major turning point for humanity, even in terms of grain prices. And what was the consequence of the fact that grain prices were fair at that time across much of Europe? The old system of serfdom, the old feudal bondage, had begun to fade away in some places around the middle of the 15th century. Then, in order to destroy this nascent freedom, Roman law made its way in. And we are permeated in the political and state spheres by Roman law, just as we are permeated in the spiritual sphere by the Greek structure of mind and soul. We have not yet been able to bring about anything in the realm of law other than a renaissance—the renaissance of Roman law. In our social organism, we have the Greek spiritual structure and the Roman state structure.

[ 44 ] Economic life cannot be shaped as a Renaissance. For one can, of course, live according to Roman law, raise children or educate the youth according to the Greek intellectual tradition, but one cannot eat what the Greeks ate, for one would not be satisfied by it. Economic life must be rooted in the present. And so the economic life of European civilization is the third element. Since these three areas are in a chaotic jumble, we must bring order to them. This can only be achieved through the threefold social organism.

[ 45 ] People like Marx and Engels recognized this in a highly one-sided way when they concluded: It is no longer possible to govern with the intellectual life inherited from Greek civilization; it is no longer possible to live under the rule of law that originated in Roman law. “All that remains for us is economic life,” they said. But they thought only of economic life. In the future, Engels said, we must only manage commodities and direct production processes—we must no longer govern people. This is as one-sided as it is correct—correct, but terribly one-sided.

[ 46 ] Economic life must be grounded in its own foundation. Within the economic structure of the social organism, the sole tasks are to manage goods and direct production processes. This must become autonomous. But if one removes the legal and spiritual life of the past from the social organism, then one must establish them in a new way. That is to say, in addition to economic life—which manages goods and directs production processes—we need democratic political life, built upon the equality of human beings. We need not merely a renaissance of Roman law; we need a rebirth of political life based on the equality of human beings. And we need not only a renaissance of spiritual life, as occurred at the beginning of the modern era; we need a reshaping, a re-creation of spiritual life. And we must realize that we are standing on the threshold of this re-creation of intellectual life.

[ 47 ] And what lives in the deepest sense within the evolution of modern humanity is connected to what should be expressed through the call for the threefold structure of the social organism. This is not a mere whim; it is what has emerged from the deepest need of our time; it is what corresponds most eminently to the present. There are people—many people—who say they do not understand this, that it is difficult, very difficult. In Germany, I told people—whenever they kept saying that these things are difficult to understand—that I do indeed distinguish these things from what people have become accustomed to understanding over the last four or five years. It used to be easy to understand things that I did not understand—so I said—; one merely had to be ordered to understand them. The high command or some other authority had to order that these things be understood, and then people would even frame them as such. People understood them because they were ordered to understand them; now what matters is to understand something from the free human soul. For this, it is necessary for souls to awaken; they are so reluctant to do so. Yet that is what matters. It is not the incomprehensibility of the matter; it is the will that does not yet exist and the courage that is still lacking to look into this reality. It is quite natural that what must speak to humanity in an entirely new tone is expressed in sentences different from those people have been accustomed to until now. For we are gripped by three things other than what is spoken of in this threefold division.

[ 48 ] This threefold social order calls for a renewal of spiritual life so that people may truly feel a connection between their inner lives and objective spiritual life. People do not have this connection. For when people speak today, they mostly speak in clichés. But why do people speak in clichés? People resort to clichés when they have no connection to what those clichés are supposed to mean. Because people lack a connection to spiritual life, their words have become mere clichés.

[ 49 ] There has been much talk in recent years about justice—about the establishment of justice among humankind, among civilized humankind. Current events surely demonstrate all too clearly how far people are from reality when it comes to justice. Of course, until now people have not fought for justice, but only for power; yet they have spoken of justice.

[ 50 ] And economic life: no thought was given to guiding this economic life, so events simply took their own course. That was the defining feature of economic life: people produced and produced, just as I said back then, in the spring of 1914 in Vienna, where I called this production a social cancer: production went on and on, goods were dumped onto the market, and the entire economic cycle was supposed to run on its own, unguided by any thought. A chaotic, haphazard economic life; a legal life that is nothing but a life of power; a spiritual life that has degenerated into empty rhetoric: this is the threefold structure that we have essentially had. We must break free from this threefold structure. And we can only break free if we understand how to take seriously precisely what is meant by this threefold structure.

[ 51 ] But you see, this is connected to something that, fundamentally speaking, can only be understood by going back to anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. It caused a stir when, a few weeks ago, I uttered a sentence during a public lecture—a sentence that nevertheless represents a profound, genuine insight. I said: The ruling, leading circles of the present day must no longer rely on their brains, which are decadent. They must rise to the level of comprehending that which does not require the brain, but rather the etheric body. For the thoughts to be grasped in anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science do not require the brain. Today’s ruling and leading circles—the bourgeoisie—must resign themselves, if only because of their physiological development, to devoting themselves to spiritual knowledge, to cultivating something that can also be cultivated with decadent brains.

[ 52 ] The proletariat is on the rise. It still has a fresh mind. The lemon hasn’t been completely squeezed yet; there’s still something atavistic emerging from its mind. That is why the proletariat today still understands what is being said in the spirit of a new order of things. And today, the situation is such that, fundamentally, the entire proletariat would be receptive to these ideas—except for the leaders, for they have become bourgeois; they are greater philistines than the real philistines. They have adopted philistinism and elevated it to a certain level of high culture. But on the other hand, there is a terrible obedience. This obedience will first have to be broken. Until then, there is no salvation in this realm either.

[ 53 ] As you can see, things in the present are already more complicated than one usually imagines, and they are such that, fundamentally, only the science of initiation can lead to a true understanding of the social problems of the present. You will find three concepts: you will also find them in my book *The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future*, which I wrote, however, not only for anthroposophists but for the general public. There you will find three important concepts in contemporary social life. There is the concept of the commodity or the product, the good that is part of economic life. Another important concept is that of labor. And a third important concept is that of capital. Our social understanding of the present essentially hinges on these three concepts.

[ 54 ] What haven’t people said in the social sciences in an effort to get to the bottom of these three concepts! Anyone familiar with the economic theorists who emerged in the academic world—particularly in the second half of the 19th century—in an effort to get to the bottom of these three concepts—commodity, labor, and capital—knows what an impossible scientific feat has been attempted, for all this scholarship is still insufficient. I recently gave a charming example of this. The famous Professor Lnjo Brentano, the leading light of contemporary economic science in Central Europe, recently wrote an article titled “The Entrepreneur.” In it, he outlines the characteristics of the entrepreneur—three characteristics of the entrepreneur. I’d like to mention only the third characteristic of the entrepreneur, as defined by Brentano. This third characteristic is that one employs the means of production at one’s own expense and risk. Isn’t it true that the entrepreneur is the owner of the means of production and undertakes production for the market at his own expense and risk? Now, the concept of the great Brentano—who is the leading light of contemporary university economics—is so concise that Lujo Brentano successfully identifies in the same article who else is an entrepreneur besides the factory owner and the business operator: namely, the modern worker. The modern worker is an entrepreneur because he does, after all, possess the means of production—namely, his own labor power—and he offers it on the market at his own expense and risk. Mr. Lujo Brentano’s concept of the entrepreneur is so clear that the worker also falls under this category of entrepreneurs. That’s how clever, you see, today’s economic science is! It’s laughable. But people today cannot bring themselves to laugh at it, because universities still occupy leading positions in intellectual life. Yet it is the universities that produce these ideas in the field of economics. People do not want to admit—they lack the courage to admit—that ridiculous nonsense is being produced in this field. The situation is simply dreadful.

[ 55 ] But these matters must absolutely be taken into account; and we must ask: Why is it that, precisely when it comes to social concepts—which are now becoming a burning issue of the day—it is precisely in the realm of social concepts that all of science falls short? It would give me great satisfaction if, during my stay here, I could provide you with more detailed answers specifically regarding this question. Today, I merely wish—I would say, by way of an introductory remark—to explain why this is the case.

[ 56 ] No matter how purely economic the concept of a commodity may be, it can never be defined using ordinary science. You cannot arrive at the concept of a commodity unless you base it on imaginative insights. You can only grasp the concept of a commodity if you base it on imaginative insights. And you cannot understand labor in the social and economic spheres unless you base your understanding on inspired insights. And you cannot define capital unless you base your understanding on intuitive insights.

[ 57 ] The concept of a commodity requires imagination;
the concept of labor requires inspiration;
the concept of capital requires intuition.

[ 58 ] And if these terms aren't phrased that way, the result is always confusing.

[ 59 ] This, in particular, shows why such confusing ideas are bound to emerge. Why does Lujo Brentano define the concept of capital—which coincides with the concept of the entrepreneur—in such a way that, according to him, the worker is also a capitalist, namely an entrepreneur? Because he is, of course, a very clever man of the present, but has no idea that intuitive insight is necessary to gain a true understanding of capital!

[ 60 ] However, this comes about indirectly. The Bible alludes to this indirect path by referring to capitalism as “mammonism.” In doing so, however, it associates capital with a particular kind of spirituality. But spirituality can only be recognized through intuition. If one wants to recognize the spirituality at work in capitalism—Mammonism—one needs intuition. It is already written in the Bible. But today we need a worldview that brings this into the modern era.

[ 61 ] We must strive to gain a thorough, expert understanding of these matters, which people today will still regard as something eccentric. True expertise in this field, however, will reveal everywhere the necessity of integrating social views with genuine, true Spiritual Science. This is what must truly strike the impartial observer of life today. Just recall for yourselves—if you were there—a memorable question that was posed at the Bernoullianum in Basel after a lecture I gave before my departure, when someone interjected into the discussion: “How can we bring about Lenin becoming the ruler of the world?” For, in his view, he saw no hope until Lenin became the ruler of the world. — Just think what a state of confusion this represents! It means that those people who behave most radically today are, in fact, the most reactionary. They want socialism; one would have to begin, above all, by socializing the relations of power; but they begin socialism with Lenin’s universal economic monarchy! They don’t even begin to socialize the relations of power. That’s how grotesque things appear to us today! Such things truly remain memorable when one is told: Lenin should become the ruler of the world. But that is how things stand today. Those people who believe they have the most enlightened concepts actually have the most distorted ones; and one will not attain clarity in this area unless one is willing to seek that clarity fully through Spiritual Science.