The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. The Social-Pedagogical Significance of Anthroposophically Oriented Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] Given the loud and clear evidence, there is no need to prove that the social question is one of the most pressing public issues of our time. But for those who are able to observe these loud and clear facts without prejudice, it may also be quite evident how the demands that are currently being made in the name of social justice involve not only the problems usually summarized under the heading of “social,” but also much, much deeper questions of humanity.

[ 2 ] One can see how these deeper questions of humanity, as it were, emerge from these social problems when one turns one’s attention to the relationships—the relationships that initially manifest themselves externally—between contemporary spiritual life and spiritual striving and social realities.

[ 3 ] What will be most striking is how, to a large extent, our current intellectual life stands, as it were, powerless in the face of the pressing social demands. I need only draw attention to two phenomena in contemporary academic life to demonstrate this powerlessness. We know, of course, that alongside other branches of science, a kind of academic social or political economy has emerged in the course of recent cultural development. It is also well known how a wide variety of schools of thought have asserted themselves in the field of political economy over the course of the last few centuries, particularly in the 19th century. It is well known that there existed a mercantilist school, a physiocratic school, and so on, and that figures such as Adam Smith and others were active in this field. And it is known how these various currents, on the one hand, endeavored to understand the social facts and the driving forces at work in social life, but on the other hand also endeavored, so to speak, to discover how what can blossom as social insight within human beings can be incorporated into human will—for example, into the most diverse forms of state will.

[ 4 ] But it was clear that no truly far-reaching and fruitful social vision had emerged from the various social-theoretical perspectives. The clearest evidence of this is, after all, the form that academic economics has gradually taken. It has, so to speak, retreated into a kind of scientific observation of social and economic life—a kind of description of social facts. And while we see the most recent efforts in this field culminating in all sorts of descriptions or observations of statistics and the like, we see nowhere in all of this an impulse that can truly translate into social will or that could be fruitful for social action in public life.

[ 5 ] It is precisely in this area that the limitations of economic analysis have become apparent. On the other hand, we see social ideas and demands for social progress emerging, particularly from the broad ranks of the proletariat.

[ 6 ] Certainly, there would be much to say if one were to discuss the historical development of these social demands, which, in their present form, are more than half a century old. Here, however, we shall focus specifically on one distinguishing feature, one characteristic of these particular social demands.

[ 7 ] I would like to express this characteristic as follows: Since there had already been earlier efforts in this direction—efforts that did not confine themselves merely to theoretical consideration, as in academic political economy, but had already turned toward the goals of humanity’s quest for a new social order—one need only recall Fourier, Saint-Simon, Louis Blanc, and so on—a completely different element gradually entered into these efforts. This can be characterized as follows: Among the broadest masses, as well as among the leaders of these broadest masses within socialist cultural circles, a certain mistrust, an antipathy, has come to prevail against everything that, arising from the spirit, from reflection, and from human will, is intended to lead to a restoration of social conditions. The belief has taken hold that all of this has a utopian character; no matter how much good will the leading circles—or those who have absorbed the intellectual impulses of modern times into their feelings and thoughts—may have to bring about social upheavals, it is impossible, from what human beings can conceive, from what can stem from human goodwill, to generate impulses that truly aim to intervene in practical social life or in a practical social restructuring. - Disbelief in the human spirit and its social ideals has become the very defining factor in the broadest circles and among the leadership of these broadest circles.

[ 8 ] Instead, something has emerged that is extraordinarily difficult. A conviction has emerged that is perceived in these broadest circles as virtually a matter of course—so much so that fighting against it is an extraordinarily difficult task: The conviction has taken hold that transformation can come only from economic conditions, from the drives of the external, material forces of production themselves; that human will is, so to speak, powerless; that it must wait until the forces of production themselves develop in such a way as to bring about a different configuration of social life.

[ 9 ] And it has become customary to speak of everything produced by the mind as if it were an ideology—something powerless in the face of life—and to speak of only material conditions and material upheavals as something real that, as it were, gives rise to the spiritual like smoke. For this reason, people speak of a materialist conception of history: because they seek the real only in the material—namely, in economic processes—and regard what the human spirit produces as something that rises like smoke, as mere ideas arising in a kind of ideological superstructure from what the real processes are—in this case, the economic processes.

[ 10 ] And if one were to ask: Is it possible, from the perspective from which, on the one hand, I would say theoretical political economy has emerged according to the methodological model of the natural-scientific view of the world, or is it possible, based on what is intended by such thoroughly honest figures—who nevertheless draw from the intellectual life of modern times—such as Saint-Simon or Louis Blanc and so on, on the other hand, —can one really find it so incomprehensible, based on what these two sides intended, that a lack of faith in spiritual impulses has arisen?

[ 11 ] No, you can't. Above all, you can't if you consider the fundamental nature of modern intellectual life.

[ 12 ] This fundamental characteristic of modern intellectual life has gradually—one might say—become something purely abstract, something that stands in contrast to external reality, alien to life and distant from it.

[ 13 ] We must repeatedly draw attention to the fact that newer worldviews—arising from what spiritual life has become over the past few centuries—have indeed also given rise to ethical systems and moral views. But do these moral views have the power to permeate external reality? Do they have the power to shape external reality?

[ 14 ] Neither science nor moral views have been able to build a true bridge between what lives in the human spirit and what lies externally in material or natural processes. We see how, in this way, the affairs of the human soul—the affairs of the human spirit—have, over long periods of time, become, so to speak, the spiritual monopoly, the cultural monopoly, of those communities that have adopted this or that creed as their own. As a result, it has gradually become uncharacteristic of scientific endeavor to concern itself with the spirit and the soul. On the one hand, people believe they are quite free of prejudice—that they are upholding a completely unbiased science—when they say: External scientific methods can be limited only to the external, sensory realm; they immediately cross the boundary of human cognition when they venture into the realm of the soul or spirit, into the supersensory realm.

[ 15 ] People believe themselves to be free of prejudice, yet they are merely following a force that has emerged from the course of history. Those religious communities that, through historical development, held a monopoly on establishing dogmas—based on ancient traditions or similar factors—regarding the nature of the spirit and the soul, and the nature of human immortality, and that had the power to prevent external research from addressing these matters, exerted their influence on that external research. As a result, this external research simply submitted in the past to this pressure, to this dictate of the denominations. And little by little, the sciences come to believe that they are following their own lack of prejudice, their own lack of preconceptions, because they are no longer aware that what they are actually following are the old prohibitions of the Church. On the one hand, this pertains to our spiritual life, which is confined purely to external, sensory reality and which, with its conscientious methods—the very methods that have celebrated such great triumphs in the study of nature in recent times—cannot penetrate the realm of spirit and soul. And so the realm of spirit and soul has become something alien to life. Life—outer reality—is grasped through meticulous methods; but as far as spirit and soul are concerned, they have gradually been stripped of all immediately real and living concepts. And anyone who follows the current, respected, and official textbooks, lectures, scientific endeavors in psychology, and the like will find that there is nothing in all of this from which reality springs forth. Spiritual life has become something that has no connection to life.

[ 16 ] Thus, however, what could have been the sole intellectual foundation for the social reflections of men such as Saint-Simon, Fourier, or Louis Blanc remained fruitless, because nowhere was the living intervention of the human spirit in immediate social reality grasped. They merely talked in abstractions.

[ 17 ] And so one can say: it is impossible to refute, using the tools of ordinary intellectual life, the claim—on the one hand—that social realities can only be observed from an economic perspective and that one cannot inject impulses into human social will, or—on the other hand—the assertion that nothing arises from intellectual life itself that could lead to a genuine restoration of social conditions, that one must leave development to the external forces of production themselves. Modern spiritual life has become abstract. Modern spiritual life has, in a sense, become an ideology. Consequently, the broadest socialist-oriented circles believe that all spiritual life must be an ideology.

[ 18 ] This is precisely what weighs heavily on the heart of those who profess the Spiritual Science that is to be discussed here today. For this Spiritual Science does not wish to follow the same path as spiritual science—that exhausted form of spiritual science—as it has developed in modern times. This Spiritual Science seeks to lead humanity back to the true spirit, to an experience of true spiritual life, to which human beings belong just as they belong to the outer physical reality through their bodies, and to the outer economic reality through their material needs.

[ 19 ] But as soon as one speaks of true spirit today—I would say, as soon as one even makes a move to speak of true spirit—then today one encounters not only opposition, but also derision, that scorn which dismisses all such spiritual striving as a fantasy of the times, if not something worse. And if it must even be said that what is meant here by “spirit” cannot be grasped by the ordinary powers of cognition—those powers that guide us in everyday life and also in ordinary science—but rather if it is emphasized that, in order to grasp to grasp the spirit, powers of cognition are necessary that otherwise lie dormant in human nature—powers that must first be awakened, just as much as the ordinary powers of cognition must be awakened in the growing child—then one encounters the disbelief of the present age all the more. For people today refuse to accept that there could be such a thing as intellectual humility, that there could be such a thing as a further development of the human inner being—a development that must begin in our childhood, when we instinctively, bluntly enter life, only to be awakened later to the use of the ordinary powers of cognition; that this development could continue; and that it is not continued because modern spiritual development has opposed this continuation of development.

[ 20 ] Now, we should not speak here in vague terms about the spirit and its reality. Today, it is easier to speak to people’s hearts and minds when one uses general phrases about the spirit and spirituality—as has often been the case as a result of the spiritual development of the past centuries—than to speak about the spirit in such a specific way as we intend to do here. When one speaks of the spirit, everyone immediately thinks of such an abstract concept of the spirit, of that which is alien to life—which has also led to the situation where, for example, one can say today that a certain kind of judgment based on the spirit has become popular, about which one might say: the true spirit has become so alien to it that it expects this spirit it should, in order to reveal itself, merely make occasional “guest appearances” in human life.

[ 21 ] I certainly do not wish to detain you long with such matters as popular spiritualism, to which even more recent scholars have fallen prey. But what, after all, is this spiritualism other than the final, decadent outgrowth of the striving for an abstract spiritual life! A real, concrete spiritual life must be understood as one with which the human spirit can connect, one through which one can engage with external, physical, natural, and cosmic reality at every step of life. Thus, it has nothing to do with a genuine spiritual life when people attempt, through theatrical means of any kind, to make contact with spirits—as happens in spiritualist séances or as is otherwise sought by abstract mystics in other ways. We are not speaking here of efforts to summon such “guest appearances” of the spirit—a spirit that, incidentally, has nothing to do with external reality and is called upon solely so that a person might—I would say, as a bystander in life—gain the conviction that a spirit exists. Spiritual Science, as understood here, cannot speak of such a spirit. It can speak only of the spirit that is, in truth, present in every material action, in every material event, and with which human beings can connect in order to master this external reality.

[ 22 ] Therefore, I will first and foremost have to speak of that aspect of the Spirit’s activity to which we must first turn our attention if we are to see how the Spirit can be made effective in external life through human beings themselves. We will have to turn our attention to the way in which the spirit gradually develops out of the human being in the making.

[ 23 ] Even this view of the developing human being—this, I might say, complete enigma of the world that we must continually seek to unravel in education—even this wondrous enigma of the developing human being has been elevated to a certain abstract, nebulous height in recent times. In recent times, we speak a great deal about the energy we should invest in education. Recently, there have been many attempts to apply this or that educational principle. All such attempts will fail. They will turn out to be mere expressions of their proponents’ good intentions, but they are bound to fail in the face of the great and intense demands of our lives unless they arise from a true understanding of human nature itself.

[ 24 ] However, this human being itself cannot be understood if one attempts to do so solely through the methods of an external science or through sensory observation derived from external science and its intellectual processing. The human essence reveals itself to us as we acquire the ability to truly explore that mysterious something which, as the human being enters physical existence through birth or conception, reveals itself with each day, each week, and each year—if only we know how to observe it. And if we do not wish to remain in the realm of the abstract, but rather to engage with the spiritually concrete activity in external reality, we must first observe very specific phases in the life of the young person.

[ 25 ] These things are far, far too little appreciated today. That phase, which can be clearly observed during the period when a person is losing their baby teeth—around the age of six or seven—represents, for those familiar with the human being, a profound transformation of the entire human nature. If one examines the life of the soul prior to this stage—if one possesses the capacity to truly investigate such matters empirically, just as one conducts empirical investigations today in laboratories, physics institutes, or observatories—then one finds that, in the period preceding the change of teeth, the human being is essentially an imitator. What dominates their entire being up to the age of seven is a life lived within an imitative element, a kind of natural, naive devotion to their surroundings. Down to our movements, our gestures, and even our tone of voice, we learn everything in the first seven years of our lives through imitation, through the strictest adaptation to what is in our surroundings.

[ 26 ] In fact, such things can easily be observed in extreme cases. Among the many cases one encounters—if one has any interest in such matters at all—I will mention just one. I could multiply that one a hundredfold. I knew a young child who limped; even though there was absolutely nothing wrong with him, he limped, and it was impossible to break him of the habit. Although there was not the slightest physical cause for limping in his leg, he limped. And he limped for the reason that an older sibling, who actually suffered from a leg ailment, had a predisposition to limping! This is how, in an extreme case, this human principle of imitation—which dominates a child’s life until the teeth are replaced—manifests itself. But one need not observe it in such extreme cases—one is even easily misled if one does so—rather, one can observe it if one possesses the aptitude for an intimate understanding of children.

[ 27 ] And then, once this phase of tooth replacement is over, entirely new forces enter into the human being’s psychological, physical, and spiritual life—as perceived by the true observer. Then the person will no longer turn merely to what their senses perceive in their surroundings, but will become especially ready to incorporate something into their faith and their opinions—something they sense is the opinion and the faith of those who, because of their age and their presence in their environment, are a natural authority to them.

[ 28 ] And this devotion—this instinctive devotion to authority—is ingrained in human life like a law of nature until the time when a person reaches sexual maturity. If one wishes to influence the human being appropriately during this period, one must appeal to this instinctive principle of authority.

[ 29 ] Anyone who observes the life of a young person—not out of prejudice, not out of some superficial rationalism, but based on the facts—knows what significance it has for one’s entire life when, as a child, one is indeed able to look up to an authority that is truly worthy of that title. One need only observe how feelings toward such an authority change within a person—one need only observe what becomes of these feelings directed toward authority in later life! Everything we develop in a truly free, independent, and democratic spirit in human coexistence—everything we acquire in terms of true understanding of and respect for others—stems, fundamentally, from the proper, appropriate development under the natural authority during the period of childhood development, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity.

[ 30 ] One should not meddle in these matters based on certain agendas, but should instead adopt a purely empirical approach in this very area. Then one will sense, then one will discover what one must consider when taking the child out of the care—or even the neglect— the parenting—which has been guided specifically by the principle of imitation—and brings the child into school life, into that school life in which, if one truly wishes to act appropriately, one must act on the basis of this principle of authority. But one can only act effectively if one is able to develop one’s pedagogical measures—one’s entire teaching and educational activity—based on a deep understanding of human nature.

[ 31 ] Now, if one is not able to observe, year by year and week by week, how different needs arise from the child’s innermost being and come to the surface—needs that must be met through the curriculum and teaching methods—then one will not be working in harmony with the forces of human development; one will be working against them.

[ 32 ] But if one does not know how authority works, if one is unaware of the intimate interactions between authority and the growing child, then—especially in the realm of teaching and education—one will never be able to influence these years in a way that fosters life.

[ 33 ] I would like to cite some specific examples again. Based on certain programs and certain preconceptions, there is a great deal of talk today about “visual instruction.” Visual instruction means that one should show the child everything individually. And very often this also implies the requirement that one should show the child only what can be demonstrated before their eyes—or at least to their understanding—so that, from their childlike perspective, they can grasp everything immediately.

[ 34 ] One need only pick up what are today widely regarded as manuals for such visual instruction. Certainly, visual instruction is very justified within certain limits; however, precisely what is justified within certain limits leads to disaster when it is taken beyond those limits and applied. This visual instruction—as can be seen, as I said, from the manuals—very often leads to the utmost triviality. One seeks to scale things down to what the child is supposed to understand, to what one believes, in one’s naivety, that the child could understand. But in doing so, one fails to consider what it means in a person’s life when, for example, one has reached the age of, say, thirty-five and suddenly recalls—triggered by some event in life—that something was taught to one by a revered authority, perhaps in the seventh, eighth, ninth, or tenth grade. “That,” you tell yourself, “you didn’t understand back then; you looked up to that revered authority with complete devotion; you knew—when that revered authority spoke it, when they instilled it into your soul—you knew it instinctively; you didn’t fully grasp it, but you felt it back then—you knew: this is something valuable.” You accepted it—perhaps only at face value—but it continued to live within you for years afterward. Years later, you remember; now that you have matured, you recall what you once absorbed. This looking back—from the vantage point of maturity—on what one absorbed in a time of immaturity, what one accepted solely on the basis of authority, is now a source of strength. And one now knows what it means to have been taught such things as a child or in one’s youth—things for which one can find full understanding only later in life, in retrospect: through this, we impart living forces to a person!

[ 35 ] I would like to mention one more thing regarding the intimate relationship between the educator’s authority and the child. We want to teach young people certain things, and we tell ourselves: Young people, of course, do not understand these things, which are meant for a later stage of life. So one presents these things to young people using all sorts of comparisons and symbols. Let’s take any such symbol that someone might come up with: Someone might illustrate the concept of immortality by trying to demonstrate it to the child in a sensory way. He might say: “My child, here is a butterfly chrysalis. Inside this butterfly chrysalis, the insect is hidden. The insect will crawl out, and the beautiful butterfly will emerge from the chrysalis.

[ 36 ] Now we go further and say: Just as the butterfly is inside this chrysalis, so the immortal soul rests within your body. And when you pass through the gate of death, this immortal soul will appear in the spiritual world just like the butterfly. Remember how, here in the physical world, the beautiful butterfly emerges from the chrysalis.

[ 37 ] One can create such a metaphor. The child might be somewhat moved by it. However, what such a metaphor is intended to achieve will not be achieved if, as an educator, one merely thinks: “I am smart; the child is still stupid.” You clothe in an image that which the child cannot yet understand. — There are intangible elements in human interaction that have nothing to do with the mind of the authority figure or the mind of the child. Something is brought about in the subconscious that is a result of the teacher’s disbelief in his own image and the belief that is supposed to develop in the child through that image.

[ 38 ] One simply has to have observed how differently such things appear—and I am about to say something that may seem very paradoxical at first—if one can believe that the image of the caterpillar and the butterfly is not merely an image, if one is clear that it is not I who create this image, but rather the creative forces of nature themselves that create it. This image is shaped by Nature, the one and only great artist who carries her divinity within herself, in such a way that it expresses the same thing on a lower level as immortality does on a higher level. To put it another way, if one can believe fully in this image—if it is not something contrived, if it is an inner conviction for oneself—then one’s attitude toward the child is such that, if it intervenes in the child’s life in the right way, the child will later have a genuine image of the immortality of its own soul. One must certainly not judge by the external factors that are associated today with the principle of authority, even for this age group. At the very least, a careful study from the perspective I will discuss shortly is necessary to truly understand what prevails in human life and must be applied in education between the change of teeth and sexual maturity.

[ 39 ] Essentially, it is only after puberty that human nature develops its own capacity for judgment—that is, free, independent reasoning. If one attempts to access this independent reasoning too early—if one appeals too heavily to the intellect of a child before puberty, or if one does not appeal to that which is transmitted from person to person through authority—then one stifles much of what is meant to develop in the child precisely between the ages of six, seven, and fourteen, fifteen, that is, during elementary school.

[ 40 ] Now we must first ask: Where does the educator gain these insights into the forces he is to apply to the child—first when the child is still an imitator, then during the period between the loss of baby teeth and sexual maturity, and finally in the stage of life following sexual maturity? One can scoff; one can mock today what Spiritual Science means when it speaks of the need to develop special powers—higher powers of cognition—within human nature so that one can recognize the spiritual, even when it manifests as spiritual in the ways I have just described for the various stages of human life.

[ 41 ] In my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, I have described in detail how one acquires these higher powers of knowledge; likewise in the second part of my *Secret Science* and in other books. I have shown how a person, by regarding ordinary everyday cognition and ordinary scientific cognition, so to speak, as a foundation, can ascend through three stages of higher cognition, which I have called—please do not take offense at the names; one simply needs common terms—imaginative cognition, inspired cognition, and intuitive cognition.

[ 42 ] We acquire imaginative insight when we engage in very specific meditations—systematically, as I have described in the books mentioned—by training our thinking beyond the level it reaches in ordinary life and in ordinary science. This imaginative insight first gives us the ability to develop images in our inner life—but not spatial images, not images of the imagination, rather images that are representations of a spiritual reality.

[ 43 ] One comes to recognize that, ultimately, everything a person develops—in terms of ideas, mental images, and the communication of sensory perceptions—for ordinary life and for ordinary science is, in fact, bound to human physicality. But by increasingly turning inward to cultivate thinking and the power of thought through meditative activity, one gradually learns to detach the life of the soul from mere physical life. And one first ascends to an imaginative insight that consists solely of images, yet which reveals reality to us the moment we develop further in the way I have described in the books mentioned. When the inspiring element from the spiritual worlds—which surround us just as much as the physical world—speaks to us, these images, for which we have first made ourselves receptive, are filled for us with effects from the spiritual world.

[ 44 ] And when we ascend to intuitive knowledge, we encounter spiritual beings just as we encounter physical beings here in the physical world. I can only hint at this today; I must refer you to the books I have cited, as well as to numerous lectures I have given here in Basel, in which I have described these things in detail. If a person can truly ascend to what I call here imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge, this is no fantasy or daydreaming—that is still how the spiritless among our contemporaries speak when one tells them about these levels of knowledge; at most, if they are of good will, they say: “Well, the excesses of a morbid imagination!” But one need only point to the real foundations of this higher knowledge, and that is what I intend to do today. Referring to the characterization I have given elsewhere, I would like to point out the actual source of this higher knowledge. Where in human nature do these forces lie that must be developed in life so that a person can look into the spiritual world?

[ 45 ] Just consider this: until a person’s baby teeth fall out, they possess certain powers that make them imitative beings—powers that, in a sense, recede later on. In our ordinary, social life today, these powers, I would say, find no use. They recede. But they remain connected to human nature.

[ 46 ] And again, the forces that are at work between the change of teeth and sexual maturity—those that, arising from the soul-body complex, bring about that inclination toward the principle of authority—these forces, which I have described to you as acting in the sense of imponderables between the educator and the child being educated, are real forces of childhood; they are later reduced. And even from sexual maturity into one’s twenties, we as human beings possess such forces, which later recede.

[ 47 ] Today, however, what we call the idealism of youth—those youthful impulses that set forth ideals, vibrant ideals, just as external, real life is otherwise experienced only by adults—is indeed a rarer phenomenon. But it is these very forces that, only after sexual maturity, form the basis of our true capacity for judgment; it is these forces that must be given special training once a person has reached sexual maturity. These forces begin to diminish again after the ages of twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-two.

[ 48 ] Just as human life in recent centuries has developed solely toward the cultivation of intellectual faculties, external scientific abilities, and the external observation of nature and society, so too will these forces—which are active during the first three stages of human life—initially be reduced. They can be brought back to the surface. And it is nothing other than these soul forces—this spiritual activity—that are brought up from the depths of human nature for imaginative cognition, as guided by my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds*; these are the very forces that, from puberty through one’s twenties, actually shape the human being as such, both spiritually and physically. What recedes is brought forth again by the spiritual researcher. It is brought forth again so that it may rise into consciousness, whereas otherwise it would have receded. There it then develops imaginative insight.

[ 49 ] It is more difficult, however, to bring to the surface what has been at work in human life from the change of teeth to sexual maturity—the forces that have receded in later life, those that, I would say, lie deeper within the organ system. These, too, can be brought up into consciousness through exercises such as those I have described in the books mentioned. Then these forces prove to be identical with unknown natural forces—forces that no external science can establish—yet which are at work precisely within the human being. Then we learn to master these forces. They then bring certain spiritual mysteries of our surroundings into our consciousness through an inspired science. Not invented forces, not something that does not exist in life, but precisely what proves to be effective during the most important years of human development—this is brought to the surface again through spiritual research to become the foundation for insights into the spiritual world.

[ 50 ] The most difficult to bring to light—because they are, in fact, already hidden from observation—are those forces that are at work in human nature and later disappear entirely. These are the forces that are active in human nature between birth—or, let us say, even conception—and the change of teeth, and which, so to speak, find their conclusion, their culmination, in the eruption of the permanent teeth. These forces withdraw completely into the human organic system, but they can also be brought to the surface after we have brought the other forces to the surface.

[ 51 ] Then we see that—by grasping these forces—we now connect with our true self, which actually gave us the impetus for life. In a sense, after the age of seven, we are merely unfolding life. The actual impulse from the deepest soul—which we recognize as spirit when we bring it to the surface—is received during the first stage of life; when we bring to the surface from our consciousness what has otherwise receded, then we receive intuitive knowledge. Then we connect not only with our own being, but with something in comparison to which our ordinary thoughts are absurdities; we connect with something that is one and the same with the essence of the world. Then we recognize the spirit within us in connection with the spirituality of the world.

[ 52 ] The educator who acquires knowledge of human nature in the spirit of Spiritual Science, when faced with a developing human being, looks toward that which, emerging from the spirit, shapes this developing human being. He meets this developing human being with his educational methods. The educator working in the spirit of Spiritual Science does not have in mind a pedagogy that, as is common today, aims to shape a student according to abstract rules; for him, the individual student is a mystery. For him, what unfolds in the individual student is something that must be resolved in a living way with each passing day, with each passing hour. But as the educator internalizes this vision of the living, active spirit within the living, developing human being, he absorbs a knowledge of reality that does not remain in concepts or abstract habits, but rather permeates his will with spirituality. He will truly be able to develop a power of insight; he will become a sage of knowledge, and from this he will develop a pedagogy that is life itself, because it arises from knowledge of human nature, from the understanding of the full, whole human being.

[ 53 ] Spiritual Science, as understood here in an anthroposophical sense, is nothing other than that which is drawn from the forces that are actually at work in the spiritual stages of human development. The source for the development of the higher spiritual powers is not drawn from some fantasy, nor from anything that may or may not occur within a human being, but rather from the conscious absorption of what is actually at work in the healthiest forces of growth and life during the first three stages of human life. By becoming spiritual researchers, we raise into consciousness—for our understanding of the world and of humanity—that which actually brings about our growth and our becoming human.

[ 54 ] Spiritual Science is so closely connected to the spiritual and soul-based tools and resources of cognition. That is why Spiritual Science is not something that is merely absorbed by our intellect. Because it is drawn from the essential and developmental forces of our whole being, it permeates our entire being—our feelings and our will. It becomes an elemental human force within us. For immaturity and unconsciousness are concepts that lose their validity in the face of this activity of the spirit within the human being. One must not say that a person loses their instinctive, elemental power when they consciously develop the spirit—no, naivety remains, and precisely the same elemental power that is otherwise present only in instinctive activity is also present when one is truly permeated by the spirit in this way. There, the spiritual truly passes into the very being of the teacher, into the teacher’s effectiveness—into the one who is called upon to develop social-pedagogical strength among the youth. For Spiritual Science stems from the very same source from which human beings themselves grow. And self-development is nothing other than the transformation of our forces of growth.

[ 55 ] These are matters that humanity today often faces—at least in terms of their deeper principles—in much the same way as it faced modern natural science at the time when Copernicus and Galileo pioneered it. But just as surely as what was once regarded as an absurdity by the broadest circles has today become a matter of course for them, so surely will the understanding of the three preceding stages of life and their fundamental forces—and the transformation into imagination, inspiration, and intuition—become a matter of course in Spiritual Science.

[ 56 ] But our age—which can perceive how modern intellectual life, as I have illustrated with two examples, has become powerless in the face of social life and social will—our age should develop sympathy and interest if it can be shown that there is not only the abstract, unworldly, and detached Spiritual Science which has developed over the last few centuries, but also a Spiritual Science that arises from the transformation of the forces of growth themselves, that seizes the living spirit—a spirit that does not merely play a supporting role in life, but appears in life, acts in life, and with which the human spirit itself can connect in such a way that it can develop it as a socio-pedagogical force.

[ 57 ] Why—let us ask ourselves this question once again—why does this modern era find it so difficult to transform the ideas it absorbs and develops into social will? Why has such a lack of faith in the power of the spirit taken hold that people speak only of ideology?

[ 58 ] Well, the era we have just left behind is the era in which the great triumphs of natural science were to begin. These great triumphs of natural science could only be ushered in by humanity first turning away from what lies within itself and devoting itself, with all its methodological rigor, to the workings and interplay of external nature. It is precisely the spiritual researcher who will recognize the conscientiousness and precision of the modern scientific method, as well as the fruitfulness of this method’s application in its respective fields. He will by no means indulge in mere uninformed criticism of the limited and restricted knowledge of nature. But an empirical fact must be brought to light—one that goes unobserved today precisely because, on the one hand, attention is rightly focused on how well the methods of natural science are suited to providing an accurate picture of the external workings of nature, or at least a picture of nature’s external activity; and so one is not inclined to ask: But how, then, does this picture—which is formed in this way—actually affect the whole being of the human person?

[ 59 ] In observing nature and understanding the laws of nature, human beings are limited to what their senses perceive and what their intellect processes. In doing so, they consciously exclude everything that arises from their emotional and volitional life. In return, however, what they acquire as knowledge of nature does not spill over into their volitional or emotional life. This is why, with a certain justification, some people who view the entire situation without prejudice speak differently about natural science and its effects than those who—as I said, from one perspective this is entirely justified—devote themselves solely to contemplating the great triumphs of natural science.

[ 60 ] What we gain as a picture of nature through the scientific method has something fateful about it, especially when we turn our gaze to human nature itself; it is something that fills only our intellect, something that does not seize our will. Therefore, if we apply the scientific method—even in popular or scholarly thought—to social life, social life, as it were, floods out of our view; it falls away. Just as something fine-grained falls through a sieve, so real social life falls out of our consideration when we approach it solely with the scientific method. We need only see how rigorous, causal scientific thinking fails completely—I will give you an empirical example of this—the moment it ventures into the social realm or, indeed, into the external social sphere. There is perhaps no book that so beautifully develops precise scientific thinking in such a hotly contested field as the book by the well-known biologist Oskar Hertwig, *The Development of Organisms: A Refutation of Darwin’s Theory of Chance*. One can only praise in the highest sense what this book attempts to achieve in terms of characterizing scientific insights into the field of development.

[ 61 ] Shortly after this book by Oskar Hertwig was published, Oskar Hertwig also published a treatise on social, legal, and political issues—on social issues in general. One cannot imagine anything more amateurish and inadequate than this foray by an outstanding biologist into the realm we encompass with the concept of social life!

[ 62 ] Such examples could be multiplied a hundredfold, a thousandfold. They all demonstrate what can also be observed directly: that it is precisely the utmost devotion to scientific knowledge that causes us to fill our consciousness with ideas that are in fact the content of an ideology—one that cannot truly permeate our minds and our wills. These ideas remain barren of feeling and will.

[ 63 ] Now I would like to emphasize explicitly that I do not intend to take the wrong approach when considering such matters. I certainly do not wish to claim that the general popular way of thinking among the vast majority of people today is, for example, influenced by scientific thinking. Oh no, on the contrary, the last few centuries have given rise to a certain popular way of thinking—anyone who truly studies history, not merely what is a “fable convenue,” but who truly studies it, can see how, over the past three to four centuries, people’s lives—particularly their social lives—have changed, even down to the most rural communities. And what has emerged as scientific thinking is merely—I would say—the outward manifestation, the outward expression of what has taken hold of human spiritual life as a whole. I do not wish to call human life—the life of human thought and feeling—an outgrowth of the scientific mindset and fields of knowledge, but rather the reverse: I wish to see in the scientific mindset and direction of knowledge only the outward sign, the manifestation of what constitutes the general human mindset, the general attitude toward life and external reality.

[ 64 ] What has thus taken shape is precisely the foundation for a spiritual life that is alien to life itself. If, on the other hand, one embraces what serves as the foundation for the anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science referred to here —I have, after all, shown how the Spiritual Science is nothing other than the transformation of the very forces of growth and formation within the human being—if one takes this in, one can rise to the point of seeing a real world in these things; then what we take in in this way, together with knowledge of the spiritual, flows back into our emotional and volitional powers. And this is the only path to a genuine social will that can be considered healthy for humanity in the present and the near future: to infuse this social will with the insight that can arise from the spiritual realm. Let us not say, however, that every human being can readily attain what is meant here—namely, the development of higher spiritual powers; that is not at all what is being claimed here. Certainly, it is true that only a few people will come to recognize the mysteries of spiritual life through the direct contemplation of the highest spiritual realities or of high spiritual realities themselves. For this recognition is, first of all, connected to—or bound by—a certain inner courage, a certain inner bravery. One must develop the human will, the human powers of thought, and all the powers of the human soul in such a way that they transcend the measure of ordinary strength, so that these powers of the soul can grasp something that entirely eludes the ordinary perception of human beings—something they do not perceive: the spiritual world. One must, so to speak, grasp the most subtle realities by exerting the most active forces. At first, the spirit does not present itself to us in the same way that an external reality does. The spirit presents itself to us in the way we connect with it, in the way we experience our own pain, and in the way we feel pleasure and suffering. This is what flows through one’s own soul, yet it is something very real. Thus one feels, experiences, and recognizes the spiritual as it flows through one’s own soul; yet one knows that it is not merely something subjective, like pleasure and suffering. It is as intimately bound to the soul as pleasure, suffering, joy, and pain, but it is something that flows into our soul as something foreign, something spiritual. At first, one is not attuned to this. Human beings are adapted to a completely different, external life. Therefore, as they take in a life within themselves and perceive it around them—a life to which they are not adapted—they must accept this life in suffering and pain. No one enters the spiritual world who does not fight their way into it, step by step, through suffering and pain. However, this initially applies only to the exploration of the spiritual world.

[ 65 ] On the other hand, it must be said that the ability to understand what the spiritual researcher communicates is limited only by ordinary, sound common sense. The spiritual researcher is not dependent on merely assuring people that he is a truth-loving person who sees and perceives the spiritual realm of which he speaks; rather, the spiritual researcher can speak in such a way that people, drawing on their common sense, can follow the manner in which he constructs his lines of thought—which he does, admittedly, from a spiritual perspective, but which clearly possess the same inner logic that we learn from external sensory reality. Therefore, provided it is not restricted by opposing prejudices, common sense can judge whether the spiritual researcher is speaking nonsense or whether, through the way he speaks, he reveals that the spiritual world is truly open to him, that he looks into it.

[ 66 ] Thus, what the individual researcher of the spirit brings into social life is itself a socio-educational force.

[ 67 ] If people are willing to cultivate understanding—that gift of ordinary common sense through which one senses the persuasive power of what Spiritual Science seeks to reveal as the true reality of the human being—then they will develop entirely different social forces. Forces that would bring people together and introduce into the structure of the social organism what cannot be introduced in any other way—as it has come to be in the past three, four, or five centuries and in the present. Forces that would foster a deeper understanding between one person and another, an ability to empathize with others, and the emergence of genuine social impulses. This is precisely what can be achieved through that kind of human interaction that develops on the basis of genuine spiritual knowledge and all that is connected with it. People will sense what social-pedagogical power can flow into social will when they come to extend to the living social organism that which is initially derived from the conditions of human growth and development. Only then will people understand that social organisms are part of the essence of the human being. It will be possible to bring into national life, into the social organism, what has first been discovered as the knowledge of the spirit at work in the natural organism.

[ 68 ] We will not achieve true socio-pedagogical power until we are able to draw our socio-pedagogical power from the drives and impulses of spiritual insight!

[ 69 ] But where does what a person will come to understand by grasping the insights of the Spiritual Science actually come from? It comes, after all, from what has physically and spiritually transformed a person from a small child into an adult—and what has merely become dormant. A person need not leave this lying fallow; they need only apply it; they need only truly apply their inherent human agency within the external social order as well; then, on the one hand, as I have shown, a genuine socio-pedagogical force will develop in the education of youth. But then, in human interaction as well, that ineffable yet very real presence of an educational moment will develop—one that lies within human intercourse and human interaction itself. When we come to understand what emerges from the personality—which we today believe to be the whole human being—when we come to understand what mystery lies within every human being, what lies within every human being in such a way that they transcend themselves through their subconscious and superconscious, then a socio-pedagogical force will lie within human interaction itself. Then people will interact with one another in such a way that the existence of one can be elevated and sustained by the existence of the other. In short, a social-pedagogical force flows from the knowledge of the spirit—not merely for the education of youth, but for the whole of human life.

[ 70 ] You see, the idea of the threefold social organism truly did not arise from some kind of program, as so many social ideas have. I already mentioned this in my last lecture, which I had the privilege of giving here in Basel on the social question. The idea of the threefold social organism arose from a new spiritual orientation—one that, on the one hand, is still very unappealing to contemporary humanity, but which, I would say, it actually yearns for and craves with all its subconscious longings and impulses. For far more than people realize in their conscious minds, they harbor a longing for the spiritual in their subconscious. We see today how what people want socially takes on all manner of formulas, forms, and demands. If one wishes to address what people present to us as social demands—arising from well-intentioned willpower and from genuine, legitimate needs—one generally cannot grasp it, at least not in a way that would give rise to truly constructive work.

[ 71 ] This is downright characteristic, and it is very strange how even those people who have spent decades working on ideas and programs for social reconstruction now find that all their thinking—everything they have developed from their intellectual life—has failed.

[ 72 ] A letter from a well-known Social Revolutionary—one who had been active for decades, Kropotkin—recently appeared in the newspapers. It was a letter to Georg Brandes in which he describes the bleak conditions in Eastern Europe, in which he portrays the entire European situation in his own way, and in which he concludes by writing: “Yes, the only thing we can hope for is that we will be given bread and tools to produce bread.”

[ 73 ] Now a social revolutionary has arrived who, for decades, has been thinking—or at least trying to think—about how the world should be shaped so that the tools needed to produce bread can be procured in the right way, and so that bread is produced in such a way that humanity can truly be fed. Finally, the abstract cry for bread and tools has arisen!—Disbelief in abstract spirituality, in one’s own spirituality up to this point!

[ 74 ] One must realize that, in the cry for bread, modern life is in fact nothing other than a cry for spirituality; for it is only through a grasp of the true spirit that those social forces of will can arise which properly integrate tools and bread production into life.

[ 75 ] The point today is not to clamor for programs, but rather to appeal in the right way to human potential and to human initiative. But that means recognizing people in the right way, so that they may be placed in the right position in life and be able to contribute in the most fruitful way to providing for their families and to the lives of their fellow human beings.

[ 76 ] We must make the social question a matter of humanity in the broadest sense. Otherwise, there will be no solution to it. Only when we recognize that we can fully grasp the social question by perceiving the spirit within it—only then can a solution to this social question be found. What we are striving for—particularly the threefold social order—has emerged from a new spiritual orientation based on this insight. The demands that confront us today—though they are justified—appear so nebulous; yet they are subconsciously justified, for the longing for this new spirituality already lives unconsciously within these demands. And in all that is known as decadent phenomena in the striving for the spirit, what is expressed is merely—I would say—humanity’s still clumsy striving toward the spirit. Certainly, one of the most decadent phenomena is the way the spirit is viewed, as is customary, for example, in spiritualism or in false mystical movements. For these decadent movements have emerged from an education spanning centuries—indeed, one might say millennia in this case—through which human beings have not learned to seek the spirit within reality itself, within the reality to which they belong. The quest for the spirit has thus been carried up into abstract heights because only dogmatic monopolies seek to seize control of this spiritual quest.

[ 77 ] The Spiritual Science referred to here seeks to demonstrate that the same forces that can externally influence nature can also penetrate spiritual life as they continue to develop, just as I have described again today. Then one will not strive for an abstract spirit—a spirit that, I might say, is to be grasped only in passing roles for the sake of satisfying human consciousness—but rather for a spirit that is present in reality, that is one with material life. For we do not recognize the spirit by viewing matter as mere matter and saying, “But that is indeed mere matter; the spirit is somewhere else.”—No, for whoever seeks the spirit through abstract formulations and believes it can be found only through spiritualism—I would say, in the corners of life—has not yet established a true human relationship with the spirit.

[ 78 ] We have established a true human relationship to spiritual life only when we seek a spirit such that, in what we perceive around us in nature and especially in human life itself—in youth, in later social contexts, in all that exists externally, even in the economic life around us—we recognize that the spirit is at work, but seek it in such a way that we connect with the spirit’s activity. A true search for the spirit will be only that in which a person seeks to grasp the spirit by loving the spirit active within themselves and by building a bridge between the spiritual reality within themselves and the spiritual reality in the world. Only through such a spirit and only through the knowledge of such a spirit can that socio-pedagogical force be developed which we truly need for human life in the present, but especially for that of the near future.

[ 79 ] Therefore, one can only say, time and again: May the dark, subconscious longings that dwell in human hearts and minds blaze brightly in the conscious life of the soul, so that humanity may find—precisely in this age in which the social question has become so pressing—the true spiritual power of the world, with which the spiritual power within the human being can unite. For from this union between the spirit of the world and the spirit of humanity will flow the best source of socio-educational power for human life.

[ 80 ] Brief discussion with Q&A

[ 81 ] Mr. Wachter: [...] It seems to me that Dr. Steiner quite correctly pointed out that in our [time] the natural sciences, philosophy, religion, and—one might even say—the modern arts have completely failed. (...] Why have they failed? [...] — And I believe that the main reason for this failure lies in the fact that natural science, religion, and the arts have been treated as abstractions. Religion has been treated for religion’s sake; natural science has been pursued for the sake of natural science; pedagogy has been practiced not to educate children—no—but to torment children for the sake of pedagogy. Have the arts been pursued to beautify people’s lives? No, the arts have been pursued, so to speak, as curious intellectual games, simply for the sake of art. And therein, I believe, lies the error in thinking that must be corrected. We should bring religion into life, apply natural science to life, and see the purpose of natural science precisely in its application to life; we should focus specifically on seeing art as an integral part of life, not as something detached from it. But that does not in the least mean we must throw all these things away and say, “They mean nothing in and of themselves…” For a wrong application of something is by no means proof that the thing itself is worthless. [...] And I believe that Spiritual Science in particular, as Dr. Steiner presented it in his lecture, can contribute to this and have a very positive effect in this direction by showing people: You must bring life into things, and not treat them abstractly.

[ 82 ] Rudolf Steiner: What the esteemed speaker before me said does not require any further comment on my part, for it was merely a reference to a specific point—and one with which I can certainly agree.

[ 83 ] Of course, precisely those who speak in the sense of the Spiritual Science I am referring to here will not hold the view that what has emerged in recent times as natural science, philosophy, or —and I fully agree with what Mr. Wachter has said—even with regard to the arts—that one must discard it on the grounds that it has indeed led to the aberration of which Mr. Wachter spoke. But that is precisely what constitutes the essence of the Spiritual Science I am referring to here: that all these human activities—which have become one-sided due to certain scientific necessities of life in recent centuries—should abandon their one-sidedness and flow into a general current of comprehensive life.

[ 84 ] If you follow my work—how I have not only written books on the humanities but, for example, described the development of philosophy in my book *The Riddles of Philosophy*, how I have attempted to interpret the essence of the arts, and what I am now attempting out in Dornach in the building known as the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science, is intended to be a representative of the Spiritual Science as understood here—even in terms of its external design—if you have been following this, you will not assume that I am in any way opposed to what has emerged in the natural sciences, in philosophy, and in the arts in recent times, provided that one allows it to develop within its legitimate bounds. Indeed, I would say that the one-sidedness that has become apparent in these fields even strikes me as something necessary. Life develops through opposites. And so, when we look deeply at history, we can see how periods in which certain activities become one-sided always alternate with periods in which these activities in turn flow into a certain universal activity that corresponds to life and does justice to it.

[ 85 ] It is precisely the enrichment of scientific views, the enrichment of philosophical considerations, and the enrichment of what lies at the heart of modern artistic movements—these are the elements that should be particularly emphasized in Spiritual Science.

[ 86 ] Let us take, for example—to highlight something that may not have been addressed in sufficient detail in the lecture—certain recent art movements. Certainly, it is easy to mock such recent art movements. But as imperfect as certain things—such as what are today called Expressionist works of art—may appear to us, one must still say: they are, at heart, merely a response, merely very tentative, sometimes clumsy attempts to arrive at something that truly does justice to life. In the last century, we have fallen into a kind of intellectualism. This intellectualism is barren. And in social life as well as in art—what has been the consequence? The inevitable consequence has been that, because people still wanted to engage in artistic activity, they have fallen into naturalism, into the mere imitation of nature.

[ 87 ] Yes, the mere imitation of nature in the absolute sense can never be art, because no matter how closely someone imitates what they see outwardly in nature, they will never match nature itself. If one has an eye for it, nature will always be more pleasing than that which imitates it.

[ 88 ] And it really is—if I may mention this trivial matter—a sign of outrageously bad taste when people show you an apple—yes, it does happen—I’ve seen it myself—and when it particularly catches their eye, gleaming beautifully and so on, that they say: “It looks like it’s made of wax!” One cannot imagine anything more outrageously clumsy than when someone compares something that nature presents to them with some artificial product—no matter how good that product may be! So, for the very reason that true nature cannot be achieved in art, absolute naturalism must be rejected.

[ 89 ] It is quite another matter when one seeks to embody, in an expressionist manner, what human beings experience beyond the merely natural—even if this embodiment is, at first, only clumsy. But in order to recognize that such clumsy beginnings should neither be overestimated nor underestimated, one must indeed have an open mind toward what is often expressed today by a buzzword, yet is not properly understood—especially with regard to human life.

[ 90 ] It may sound paradoxical to you once again: I am certainly among those who admire Raphael to the very highest degree. But based on my worldview, I would like to assert the following: Today, the only person who has the right to truly admire Raphael is someone who is convinced that if someone were to paint today the way Raphael did—exactly as Raphael painted—it would be anachronistic and impossible. It would not be art that we could recognize today as contemporary art. It may sound paradoxical. But what emerges in the course of human development belongs to the respective phase of that development. One must take this development truly seriously. And so what has developed—particularly since the mid-15th century—in the natural sciences, philosophy, and the arts has been fully justified as, I would say, an educational impulse for evolving humanity; but today it has reached a stage at which the opposite pole must be sought. As humanity, we had to pass through a period of one-sided natural science so that, by taking in the ideas of this natural science, we might arrive within ourselves at the spiritual disposition that is brought about precisely by recognizing the powerlessness of these mere scientific ideas.

[ 91 ] This powerlessness gives rise to a counterforce in the living soul life: the counterforce toward spiritual knowledge and spiritual insight.

[ 92 ] If one takes Lessing’s idea seriously—that history is the education of the human race—then it is precisely such matters that one can best come to terms with. And so, in closing, I would like to point out that there are indeed still certain areas today in which human prejudices allow us to truly translate what Spiritual Science offers into immediate social-pedagogical practice—that is, into an external view of reality.

[ 93 ] In the Dornach building, we have been able to artistically convey outwardly—to express in forms—what animates us inwardly. And—I think I can mention this here—very recently, an attempt has indeed been made in the field of education to establish a school. In Stuttgart, our friend Emil Molt has joined us; he—and people have, of course, poured scorn on this as well—has linked himself to a modern industrial enterprise, the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, linked the founding of the Waldorf School to a unified elementary school, which is now to be built entirely upon what can result for educational development from an understanding of the spiritual perspective, as it is meant here. And I must say, it is among the most wonderful things I have had the privilege of undertaking that I was able to lead the pedagogical training course for the teaching staff of this Waldorf School. In this course, a pedagogy was established that has now, since September 7—the date the school was founded—been directly applied by these people in school life; a pedagogy that does not seek to implement standards that are intended to “train” people, but rather a pedagogy that has emerged from a genuine understanding of the whole human being—that is, the physical, soul, and spiritual aspects of the human being—so that, on the other hand, the teacher actually faces greater challenges than with a mere standard-based pedagogy.

[ 94 ] Anyone who adheres to a standardized approach to education—who designs curricula that lay out certain educational principles—well, that person knows how to teach. But the one who is to teach from the immediacy of life—that person can, I would say, only receive the impulses to observe what truly unfolds in the developing human being from year to year, from week to week, from month to month. There, one must constantly—no matter how large the class may be—be in lively interaction; one must understand what it means not to practice a memorized pedagogy, but to reinvent, in every moment, the individual method to be applied to the living human being standing before one.

[ 95 ] That which is meant to have an effect in life must not be based on memory or on habit. Whatever enters our memory and whatever we practice by rote in our human activities, whatever we do out of habit, becomes—under all circumstances—something like a straw template. That which springs from spiritual life can never become a straw template!

[ 96 ] There have been times—and I’m sure there still are—when I’ve given a lecture on the same topic week after week. I do not believe anyone can accuse me of having given a single lecture twice, or of ever having spoken on the same topic twice in a row in exactly the same way, because when it comes to speaking from the spirit, it is a matter of immediate, spontaneous production; it is simply not possible to entrust what is produced from the spirit entrusted to memory in the ordinary sense, since it must continually develop in immediate life. For those who act from the spirit, the mere memorization of any spiritual knowledge is roughly equivalent to someone saying, “I won’t eat today, because I ate the day before yesterday.” Why should I eat again today? My body will build itself up based on what I ate the day before yesterday.” — Yes, our physical organism is in a constant state of renewal. The spirit must also take this into account. The spirit, too, must be present within this living reality. The true spirit must always be a creative force. Thus, a pedagogy guided by the spirit must also be a constantly creative art.

[ 97 ] Blessings will not come to the elementary school system in particular—nor will healing come to the other school systems—until pedagogy becomes a constantly creative art, sustained by true love and by those intangible qualities I spoke of this morning.

[ 98 ] And so, if we had the time, we could see in all areas how necessary it is—in light of humanity’s unconscious and subconscious needs in the present day—and in the near future it will be even more necessary to move from what one might call a “convenient program” of spiritual activity to a genuine, productive experience of the spiritual.

[ 99 ] This will be harder to achieve than many of the things we call “spiritual life” today. But it will be the kind of social and educational force we need.

[ 100 ] And while it is true, on the one hand, that humanity today—after having devoted itself for so many years to a scientific way of thinking—is calling, directly from the deepest needs of its soul, for an immediate spiritual understanding, it is also true, on the other hand, that social demands are crying out for spiritual deepening and that the subject of my talk today— “Spiritual Science as a Social-Pedagogical Force”—is not something arbitrarily chosen as a lecture topic, but rather something drawn from what human development itself is actually revealing in the present.

[ 101 ] But one must first train oneself and bring oneself under control to do so. In closing, I would like to point out something that is particularly necessary in the present day, because today everyone believes that some kind of fruitful philosophical life can arise from subjectivist notions of the will; I would like to use an example to illustrate the way in which questions must be approached today.

[ 102 ] Many years ago, in a city in southern Germany—which is no longer a German city—I gave a lecture in which I spoke about the “wisdom teachings of Christianity.” Two clergymen were also in the audience. Since there was nothing in that particular lecture that they could object to in terms of content, they approached me after the lecture and said: “We have absolutely no objection to the content of what you said today; but the fact that you speak to people who identify with the way of thinking from which you spoke, whereas we speak to all people—that is what we would like to say about the matter.” —That’s what they said.—I addressed them, of course, with the title they deserved. One must always be polite. I said: “You see, Reverend, that you believe you speak for all people—I find that natural and self-evident, for it is subjectively obvious. But whether you believe I [do not] speak for all people makes no difference at all, especially not today, when the life of the individual is so deeply embedded in the social whole.” Today we must learn not to let our tasks be dictated by our subjective whims, but to develop them individually based on objectivity and objective facts. And so I ask you, Reverend, if you now also believe you speak for all people, observe this fact: Do all people still come to hear your sermons? - They couldn’t say “Yes” to that! - Yes, you see, that’s what the facts say! I told you that this isn’t right, because: I speak for those who don’t attend your sermons—for those who no longer attend your sermons today. — That is what the facts teach us today.

[ 103 ] Things do not teach us merely in response to an objection; rather, one must see the facts as they give rise to the objection. It is quite natural to imagine that one is speaking on behalf of all people. But the issue today is that—while the vast majority of people still consciously resist what is meant by genuine impulses of Spiritual Science—one nevertheless knows that something is emerging in the subconscious that acts like a cry to those who can understand the message: O, take that which has become fragmented into philosophy, the natural sciences, the arts, religion, and other branches of culture—namely, the social sphere—and make it whole again!

[ 104 ] But it can only become a whole if we trace it according to its spirit. Only then does a concrete unity—not an abstract one—speak to us from all things, a unity of the true spirit that we find in all individual phenomena, a true spirit that is one in all. But because this unity is a concrete, living reality, it cannot be grasped if we merely try to encompass it with abstract concepts or an ideology. We must resolve to seek the living spirit. We can seek it only if, with a certain intellectual humility, we find the bridge between the spiritual forces slumbering within the human soul and the spirit that lives in nature, in human life, and in the entire rest of the cosmos outside of us. That is why I would like to emphasize once more in our closing remarks: We must take into account that today, deep within the human soul, there lives a longing to unite the spirit within the human being with the spirit of the world. And in this alliance between the human spirit and the spirit of the world will lie the solution to much of what humanity today perceives as a burning mystery.

[ 105 ] I do not mean to give the impression that every mystery can be solved. But humanity is on the path to partially solving the mysteries that are constantly presented to it. And it is precisely in this partial solving that true human progress lies—in recognizing how Spirit lives in all things, and how this Spirit can enlighten us when we awaken the Spirit within ourselves. This insight is the foundation of the greatest and most significant social tasks of our time, and it will be beneficial if this understanding spreads to ever wider and wider circles.