The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Development of Social Life Among Humankind

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! It has now become a matter of universal concern for all of humanity to examine the social question and, within that question, to find those answers that are particularly suited at this moment to inspire human action capable of steering our social conditions in the direction of what many people envision as an indefinite, I would say, a nebulous vision of the future that many people have in mind, but about which there can by no means be any clear concepts available today—I say “can,” not “are.”

[ 2 ] If I may take the liberty of speaking about the social question in three short lectures, it goes without saying that I will be able to offer only a few rather unsatisfactory perspectives, and that much of what I can only vaguely hint at—due to the limited time available—will first have to take shape in what my esteemed audience makes of my words. I therefore ask that these lectures be regarded merely as very vague suggestions intended to provide some food for thought.

[ 3 ] The social question—how does it actually present itself to us today? If we take an unbiased look at human life in the present, it certainly does not present itself to us in such a way that we have a clear definition of it, that we would know, “This is the social question,” and “This is how it can be solved.” That is simply not the case. What we are faced with is a vast array of diverse living conditions across the globe, which have created chasms and abysses between people’s inner experiences and the external economic conditions of life within humanity. These manifold and diverse conditions exist. Anyone who looks at the very different ways in which these living conditions existed before the terrible world war and how they are now after the world war can easily grasp just how diverse they are. If one considers even a slightly larger region of the earth, one will soon find that the differentiation in social living conditions before and after the war is fundamentally different from the conditions that existed in that same region as recently as fifty years ago.

[ 4 ] Today, perhaps—and we must say, thank God—we look at these living conditions more deeply with our hearts and sense their tragedy; but reason, the intellect, no matter how highly developed it has become over the past centuries, has not kept pace. This is what is peculiar about all contemporary social conditions: the question of reality, of immediate life, is pressing with immense force, and people’s understanding simply cannot keep up.

[ 5 ] If we ask ourselves: Where are the fruitful social ideas? — then we will find very little that we can, in all impartiality, describe as such. It is precisely people’s ideas that tend to fall short when it comes to social life.

[ 6 ] Well, today, as a result of the social developments that humanity has undergone, the question of social coexistence is directly linked to another question, one in which only expert knowledge can be the deciding factor—only a true understanding of the concrete reality can be the deciding factor.

[ 7 ] Ladies and gentlemen, it is very easy to imagine a paradise on earth where people can live well, where everyone can be content. One might say that this goes without saying. To explain how, from the structure of our economic life—from the individual concrete facts arising from nature, from human labor, and from the human spirit of invention and ingenuity—how a dignified existence for people is to gradually develop from these elements requires such thorough and deep expertise that no branch of science, nor any branch of the natural sciences. For compared to the complexity of social and economic reality, what we see under the microscope and observe in the sky through the telescope is extraordinarily simple.

[ 8 ] So one must say: It is precisely in the realm of social issues that everyone today wants to have a say, yet very few people have the patience, the perseverance, or even the opportunity to acquire the specific expertise required. That is why we have left behind an era regarding social issues about which we must say: We thank God that it is behind us. — It is the age of utopia, the age in which people, I would say, imagined in a novelistic way how people should live in the future so that they might find a kind of paradise on earth. Whether this utopia was put down in writing, or whether one seeks to establish it in reality—as Owen in England or Oppenheimer in Germany intend to do—that is not what matters. Whether one writes utopias in a book—where one can see that they cannot be realized—or whether one establishes an economic parasite somewhere in a small colony, one that can only survive because the rest of the world still exists, and which can survive only as long as it sustains itself as a parasite of the economic world—and then perishes—is, in essence, exactly the same in relation to the present life of humanity and in relation to society.

[ 9 ] Now, the point is that, above all else, if one wishes to speak about the social question, one must develop an eye and a sense for what pulsates socially in the depths of humanity—what was in the past, what exists in the present, and what seeks to influence the future; for what seeks to influence the future is, to a large extent, present everywhere in the unconscious of human beings. We will therefore have to place extraordinary emphasis on this unconscious aspect of human beings in these lectures. But above all, it is necessary to form a concept of what the conditions are like across the earth with regard to social life in general, and how they have developed historically.

[ 10 ] For, ladies and gentlemen, that which once was long ago still remains among us as tradition, as a remnant, and we can only understand what is before us if we understand that which once was long ago. And what is the present is always already intertwined with something that points toward the future, and we must understand what is already future-oriented and embryonic within our present. We must not regard the past merely as something that happened centuries ago, but as something that in many ways still lives among us, that continues to have an effect, and that we can only understand as a “present past” or a “past present” if we know how to assess it correctly. Insights arise only when we can trace the outward symptoms back to their deeper causes.

[ 11 ] Please do not misunderstand me, ladies and gentlemen; when one speaks of such things, one must sometimes emphasize them rather strongly, and it might seem as if one were criticizing certain things when one is merely trying to describe them. So, I do not wish to criticize the fact that the past is still present today; I can even admire this past and find it extraordinarily appealing as it inserts itself into the present, but if I am to think socially, I must recognize that it is a thing of the past and that it must insert itself into the present precisely as a thing of the past. In this way, I must be able to develop a sense of immediate social life.

[ 12 ] For example—please forgive me if I cite a perhaps somewhat strange, but certainly not in any way offensive, example from the very recent past—yesterday we ran into the esteemed Chairman on the street, dressed in a academic gown and wearing a beret. He looked very handsome. I couldn’t help but admire him. But, ladies and gentlemen, I was not only seeing the Middle Ages before me; I also thought I was seeing someone coming toward me from the ancient Eastern theocracies right here and now.

[ 13 ] Isn't it true that, in this case, that academic gown housed a very much present soul—even an anthroposophical soul—which perhaps even claims to have a future within itself; but what expressed itself in a way that was immediately symptomatic—physiognomic, I might say—that is history; that is history in the present.

[ 14 ] And so, if we want to understand social life—if we want to understand even the economic conditions that affect us every morning at our coffee table, that determine how much we have to take out of our wallets to set that breakfast table—we must, in order to understand these conditions, have an overview of the social development of humanity. And this social development of humanity is today—especially when one considers the social question—addressed almost exclusively in a materialistic sense.

[ 15 ] One must first consider the very different conditions that once existed within the historical and prehistoric development of humanity. One must indeed consider those social communities that can be understood precisely as the Oriental theocracies, which still exert a strong influence on the West.

[ 16 ] These were entirely different social communities. They were social communities in which the structure of human relationships had been shaped by the inspiration of a priesthood that was alien to the rest of the world. From the spiritual impulses that arose within them, they drew the impulses for the external world. If you still see how the social structure is in Greece and Rome—a vast army of slaves, above which stands a self-satisfied, wealthy—the words are, of course, meant relatively — upper class—then you cannot understand this social structure without looking at its origin, at its theocratic origin, within which it was possible to make this social structure credible to people as something given by God or the gods—credible not only to the mind, but to the heart, and to the whole person; so that the slave actually felt, in the proper way, that he had been placed in his rightful place by the divine world order. Social life in the ancient times of humanity can only be explained by the interweaving of the external, material-physical social structure with inspired commandments.

[ 17 ] And from these commandments—which a priesthood withdrawn from the world sought to obtain from outside the world—not only did what a person should have for the salvation of his soul emerge, not only what he thought and felt about birth and death, but also what was to form the relationship between one person and another. From the distant East comes not only the words, “Love God above all,” but also the other: “and your neighbor as yourself.” Today we regard such a saying as “love your neighbor as yourself” in a very abstract way. It was not so abstract in the time when this saying resounded from the inspired priest to the crowd. There it became something active among people, for which later all those concrete relationships came to stand that we summarize under the names of law and morality. For these relationships of law and morality, which were only later integrated into human development, were contained within the original divine commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” through the very manner in which they were brought into the world by the inspired priesthood in the theocracy.

[ 18 ] Likewise, the activities of economic life—what people were to do, what they were to do with livestock, what they were to do with land—you can still find echoes of this in Mosaic law—were established on the basis of divine inspiration. Human beings felt that they had been placed on earth by the divine powers with regard to their spiritual life, their legal and moral life, and their economic life. Theocracy was a unified structure in which the various elements worked together because an impulse resided within them. The three elements—spiritual life, legal life (what we today also call political life), and what we call economic life—were united in a single organism pulsating with impulses that could not be found on Earth.

[ 19 ] What is distinctive about the further development of humanity is that these three impulses—spiritual life, political-legal-moral life, and economic life—drifted apart and became differentiated. The single stream that flowed as a unified human life in the theocracies gradually became two, as I will show shortly, and later three; and today we are faced with these three streams.

[ 20 ] I will discuss what has resulted from this single current of theocracy later, in the second part of the translation.

[ 21 ] Ladies and gentlemen, theocracy, as it existed in ancient times—with the inspiration of the mystery priests flowing into the social structure, into legal and moral life, and also into economic life—this theocracy, to cite just one example, can only be realized in economic life can only come about through that which extends into economic life as far as agriculture, through that which has to do with the relationship of human beings to the land. Commandment-like rules of conduct for economic life can be derived from this inspiration when economic life is primarily grounded in the land, in agriculture, livestock farming, and so on.

[ 22 ] This is because there is a unique relationship between the person who is deeply attached to the land. In his heart, he possesses what can resonate with what emerges from theocracy.

[ 23 ] The moment trade and commerce begin to play a greater role in the development of humanity, that is the moment things change. The ancient, the oldest theocracies—they can only be understood if one realizes that, in essence, all economic life is based on a person’s connection to the land, and that trade and commerce were, so to speak, merely superimposed upon this foundation. They did exist, of course, but they developed in such a way that they evolved in tandem with the conditions pertaining to land and agriculture. We see in the development of humanity how trade and commerce, so to speak, emancipate themselves from agriculture—first only in its very beginnings in ancient Greece, and then more clearly in the ancient Roman Empire. There we see how human activity in trade and commerce, so to speak, grows into something independent within the social structure, and this is what gives Roman life as a whole its distinctive character.

[ 24 ] When the consequences of this emancipation for the people in the Roman Empire struck a deep chord in the hearts of the Gracchi—Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus—and when these sentiments took root in their hearts and were put into action, the great social struggles of ancient Rome arose. The first strike movement in ancient Rome essentially took place when the people marched out to the “Sacred Mountain” and demanded their rights; that is when the push for a new future began.

[ 25 ] And what is now recognized as something independent—something that was previously integrated into the entire social structure—is human labor, which establishes a special relationship between people. When, based on the commandments, a person knows that he stands as an inferior before a superior, he does not ask how he should organize his work; this follows from the human relationship. The moment work appears as something emancipated and independent, the question arises: How do I relate to my fellow human beings so that my work integrates itself into the social structure in the proper way? — Trade, commerce, and labor—these are the three economic factors that then inspire human beings to draw forth from within themselves that which is right, as well as the morality derived from religion. And this prompts human beings to allow two streams to emerge from the single stream of theocracy: to let the old theocracy continue, and to allow a second stream—which is essentially the stream of the martial and, in particular, the legal—to flow alongside it.

[ 26 ] Thus we see how, as Eastern culture spreads to Europe under the influence of trade, commerce, and labor, the old theocratic way of thinking gives way to legal thinking; just as the old relationships—which were not legal relationships at all (try to understand this clearly, even from the Mosaic Law)—are replaced by legal relationships of property, relationships that are meant to express the bonds between people.

[ 27 ] One can see this emerging in its infancy during the time of the Gracchi, and later blossoming more fully during the time of Diocletian; one sees there how the second current stands alongside the first, and one sees this expressed throughout human life.

[ 28 ] One could say: Over in the Orient, in the ancient theocracies, what people were meant to know as spiritual knowledge about the supersensible worlds was all self-evident theosophy. Theo-Sophia is the concrete wisdom that was received through inspiration.

[ 29 ] As the current flows toward Europe, jurisprudence takes its place alongside it. Jurisprudence can no longer be Sophia, for it does not deal with something that is imparted to one, but with something that human beings themselves develop more and more through human interaction. Here, judgment becomes decisive. Here, logic takes the place of Sophia, and jurisprudence—into which the entire social structure is now poured—becomes primarily logical. Logic and dialectics achieve their triumphs, not in the natural sciences, but precisely in legal life, and all human life is forced into this second current—into logic. The concept of property, the concept of personal rights—all of these are, after all, realized logical categories.

[ 30 ] And this force is so powerful in this second current that it rubs off on the first current. Theosophia becomes Theologia. The first current is thus definitely influenced by the second current. And we now have, side by side, a time-honored tradition—an ancient Theosophia—which, having become less vibrant, somewhat drier, and somewhat leaner than it was in its youth, is now becoming Theologia; and alongside it, Jurisprudentia, which in this sense actually encompasses everything up into the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, appearing in various guises, and which still exerts an influence on the entire economic life of humanity.

[ 31 ] Jurisprudence also influenced Adam Smith, even though he sought to focus on economic life. Read Adam Smith with the sense that legal thinking is rumbling beneath the surface; yet economic life is emerging. Now he wants to squeeze into the old concepts of jurisprudence—which by then had already become outdated themselves—what is emerging as economic life in all its complexities, after scientific thinking had taken hold of technology and so on.

[ 32 ] And so we see how, for a time, two currents take shape within civilized humanity itself: theology, which then flows into science on the one hand—for it can indeed be demonstrated everywhere how the later sciences, including the natural sciences, developed out of theology. But in the meantime, people have learned dialectical-logical thinking, and they now apply it to everything, including science. And this is how the modern era has developed. Social and economic conditions have emerged with overwhelming complexity. People are still accustomed to theological-juridical thinking, and they now apply that specifically to the natural sciences as well. In the natural sciences, this is no longer noticed. When one looks through a microscope, or gazes at the starry sky through a telescope, or even dissects a lower animal to study its organism, one does not realize that one has brought a historical phase of human thought into that process—and not something absolute. And so, in recent times, this scientific way of thinking has come to dominate humanity and civilization: everything is to be thought of in the same way that science thinks. Today, this is not confined merely to the educated; it permeates all of humanity, right down to the most primitive of people.

[ 33 ] I do not wish to be misunderstood here either, but I would like to make a comment. When such matters are discussed today—as I did, for example, in relation to education in days gone by—it is also necessary to include what illuminates the natural sciences from a spiritual perspective. When people today, who have been educated in the natural sciences, encounter these ideas, they think: “Yes, what is being said here isn’t in a physiology textbook; I haven’t heard this from a physiology lecture, so it must be wrong.” - It is not assumed that what cannot be stated there—that everything I have said regarding natural science—has been thoroughly verified, or that it fully takes into account what is written in physiology textbooks and what is taught as physiology from the lectern. But humanity today is structured in such a way that people do not even know how one thing arises from the other. And so today, the brilliant natural science—which is, of course, fully recognized within anthroposophy—is now an obstacle, not because of what it says itself, but because of people, because of the way people perceive it. And I would like to say that one can make it tangible in the development of modern humanity just how it is an obstacle.

[ 34 ] You see, there was a man whose name is well known to you—Karl Marx—who, in recent times, spoke particularly forcefully about social life to millions and millions of people. How did he speak? Well, he spoke as the quintessential representative of the scientific age must speak about social life.

[ 35 ] Let’s imagine for a moment how this “typical” person must speak. The natural scientist has thoughts in his head. He doesn’t place much value on them; he only attaches any significance to them once they have been verified under the microscope, through an experiment, or by some other observation. But what he observes must be completely separate from the human being; it must not be linked in any way—it must be presented to him. And so the person who thinks scientifically must see a chasm between his thinking and what is presented to him.

[ 36 ] Well, Karl Marx did not, I would say, learn this way of thinking—which refuses to engage with the external world—entirely in the spirit of the latest scientific discoveries, but he did learn it in an older form, namely Hegelian dialectics. It is, in essence, merely a different variation on scientific thinking. When he was learning this way of thinking characteristic of modern man, he was immersed in his own milieu. But as a representative of the scientific age, he simply could not make sense of it. He was a German; he was steeped in the German logical-dialectical mode of thought. But he could make no headway with it from that perspective, just as the natural scientist can make no headway with his own thoughts. He waits to see what the microscope or telescope reveals to him. That must come from outside. Karl Marx could make no headway with his own thoughts. And since he could not step outside his own skin, he left Germany and went to England. There, social conditions confronted him from the outside, just as the microscope or telescope does for the natural scientist. There he had an external world. There he could speak in such a way and establish a social theory based on a scientific model, just as the natural scientist establishes his theory. And because this way of thinking is deeply ingrained in people, it became immensely popular. And since what relates solely to external nature is already considered authoritative—when one speaks of human beings as one speaks of external nature, as Karl Marx did—then everything one says about human beings, including their social conditions, appears as if it were nature itself. What I say about Jupiter, what I say about the violet, what I say about the earthworm—I can say the same thing in Iceland as in New Zealand, and in England as in Russia. This applies to the whole world. I don’t need to be specific; it must apply universally.

[ 37 ] So when one establishes a social theory based on the model of the natural sciences, one apparently establishes something that applies across the entire globe, something that can be applied everywhere. This is, in fact, the peculiarity of the legal-statist way of thinking—which has found its culmination in Marxism—namely, that it seeks to impose the general and abstract like a universal garment upon everything. You can already find this where thinking is not yet socialist but merely legal-logical, for example in Kant’s categorical imperative, which you may also be familiar with as something foreign.

[ 38 ] Ladies and gentlemen, this categorical imperative, which states: Act in such a way that the maxim of your action can apply to every human being. - In real life, this cannot be applied, because you cannot tell anyone: “Have the tailor make your coat in such a way that it fits every person.” But this pattern—which is, in fact, the logical pattern—is the very model upon which traditional legal and political thought is based. This reaches its culmination in Marxist-socialist thought.

[ 39 ] And so we see how what Marx observed in a scientific manner—by applying German thought to the English economic reality—is first realized and brought to fruition.

[ 40 ] Now it is being carried back to Central Europe. There, it finds its full expression in the impulses of human will.

[ 41 ] And then it is carried even further eastward. In the East, in fact, the superimposition of the purely abstract upon concrete human conditions has already been prepared. For in the East we see how Peter the Great had already paved the way for Marx. Peter the Great had already introduced Western influences into Russian life; although Russia, in its soul, retains many Oriental characteristics and its people still carry the spirit of theocracy deeply within them, he introduced the legal and state structures and established St. Petersburg further to the west, alongside Moscow.

[ 42 ] People did not understand that these are two worlds: St. Petersburg is Europe, and Moscow is Russia, where Oriental theocracy in its purest form still runs deep. So when Soloviev developed a philosophy, it naturally did not turn out like Herbert Spencer’s dialectical-scientific philosophy, but became theosophical. But Soloviev is Moscow. Soloviev is not St. Petersburg. Nor do I mean to suggest that things in Russia can be separated solely on geographical grounds. Dostoevsky—no matter how deeply he may be bound to Moscow, no matter how far east he may go—is St. Petersburg. And life in Russia unfolds between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Moscow is Asia, viewed from a theocratic perspective, even today; St. Petersburg is Europe.

[ 43 ] And in St. Petersburg, preparations were already underway—in a state-legal manner—for what Leninism would later inflict upon Russia as a whole, where something so foreign to the Russian essence was imposed as the ultimate consequence of the Western European essence—as something abstract, so alien that one might say: What Lenin did in Russia could just as well have been done on the moon or anywhere else. It did not even occur to anyone that this was Russia, the very place where Lenin wanted to rule.

[ 44 ] Thus, circumstances have gradually developed in such a way that one does not actually get to the heart of the matter by focusing on the social aspect. But that is precisely what we must do, ladies and gentlemen. We must be clear that, in the development of humanity, spiritual life arose earlier than legal and political life; that the latter emerged as a second current alongside the first; and that perhaps something other than this mere transfer of jurisprudence into theosophy—which transforms it into theology—must now take place; that perhaps spiritual life must be reawakened in a new form.

[ 45 ] For the fact is that the evolution of humanity has proceeded in such a way that many aspects of the spiritual life of ancient times have retained their form. It has retained not only the academic gown and the cap, but also the forms of thought. These forms of thought no longer fit a world into which commerce, industry, and labor were introduced as emancipated elements, so that spiritual life today often stands as a separate entity alongside the rest of life—most notably the farther west one goes.

[ 46 ] In Russia—in Moscow-Russia—this is least of all the case. In Central Europe, all struggles, including social ones, revolve around the failure to find the right balance between the dialectical-legal-state element and the theocratic element. People do not know whether they can keep their robes and caps on when they take their seats as judges, or whether they should take them off. Lawyers are already ashamed of them today, while judges still find something very dignified in wearing the robe. No one knows. In Central Europe, there is a fierce struggle; in Western Europe, the theocratic element is very strongly preserved in intellectual life, very strongly preserved in patterns of thought.

[ 47 ] But the second current within humanity has, after all, developed over time. On the one hand, if we view this as a symptom, we have the human being who wonderfully preserves the old—the academic gown and beret—and now one would like to see him take off the gown and beret to reveal something else underneath, a second layer, whether it be a king’s cloak or a warrior’s cloak; but it would have to be something that now enters into the legal relationship, into the relationship with the state. And so, I would say, if one encounters him on the street today, in order to see him as a complete human being, one would want to remove his robe and beret and find beneath them something like a warrior’s cloak, or something that belongs in a lawyer’s office; then one would have the two currents within the human being living side by side.

[ 48 ] I must confess to you—admittedly, I’m saying this in jest, but I mean it quite seriously—that whenever I encounter someone wearing a robe and a cap on the street these days, the thought occurs to me: “Well, if you were to write a letter right now, you wouldn’t know whether to date it 768 B.C. or—since there might, after all, be a legal scholar inside that robe—1265 A.D.?” One can’t make sense of the date, because the past—the distant and the more recent past—doesn’t even need to be taken into account here; I would only arrive at today’s date as a last resort—because the more distant past and the less distant past stand side by side like two currents. And they stand side by side just like Moscow and St. Petersburg.

[ 49 ] And the question arises: How does true organization, true structuring, come into play in what today exists side by side? We will then see this twofold structuring, which I have described so far, give way to a threefold structuring in modern times, where the three elements likewise exist side by side.

[ 50 ] Threefold organization, ladies and gentlemen, does not mean that we now have a harmonious unity in social life and should simply make three divisions so that the three parts develop side by side; rather, threefold organization means that it exists just as the three parts exist within the human being: the head and nervous system, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic system. They simply have to work together properly, and each must be assigned its proper role. If the digestive system works too little and transfers too much of its work to the head, all sorts of migraine-like illnesses arise.

[ 51 ] If the spiritual element of the social organism does not function properly—if, for example, it devotes too much of its energy to economic matters, since the economic sphere is currently the head of the social organism—then all sorts of social ills arise.

[ 52 ] Thus, if one wishes to gain insight into social life, one must view these matters in the context of human development and evolution. Social life, more than anything else, does not lend itself to a superficial view. So we must come to the point of incorporating into our academic robes and caps forms that enable us to conceive of these two historical realities in relation to one another. That is the present. Otherwise, the past remains the past, with its parallel currents that today stand precisely as the root cause of social ills in the world—even if people do not believe it. I will elaborate further in the third part of my lecture today.

[ 53 ] Ladies and gentlemen, since time is running short, I will keep what I have left to say to you today very brief. After all, it already brings us into the present, into these days, and so I will have to save the most essential points for my next lecture. What I would like to say today is this: In addition to the two currents I have described, a third current has been emerging more and more since the beginning of the 15th through the 16th centuries, but most clearly in the 19th century. It becomes all the more evident the more culture shifts toward the West. To what was originally theocratic in nature—adapted to the land and agriculture—is added, in the central regions, the legal system, which is adapted to trade, commerce, and labor. And in the West, what is later understood under the name of “industrial,” the truly industrial with all that is technically integrated into this industrial sphere, is now increasingly coming to the fore.

[ 54 ] Just consider what the introduction of the actual industrial element into the evolution of humanity signifies. Today’s circumstances could easily be extrapolated to what I am about to describe, but I want to apply this to a somewhat earlier period—roughly the 1880s. At that time, one could already say: If one were to count the physical human beings on Earth, one would find about 1,500 million people. But that is not the true population of the Earth. That would only be the true population of the Earth if we were still living in deep antiquity, when people essentially performed all work with their hands or through means directly related to the human body—such as using one’s hands to guide a plow or lead a horse, and so on. As early as the 19th century, a whole new “population” had entered the world: machines, which have taken over a portion of human labor. And if one calculates—even for the 1880s—how much human labor the machine has taken over from people, one arrives at the conclusion that the Earth’s population should then be considered to be 2,000 million people—25 percent more. Today—and this was even more true before the war—if we look merely at the physical presence of people on Earth, we arrive at a completely inaccurate estimate of the Earth’s population. Based on the work performed, we must assume there are 500 million more people on Earth.

[ 55 ] This did indeed introduce a completely new element into the old theocratic and legal tradition—a completely new current in real-world conditions—for it did not bring people closer to the outside world, but rather turned them back more toward themselves. In the Middle Ages, human beings were in such a position that a part of them was, so to speak, what they made—a key to a lock, or the lock itself. Thus, whatever human beings did was transformed into work. When a person stands at a machine, it makes no difference to them—relatively speaking—what their relationship to the machine is. This causes them to be turned back upon themselves all the more. They become aware of their humanity. Humanity is entering a new phase of development as an entirely new being. It is detaching itself from its external activities.

[ 56 ] This is what has emerged in the West as the democratic element over the past few centuries, but only as a demand, as a postulate—not as something that has actually been realized. For circumstances overwhelm human beings. People can think only in theocratic or legal terms. But life is becoming industrial and economic, with overwhelming demands. Their thoughts have not yet caught up with this. Even a man like Marx thought only in legal terms. And the understanding he found among millions and millions is purely legal.

[ 57 ] And so one can say: As a result, a third current—which we will discuss by name in the next lecture—emerged alongside the other two. The proletarian is born. What stirs within the proletarian manifests itself as a specific conception of capitalism and of labor. People are compelled to confront these issues as they arise in their daily lives. Only now has the evolution of humanity truly become a reality.

[ 58 ] One might say: there stands the man in his robe and beret, wonderfully beautiful, magnificent; he looms in from the past. There stands the man in his warrior’s cloak and with his sword, the embodiment of the legal—the warlike is merely another aspect of the legal—the recent past, not yet the present. And when I see the man in a robe and beret, he may still—since humanity has been accustomed to this for centuries—under certain circumstances be a good lawyer, a good advocate. In that case, I won’t feel the disharmony so strongly. But if he is now to be placed within economic life—I almost suspect that, unless he is specifically qualified to actively engage in economic life despite his cap and robe, he will simply lose his money! For humanity, in general, has not yet grown into what this third current in life signifies. And, on a larger scale, it hasn’t either. That is why the social question stands before us as a question of humanity. For humanity stands alongside the machine. Today, we must not view the social question as an economic issue; we must be able to grasp it as a question of humanity, and we must understand that we must resolve it within humanity itself.

[ 59 ] However, the intellectual impulses needed for this are still lacking, unlike those that existed for the theocratic and the legal spheres. They are still missing for the economic sphere. And the struggles of the present day are about finding intellectual impulses for the economic sphere, just as they were found for the theocratic and legal spheres. That is, in essence, still the substance of the social question today. On a large scale, we are even less on a healthy path than on a small one. The states that were suddenly supposed to embrace this industrial economic life sought to integrate it into their old legal forms. And since they were unable to do so, they resorted to what served as a kind of safety valve, so as not to have to develop economic life alongside state life right away. And this safety valve is colonization. Because they could not find the basis for strong social ideas at home, they initially sought a sort of way out through colonization.

[ 60 ] That worked for England. It didn’t work for Germany. Germany was unable to integrate its industry, undoubtedly because colonization didn’t work. And the great question facing humanity today is: How will humanity deal with economic life, just as it once dealt with theocratic and legal systems?

[ 61 ] Today, people believe that this great question can be solved in a purely materialistic way. Everyone wants to resolve it through economic activity. Here, I will begin, in a modest way, to show that it can only be solved through spiritual means. That will be the subject of my next two lectures.