The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. Social Impulses in the Present

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Anyone who wishes to reflect on the social question today must, above all, take into account that in the real world, effects stem from causes that one usually does not even consider when merely observing things superficially. Such an observation reveals only what takes place on the surface of reality, while the actual deeper causes—the deeper reasons—remain unseen. This is why so many well-intentioned utopian mental images have emerged and continue to emerge, through which people believe they can cope with social life as it presents itself today with all its demands. I have now attempted, at a very important juncture—the period between the end of the war and the attempt at peace at Versailles—to outline in a few lines how one might conceive of an organic structure within the present social organism, based on the three parts of social life that I took the liberty of characterizing in my last lecture.

[ 2 ] In my last lecture, I pointed out how, in the course of humanity’s historical development, three distinct currents emerged from a single original current—the theocratic current—and how spiritual life, legal-political life, and economic life currently coexist within the social organism. I had expressly noted that I do not believe one must first, in theory, divide the social organism into these three parts. From my realistic, rather than theoretical, perspective, that would seem to me as if someone were trying to figure out how to first divide a human being into head, chest, and limbs. The division within the social organism has become a historical reality and simply exists today; the question today is not how to divide the social organism into three parts, but how to find the connecting links between the three parts that already exist.

[ 3 ] If one wants to think correctly about this question as the fundamental social issue of our time, then one must think in a completely realistic way, basing one’s thinking solely on the facts. But then one is thinking in terms of a specific point in time and a specific place. And in my book, *The Key Points of the Social Question*—because the book was requested of me by friends in Stuttgart, in southern Germany—I did not write it of my own accord; it was requested of me— I wrote this book for that specific time—the spring of 1919—and that specific place—southern Germany—because I had a mental image of a situation in which, when people come to a resolve, that resolve might be of such a nature at that time and in that place that understanding would be found for what is indicated in this book not as program points, but as directions of will.

[ 4 ] The fact is that the question addressed in this book is quite different for the East of the civilized world—for Russia and Asia—quite different for Central Europe, and quite different for the West—for England and America. This follows from a realistic way of thinking. For what I characterized in my last lecture—the emergence of the industrial world order from the two earlier ones, so that it continues alongside them as a distinct current—has developed primarily under the influence of the Western countries. It developed under the influence of what constituted custom, habit, and social order in the Western countries during the 18th century; it fitted into that context. If one wishes to characterize it more concretely and precisely, one must say: England has become the great trading nation in the course of recent historical development. That which—I would say—is every third word today in the social question of the proletariat, namely capital, has developed for Western Europe under the influence of large-scale trade relations as commercial capital.

[ 5 ] Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this gives a matter a very specific character, for the commercial nature has developed organically in recent times out of Western lifestyles and customs. In fact, what Karl Marx observed in England was different from what he encountered in Germany. From Germany, he brought only the theory, the thinking, the dialectic. Here, he observed a foreign social structure. And so one must say: Everything that subsequently emerged as the industrial order arose through continuous development as the next link in the chain of commercial development in the West. The industrial sphere developed organically out of commerce.

[ 6 ] In Central Europe—and in Germany, the representative country of Central Europe—this was not the case. Until the mid-19th century, Germany was essentially an agrarian country, a country in which agriculture was by far the dominant sector. And what existed there as modern industry—this modern industrial movement that established itself as a third force alongside the other two—was a state structure, a structure that became increasingly consolidated by the state and therefore developed a tendency to integrate industrialism into the state apparatus, to absorb it.

[ 7 ] Just compare, in a realistic way, Central Europe as it was before the war with Western Europe before the war. In Western Europe, the economic sphere has maintained a certain degree of independence from the state, and the intellectual sphere even more so. It stands in a certain degree of autonomy in relation to the other two spheres.

[ 8 ] In Central Europe, a cohesive whole emerged comprising intellectual life, the legal, state, and constitutional spheres, and economic life. In Germany, therefore, it was necessary to consider how to separate these three elements in order to then bring them into organic interaction; how they must stand side by side so that they can function effectively together; and how to forge the bonds between them.

[ 9 ] Here in the West, the situation is that the three spheres lie side by side, that they are clearly separated from one another, that one finds spiritual life spatially concentrated, as it is here in Oxford, where one has the feeling that there is no longer any political or economic world outside at all, as if everything spiritual stood sovereign and autonomous. But one also has the feeling that what develops within this sovereign spiritual life no longer has the power to exert an influence on the other two elements. It is something that lives only within itself, something that is not organically woven into the other two elements.

[ 10 ] In Germany, one gets the feeling that intellectual life is so deeply embedded in public life that it first needs to be helped to get on its feet so that it can stand on its own. Here, one gets the feeling that intellectual life stands so independently that it doesn’t care at all about the other sectors of society. This lends a fundamentally different perspective when one thinks realistically about the entire social question of the present and the underlying impulse behind the social question in our day.

[ 11 ] For this reason, I believe that it is only natural that my “Key Points of the Social Question”—even if they are almost forgotten in Germany today (which is a slight exaggeration, but it is almost true)—even if they are almost forgotten in Germany today, and even though they spread with tremendous speed in 1919, that this is only natural. For the time when what is set forth in the “Key Points of the Social Question” should have been put into practice has passed for Central Europe. It passed the very moment that sharp decline in the value of the currency occurred, which has completely tied the hands of the German economy.

[ 12 ] Back when *The Key Points of the Social Question* was published, many people asked me: “Yes, that’s all well and good, but right now the most important thing is how we can improve the currency.” — At that time, it was still relatively sound compared to today’s deplorable state. All I could say was: It’s right there in the “Key Points”—it explains how to improve the currency. But people didn’t see it. They didn’t know where to find the answer to the question; instead, they were looking for the answer in some superficial way, not in the depths. People didn’t understand that the book itself was the answer.

[ 13 ] Well, that is one of the fundamental driving forces in social life today. If one tries to think from reality, to give people answers based on reality, they don’t understand them, because they come with theories, with minds completely filled with “capital” and “surplus value” and “class struggle” and all sorts of things, and with all the old prejudices. They come with what are old habits of thought. And today, especially in practical life, theories are killing reality. That is the peculiar enigma of our time: that the practitioners have all become theorists, that they all have ideas in their heads—ideas they have, for my sake, cobbled together from a factory—and want to master the whole of social life with these theoretical ideas.

[ 14 ] That is why I believe that in the future my “Key Points” should be read more widely in the West and in Russia, since in Germany today they essentially have no chance of having an impact. For in the West, for example, one can still gain a great deal from this book, since it sets forth—without utopianism—how the three spheres should stand side by side and interlock. For the West, the timing is entirely irrelevant, for there, too, much remains to be done regarding the proper structuring of the three spheres: spiritual life, economic life, and political-legal life.

[ 15 ] But above all, we must learn to think in a truly modern way in order to arrive at social judgment in the modern sense—let us not take this superficially, ladies and gentlemen—in order to arrive at social judgment, at the formation of social judgment, in the modern sense. We can only do this if we look beneath the surface of social phenomena, into their depths. And here a peculiar fact emerges today. The fact emerges that the individual, no matter how clever he may be, no matter how intelligent—and, for my part, even how idealistic and practical—he may be—I would like to emphasize “practical” three times—that as an individual he cannot form a social judgment at all. It is, I would say, a social mystery, ladies and gentlemen, that every individual social judgment is wrong.

[ 16 ] Take a moment to study the incredibly wise judgments that were made when the gold standard was to be introduced in Europe. Anyone who delves into what was said at the time in trade associations and parliaments—and I say this not ironically, but out of full conviction—will find an excellent example of human wisdom. One cannot help but feel a deep sense of respect when delving into what all those immensely intelligent people said, starting in the mid-19th century, about the influence of the gold standard on the social structure of the world. Above all, it has been rigorously proven—as logically and practically as is possible, in a way that inspires immense respect—that if the gold standard is introduced, free trade will flourish.

[ 17 ] The opposite has happened. In fact, precisely as a consequence of the gold standard, it has even been necessary to re-erect tariff barriers. In other words: the smartest people spoke nonsense when they looked to the future. This is not a criticism. It stems from the fact that, when it comes to social judgment, the smartest people perhaps speak the greatest nonsense the smarter they are—when they speak as individuals; when they judge solely on the basis of what can emerge from individual human nature.

[ 18 ] Therefore, the issue today is not at all that we allow ourselves to be influenced by what is widely regarded as social misery. The individual is unable to form a judgment regarding the relationship between cause and effect in social life. We must go deeper. We must look into the very structure of humanity. We must ask ourselves: How can a genuine social judgment come about?

[ 19 ] In the ancient social judgments—which we do not wish to revive, as they belonged to a bygone era, the era of theocracies—in these ancient judgments, social judgment was not a conscious act, but was passed unconsciously; yet it was passed by groups of people.

[ 20 ] It is not at all true that the family was the first element in the social order. The family is a later development that emerged only later in social life. Primitive humans did not ponder what social judgment should be; they allowed themselves to be inspired by the priesthood and grasped this inspiration through the unconscious. But these social judgments—these unconscious ones—arose only when people were part of a structure—when they were bound within that structure by blood ties and other bonds. Social groups had an understanding—social groups, not individuals; social groups that lived together. And from the coexistence of these groups, true social life emerged. In the minds of people, what was right developed out of the group, including democracy, and with it the democratic idea. This only reached its culmination over the course of time. The individual entered the stage of world history. But he could still bring with him what the groups had formed. It lived on in tradition. This also found its way into the legal and state order, but it no longer found its way into that which is detached from the human being—into the mechanical, into the industrial order. There it has no effect; it no longer penetrates there.

[ 21 ] Well, we see that it becomes necessary to form, once again, something within the economic order itself that, in a fully conscious human society, is similar to the original social groups. In my book *The Key Points of the Social Question*, I have referred to these as “associations,” where social judgment does not arise from the individual but from what lives and acts together within the association—in those associations formed among consumers, producers, and merchants. Thus, we once again have social groups from which, with full consciousness, a judgment emerges that the individual cannot form on his own. One can ponder a solution to the social question for as long as one likes; all such pondering is nonsense. The only thing that makes sense is to form social groups from which one can expect partial solutions to the social question to emerge—that people who judge together will produce something that comes close to a partial solution to the social question for any given place and time, so that it becomes part of humanity.

[ 22 ] This is precisely what is particularly necessary today, and what is so poorly understood. I sensed just how little it is understood when I published my *Philosophy of Freedom* in the early 1890s. I came to realize this in a very specific aspect of the social question.

[ 23 ] At the time, I also had to briefly touch on the women’s issue as a social issue, and back then—it’s been thirty years now—I did not say: “This is how you solve the women’s issue,” because it doesn’t matter at all what individuals have in their mental images today; that might have a literary significance—you can write novels about it—but it doesn’t have any impact on reality. That is why I said back then: First, you have to ask women properly what they think about it; only then can you draw on reality to establish a foundation for what can actually happen.

[ 24 ] Women were not really in demand back then; for the few women who had spoken up until then had merely passed judgment in a masculine way, simply applying the male model that had always prevailed—from the lowest elementary school grades all the way up to the universities. These women had no intention of integrating social judgment into the social fabric. They did not ask at all how social life would turn out based on what the skirt one has to wear looks like; they strove—forgive me for mentioning this, even though it is otherwise frowned upon in England—they strove to wear trousers like men, to become doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and schoolteachers just as men have become; not to incorporate what is feminine into the social organism, not to take reality as it is, but to proceed from a theory. For theory has been taken to the point of utter sterility in our time. One must also realize that one should not form a theoretical judgment on the women’s question, but first listen to real women. For it is reality that is at stake.

[ 25 ] And so, regarding the entire social question, we must not answer it theoretically: How should employers and workers position themselves? How should the factory be structured in terms of social relations? — but rather, we must first form the right associations, the right groups of people, from which the answer will then emerge. One must ask the questions correctly and wait to see how the answers emerge from the way people are organized.

[ 26 ] So if one is going to write books, one must write books that do not provide definitive answers, but rather point out how groups of people will arrive at answers when these people are brought together in the right way. A book must arise from a social way of thinking and a social outlook if it is to truly resonate with the social impulses of our time. I will speak further about this in the second section.

[ 27 ] Ladies and gentlemen, it is extremely difficult these days to speak about practical thinking. People all believe themselves to be realists, but in reality, one encounters far-fetched theories everywhere—theories that nevertheless have an impact on real life. To make myself perfectly clear regarding what I still have to say here, allow me to make a personal remark.

[ 28 ] I believe that what needs to be said regarding the threefold structure of the social organism can indeed be read today in my book *The Key Points of the Social Question*, particularly outside of Germany; but I myself was compelled, through practical and realistic thinking, to express things differently than I had originally written them for an audience outside Germany, for a Swiss journal. And there you will find the essay that is now reprinted in *The Hibbert Journal*. It is written from an international perspective because it was intended from the outset for everyone. But that is not how people view things today. That is why I must make this personal remark, so that the following points—which are important for understanding social life in the present—so that the following points I have to make are properly understood.

[ 29 ] I am completely indifferent to any “theory,” and therefore I regard every formulation of ideas and concepts merely as a language for expressing reality. If I find that reality can be expressed using the concepts formulated by the materialists, then I express what needs to be said about reality in materialist terms. If I find that the idealists have suitable concepts to truly express something, then I simply express it in idealist terms. In theory, materialism, idealism, and realism are all equally indifferent to me; I regard them as a language for expressing realities. Therefore, it is very easy to find that, if at one time I expressed what I wanted to convey using Ernst Haeckel’s words, the very writings I produced during that period take a form that could give rise to calling me a materialist; and in this way, one can find contradiction upon contradiction.

[ 30 ] That is simply the nature of life—and especially the increasingly complicated life of modern times. If we want to think practically about social issues, we must take into account that everything we call naturalism, idealism, materialism, and spiritualism stems from legalistic-logical thinking, and that none of this is suitable for the present; but neither are “industrialism,” “communism,” or “socialism.” All these terms are useful for expressing one thing or another, but when taken as theories, catchphrases, or agitation directives, they have all already run their course. That is why it is so difficult to find titles. For example, for my lecture tomorrow, I have chosen a title that I actually find repulsive, because it essentially reflects old catchphrases—but those no longer apply today. Today we must immerse ourselves in real life. This is not idealistic; it is simply real, and it demands to be viewed from a wide variety of perspectives. As I’ve already said: If you photograph a tree from one side, it’s “materialism”; if we photograph the tree from another side, it’s “idealism”; if the tree is photographed from a third side, it’s “naturalism.” One photographs social life from one side = “socialism”; from the other side = “autocracy”; from the third side = “communism.” But these are not concepts one should be working with today. We simply lack the proper instinct today to find terms that must be derived from contemporary life, which is permeated everywhere by industrialism. One need only consider how intensely life has shaped the past epochs of humanity. Theocracy was once so intensely imposed on all social life that even the economic sphere, as I said the day before yesterday, grew directly out of theocratic directives. But this applies only up to the level of agriculture. Agriculture can be fully integrated into a social organism conceived theocratically, for it is in the human heart to bring land and soil together with the theocratic order. Ask the person who has grown up with the land, with the soil, what bread means to him. For him, bread is first and foremost a gift from God. There you see, in his use of language, that what he has on his table is connected to what he experiences in theocracy.

[ 31 ] And then the social orders emerge—the ones I discussed the day before yesterday—which are based on commerce and trade. The question of labor arises. The day before yesterday, I attempted to discuss its origins in Roman society. And then a completely different way of thinking emerges. All the concepts we have—property, human rights in relation to other human rights—took on a legal, dialectical, and logical character at that time. “God willed it”—that was the social motto of the theocracies. “People must settle matters among themselves”—that became the social motto in the legal and state order.

[ 32 ] And this had such a profound effect that it left its mark on all of life. Not only in the sense of what I said the day before yesterday—that theosophy had become a theology—but in an even more profound way, it permeated life.

[ 33 ] Please take a look at the magnificent painting by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel in Rome today: Christ the Judge of the World, from a time when legal and political life most intensely encompassed everything. But a religious mystery was to be painted on the wall of the central sanctuary of religion.

[ 34 ] Do you think that if Christ had been depicted based on ancient Eastern theocracy, he would have turned out the way Michelangelo painted him? By no means! He would have become the one who, in some way, bestows the gifts of the world—the graces that humanity can receive—with blessing hands, and he would have become the God of the world who gives to humanity with a blessing.

[ 35 ] Who is the Christ in Michelangelo’s painting? The Judge of the World, the great jurist of the universe, who rewards the good and punishes the wicked. The entire painting is legalistic, steeped in the era from which it emerged. The entire social momentum of the era is still viewed artistically in this painting. The former conception of the world of the gods, where God was simply God, has transformed to such an extent that the worldview has become a jurisprudence of the world. God is the great jurist in Michelangelo’s painting. Jurisprudence penetrates into the most intimate threads of thought, including religion. Religion becomes a sense of what is just, unjust, good, and evil, and how these should be rewarded or punished. The world does not culminate in what it once did in the ancient Orient—the reunification of humanity with the divine substance—but rather, as it nears its end, the world approaches the great judicial session, where the fate of the world is decided by legal judgment.

[ 36 ] Michelangelo painted that way. Adam Smith thought that way. But he thought from the other perspective. Michelangelo painted from the perspective of theocracy, and as an artist, the theocratic order slipped into his legal thinking. Adam Smith thought entirely in legal terms; Ricardo did as well, and so did Karl Marx, and they wanted to impose this legal thinking on the new industrial order, which no longer presents human beings in the same way that earlier orders did.

[ 37 ] In the theocratic order, human beings were rooted to the soil, to the land; they had grown together with it. And they sensed how they could grow together with this soil once the theocratic social order was behind them. The center, the focal point, was the place where the inspired ones issued their directives—what later became the village, along with the surrounding land and the church. In the course of human development, the city emerged. The city arose from the social order of jurisprudence. Now there is no longer the contrast between farmer and priest; now there is the contrast between city and countryside.

[ 38 ] However, this is entirely interwoven with legal categories. Even those who went on to conceive of the social organism—comprising city and countryside—as the state thought within these legal categories; this was the way of thinking from Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill all the way to Karl Marx. Abstract, legal categories prevail everywhere here, even if they are treated critically by Karl Marx—positively by Adam Smith, negatively by Karl Marx—but he works entirely in legal terms. These legal terms have now become common property of a humanity that is no longer connected to anything.

[ 39 ] The farmer was bound to the land. The merchant, the businessperson, was bound to other people. People simply don’t study this properly—how one person came to value another when buying or selling something that the seller had made himself, something to which he was still connected. What was decisive here was the legal perspective. What determined a fair price was what took place from person to person, what unfolded between city and countryside—the reciprocity, the agreements people make with one another.

[ 40 ] Now came the time when humanity found itself face to face with machines and technology. Human beings in particular, now placed within the mechanical world, have been torn away from all their former circumstances; they are no longer tied to the land, nor are they connected to the mutual interactions that existed between people in the era when trade and commerce dominated. They are left to rely solely on their humanity.

[ 41 ] And yet the fact is that social structure develops in a highly abstract manner. The entrepreneur stands there, and essentially his only option is to work with the balance sheet—to work with what emerges from the enterprise—because all other factors elude his observation. After all, he no longer has any relationship with human beings; he has a relationship with what has been recorded in the books from the human realm. That is why it is exceptionally difficult today for so-called practitioners to understand truly correct thinking.

[ 42 ] This became apparent when an attempt was made to establish something in practice that, in turn, feeds back into concrete life—where those in charge do not merely manage according to the books, but are actively engaged with their thinking in real, concrete undertakings. But no collaborators could be found. The majority of the collaborators took a stand and said: “He’s the theorist who comes up with ideas; we are the practitioners. We, as practitioners, know how things are.” — But what did these practitioners have in mind? A few concepts—entirely theoretical concepts—from which they imagined exactly how things ought to be here and there at that very moment. These were, of course, the philosophers—but philosophers of just a few concepts, who had merely cobbled together a few ideas from a corner of economic life and now proclaimed with great confidence: “These theoretical concepts are the practice, and if anyone comes along with something else, then they simply don’t understand a thing.”

[ 43 ] It is therefore so incredibly difficult to make headway in the world today with “practical” thinking, because practitioners are all theorists—and indeed, the most abstract of theorists.

[ 44 ] And so today we certainly have people standing there—people from all walks of life—because even the terms “bourgeoisie” and “proletariat,” “medical profession” and “clergy,” are all completely obsolete today. We can no longer make sense of these old conceptual distinctions. For if we judge realistically—forgive me for using this overused metaphor once again—I really could no longer tell, when I encountered our esteemed co-chair on the street wearing a cassock and a biretta, whether he was a priest or something else. It’s impossible to tell the difference because we’re stuck with these rigid concepts in our daily lives.

[ 45 ] We must set everything in motion again; we must immerse ourselves in life; we must now see what industrialism has become, how it has become detached from humanity. In every door lock, just as in a Gothic church, there used to be something human within. Social impulses radiated from that.

[ 46 ] In what the factory worker does today, and in what the architect erects as a department store in all its aesthetic ugliness—which, however, is perfectly appropriate to the present, for the department store is the style, the architectural style of the present—nothing is expressed anymore that has any connection to human beings. That is why we need something that once again radiates from within.

[ 47 ] The essence of the spirit radiated from the earth in such a way that people said: What the earth gives me—bread—is a gift from God. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, theocracy did not merely descend from heaven to earth; it grew out of the ground with every stalk of wheat. This was alive in human souls. And later, as people shared what they had acquired with one another, a human relationship took root in trade and commerce.

[ 48 ] But a human relationship with the machine—that is impossible. The machine is cold; it exists coldly. And we cannot form a social judgment because we do not understand how to give the human being—coming from a completely different place—a human substance that cannot emerge from the machine in the same way it emerges from the earth. From the earth spring forth stalks of wheat, which are a gift from God to humankind; from trade and commerce springs forth what takes place between one person and another, where a person feels: You must treat the other decently; from the machine, however, a gift from God does not exactly spring forth; yet even treating the machine with decency does not quite work either. And so an age like this, permeated by industrialism, needs a human essence that is not of this earth—that is not of this earth at all—and that fills the souls from the spiritual world.

[ 49 ] As long as the Earth provided humanity with spirituality, there was no need to attain spirituality through free spiritual striving. As long as the bond between people remained strong, there was no need to attain spirituality through free spiritual striving. Today, we are dependent on this, since nature—which bestows God’s gifts—has largely been transformed into the world of the means of production, which humanity has created in an abstract sense as a second nature; today, alongside the means of production, we need the world of free spirituality, which provides us with meaning.

[ 50 ] With this kind of content, you can also reach out to those with whom you want to form connections. You see, I’ve just had some recent experiences in Dornach, where we also have a small army of workers, a small workers’ company. These workers don’t just want to work; they also want something human. And people have indeed come to realize that workers need something human. But they talk to them about all sorts of economic matters—capitalism, socialism, bourgeoisie, communism, and so on. At first, people believe that this is what grabs the workers’ attention. And the labor leaders, above all, believe that they should only talk to the workers about these things. Well, I, too, started out that way—when I finally had to take matters into my own hands in Dornach—I, too, started out talking more about economic issues. One day, from among the group of workers—whom I always let choose the topic themselves at the beginning of the session— I don’t choose a topic myself when speaking to these people; instead, I let them suggest the topic at the beginning of the session and then speak on that topic—one man stood up, pulled our magazine *Die Drei* out of his pocket, and said he wanted to know what it was actually like when the Earth was still a moon, that is, when it was undergoing a completely different stage of development. And since that time, things have developed in such a way that we speak about the nature of the human being and the human being’s place in the cosmos in a way that corresponds to how they understand these things. I have already been able to speak to proletarians today—just imagine—about the influences from the directions of the zodiac in such a way that they regard it as a matter of course.

[ 51 ] We must first find a way to recognize what lies within others—in terms of their soul and spirit—and what lies within us, if we are to come together with them in the associations. We must bridge the gaps that have formed. That is the first requirement.

[ 52 ] Therefore, the social question, in its deepest sense, is first and foremost a spiritual question: How do we spread a unifying spirituality among people? Then, in the economic sphere, we will be able to come together in associations, from which the social question will take concrete form and—I must always say—be partially resolved.

[ 53 ] But even today, we still think entirely in the old categories. We cultivate legal thinking, but we do not yet cultivate economic thinking, because—as paradoxical as it sounds—economic thinking means thinking in freedom. Precisely at a time when a “second nature” has emerged in the means of production—at a time when the spirit has entirely withdrawn from the tools of labor, from the means of production— we need precisely a spirituality that is no longer drawn from nature, that is not drawn in the way it was in theocracy—from that which still lived more physically within human beings—but rather one that has been freely attained and yet possesses substance.

[ 54 ] I know that this sounds like the most utopian idea to people today, but it is actually the most practical. You can found as many social communities as you like, create as many associations as you like, establish as many unions and cooperatives as you like—but with the concepts and the way of thinking that have crept from the Middle Ages into modern times, the social question will not even begin to be addressed, let alone find even a partial solution. The social question has now become the global question.

[ 55 ] But what has followed in the wake of the way of thinking that judges the social organism entirely in terms of the legal-dialectical and the conventional moral? What has followed is the beautiful, the joyful, the wonderful charity—human compassion, human sympathy. Now that the social question has become a burning global issue, we see collection boxes for the East popping up everywhere in Western Europe. People are donating. Very, very nice! There is nothing to be said against it, and I would like to say that the more one can contribute to this effort, the more one should do so. But what happens as a result of this belongs to the past, not the future. All of this—including this compassion, including this charity—is still rooted in medieval thought. And I see two images: the medieval Gothic cathedral, where the prelates’ magnificent chasubles were stored—those prelates who, meanwhile had their chasubles stored in the cathedrals, sat together in their own dwellings and did something that came to light in a curious way when a Swiss newspaper published, a few months ago, the menu—the Christmas menu for the prelates—who were once catered to in a Swiss cathedral during Christmas. You would be astonished if I told you the number of pigs that were consumed by the prelates back then during the holy days of Christmas. Around these cathedrals gathered multitudes of poor people to whom alms were given. It was entirely in the style and spirit of the Middle Ages; it could not have been otherwise. That was simply the norm for that time. Whether one finds this beautiful or ugly by today’s standards is irrelevant, for it was simply the norm for that time.

[ 56 ] But isn’t it the same thing when, today, misery in Russia is on one side—that is, the poor who camp out in front of the cathedrals—and on the other side, alms are being collected? Good, very good, and commendable. But this does not even touch upon today’s social problem, let alone solve it even partially. For we must not overlook the fact that, due to the impotence of our social thinking today, voices can be heard everywhere that do not say, “We are grateful for what is given to us as alms,” but rather say, “The very worst thing is that alms are given to us, for from this we see that there are still people who can give alms. They should no longer exist at all!”

[ 57 ] This is what one must feel with one’s whole heart as the fundamental impulse of the social organism in our time—which is, in fact, already the world organism, but which is everywhere viewed solely in a national sense. And this is what should become clear to humanity today: that, above all else, we need something that builds a bridge across the chasms that exist in the social order.

[ 58 ] Why do we talk so much about the social question today? Because we have become thoroughly antisocial. People usually talk most theoretically about what is absent from their feelings and instincts. What is present in their feelings and instincts is not discussed theoretically. If there were social feeling among humanity, we would hear very little about social theories and social agitation. People become theorists in any field when they lack something. Theories are actually always about what is not real. But today we must seek real life; that is what matters above all else. That requires more effort than devising a theory. But human progress will not advance at all unless it truly finds its way into life, for it is the theoretical spirit that has fractured our world today, that is bringing our civilization close to chaos; it is the theoretical spirit. And the Life-Spirit—it alone will be able to lead us forward.

[ 59 ] That is it—I must say it once again—what we should feel deep in our hearts as the fundamental impulse behind the social issues of our time. If we understand how people can reconnect with one another, then we will have the opportunity to steer social matters in the right direction as well.

[ 60 ] What have the upper classes done in a given area? Well, they have stuck their noses into proletarian misery and fashioned works of art out of it. One can have a clear mental image of the theocratic God, Christ—Michelangelo painted the Judge of the World. As for what the one shaped by the industrial order must look like—in Dornach we are trying to create that. But people still do not understand this today, because they are not yet able to relate the spiritual world to the cold, mechanical world. We do not yet possess a mode of thinking that, just as legal and theocratic thinking once drew upon reality, can draw upon the reality that has grown cold today and penetrate this cold reality. That is why the higher classes have stuck their noses into this misery and shaped something out of it—well, just as the poets, sculptors, and painters of our time have shaped it: social art. It has turned into abominable sentimentality, precisely because people have not yet been filled with what can truly emerge from free spirituality to join the human order. “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest,” painted today, is truly a sentimental, repulsive thing—unless one approaches it without prejudice or preconceived notions. The point is to exert the same influence from within industrialism—to which we must now bring free spirituality—as we were once able to exert through theocracy on agriculture, and as we were once able to exert through jurisprudence on commerce. Thus, it is essential that people arrive at a social way of thinking, at social knowledge and concepts, which cannot be attained unless one moves beyond abstract concepts such as “capital,” “surplus value,” and so on. Social concepts can be attained solely by bringing warmth—the revealing spiritual element—to the cold, mechanical world. And it is precisely those who today move about among the machines who, even if they do not realize it, long for true spirituality, so that they are not left with only the old materialism that otherwise fills their hearts entirely.

[ 61 ] The countryside and the city have been added to the village and the church. They were governed by a social mindset. The factory no longer belongs to the city. The factory is a new social entity. But the factory is also set apart like a special demon from the entire world order. The factory no longer possesses anything spiritual in itself. Therefore, the spiritual must be brought in from the other side. That is why the social question of today is, in the most eminent sense, a spiritual question. We must find a way not merely to stick our noses into proletarian misery, but to discover a spirituality that flows naturally from our own hearts—and that also flows from the heart of the person we are speaking to, even if that person belongs to the lowest social class. Just as the sun shines upon all people, so too does true spirituality not shine upon this or that social class, not upon this or that class; it does not wage this or that class struggle, but is for all people. And the great moment in world history that we are currently experiencing demands that all people be able to enter history as individuals.

[ 62 ] In the past, we dealt with estates and classes. Today—and in the future—we are dealing with the human being; with the human being who gives birth to a world from within himself. To this end, we must help—not by perpetuating the old ways and muddling through, but by truly descending into the deepest depths of the human being in order to find the broadest expanse of the world in a spiritual way. This will then most certainly penetrate the social question.

[ 63 ] You see, this is precisely what was intended in the “Key Points of the Social Question,” because the present moment is precisely the time when one must believe that people can understand such things not merely through their theoretical intellect, but from their hearts, from their will. Anyone who regards “The Key Points of the Social Question” as a book of the intellect does not understand it. Only those who regard it as a book of the will, as a book of the heart—spoken from life itself, from what can be perceived today everywhere beneath the surface of existence as the most important social impulses of the present—will understand it.

[ 64 ] The subject matter has made it necessary to structure the lecture in two parts rather than three; I will therefore conclude for now and save what I have to say to round out the social problem for tomorrow.