The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to begin by returning the kind words of greeting that the esteemed Miss Beverley has addressed to me and to Dr. Steiner. You may rest assured that both Dr. Steiner and I fully appreciate the invitation to these lectures, which are essentially intended to cover what anthroposophy has to say about education and to highlight the extent to which practical experiments have already been conducted at our Waldorf School in Stuttgart with the principles derived from anthroposophy that can be developed in a pedagogically didactically. We were happy to accept the invitation to come up here to the north of England, and it gives me deep satisfaction to speak here about subjects that have become so dear to me in life, all the more so because I am now able to speak before those who organized these lectures and the workshops, and who are not attending a discussion of this subject from this perspective for the first time. I may therefore hope that the organizers have not merely made a brief decision regarding these lectures, but that the event itself may be regarded as evidence that the previous events will, after all, prove fruitful in some way for the world’s current endeavors.

[ 2 ] The first event in which the Friends of the Anthroposophical Cause from England participated was held at Christmas two years ago, when the Goetheanum in Dornach was still under construction—a building that has since been destroyed by fire.

[ 3 ] This event was organized by Mrs. Mackenzie, the same individual who had previously conveyed Hegel’s pedagogy in such a witty manner in a book written in English. When one sees how well this book aligns with Hegel’s pedagogy and philosophy, one gains hope that a relatively easy understanding is possible—I would say—even beyond national boundaries.

[ 4 ] Now, however, what I myself had to say about pedagogy was not drawn from Hegel’s more intellectually oriented philosophy, but rather from anthroposophy, which is thoroughly spiritually oriented. But here, too, it was once again Mrs. Mackenzie who discovered how something fruitful could nevertheless be gleaned—even in educational terms—from this anthroposophy, which, while fully acknowledging Hegel, transcends his intellectualism to reach into the spiritual realm.

[ 5 ] Then, last year, I had the opportunity to describe our entire educational system and its practical implications a second time at the ancient center of culture and scholarship, Oxford. And perhaps I may assume that it was precisely the inspiration provided by these lectures—which took into account the relationship between pedagogy and social life—that prompted a whole group of English figures dedicated to education to wish to visit our Waldorf School. And we then had the great pleasure of welcoming these friends within the walls of our Waldorf School, amidst our work in education and teaching. It was a great and heartfelt joy for us, and it gave us deep satisfaction to hear that our friends also found a certain satisfaction in the way pedagogy and didactics are practiced here and followed the work with interest. And so it seems that it was precisely during this visit, which gave us so much joy, that the idea arose—I was delighted when Miss Beverley shared this idea with me in Stuttgart—for this summer course on pedagogy here. It may therefore be assumed that, in a sense, the roots of what is now to take place here can already be found in what came before. And this gives us the necessary courage and confidence for what now lies ahead: the lectures on pedagogy and didactics that I am to give here starting tomorrow.

[ 6 ] And one certainly needs courage and faith when speaking about something that currently still appears so foreign to intellectual life—something that is still so sharply opposed from many quarters today. One needs courage and faith especially when it comes to describing principles that seek to approach human beings themselves—this greatest work of art in the universe—in a creatively formative way.

[ 7 ] Perhaps I may point out to the friends who visited our Waldorf School in Stuttgart this year that, simply by seeing what they saw there, they may have been reminded a little of how fundamentally Waldorf pedagogy and didactics are rooted in the deepest foundations of modern life, and how, therefore, this Waldorf school pedagogy is, in essence, from the very beginning, a kind of betrayal of what it itself seeks to convey in its name: pedagogy—a revered ancient Greek term, born of the serious dedication to pedagogical reflections by Plato and the Platonists.

[ 8 ] Pedagogy—we can’t really use it anymore today; in fact, we should really discard it, because even its name reveals, in the most extreme one-sidedness imaginable, exactly what it aims to achieve. Our esteemed visitors were able to see this right away at the Waldorf School.

[ 9 ] Just imagine that at a Waldorf school—this is nothing unusual today, but I simply want to emphasize that Waldorf pedagogy takes the most modern trends into account—just imagine that in the same class, boys and girls are together, raised in the same way and taught in the same way.

[ 10 ] But pedagogy—what does the name mean? The pedagogue is a guide to boys. From the outset, it tells us how the Greeks were raised and educated based on a one-sided view of humanity. It completely excluded half of humanity from what was taken in all seriousness as education and instruction. For the Greeks, only men were truly considered human beings, and women had to quietly withdraw when it came to serious pedagogy, for the pedagogue, by definition, is a guide for boys. He is there only for the male sex.

[ 11 ] Nowadays, the presence of girls as students—which, in many respects, is something quite radical compared to a time not so long ago—is no longer particularly shocking; but the other aspect will still strike many as quite strange even today: in our school, not only do male and female students enjoy equal status as students, but so do the teachers. We make no distinction among the teaching staff—at least no distinction in principle—all the way up to the highest grades.

[ 12 ] Above all, it became essential for us to shed this one-sidedness toward what is universally human. We had to abandon from the outset what the traditional term “pedagogy” implies if we were to establish a pedagogy appropriate to the present. It is simply a one-sidedness inherent in the term “pedagogy.” On the whole, it must be said that it was not so long ago that, when it came to education and instruction, people actually knew nothing at all about human beings in general. It was not just the one-sidedness regarding male and female genders—there were countless other forms of one-sidedness, particularly in the field of pedagogy.

[ 13 ] Did the universal human being emerge according to the old principles once education and instruction were complete? Never! Today, however, humanity is very much on the path toward the search for the human being—pure, unclouded, undifferentiated humanity. That this had to be the goal is already evident from the way the Waldorf School was established. The initial idea was to provide education for the working-class children of the Waldorf-Astoria factory. And because the person who ran the Waldorf-Astoria factory was a member of the Anthroposophical Society, he turned to me to set up this educational program. I myself could not organize this program other than from the roots of anthroposophy. Thus, the Waldorf School initially emerged as a completely general school—one might even say, a school of humanity formed out of the working class. And it was only because the person who first conceived the idea for this school was also an anthroposophist that the school became anthroposophical. So the fact remains that, while the educational institution did indeed emerge from a social foundation, it seeks its roots in anthroposophy with regard to its entire educational spirit and its entire teaching method; but not in the sense that we have, even remotely, an anthroposophical school, but only because we believe that anthroposophy is capable, at any moment, of denying itself to the extent that it is able to shape not a school for a particular class, a school based on a worldview, or any other kind of specialized school, but rather a general school for all humanity.

[ 14 ] This may well have been noticed by those who attended the Waldorf School. And it can be observed in every single activity carried out there. And that may have led to this invitation being extended. And now, at the beginning of these lectures—where I am not yet to speak about education, but rather am to give a kind of introductory lecture—let me, above all, in the first part of this lecture, express my most heartfelt thanks to all those who have worked so devotedly to make this summer course a reality, including thanks for their willingness to include eurythmy performances in this summer course, which already form such an integral part of everything that is intended within our anthroposophy.

[ 15 ] But let me begin by expressing a hope. A summer course has brought us together. We have retreated to this beautiful—though, after all, northern—corner of England to pursue what we have set out to do here, far from the serious business of life that we must still attend to in the winter. You have taken time away from that seriousness of life—the other time, the time in summer, your break—to participate in discussions about something that actually claims to have a great deal to do with the future, and that actually claims: there must one day come a time when the same spirit that now brings us together for two weeks during our respite might inspire us in what we, as human beings, engage in throughout the winter.

[ 16 ] For one must not only give thanks twice over. — It is impossible to count how many times one must be grateful that you have come together to devote your respite—which you had to take from the seriousness of life today—to contemplating ideas for the future. Just as warmly as I would like to thank you for this now, I would also like to hope that, through such a refreshing contemplation of what we consider valuable for the future, we will increasingly come to the point where the spirit of such a summer course also permeates the winter months and weeks a little. For only in this way does the content of such a summer course have meaning.

[ 17 ] With these words, I would like to begin by expressing my heartfelt thanks to the esteemed organizers and the esteemed audience.

[ 18 ] I will continue after the translation.

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[ 19 ] I would like to build upon the impressive words spoken yesterday by Miss Macmillan, which expressed a profound socio-educational impulse and, in a certain sense, bore witness to how, in our time, deep moral impulses must be sought in order to advance the general civilization of humanity precisely through the path of education.

[ 20 ] It is precisely when one allows the significance of such impulses to deeply resonate in the human heart in the present day that one arrives at the fundamental question in contemporary spiritual life. And this fundamental question is linked to the form that our culture and civilization have taken over the course of human history.

[ 21 ] We live today in an age in which, to a certain extent, the most important factors exist side by side: that which human beings can acquire about the world through knowledge—mostly through knowledge mediated by the intellect alone—; and that which human beings seek to express as their deep inner experience in the realm of art, imitating, as it were, God’s creative activity with their human powers. And we are confronted with that which seeks to connect the roots of human existence with the roots of the world: we are confronted with human religious striving, with human religious longing. And then we seek to draw from within ourselves those impulses that place us, as human beings and moral beings, within the fabric of civilization.

[ 22 ] We find ourselves faced with these four branches of civilization: knowledge, art, religion, and morality. But it is only in the course of human development—I do not wish to criticize this; it is a necessity, but it must be understood—that we have come to a point where these four branches develop side by side in our lives, and where we lack the true, unified root for our consciousness.

[ 23 ] And so, in light of this fact, we may recall today the starting point of humanity with regard to civilization. There was an ancient era of human development in which knowledge, artistic life, religion, and morality were one; a time in which human beings—when the intellect had not yet developed to the level of abstraction we face today—sought to make sense of the mysteries of existence through a kind of ancient, pictorial perception; a time in which the soul of humanity was confronted with the powerful images that have come down to us in a decadent form as myths and legends, but which originally signified knowledge, experience of the spiritual content of the world. There was such a time when human beings, through this immediate inner experience of images, through this immediate inner imagination, brought to mind what underlies the world—the sensory world—as its spiritual essence.

[ 24 ] And whatever he was able to discern from the world through his instinctive imagination, he brought to life by making use of the materials of this earth—the material of architecture, the material of sculpture, the material of painting, the material of music, the material of other arts —in such a way that he shaped what emerged as his insight into an outward form, bringing it into an outward, sensory form to the delight of his heart, in a sense imitating divine creation with human powers, setting before him what had first flowed into his knowledge and insight. And so humankind possessed an art that reflected for the senses what it had first been able to take in through its understanding.

[ 25 ] This fact reappeared, albeit in a milder form, in Goethe’s work when, drawing on his own convictions regarding knowledge and art, he uttered these significant words: “ Beauty is a manifestation of secret laws of nature that would have remained eternally hidden from us were it not for its appearance,” and when he uttered the other, no less significant statement, again based on his deepest convictions regarding art and knowledge: “Whoever to whom nature begins to reveal her manifest secret feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.”

[ 26 ] From this perspective, it becomes clear how human beings are, in fact, naturally inclined to regard science and art as merely two manifestations of one and the same truth. And this was how it was originally in the development of humanity. What satisfied human beings inwardly as knowledge, presenting itself to their souls in the form of ideas, and what delighted them as beauty when they beheld it presented to their senses in art—knowledge and art stemming from a single root—that was once what a more primitive humanity experienced as its civilization.

[ 27 ] And what is our stance on this today? Our stance is that, through what the intellect and abstraction have given us, we gradually seek to establish a science, a body of knowledge, that, as much as possible, eliminates precisely that which is artistic. It is practically considered sinful to assert anything artistic in science. And anyone who commits this “sin”—by introducing something artistic into a scientific book—is today branded from the outset as a dilettante. For knowledge must be sober, must be objective, so they say; art, on the other hand, is allowed to provide that which has nothing to do with objectivity, that which arises from human arbitrariness. This, however, creates a deep chasm between knowledge and art. And people can no longer bridge this chasm.

[ 28 ] But, to his detriment, he can no longer find his way across this abyss. For no matter how extensively one applies that knowledge and insight which is generally valued today as “artless knowledge,” one arrives at that excellent understanding of nature—namely, inanimate nature—which is also fully to be acknowledged here; but one must stop short the moment one attempts to approach human beings. That is why, if one looks around at science today, one sees that it provides magnificent answers to questions about external nature; yet it comes to a halt when it comes to human beings. One does not advance as far as human beings using the laws derived from the natural sciences. Why? Because—as heretical as this may sound to today’s consciousness, it must be said—because the moment one approaches human beings with the laws of nature, one must act artistically. Yes, it is heretical, for then people say: “Now you are no longer doing science!” You are no longer following the laws of observation, the laws of strict logic, to which you must adhere, which you seek to understand when you approach human beings with an artistic sensibility in order to grasp them. One can go on at length about how such an artistic approach to human beings is unscientific precisely because it is artistic. If nature makes human beings artistic, then no matter how long people argue that the method of understanding them is unscientific, it would simply mean that human beings cannot be understood through scientific methods alone.

[ 29 ] So, even with all of today’s science, one stands before humanity and realizes—if one is open-minded enough—that you must turn to something else; you must let your intellectual, scientific approach flow into the artistic. You must let science itself become art if you are to truly understand humanity.

[ 30 ] Now, when one devotes oneself to this path—but devotes oneself completely, with one’s whole human soul—one learns not only to view human beings artistically from the outside, but, if one follows the appropriate paths, one learns to allow intellectual and scientific understanding to flow into what I have described in my book: *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* as “imaginative knowledge.” This imaginative knowledge, which is still so widely contested and met with hostility today, is possible when thinking—which otherwise passively surrenders to the external world and has, in this passivity, become an ever-greater part of our civilization—becomes active again, when it rouses itself inwardly to activity.

[ 31 ] It is difficult to speak about this today, for one is not merely speaking in favor of or against a scientific convention of the times, but—when one examines this issue—one is, in essence, speaking out against the entire civilization of today. For it has, after all, become increasingly popular to completely disregard the activity of thinking—that inner presence, that inner engagement in thought—and to simply surrender oneself to successive events, allowing one’s thinking to run its course within those events without actively participating in the thought process.

[ 32 ] It all began with a growing call for greater clarity when dealing with spiritual matters. Take, for example, a lecture that cannot be vivid because it deals with spiritual matters and presupposes that the listeners—since one can only use words to stimulate the mind and cannot make things rustle or conjure them up—must actively engage their thinking to participate in what words can only hint at: one will already find today that a large portion of the audience—sitting, of course, in halls other than the one we are in today—begins to yawn because their thinking is merely passive; people no longer actively engage with the material, until they eventually even fall asleep. For people demand that everything be vivid, illustrated with slides, so that they do not have to think. People can’t think! That’s how it began, and it has gone much further. In *Hamlet*, one still has to engage with the story; one still has to follow the spoken word. Today, we have moved from the theater to the cinema: there, one no longer needs to be active; the images roll by mechanically, and one can remain completely passive. And so, little by little, we have lost that inner activity of the human being. Yet it is precisely this that must be grasped. Then one realizes that thinking is not merely something that can be stimulated from the outside, but that it represents an inner force within the human being himself.

[ 33 ] The kind of thinking that characterizes our modern civilization is only one side of the coin. If one looks at thinking from within, from the other side, it is the very force that shapes a person from childhood onward.

[ 34 ] To understand this, one needs the inner creative power that transforms abstract thoughts into images. And if one makes the proper inner effort in this way, then one is at what I have called the beginning of meditation in the aforementioned book; then one is on the path not only to transform skill into art, but also to transform the whole of human thought into imagination; so that one stands within an imaginative world, yet one now knows: it is not a creation of our own imagination; it must point to an objective world. One is fully aware that one does not yet possess this objective world in the realm of imagination, but one knows that one possesses the pictorial nature of this objective world.

[ 35 ] And now it is simply a matter of realizing that one must move beyond the pictorial. It takes a long time, after all, to arrive at this pictorial quality, at this inner, creative thinking—a thinking that grasps not merely images of the imagination, but images that carry their reality within their very essence. But one must then go on to set aside this entire creative process of one’s own essence. One must arrive at an inner, moral act.

[ 36 ] Yes, it is a moral act within the human being! After one has made every effort—and you can read in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, what efforts one must make to attain this pictorial-active thinking—after one has had to employ all the soul’s powers, the entire totality of the soul’s powers, that is, to mobilize the Self in the highest sense—then, after first having achieved this highest mobilization, one must be able to set aside everything that one has gained along this path.

[ 37 ] One must have developed the highest fruits of active thought—elevated to the level of meditation—within one’s own self and then be able to become selfless, to set aside what one has attained. Then it is different from when one does not have it, when one has not attained it at all. If one has first made every effort to strengthen the self in this way, one then destroys it again through one’s own power, so that consciousness becomes empty: then a spiritual world surges and flows into human consciousness; then that which is the spiritual world enters the human being. Then one sees: spiritual powers of cognition are necessary for the knowledge of the spiritual world.

[ 38 ] And if the attainment of the first active, pictorial thinking can be called imagination, then what now—after the human being has completely emptied his consciousness—floods in as the spiritual world must be described as having been attained through inspiration.

[ 39 ] Having gone through the process of imagination, we can prepare ourselves—through the moral act of inner selflessness described above—to grasp that which underlies the outer world of nature and humanity as the spiritual world.

[ 40 ] Once this has been translated, I would like to discuss how this then leads to religion in the third part of my lecture.

[ 41 ] Now I would like to draw attention to just one thing: By striving for imaginative knowledge, anthroposophy leads not only to knowledge—to art that remains merely an image—but also to that which now manifests itself as images containing spiritual reality. By striving for this, anthroposophy bridges the chasm between knowledge and art in such a way that, on a higher level—one suited to the present and to modern life—that from which humanity originated can once again enter civilization: the unity of science and art. We must return to this unity, for the division between science and art has torn humanity itself apart.

[ 42 ] But this is what modern man must strive for above all else: to move from a state of inner conflict toward unity and inner harmony. What I have said so far applies to the harmony between science and art. Later, I would also like to extend this idea to religion and morality.

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[ 43 ] Insight that embraces the creative essence of the world in the manner described here can flow directly into art. But the path that is thus taken from insight into art can also be continued further. It has been continued in that ancient, instinctive, imaginative insight of which I have spoken, which continued into art and which also found its way, without an abyss, into religious life. Those who devoted themselves to such knowledge—even if it was once still primitive and instinctive among primitive humanity—did not merely experience knowledge as something external; rather, they felt how, within knowledge, within thought, the divine essence of the world lived within them, and how the creative-divine within them transformed into the artistic-human-creative.

[ 44 ] But then the path could be taken to elevate, through art, that which human beings had imprinted upon matter to a higher consecration. The activity that human beings acquired by artistically embodying the divine-spiritual in the external sensory material—this activity they were able to continue and use to produce actions in which they became directly aware of how, by acting as human beings, they express the will of divine governance in the world. And as the path was thus found—from the working of sensory material to the action in which human beings felt themselves permeated by the divine-creative power—art transitioned into worship, into the service of the Divine. Artistic creation became a form of worship.

[ 45 ] The acts of worship are the artistic acts of early humanity, imbued with consecration. The artistic act rose to become an act of worship; the glorification of the divine being through sensory matter evolved into devotion to the divine being through the act of worship. By bridging the chasm between art and religion, religion emerged—a religion that was once in complete accord, in perfect harmony, with knowledge and art. For even if that knowledge was primitive and instinctive, it was nonetheless an image; and it could therefore also lead human action to that kind of action which, in itself, embodies pictorial worship and directly represents the divine.

[ 46 ] Thus, the transition from art to religion was found. Can we still achieve this with our current understanding? That instinctive, ancient perception saw something spiritual, expressed in imagery, in every natural being and every natural process. Through devotion to the spirit of the natural process, the spiritual workings and interplay of the cosmos found their way into worship.

[ 47 ] How do we perceive the world? Once again, the aim is not to offer criticism, but to describe. All of this was necessary in the historical development of humanity, as the next few lectures in particular will show. Today I simply want to offer a few suggestive thoughts. We have gradually lost our immediate, instinctive insight into natural beings and processes. We pride ourselves on observing nature without the spirit, and we ultimately arrive at such hypothetical views of nature that we trace, for example, the formation of our planet back to the weaving and nature of a primordial nebula. Through purely mechanical force, our Earth is said to have coalesced from this primordial nebula through rotation. From whatever was already acting mechanically within this primordial nebula, everything that lives in the realms of nature—up to and including human beings—is said to have emerged. And again, according to the same laws that govern all our thinking that claims to be objective, this Earth must one day come to an end in what is known as the “heat death.” All the ideals that humanity has attained, having emerged merely as a mirage of natural existence, will vanish, and in the end, only the great graveyard of earthly existence will remain.

[ 48 ] If humanity today were completely honest, if it had the courage to admit to itself what the necessary consequence would be if such a line of thought were recognized as correct by science, it would have to say to itself: All religious and moral life is therefore nothing but a mirage! — It is only because humanity cannot bear this thought that it clings to what remains of religion—and indeed, of morality—from ancient times, when religion and morality were still attained in harmony with knowledge and art. Today’s religious and moral life is not something created directly by human beings; it is traditional, a legacy remaining from those times when, through human beings—albeit in their instinctive lives—God and, with God, the moral world still revealed themselves. Today we strive for knowledge in such a way that neither God nor the moral world can reveal themselves; rather, it is a purely scientific life that recognizes human beings only as the highest of animals. Science today reaches only as far as the limits of animality; the human being is excluded. An honest inner striving cannot find the bridge across the abyss between knowledge and religious life.

[ 49 ] All religion has arisen from inspiration. Even if this inspiration was not as conscious as the one we must regain—the one just mentioned—it was instinctively present. Religions rightly trace their origin back to inspiration. And those religions that no longer wish to acknowledge the living inspirations—the revelation from the spiritual realm in the immediate present—must simply remain within the confines of mere tradition. In doing so, however, they lack the inner vitality, the immediate impulsiveness of religious life. Human civilization must reclaim this impulsiveness, this immediate vitality, for only through it can the healing of our social structure begin.

[ 50 ] I have spoken of inspiration. I have spoken of how human beings must once again attain a kind of insight that extends through art to the realm of imagination and on up to inspiration. If humanity regains that which flows into human consciousness through the inspiration of a spiritual world, then true religion will once again be present. Then people will no longer discuss, from an intellectual standpoint, what Christ was actually like; instead, they will once again know—as can truly be known only through inspiration—that Christ was the human vehicle of a genuine divine being who descended from divine heights into earthly existence. For suprasensory knowledge is necessary to understand Christ.

[ 51 ] And if Christianity is to be deeply rooted in humanity once again, then humanity must once again find the path to supersensory knowledge. We must regain this. Inspiration must once again give humanity a direct religious life. Then we will not have a form of knowledge that merely imitates naturalism and stands on the brink of the abyss—not only in art but also in religion—but rather we will have harmony between knowledge, art, and religion.

[ 52 ] And in the same way, primitive man relied on the fact that once he had reduced art to a form of worship—once he had been able to partake in that arousal of the human heart that can take root when, in worship, the divine will itself permeates human actions—God would then become present in those human actions. And when we once again succeed in finding this path from external, objective knowledge to inspiration, then we will have direct religion precisely through inspiration; then, in this way, we will once again find the possibility of standing, just as that original human being did, within a God-given morality.

[ 53 ] And this is what that primordial human being felt: If I have the ritual, if I have the worship service, if the worship service exists in the world and I am woven into it, then my inner being is so fulfilled that I can make God present in the world throughout my entire life, not just at the place of worship.

[ 54 ] But this is true morality: to be able to make God present in the world. No aspect of nature leads to morality; what alone leads human beings to morality is that which elevates their nature above nature itself, that which fills their nature with divine-spiritual existence. Only that intuition which comes upon a person when, through religious life, they place themselves within the Spirit can fill them with true, innermost human-divine morality.

[ 55 ] And so, when we return to the subject of inspiration, that bridge is rebuilt—the one that once existed in the instinctive civilization of humanity—that bridge from religion to morality. Just as knowledge leads upward through art to the supersensible heights, so religious service will lead the supersensible heights down into earthly existence, so that we may in turn infuse this earthly existence with an elemental, primordial, immediate morality experienced by human beings.

[ 56 ] Then human beings themselves will once again be able to become, in truth, the individual bearers of a life pulsing with morality—a moral life that impels them in the present. Then morality will become a creation of the individual human being. Then the bridge will be built across the final chasm that exists between religion and morality. Then that intuition—which primitive man experienced when engaged in a ritual act—will be recreated in a modern form. Then, through a modern religious life, human beings will create modern moral conditions.

[ 57 ] This is what we need to renew our civilization. This is what we need so that primal life may once again become what is today merely a legacy, merely a tradition—and therefore appears weak and powerless. We need these primal impulses for our complicated social life, which threatens to spread chaos across the earth. We need harmony between knowledge, art, religion, and morality. We need, in a new form, this path from the earth—where we acquire our knowledge—through inspiration and art, to a direct inner experience, to the grasping of the supersensible in religious life, so that we may once again bring down to earth this supersensible reality—felt in religious life and translated into the will—into our earthly-social existence.

[ 58 ] The social question will only be grasped in its full depth when it is understood as a moral and religious question. But it will not become a moral and religious question until the moral and religious question itself becomes a matter of spiritual insight.

[ 59 ] If, on the other hand, human beings regain spiritual insight, they will be able to bring about what they need and, in a sense, link their further development to an instinctive source. Then they will find what must be found for the good of humanity: harmony between knowledge, art, religion, and morality.