The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Founding of the Agricultural Research Association

[ 1 ] First of all, let me express my deepest satisfaction that this experimental group, which was initiated by Count Keyserlingk, has come into being and has now expanded to include those interested in agriculture who were attending such a gathering for the first time. The impetus for this initiative arose when Mr. Stegemann, in response to various requests, agreed to share some of what he and I had discussed over the past few years regarding various guidelines for agriculture, as well as what he had tried out on his farm in one way or another through his highly commendable efforts. This then gave rise to a discussion between our highly esteemed Count Keyserlingk and Mr. Stegemann, which led first to a meeting in which the resolution read aloud today was adopted, and which in turn led to our gathering here again today.

[ 2 ] It is indeed a deeply satisfying fact that a number of people have now, so to speak, stepped forward as the driving force behind the experiments—following—yes, at first they can only be guidelines—the guidelines provided here in these lectures—to conduct experiments aimed at confirming these guidelines and demonstrating how they can be put to practical use. However, at a time when something like this is taking shape in such a gratifying way, it is necessary for us to be aware that we must draw upon the experiences we have gained through our practical endeavors within the anthroposophical movement—and, in particular, that we must avoid the mistakes that have become all the more apparent over time, when anthroposophical, I would say, central activity was extended to peripheral activity—to the introduction of what anthroposophy is meant to be and can be into the various spheres of life. Now, of course, what we have learned through experience in introducing, let us say, anthroposophy into the realm of general science will be of particular interest for the work that this agricultural community has to carry out.

[ 3 ] You see, when it comes to something like this, there are those who, in a sense, have until now managed the central aspects of anthroposophy in their own way—with inner loyalty and inner devotion—and those who stand on the periphery and wish to work on specific areas of life; as a rule, they have not faced one another with a full understanding. We have experienced this sufficiently, particularly in our collaboration with our scientific institutes. On the one hand, there are the anthroposophists as such—those who live out this central aspect of anthroposophy as a worldview, as the very essence of life, which one perhaps carries through the world every minute with deep inner feeling. There are, in fact, those anthroposophists who practice, love, and make anthroposophy the very purpose of their lives; they generally—though not always—hold the view that something significant has been accomplished when they have won over one or many people here or there to anthroposophy. When they engage with the outside world, their sole aim is to win people over to anthroposophy, and they hold the view that people must—if you’ll pardon the expression—be won over body and soul; for example, if a university professor specializes in some branch of the natural sciences, just as he is embedded in the scientific establishment in which he operates. Such anthroposophists, in their good-heartedness and love, then naturally assume that one can simply bring the farmer—body and soul, along with the soil, everything connected to it, and all the other products that agriculture brings into the world—into the anthroposophical enterprise overnight. That is what the “central” anthroposophists believe. They are, of course, mistaken. And even though many of them claim to be my loyal followers—indeed, it is often the case that they are loyal followers in their hearts—they fail to hear what I must say at crucial moments. They then fail to hear, for example, when I say: It is naive to believe that one can win over a professor or any other scientist of today to anthroposophy overnight. That is not possible. A person must break with a past spanning twenty to thirty years; to do so, they would have to create an abyss behind them; things must be taken as they are in life.

[ 4 ] Anthroposophists often believe that life consists of thinking. It does not consist solely of thinking. These things must be said so that they may fall on fertile ground. Those who, out of a good and sincere heart, wish to integrate any area of life—yes, even scientific fields—with anthroposophy have not made this clear to themselves at all when they became practitioners of anthroposophy, and they repeatedly proceed from the mistaken belief that that one must do things exactly as they have been done in science up to now, and proceed exactly as science has proceeded up to now. For example, there are a number of quite dear, good anthroposophists working in the medical field among us who felt that physicians should now apply what comes from anthroposophical medicine in their traditional medical manner. In this regard, Dr. Wegman is a complete exception; she simply recognized the necessity [that exists for anthroposophical medicine] within our society.

[ 5 ] Yes, what does one experience there? It’s not so much a matter of the spread of central anthroposophy [within society], but rather the spread of anthroposophy out into the world. There, one experiences people saying: “Yes, we’ve been doing that all along; we’re the experts in that field; we can master it with our methods; we can certainly judge it without a doubt. But what they’re presenting contradicts what we’ve found using our methods.” They then say it’s wrong, and we’ve seen that when people try to follow the scientists’ lead, the scientists claim they could do it better. In these cases, there’s no denying that they can apply it better, if only because, in recent years, methods have actually consumed science. The sciences have nothing left but methods. They no longer engage with the substance of the matter; they have been consumed by their methods, so that today we may have the research, but there is nothing [substantial] left in it. We have seen how these scientists, who had their methods down to a fine point, became furious when the anthroposophists came along and did nothing other than apply those same methods. What can one prove with this? As for the wonderful things we are able to do, and the excellent research conducted at the Biological Institute [at the Goetheanum], nothing else has come to light other than that people became furious when our scientists spoke about these very same methods in their lectures. They were furious because they heard things they were accustomed to thinking about in certain ways—they heard them again.

[ 6 ] But we’ve experienced something else that’s important. It’s this: Some of our scientists have now deigned to depart from their habit of imitating others—though they’ve only done so halfway, in such a way that in the first part they were entirely scientific, correctly applying scientific methods in their arguments. Then the audience got angry. “Why are they meddling in our business? What does that mean? They’re insolent rascals, cheeky little devils who are meddling in our science like dilettantes!” Then, in the second part, the speakers moved on to real life—not as it was traditionally conceptualized, but as an anthroposophical perspective drawn from the supernatural. Then those who had been angry before became terribly attentive, were eager to hear this, and began to catch fire. People already liked anthroposophy, but they can’t stand—and, as I have admitted, quite rightly—what is cobbled together as an unclear “mixtum compositum” of anthroposophy and science. You can’t make any progress with that.

[ 7 ] It is therefore with great joy that I welcome the fact that, at the suggestion of Count Keyserlingk, the agricultural professional community now intends to unite around what was established in Dornach as the Natural Science Section. This Natural Science Section, like the other initiative now before us, emerged from the Christmas Conference.

[ 8 ] So what is meant to come out of Dornach will indeed come out of it. There, we will find the most precise scientific methods and guidelines right within anthroposophy itself. Of course, I cannot agree with what Count Keyserlingk said—that the professional community in question is to be merely an executive body. You will see for yourselves that a set of guidelines and instructions emanates from Dornach that requires every person, in their own position, to be a fully committed collaborator if they wish to participate. We will even—and this will become clear at the end of my lectures; after all, I will have to provide the first guidelines at the end of the lecture—have to receive from you the foundation for the very first work we have to carry out in Dornach. We will have to formulate the guidelines in such a way that only from the answers we receive will we be able to do anything at all. So from the very beginning, we will need active—the most active—collaborators, not merely executors. For you see, to cite just one example—it has been discussed repeatedly in recent days by Count Keyserlingk and me—an estate is always an individual entity in the sense that it is truly never exactly the same as any other estate. Climate and soil conditions provide the very foundation for an estate’s individuality. An estate in Silesia is not the same as one in Thuringia or southern Germany. These are truly unique entities. Now, according to the anthroposophical view, generalities and abstractions have no value whatsoever, and they have the least value of all when one wishes to intervene in practical matters. What value is there in speaking only in general terms about this practical question of estates!

[ 9 ] In general, one should pay attention to what is concrete, because that leads to what must then be applied. Of course, just as the thirty-two letters are combined to form a wide variety of words, one must also proceed in the same way with what is presented in these lectures, because it is only from these elements that what one expects will come together. If we want to discuss practical questions based on the sixty collaborators, the real task is to find the practical guidance and practical materials for these sixty specific farmers. And now the first task will be to seek out what we know in this regard. Only then will the very first series of experiments emerge, and then the focus will be on actually working in a practical way. For this, we need the most active members. And what we need, above all, within the Anthroposophical Society, are true practitioners who do not stray from the principle that practice does, after all, demand something that cannot be realized overnight. If those I have called “core anthroposophists” believe that a professor, a farmer, or a doctor—after having been in a particular milieu for decades—can adopt an anthroposophical conviction overnight, then that is simply a mistake. This becomes particularly clear in the case of agriculture. An agricultural anthroposophist, if he is idealistic enough, might indeed transition fully into the anthroposophical way of thinking—including with regard to his farming—between his twenty-ninth and thirtieth years; but will the fields, the farm facilities, and everything that mediates between him and the consumers, and so on, go along with this? You can’t just turn them into anthroposophists overnight, from the twenty-ninth to the thirtieth year. And once you realize that this isn’t possible, you very often lose heart right away.

[ 10 ] But that is precisely the point: not to lose heart, but to know that what matters is not immediate success, but unwavering effort. You do as much as you can manage. Some can do more, others less. Ultimately—as paradoxical as it may sound—the more limited you keep your scope within the area of land that you initially cultivate in our way, the more you will be able to accomplish. Isn’t it true that with a small area of land, one doesn’t cause as much damage as with a large one? And the improvements resulting from the anthroposophical guidelines can become apparent very quickly, because there isn’t as much that needs to be changed. And so the benefits will also become apparent more easily than on a large estate. But things really would have to be approved, especially in such a practical field as agriculture, if this community is truly to succeed. And it is indeed very curious—we spoke at length, in all good faith and without irony, because we were pleased about it, about the difference of opinion at the first meeting between Count Keyserlingk and Mr. Stegemann. And such matters take on nuances, so that I almost believed one might have to consider whether, on that evening, the Anthroposophical Executive Committee or someone else should have been asked to be present to reconcile the conflicting views. But little by little I became convinced of something quite different: that what is asserting itself there is actually the foundation for an intimate tolerance among the farmers, for an intimate acceptance of one another among colleagues—it just has a somewhat rough exterior.

[ 11 ] The fact is that farmers, more than many others, need to stand up for themselves, and that people very easily try to tell them what to do about matters that only they can truly understand. It’s certainly true that, when you get down to it, you discover a certain tolerance there. All of this really needs to be properly understood within this community, and I’m only making this comment here because I truly believe it’s necessary for us to start off on the right foot from the very beginning.

[ 12 ] So I feel I must once again express my deepest satisfaction with what has been accomplished here through your efforts; I believe we have taken the experiences of the Anthroposophical Society into proper consideration; that what has been initiated will be a great blessing; and that Dornach will not fail to work actively together with those who wish to be active collaborators with us in this endeavor. We can only rejoice that what is happening here in Koberwitz has been set in motion. And while Count Keyserlingk so often says that I took on a burden when I came here, I would like to respond—not to provoke a debate—by asking: What, after all, has been so great a burden for me? I had to travel here, and now I find myself in the most beautiful and ideal circumstances; others handle all the unpleasant tasks, and my only duty each day is to speak—though I must admit I felt some trepidation about these speeches, as they are in a new field for me. My effort isn’t that great. But when I see all the effort that Count Keyserlingk and this entire household have put in—everything that has come their way—then I must say that what each individual had to do, thanks to those who helped make it possible for us to be here together, ultimately seems to me to be a towering amount—far greater than the fact that I simply took my seat at the finished event. And it is precisely on this point that I cannot agree with the Count. That is why I would like to ask you most earnestly to thank him for everything you find worthy of recognition regarding the realization of this agricultural course, and above all to bear in mind that if he had not reflected with such iron determination and sent his representative to Dornach—and had not persisted at all—then, given the extraordinary amount that has to be accomplished from Dornach, this course, relocated to this far eastern corner, might not have come to fruition. I do not at all agree that expressions of gratitude should be directed at me; rather, they truly belong, in the most eminent degree, to Count Keyserlingk and his entire household. That is what I would like to add to the discussion.