The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Spiritual Science (Anthroposophy) and the Conditions of Culture in the Present and Future

[ 1 ] If you board the streetcar here in Basel at Aeschenplatz and ride out to Dornach, then take the short path through Dornach, you will come to a hill on which stands the Goetheanum building, which is to become a School of Spiritual Science. Although, as has been and continues to be gratifyingly noted, an extraordinarily large number of visitors have been arriving day after day recently to view this building, one must nevertheless observe that whenever answers to the question of what is actually to be done inside this building—once it is completed—are provided in the outside world, for example in newspaper articles, these answers still generally —with exceptions, of course—represent the opposite of the truth. All sorts of things are said about what is supposed to take place there in the future or is already taking place in this Dornach building. In any case, the answers given to those asking questions are very far removed from what those involved in the spiritual movement underlying this Dornach building actually set as their goal. For this goal arises from a careful consideration and observation of what I would like to call the cultural conditions for humanity in the present and the future. And based on all sorts of premises—which I will take the liberty of discussing this very evening—this spiritual movement, which is to find its expression in the Dornach building, is founded on the conviction that the longings of broad circles today contain the idea that a complete healing, a healthy further development of our human culture, must take place from the soul of the human being—from that which the human being can grasp in his or her soul as his or her connection to the spiritual world. It is based on the conviction that, even in the face of the demands and pressures expressed in our social life, we must seek—from the spirit and the soul—the impulses that correspond to the longings of a large number of people—and this number will continue to grow ever larger.

[ 2 ] Now, one might say—and I’d just like to mention this in passing—that quite a few people from Basel and the surrounding area are coming out on Sundays and other days to see, in the makeshift hall of our carpentry shop—where we must hold these events for the time being until we can open the Goetheanum itself— to see what we call our eurythmy performances, and it seems reasonable to believe that a large number of those who have already made the pilgrimage to Dornach for these eurythmy performances have nevertheless become convinced that, even in this particular area, within a limited region, an effort is being made to spiritualize something, to elevate something into the sphere of the spirit—something that, under the influence of the materialism of the past centuries, is still today, to a greater or lesser extent, pursued by our culture in a materialistic, physiological, and similar manner.

[ 3 ] For this eurythmy is, after all, an art of movement of the human organism itself, drawn from the organizational capacities of the whole human being—the whole human being, who encompasses body, soul, and spirit. And apart from the fact that eurythmy strives to be a special new art form—one that cannot really be compared to what is often regarded as related arts— it can also be said that underlying these aspirations toward the spirit is what I would like to call the animation of the human organism’s potential for movement—which, for example, in gymnastics is understood merely in an external, physiological way, in a purely material way. Human beings are to perform movements, and for this reason, eurythmy will one day also acquire a spiritual-pedagogical value. In addition to artistic movements, this will enable people to perform movements that are not, as in gymnastics, merely derived from human anatomy and physiology, but are drawn from that which can live within the moving human being: spirit and soul.

[ 4 ] Well, it is difficult not to be misunderstood when one presents a profound spiritual or psychological movement to the world today. One might say that misunderstandings are pouring in from all directions. And so it can happen, for example, that in certain places some misunderstandings regarding Spiritual Science itself have already been cleared up, to the extent that this Spiritual Science is even permitted to weigh in on social issues. However, we have again committed what we believe to be the right thing to do—though others have called it a blunder—by staging eurythmy performances at the same time as I spoke about Spiritual Science and social issues in certain places. And lo and behold, the judgment was immediately voiced: How can a spiritual endeavor be of any value if it simultaneously stages dance exercises?

[ 5 ] Well, I could easily add to the list of misunderstandings—which, as I said, come from all directions—because even today the world still often judges as if everything that is to be done at the Dornach Building were something obscure, something dark and mystical. After all, one hears so often today, when spiritual endeavors are discussed, that here and there—even in many places—all sorts of mystical activities are taking place. The fact that the movement associated with the Dornach Building has nothing to do with such obscure, mystical movements as the very fact that the person standing before you and speaking to you about his cause—the cause of this Dornach Building, this Goetheanum—can point to a book written as early as 1894, The Philosophy of Freedom, should make clear to those who seek to see such matters clearly and truthfully. And if anyone reads this Philosophy of Freedom, I think they will not get the impression that this Philosophy of Freedom is intended to introduce anything of obscure mysticism, fanaticism, or the like into the world. And I may say, after all, that everything that is intended to form the main content, the main impulse of this movement of Spiritual Science of which I am speaking, is permeated by that longing of present-day humanity which finds expression in the urge toward a way of life in which the individual human being, on the one hand, can indeed fulfill his or her social duties, but on the other hand can still be a free being as an individual human being.

[ 6 ] By way of introduction, I would simply like to point out a phenomenon related to something with which you are very familiar. And even though I am taking a politician as the starting point for my reflections today, please do not think for a moment that I intend to discuss contemporary political culture, even in the remotest sense. I would like to speak about the cultural conditions of the present and the future in a much broader sense; but I would still like to mention one characteristic feature that can show us how, out of the cultural aspirations and ideals of the present, a call for freedom emerges, so to speak—only it emerges in such a way that it is truly not taken deeply enough. And taking it seriously enough—deepening what constitutes humanity’s longing for freedom—is intimately connected with the view that the Spiritual Science holds regarding the cultural conditions of the present and the future.

[ 7 ] Those of you who have heard my lectures here this year and in the past—these esteemed guests who remember how I spoke during that time when Woodrow Wilson was, one might say, was regarded as a man revered by the whole world—a man who was looked up to and in whom numerous hopes for the future were placed—these esteemed listeners will not hold it against me if I, who, in the days when this man had many followers, freely expressed my opposition from a certain perspective, take as my starting point today the particular conception of freedom, the particular call for freedom that resounds from Woodrow Wilson’s political worldview. One must believe, after all, that the powerful—and, in my view, otherwise quite incomprehensible—impression that Woodrow Wilson has made on the world thus far is based precisely on the fact that all the points of his platform, everything this man has put forth to the world, is ultimately, in a certain sense, underpinned by the impulse of human freedom. Let us take a look at how this man made his mark before he became President of the United States; let us see what made him great as President of the United States. We will find that it is his vision of a possible social structure for human coexistence, in which people can enjoy their freedom in a democratic manner. Woodrow Wilson saw how, within American society—particularly in the final decades of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century—those vast accumulations of capital in the hands of a few individuals had emerged. He saw how trusts and the like had formed. And he saw how, as a result, a select few wealthy individuals had gained dominion over others. That is where his analysis and activism began. There, he first asserted the principle of freedom. In the face of the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a few, he called for a complete democratization of public life. He wanted every single person to have the opportunity to put their abilities to use in human coexistence. He did not want those who had once established themselves in any branch of industry or commerce to be able to hold monopolies against which the legitimate abilities of the weak could not compete. He wanted the causes of what happens in social life to be sought in every single, even the simplest, human setting. And he expressed this many times. And it is characteristic of him that he underlaid his political aspirations everywhere with precisely this goal of freedom.

[ 8 ] We need only consider his extraordinarily significant work, Die neue Freiheit (The New Freedom). One might say that on every page one finds confirmation of what I have just stated. I’d like to quote just one of his most remarkable sayings for you. He said: “There is only one way to create a free life, and it is this: Ensure that a free and hopeful heart beats beneath every garment.”—I truly believe that what has had such a powerful impact is this call for freedom.

[ 9 ] Well, this call for freedom always resonated with practical political and social action. The work The New Freedom is, after all, really just a collection of campaign speeches. So it does not speak of a freedom that is merely speculated upon philosophically; it does not speak of some abstract, mere freedom of consciousness; rather, it speaks of a freedom that is to be actualized and realized in life.

[ 10 ] Well, I also sought to understand this kind of freedom—which is meant to be realized and brought to life—through my book The Philosophy of Freedom, written in the early 1890s. But now that, after much hesitation, I have had this book published in a new edition, I feel I may say quite openly that I believe a truly practical living out of freedom is possible only if one seeks this freedom not merely in external social and political life, but in the depths of the human soul itself. And it is in the depths of the human soul itself that freedom should be sought through my Philosophy of Freedom. If one remains on the surface of mere social and political life—or of external social life—one will very soon see that the realization of freedom is not possible at all if one conceives of it only in this way. For freedom is something that must spring from the individual human being; it cannot exist if individual human beings are not capable of realizing it, if individual human beings do not first infuse it into the social life that brings them together. But if one wishes to appreciate the full significance of what has been suggested here and to understand it in the context of contemporary culture, then one must look beyond much of what mere rhetoric offers in the present, and one must try, for once, to speak seriously, honestly, and truthfully about various matters. The call for freedom, I would say, resounds throughout the entire educated world. It is there today for anyone who is willing to hear it—in the American, European, and Asian worlds. And the question is simply this: how can the consciousness of freedom be realized within the context of contemporary life?

[ 11 ] One must take a closer look at how a man like Woodrow Wilson—who was inspired by the impulse toward freedom—speaks about freedom today, and how others speak about freedom today. It will sound strange to you, and I must confess that I hesitated for a long time about whether to state the truth I have to say here in as blunt a manner as I am about to, because such things still shock many people today—because people still take such things far too literally, based on familiar clichés, and pay far too little attention to what actually lies behind them. Read Woodrow Wilson’s book The New Freedom; take note of how he speaks there about social conditions in America and, ultimately, about the social conditions of contemporary civilization as a whole. What do you find in it? Essentially only criticism—criticism of how this freedom has not been realized within today’s civilization, and of how we must strive to realize this freedom within today’s culture and civilization. There are sharp words of this kind of criticism in Woodrow Wilson’s book The New Freedom. And if one focuses on the criticism—and there is little else in this book besides criticism—and then asks oneself seriously and honestly: How does this criticism of freedom, or indeed this social criticism, by Woodrow Wilson compare to the criticism advanced from other quarters? —one arrives at a curious result. For example, I have endeavored to examine Lenin’s and Trotsky’s critique of freedom to see how this critique of freedom and social conditions relates to Woodrow Wilson’s critique in The New Freedom, and I believe that anyone who makes such a comparison honestly and truthfully can say nothing other than: With regard to the critique of social conditions and the realization of freedom within them today, Woodrow Wilson agrees with Lenin and Trotsky, however different the conclusions they draw may be.

[ 12 ] One must be able to admit such a truth, even if one finds it entirely understandable that, despite this criticism, Woodrow Wilson naturally arrives at conclusions opposite to those of Lenin and Trotsky. And even if, just like the person standing before you, one is convinced that Lenin and Trotsky are the gravediggers, not the founders, of social life—that hardly anything worse could befall humanity than if the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky were to be put into practice—there is one important, one significant fact that emerges; what must be clarified right now—this fact makes itself clear: that from the most diametrically opposed party positions, from the most diametrically opposed social passions, people today arrive at similar critiques of existing cultural conditions and ultimately also at the abstract call for freedom. Only they understand this freedom in very, very different ways.

[ 13 ] If one truly grasps the fact that, ultimately, the true impulse toward freedom can come only from the depths of the human soul itself, then one might well ask: Why is it that, despite all his politicking and calls for freedom, so much of what Woodrow Wilson writes in this book—and in his other books as well—consists of what one must call abstract, impractical truths that can never take root in reality? I believe that it is precisely what Woodrow Wilson understands by freedom that prevents him from being a truly practical person when it comes to the spiritual life of the present. It is very characteristic how Woodrow Wilson explains freedom. He explains it, one might say, as if he had derived the entire sum of his concepts from the engineering arts. He says, for example: A ship moves freely when it is designed so that its machinery is precisely adapted to the movements of the wind and the waves, when it encounters no obstacles or hindrances from the movement of the wind or the waves, when it is, as it were, carried along freely, without resisting what carries it. - And so a human being would be free in Woodrow Wilson’s sense if he were so adapted to external social conditions that nothing within him would present obstacles or hindrances to being carried along, so that he feels, as it were, no dependence, no constraint, and no disturbance in any direction. One need only take a single sentence seriously to understand the significance of Woodrow Wilson’s view of freedom. Let us seriously and honestly compare the person who is to act freely from the innermost impulses of his soul within some humane social order to a ship that offers as little resistance as possible to the forces of the wind and the waves; then we completely overlook the fact that the ship must be held steady by another force against the wind and waves—it cannot hold itself steady—whereas a person, if he is to be free, certainly should not merely be carried along by social forces, but must, under certain circumstances, be able to stop and even resist the forces acting upon him. The opposite of this would have emerged here as a true idea of freedom—something found in Woodrow Wilson’s definition of freedom. And we will find that the vague call for freedom resides in many people’s souls today, but that what they consciously associate with the impulse toward freedom is something other than what they unconsciously truly strive for. This was already before my inner eye when, in the 1880s, I conceived my Philosophy of Freedom out of the human spirit. I could see how the question—Can a human being be inwardly free or unfree at all?—how this question had occupied philosophy, worldviews, and religious convictions throughout the entire history of civilized human development. If a human being is a creature, a natural being driven purely by natural causes, then he is not free. Or does a spiritual being dwell within the human being who possesses and uses what he is as an external, physical being merely as an instrument, acting out of his own innermost impulses? If that were the case, then one could say that this human being is a truly free being. Is the human being free, or is he not free? Is he one or the other by virtue of his essential nature and innate disposition? These questions stood before my soul. And anyone who wishes to address these questions within the framework of modern scientific thought must, of course, account for his position regarding the various views that have asserted themselves here and there throughout the entire history of civilized human development concerning the question of freedom.

[ 14 ] Now it seemed to me that the main point lay in the fact that the question is usually posed entirely incorrectly—the question: Is human beings, by their own nature and essence, a free being, or are they not? It is posed incorrectly. And as a question posed incorrectly, it can never be answered with a simple yes or no. And so you will find that my Philosophy of Freedom aims to place the entire question on a different foundation. Admittedly, what I am about to explain lies more than just at the foundation of what is presented in my Philosophy of Freedom itself. Just as modern human beings are—in whom, in fact, a true awareness of freedom has only just awakened—so have these modern human beings evolved from earlier states of human existence. Today, far too little consideration is given to the fact that the principle of evolution must also be seriously and honestly applied to humanity. It is true that people think that, in the very, very distant past, human beings were once a kind of ape-like creature; then they say: Scientifically speaking, the time has not yet come to discuss how modern humans emerged from this ape-like creature—this animalistic ape-like creature that once climbed around in trees. A long, vast desert is left between humanity’s ape-like state and modern humans. But even if one does not admit this, one essentially holds the mental image that, once human beings became human, their soul-spiritual nature did not undergo any particularly radical changes. I know that this is a debatable statement. But anyone who allows the history of human evolution—as it is commonly understood—to sink in will find this statement to be justified. And anyone who examines this history of human development more closely will find that, just as human beings have developed, a consciousness of freedom has indeed awakened within them, so that from the depths of the human soul springs the cry: First, you must be able to act freely out of your own passions, emotions, sensations, and feelings; you must live in a social condition in which you can be free. But on the other hand, this call actually exists only as such. Nor does the consciousness of humanity exist today that would allow this call to attain its full significance within the human being himself. That is to say, the human being does not find enough of his own essence within himself to be able to say of it: yes, there is something within me that is a free being. In the course of human development, we have advanced to a magnificent level of scientific knowledge, and the last person to do so will be the one who advocates the Spiritual Science referred to here—the one who, as I have often explained here, would somehow like to deny the magnificent advances in the natural sciences or raise objections to well-founded scientific views. But the way we have developed the natural sciences in modern times means that the human being of the modern era—of the last three to four centuries—can actually conceive of himself only as a physical being. From the depths of the human being, from the consciousness naturally given to human beings, the thought “you are just as much a real soul, you are just as much a real spirit” does not arise at all in the same way that the thought arises from the depths of the human being: “there is your arm, there is your hand; they are made of flesh, blood, and bone.”

[ 15 ] This is not merely, I would say, a lapse in worldview. One completely fails to recognize what actually underlies this if one merely criticizes what I have just said and sees in it nothing more than a neglect of one’s worldview, if one simply says: People today are so complacent that they believe human beings are merely material beings, and that nothing soulful or spiritual is expressed within them. No, my esteemed audience, such criticism gets us nowhere; rather, we must recognize that, given the way human beings have developed, they are initially—if they take into their souls nothing other than what today’s external view of nature, external natural science, and the consciousness of time can offer—compelled to feel themselves to be merely material beings. In other words, if we allow that which contemporary culture—and our time in particular—cherishes, that which contemporary culture—and our time in particular—produces as science, art, and religious conviction, and which also permeates the schools—if we allow this to influence modern human beings to the point where they become imbued with it, then, if they are honest, they will inevitably become materialists. That is a harsh statement. But it is, I believe, a true statement. Today, one can be dishonest in a certain sense; one can say, out of some prejudice or other: “I do believe in the spirit and the soul.” —But then one is not taking seriously what contemporary consciousness and scientific convictions have actually brought about. And if one takes these convictions seriously, there is no alternative but for a person to feel that they are a material being. They have developed to such an extent that, if they simply surrender to the conditions of life they have imposed upon themselves today, they can only come to believe that they are a physical being. A physical being, no more than any other natural being, can be a free being. Therefore, one can say: If present-moment consciousness is taken seriously, then nowhere does anything like the impulse toward freedom arise from this present-moment consciousness. One can let the call for freedom resound from subconscious instincts, as Woodrow Wilson does. But one will arrive at distorted concepts of freedom—at a definition of freedom that says nothing about freedom or a free being, as Woodrow Wilson again does—if one becomes absorbed in the present-day consciousness of time. One must have the courage to step outside this sense of the present—which has taken hold of the widest circles and has become popular. And one can say that, precisely at the time when I was writing my Philosophy of Freedom, one could feel quite isolated within contemporary culture with such ideas, no matter where on earth one lived. One can understand why Woodrow Wilson’s particular views arose from the—in terms of world history—young life of America. And when I look at my Philosophy of Freedom today—I may speak frankly about this as well—I know how justified those criticisms are that may grate on today’s reader of this Philosophy of Freedom. I know very well that if someone today reads the first thirty or forty pages of this book, they will say: Well, this clearly bears the hallmarks of German philosophy—academic terminology, university terminology, and scholastic terminology.

[ 16 ] Nevertheless, I must adhere to the form of this book and appeal to the present by saying: Just as one should not judge the essence of a human being by his appearance, so too should one not judge my philosophy by its conceptual framework—a framework that, out of necessity, had to serve as such a covering, arising from the era, the education, and the intellectual life within which this philosophy came into being. Rather, something else seems important to me—something that, I might say, appeared to me as if symbolically during the drafting of my Philosophy of Freedom. At that time, while working on this philosophy, I was also working at the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar. An American scholar worked alongside me there for some time. He was drafting a literary-historical treatise on Goethe’s Faust. It was very interesting to speak with this man, and anyone who can perceive reality in symptoms found, in a sense, American intellectual life right in the midst of Central European intellectual life in the person of the outstanding American literary historian Calvin Thomas. But you see, all sorts of scholars—including American scholars—were working there, I might say, as if in a meticulous Central European office at the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar. Once office hours were over, I could only use my free time to write my Philosophy of Freedom. But I often had to ask myself: How close is what Calvin Thomas considers American knowledge and American insight actually to what European scholars wrote on the same subject, and how isolated one is, in the face of this cultural development and the entire world, with what can be conceived as a true idea of freedom arising from an independent intellectual life? In a sense, one also felt isolated in relation to what might emerge—from America’s sense of freedom, which is young in terms of world history—as an idea concerning the impulse of freedom. And it was a matter of concern to me at that time, as I have already said, to place the entire question of freedom on a different foundation. I had to tell myself: Just as a person is when they surrender themselves entirely to that which—when they take only what can initially fill their soul from a sense of time—they cannot know themselves as a free being at all. That is why I posed the question differently. And this different way of framing the question permeates what I recognize as the idea of freedom. I cannot ask: “Is a human being free or is he not free?” but rather: “Can a human being, within the depths of his soul, after having gone through what arises, as it were, of its own accord from nature and from his own essence, continue to develop his soul by taking his soul’s development into his own hands, and can he then awaken something dormant within him in such a way that this actually deeper essence within him comes to the fore, so that only through this awakening of a second human being within him does he become a free being? Can a person educate themselves toward freedom, or can they not? Can a person become a free being, or not? How does one become a free being?—That was the new question that had to be raised.

[ 17 ] This, however, pointed out that modern man—if he wishes at all to attain awareness of his full humanity—must not stop at what arises naturally in the course of human development, but must take his own development into his own hands. Admittedly, this is a point of view that is extremely uncomfortable for quite, quite a lot of people today. For in order to make it plausible, one must say the following to people: Take a look at a five-year-old child. Let us imagine that this five-year-old child is standing in front of a volume of Goethe’s lyric poems. This five-year-old child, standing in front of the volume of Goethe’s lyric poems, will do something with this volume of lyric poems; it will tear it up, perhaps chew it up, or do something else, but one cannot assume that this five-year-old child will do the right thing with Goethe’s volume of lyric poetry. But the child can develop; the child can be raised in such a way that it later learns to do the right thing with this volume of Goethe’s lyric poetry. Now, what if one were to say to people today: Just entrust yourself to what your sense of time gives you of its own accord, and then you will relate to the true mysteries of nature, to the true mysteries of the world around you, just as the five-year-old child relates to Goethe’s volume of lyric poetry. The child has Goethe’s entire volume of lyric poetry before them, just like a fully intelligent person, but of course it does not penetrate into what one can penetrate as a fully intelligent person. It must first be educated. Now, the call for freedom actually presupposes that a person truly possesses the great intellectual humility to say to themselves: Perhaps I stand before nature, before the essence of the world, just as a five-year-old child stands before Goethe’s Iyrischer Band. I must first take the development of my soul into my own hands; then, just as Goethe’s Iyrischer Band becomes something entirely different for the five-year-old child after five or seven years, so too will the world become something entirely different for me. Whereas before, when I simply surrendered myself to whatever came of its own accord, I was an unfree being, a different person awakens within me when I take my own development into my own hands. And as this different person burns through me, warms me, and permeates me, I become a free being.

[ 18 ] Yes, that was expressed in my Philosophy of Freedom as the foundation of a human conception of freedom, and it was not intended merely as a philosophical truth, but rather to show that through what a person awakens within themselves by advancing—as opposed to merely attaining what is given to them of their own accord—by developing in this way, a person develops, as it were, a reality within themselves that was previously dormant and hidden. They create something within themselves that is what ultimately leads them to freedom. As long as one theorizes, as long as one devises abstract ideas, these will remain a matter of the human mind. They will not particularly capture the whole person. In fact, anyone who has dealt with such matters should know how fleetingly the most beautiful, the most ideal abstract ideas exist within people. It is different when it is not abstract ideas but life itself that is to be awakened in a person, when a person is to experience something vividly that awakens within them something that was not there before. This is a living force that engages the whole person—it is not merely a matter of the intellect, but a matter of the soul and spirit of the whole person. Here, all feelings and impulses are brought together; here, the entire life of the human will is brought together; here, freedom becomes a real force within the person; here, freedom becomes something experienced. But then, once it becomes a lived experience, the human being also wants to shape it in external social life; then, through living with other people, he or she moves from this experience of freedom to an idea of a social structure of human coexistence in which freedom alone can be realized.

[ 19 ] Therefore, in the second part of my philosophy, I attempted to establish a moral doctrine for humanity, to establish a social perspective that—I would say—must then naturally arise from the awakened sense of freedom and spirit of liberty. If one thus regards the impulse of freedom as something that is vividly grasped in the deepest essence of the human being, then freedom is not an abstract idea; then the philosophy of freedom is not mere philosophy; then what is expressed through such a conception of freedom is something that permeates all human action and all human goals. Then it contains something that others are calling for when they speak of freedom—but which is found by those who, in seeking to understand freedom, do not stop at the worldviews of the present, but rise to that which lies dormant within the human being and can be awakened. That which can thus—I would say—be addressed to humanity as a “language of freedom,” intimately connected with the cultural conditions of the human present and future, did, however, require something else for its further development.

[ 20 ] And here is the reason why it was necessary to move from laying the foundations of a philosophy of freedom to an anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. Take one of the major works of this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. There you will find a detailed description of the paths that a person must take inwardly, in soul and spirit, so that this awareness of the other human being—the truly free human being—can awaken within them. There you will find how it is possible for a person to truly arrive at such an understanding of their own being that the true form of thinking and also of willing appears before their soul. And I would like to point out something here that I have already mentioned in one of the most recent lectures given here: Thinking and willing become something different for the person than they are for ordinary consciousness—the consciousness that, as described in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, penetrates the human being. Through thinking, one learns to recognize how the being—which one then grasps as the higher human being—was already there before the human being entered physical existence through birth or conception. Through the true form of human will, one learns to recognize how the human being carries his or her essence through the gate of death into the spiritual world. One learns to recognize this by truly rising above oneself, by developing into the truer essence of the human being—the eternal within the human being.

[ 21 ] But this merely outlines in detail the paths that lead people—I might say—to regard the “Philosophy of Freedom” as something self-evident; it outlines the paths toward discovering the truly free human being. At the same time, this serves the deeper cultural conditions of the present and the future, which find expression precisely in such calls for freedom as I characterized in the introduction to my lecture today.

[ 22 ] What does a person need—given all that he or she feels so intensely about a dignified existence—what does a person need as the substance of his or her innermost human consciousness? What I wish to say here can perhaps best be illustrated if I refer you back to the starting point of humanity’s spiritual culture over the last three to four centuries. For it was a momentous event when, at the dawn of modern human development, figures such as Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and others emerged. What did they essentially do? They broke with the traditions of knowledge and worldviews of antiquity and directed human attention toward the unbiased observation of the external world. They sought to dispel prejudices. They wanted to clearly demonstrate what human beings can gain through the observation of the external world. Gradually, however, something else has come about—namely, what I have already described in part. What has happened is that an ancient awareness of what a human being is at their very core has been destroyed by modern observation. When we look today at the vast starry sky in accordance with our modern natural science, what is this starry sky? Something we seek to understand through mathematics and mechanics—something with which we feel a connection only through these abstract products of our minds: mathematics and mechanics. And let us compare this with the consciousness that people had in earlier times when they looked up at the starry sky. They did not possess the abstract scientific consciousness: “Up there, the stars revolve according to mathematical and mechanical laws, but you, earthworm, stand here on this earth, come into being at birth and pass away at death, and what you are has nothing to do with the course of the stars.” If we go back to earlier stages of human consciousness, we find that this older human consciousness held the view: You, human being, as you stand here on this Earth, are not merely bound to this Earth; the forces that act and live within you are connected to what circles up there among the stars; and as you perfect your knowledge and become aware of yourself as a complete human being, you know that you are related not only to the animals, plants, and stones of the Earth, but also to the entire cosmic space of the stars. We have paid for what we have learned about the stars through mathematics and mechanics by cutting humanity off from the cosmos, from the world. If one now follows the path to higher knowledge in the way I have described, and comes to recognize within oneself that human being who did not begin with birth or conception, but who existed in spiritual worlds before birth and conception, and which also lives within us now, and which passes through the gate of death into the spiritual world, then one does indeed come to know, together with this human being—but in a new form, not in an old, worn-out form—one’s kinship with the entire cosmos once more; then the human being is once again permeated by world-consciousness. One’s mere earthly consciousness is transformed into world-consciousness. Then, however, human beings possess something they need precisely as a cultural prerequisite for the spirit in the present and for the future. Humanity could never endure the moment—without causing the deepest harm to its very being—when attention were directed toward new external observations, gradually extinguishing the old spiritual life. Humanity needs faith, a reference to the knowledge of something enduring that can stand firm even as the observation of the external world expands.

[ 23 ] Thus, it is anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science that, in its own way, reveals the human being to himself in such a way that he can once again connect his consciousness of the world to the entire cosmos, so that he knows himself to be, in his spirit, in communion with the World Spirit. This is not merely a theoretical idea; it is something that takes root in the whole person and transforms that person into a different being. In the present and in the future, there will be much, much speculation about what social institutions need to be established so that people may find a dignified existence within them. In recent times, people have even succumbed to the delusion that such institutions can be invented. We will only arrive at institutions that provide human beings with a dignified existence if human beings are capable of creating such institutions from the depths of their spiritual and soul life. But this does not require dreaming of a transformation of external social conditions; it requires seriously embarking on a new spiritual culture, a reawakening of that which slumbers and sleeps within the human soul—and which must first be awakened—so that human beings may know within themselves that they are free beings. Today, people completely overlook the deep rift in our spiritual culture. For many centuries, certain social forces have ensured that external science would under no circumstances speak of the spiritual and the soul. That was to be the domain of dogmatism. One was to experience this through mere faith, allowing mere authorities to dictate what one was to think about the spirit and the soul; because certain social forces claimed a monopoly on dictating what was to be acknowledged regarding the spirit and the soul, science was thus confined to the purely material. It strikes those who look more deeply into human evolution as very peculiar when they hear today how official science believes that it pursues truths without prejudice and, through this unbiased pursuit of truths, discovers something that is today called science and nothing else—and which, in essence, wishes to deal only with sensory facts. In truth, this has become a process of development; in truth, this is human inquiry that has capitulated to the monopoly of certain social circles who wished to concern themselves exclusively with what people have to say about the spirit and the soul. A science, as I have characterized it—one that leads to freedom—leads at the same time to the point where human beings can not only investigate the physical, their bodily nature, but also learn to investigate the spiritual and the soul. And when a person learns to investigate the spiritual and the soul, they take in concepts that are stronger and more in keeping with reality than those they take in when they must limit themselves to the mere external material. And so attempts have been made to allow only that which arises from the consciousness of the present age to flow into social thought. And from this perspective, one believes that truly human ideas cannot actually influence social conditions at all, or one ends up formulating highly misguided social ideas. In my book On the Mysteries of the Soul—one of the last I wrote, and which, like the others, is merely a direct continuation of what you will find in my book The Philosophy of Freedom—in this book On the Riddles of the Soul, I have shown how a truly anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science is not only capable of speaking abstractly about all manner of spiritual and soul-related matters, but how, by grasping what is truly spiritual, it simultaneously becomes capable of comprehending the human being—who is body, soul, and spirit—in their entirety. And so, in these Mysteries of the Soul, for example, I was able to point out what a great error it is in contemporary scientific physiology to speak of humans as having sensory nerves that run from the sense organs to the central nervous system, while motor nerves run from the central nervous system back to the muscles. An abstract science that speaks of spirit and soul only in abstract terms will never dare—nor will it even find the method—to say anything about the sensory realm that cannot be proven purely through the senses. One can “prove” something by asserting that there is only one type of nerve, that there is no difference between sensory and motor nerves, and that phenomena such as tabes—which are cited to support the view that motor nerves exist—actually prove the exact opposite of what one believes they are meant to demonstrate.

[ 24 ] Thus, in this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, something is created that in turn permeates all of nature—something with sufficient momentum to penetrate all of nature. Through this, however, this Spiritual Science may also penetrate into that which must be of particular interest to contemporary culture. This Spiritual Science must penetrate the structure of social life. And it is only from the experiences that human beings have with the higher human being that truly social concepts can be derived. That is why we live today in such a confused age, in such confusion and chaos, because the people who are concerned with solving the various social issues are not able to delve deeply enough into the human being itself to find the ideas that can truly govern social life. And so we are at a loss when faced with the most pressing and burning questions of the present, and we stand before these most searing and burning questions in such a way that, fundamentally, no answer—no echo—comes from the depths of human nature.

[ 25 ] By tracing the development of humanity throughout world history, we have seen how great transformations have taken place. Or was not one of the greatest transformations that has occurred in the course of human development the one through which Christianity emerged? Christianity, which first gave true meaning to the Earth’s development, emerged through a powerful transformation. It left many things behind. Not all people recognized the truths of Christianity; but on the whole, Christianity was the force that worked to transform the old cultural elements and, in essence, brought forth the entire European civilization along with its American offshoot. Later, events such as the French Revolution took place. While Christianity was a purely spiritual transformation and achieved its goal to the greatest extent, one can say of the French Revolution—which was a political one—that although it achieved some of its political goals, important and essential aspects remained unfulfilled among the goals that had been set. And now, in our own time, we are witnessing the longing of many people for a new transformation, for new revolutions. And we are already seeing these revolutions at work in many places. Humanity has had sad experiences. If it is only willing to be open-minded enough, it should recognize this even in proletarian circles. Humanity has had sad experiences with the extreme social revolutions in Eastern Europe and in Hungary, and the failure of these social revolutions should be a major lesson of world history. And an even greater lesson—if people are capable of learning anything at all from the events of world history—could be the sad fate of the German Revolution of November 9, 1918, a revolution that petered out. And when one properly surveys all that emerges from such facts—from the failed revolutions in Hungary and Eastern Europe, from the sadly fizzling-out German Revolution—then one sees: spiritual transformations, such as those brought about by Christianity, can take place in the course of human development; political revolutions, such as the French Revolution, only to a limited extent; economic revolutions, such as those currently being attempted, are doomed to failure; they can do nothing but destroy and cannot bring about anything new unless they are transformed into spiritual impulses of progress. One of the most important and essential cultural conditions of the present is this: that, drawing upon a correctly grasped impulse toward freedom, people come to realize that all the issues we face today must be viewed in the context of humanity’s entire spiritual development—along with a renewal of human spiritual life. And humanity must bring this clearly into its consciousness before the sad, terrible doctrine of necessity could take hold—a doctrine that would take hold if what is unfolding in Eastern Europe toward the downfall of human culture, what has unfolded in Hungary amid such sad symptoms, and what is petering out in Germany, if, as understood by those who have no concept of the true impulse of the spirit, it were to continue in the manner now regarded by many as appropriate to the times.

[ 26 ] Even what is done in the economic sphere can only be done correctly when it springs from the human spirit, and we live in an age where the old concepts are no longer sufficient, where we must find new concepts that can create a new economic culture for the present and for the future. Woodrow Wilson is right when he says: We face new economic conditions; people could not shut themselves off from the new economic institutions; yet we continue to think about this economic life using the old legal concepts and the old, outdated ideas of the spirit. — But then, nothing springs forth from what is rooted in the soul that could now master this new economic life.

[ 27 ] What is sought here as an anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science—as conveyed in this text—will, on the one hand, reach up to the highest heights of human mental and soul life, but on the other hand will also be strong enough to reach down to where the most everyday aspects of life must be grasped. How is it today? Spiritual life has gradually taken on a completely abstract character. Just think about how the religious, aesthetic, artistic, and worldview convictions of, say, a merchant, an industrialist, or a government official take shape. That is a matter in itself, experienced within his soul. It does not extend into his ledger, or into what he does in his office. In the realm where he generates his spiritual ideas, the ideas and impulses that are then expressed in his ledger are not created at the same time. At most, it might say “With God”; but that is all that connects the activity expressed there with what he carries through the world as an abstract spiritual and soul life. This is why, when people with sound social views—such as Saint-Simon, Blanc, and Fourier—emerged in more recent times, it was said: “These are good moral ideas, but one does not transform social conditions with good intentions.” One can hear this today wherever people speak from a socialist standpoint. And they are right. Social life cannot be transformed with the kind of social ideas held by Saint-Simon, Blanc, Fourier, and others, because these ideas sprang from people’s awareness that, when one thinks and reflects on the spiritual, this spiritual realm is a separate entity that is not meant to encompass the world at the same time. Ultimately, all intellectual life has become abstract. On the one hand, people soar to spiritual heights—whether religiously, artistically, or ideologically—if they soar at all. On the other hand, they surrender themselves, I might say, to the vagaries of life; in the natural sciences, by working in laboratories, observatories, and the like, and whatever he produces there—whether in the social or scientific realm—has no connection to abstract spiritual life. Anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science seeks to infuse the entire human civilization with a unity of spiritual and material life. And what is developed within the human being—through the act of beholding the higher human being within oneself and ascending to the Eternal—should give rise to the possibility of grasping the Eternal, which lies beyond birth and death for the human being, while at the same time making these ideas so powerful that they can take hold in everyday life. For it is not the one who speaks of the spirit who is serious and sincere about the spirit, but rather the one who pursues the spirit right down to its final immersion in material existence—for whom nothing of spiritless matter remains, even in their practical outlook on life. This is what one might describe as the cultural conditions of the present and the future—that people possess such spiritual and soulful consciousness.

[ 28 ] Then the people who are imbued with such consciousness will also create the social and political conditions desired by people such as Woodrow Wilson. Today, however, the situation is such that people are really only offering criticism; productive ideas are not yet forthcoming because they do not want to descend into the spirit—or ascend to it. Today we see how, from America—we have cited the example of Woodrow Wilson himself, certainly a leading figure—how, from America, contemporary social life is being criticized, and the call for freedom is being heard. Yet people are unwilling to make the decision to rise appropriately to the true impulse of freedom. And we have witnessed how truly beautiful, spirited ideas about freedom and social conditions have emerged in Europe. But it is characteristic of European civilization that we are unable to bring down from the realm of abstractions, from the philosophical heights, what we so beautifully conceive and feel, and to introduce it into everyday life. And we still do not understand when there is talk of such an introduction of real—not merely imagined—ideas into political life. And when we look toward Asia, we are dealing with a different civilization that offers a critique of contemporary social and political life just as incisive as that of America and Europe. One need only read the wonderful essays of Rabindranath Tagore to see how the leading figure of Asian culture takes his critique just as far. He does not go as far in the realm of productive activity, however, because he is unable to tell himself: We must strive for something new if we are to speak of intellectual life once again. He wants to preserve an old intellectual life and allow it to remain the sole force at work.

[ 29 ] Well, unfortunately we have seen in Europe that people have ultimately lost the direct connection between what they strive for in spirit and what everyday life brings them to such an extent that we now see numerous societies engaged in shaping Europe according to purely external economic considerations and seeking to satisfy their spiritual needs—since the Christian religion is no longer sufficient for them in Europe—by drawing on all sorts of theories and the like from Asia. Such connections are not suited to bringing about a renewal of spiritual life; they are the final, decadent shadows of the past.

[ 30 ] All of this is taken into account by what is meant here as anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. It is pretty much the opposite of what people say about it. And the Dornach building, which is so often described as symbolic, does not contain a single symbol; rather, it is simply meant to be built, I would say, in a purely natural way—so that it is envisioned that this and that will one day take place within it, just as one learns to recognize a nut in its shell; and when one looks at the shell surrounding the nut, one finds that it is naturally shaped in such a way that it is appropriate for the nut. So we wanted to create a new shell—architecturally, artistically, and pictorially—for a new spiritual life. The building was constructed in a natural way, not based on abstract ideas, nor on a convoluted aesthetic conception. I have often used a rather trivial comparison just to convey, to some extent, what I actually mean by this building in Dornach. I believe many of you know that in Germany, Austria, and even here, certain cakes are called “Gugelhupf,” and the mold in which the Gugelhupf is baked is called a “Gugelhupftopf.” Now, I said, imagine what is to be cultivated in this building as a Gugelhupf, as a cake; then, if the cake is to be right, the Gugelhupftopf must be the right one. In the same way, the spiritual life that is to be cultivated there must have the right outer shell, just as the nut has the right shell. Apart from this fundamental principle of the building, everything is, in essence, still widely misunderstood today.

[ 31 ] Well, today, as in numerous other lectures I have already given here in this very place, I would like once again to point out how the matters concerning the Dornach building and what is to be carried out within it truly relate to the civilized development of humanity—in contrast to the numerous misunderstandings that arise, which, quite naturally, are bound to arise. Perhaps from the few hints I have been able to offer—which, however, are intimately connected with the most important human longings for the renewal of culture in the present and for the future—one can see what is precisely meant and intended by this building and its purpose. When the call for freedom resounds from America—as I characterized it in reference to Woodrow Wilson—it is a call to find that humanity, that dignified existence rooted in a conception of the spiritual and the soul, which can respond to this call as its realization, as the correct answer to the question that is being posed. Some people still tend to sidestep these issues today. Demands of the times are raised out of dark, vague feelings. The answers must be given out of a clear spiritual insight. I cannot help but think how right Woodrow Wilson is, in a certain sense, when he points out that decisions regarding the affairs of the people and of humanity should not be made in secret consortia. Woodrow Wilson wants decisions to be made in every single household, whether in the countryside or in the city, but he believes that people should come together especially in the schoolhouse. It is a beautiful idea that the nurturing place of the spirit should be the source for the development of ideas about time. And it is a beautiful statement by Woodrow Wilson when he says: “Our goal is the reality of freedom.” We want to work toward legally preventing the accumulation of private capital and making the system through which the accumulation of private capital was created legally impossible. And here is another very beautiful saying: “In the countryside, on the farms, in the shops, in the villages, in the apartments of the big city, in the schoolhouses—everywhere where people come together and are true to one another— that is where the streams and rivers spring from their source to form the mighty force of that current which carries and propels all human endeavors on its journey toward the great common sea of humanity. - It is a beautiful idea to bring people together in such a way that, from all these individual sources, the current can form to bring about the liberation of humanity, and it is a beautiful idea to have goals set—precisely from the nurturing grounds of the spirit, from the schoolhouses—that are meant to carry humanity forward.

[ 32 ] But if you take what I was trying to explain today, then perhaps this call for schools, as articulated by Woodrow Wilson, will have to take a different form after all. For I believe that only when a cultural life is cultivated in these schools—one imbued with a realistic understanding, a humane understanding of the free human spirit and the human soul—only then will the true current of human freedom flow from the school. As long as we cannot instill in the human soul the true understanding of freedom—no matter how we gather students in the schoolhouses—they will scarcely find goals grounded in reality even there. Such goals will be found only when we have the courage to bring into the schools a worldview, an aesthetic vision, and a religious commitment that are in harmony with the spirit and grounded in reality. For what will emerge from the schools—if we instill the right spirit within them—will be more important for the future of humanity than what people today generally take away from schools.