The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. Spiritual Questions; Spiritual Science (Art, Science, Religion); Education – Social Art

[ 1 ] If one surveys the history of recent years and asks: How do the social issues and demands—which have, after all, been raised for more than half a century—fit into this history? — one cannot help but arrive at the following answer: In large parts of the civilized world, individuals who have devoted themselves for decades to their own way of viewing social issues have been given the opportunity to work constructively, in accordance with their convictions, toward building and reshaping social conditions, and an extraordinarily characteristic phenomenon is surely this: that all the theories, all the views that have emerged from various quarters as “socialist” for more than half a century have proved powerless in the face of a genuine reconstruction, a reshaping of present-day conditions. In recent years, much has failed, and little—and to the discerning observer, one might even have to say: nothing at all—has been built. Must not the question then press itself upon the human soul: What, in fact, is the reason for this powerlessness of developed views in the face of positive work?

[ 2 ] I took the liberty of giving a brief answer to this question—which I may refer to today—at a time preceding the great catastrophe of World War I: in the spring of 1914, during a short series of lectures I gave at that time in Vienna to a small audience—a larger one would likely have laughed at what I said back then. At that time, in response to everything that the so-called “practitioners of life” assumed about the near future, I took the liberty of saying that, in our social conditions throughout the entire civilized world, there is something alive that appears to the keen observer of humanity’s inner life as a social ulcer, like a social disease, like a kind of cancerous growth that will inevitably erupt in a terrible way across the civilized world in the near future. Those who spoke at the time of political détente and the like—they were practical statesmen—could regard this as the pessimism of an idealist. Yet this was expressed precisely out of the conviction one can gain from a view of human development as described by Spiritual Science—a view of the kind I intend to describe to you this evening.

[ 3 ] The Dornach building, the Goetheanum, located in a northwestern corner of Switzerland, is dedicated to the perspective of Spiritual Science. This building is intended to be the outward representation of the movement of Spiritual Science I am referring to here. You can, of course, hear all sorts of things today, read all sorts of things today, about what the building in Dornach is intended to achieve, and what is meant by the movement that this building is meant to represent. And in most cases, you can tell yourself: The opposite of what is usually chattered about regarding these matters today is true. People look for all sorts of mysterious elements, all sorts of false, meaningless mysticism, and all sorts of obscure nonsense in what this movement and its representation through the Dornach building are striving to achieve. There is no other way to put it than to say that misunderstandings upon misunderstandings still prevail today regarding this current of spiritual life. In truth, the aim is to consciously use this spiritual current to bring about a renewal of our entire civilized life—as it has taken shape throughout human history in art, religion, science, education, and so on—and as the discerning person can see, this truly requires renewal; indeed, one might say it requires renewal from its very foundations.

[ 4 ] And this intellectual current leads to the conviction I have already hinted at in the lectures that preceded this one in this series: that, when it comes to the social movement today, it is not enough to reflect on one new institution or another, but that what is required by the deepest foundations of human development is a transformation of mental images, of thought, and of the innermost spiritual constitution of humanity itself. And it is precisely such a transformation that the Spiritual Science referred to here strives for. And it must be understood that, because the social views I have just spoken of arose from old modes of conception that no longer correspond to the current development of humanity and contemporary life, they have, when faced with the task of rebuilding and reshaping, so clearly foundered.

[ 5 ] What we need is insight. What, exactly, do the subconscious longings and demands of today’s humanity—which have not yet risen to the level of conscious thought—actually want? What, above all, do they want with regard to art, science, religion, and education?

[ 6 ] Let us, for example, consider what has emerged as art in recent times. I am well aware that by presenting the following as a brief characterization of what has emerged as art, I will have to cause offense to many; indeed, many will interpret this as evidence of a complete lack of understanding of the trends in modern art.

[ 7 ] The main characteristic of recent developments in art—if one sets aside certain individual attempts from recent years that are actually quite commendable—is probably this: that these artistic developments have lost a genuine inner impulse to present to humanity, out of a human necessity, something that humanity perceives as an immediate need. Yet the view has increasingly gained ground that, when faced with a work of art, one must ask to what extent the spirit and meaning of external reality live within it, and to what extent external nature or human life is rendered through art. One need only ask: What significance does such a view have in relation to, say, a painting or work of art by Raphael or Leonardo? — Do we not see in them that the relationship to immediate external reality is by no means the decisive factor, but rather that what is decisive is creation from something that stands apart from immediate external reality? What worlds shine out at us when we view Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” in Milan—a painting that is already almost beyond our comprehension—or when we stand before a painting by Raphael! Is it not, in the end, a complete triviality to what extent these artists may have captured one aspect or another of the laws of natural existence? Is not the main thing about them that they tell us something about a world we do not see when we see only with our eyes, when we perceive only with our external senses? And is not the question that modern people ask—Is this thing actually true?—increasingly emerging as the sole criterion for a work of art or for anything artistic at all?—and by “true” one means it in the ordinary, naturalistic sense. Let us ask ourselves—as “Botokudian” as it may sound to certain artistic views today: What is art in life, including social life? What is art that seeks nothing more than to reflect a piece of reality?

[ 8 ] At the same time that modern capitalism and modern technology emerged, the depiction of landscape developed, particularly in the artistic realm. Of course, I am also aware of the artistic merit of landscape painting. But the following question is equally valid: I stand before a landscape, no matter how artistically perfect it may be; can it in any way match what I experience when I stand on a mountainside and behold the landscape as nature itself? — The very emergence of landscape painting testifies to how much art took refuge—because it could not create from anything spiritual or supernatural—in the mere imitation of nature, which it nevertheless cannot attain.

[ 9 ] What becomes of an art that thrives solely on such impulses? Such art does not become something that blossoms from life itself; it becomes something that stands alongside life as a luxury—something that only those who, weighed down by their worries, are not fully immersed in life can desire. And is it not understandable that those people who are completely absorbed from morning to night by the immediate concerns of daily life—who are also unable to attain an education that strives toward understanding, which itself must first be artistic—feel separated from this art by a gulf? And even if one does not dare to say it aloud today, because it is considered philistine, it manifests itself in social life: that broad segments of society look upon this art and unconsciously perceive it as a luxury of life—as something that does not belong to every human life, yet which in reality belongs to every dignified existence, because it is what gives every dignified existence its full meaning.

[ 10 ] Naturalistic art will always be, in a certain sense, a luxury art form for those who have the opportunity to rise above the worries of daily life and to educate themselves specifically in this art form. I felt this when I was a teacher at a workers’ educational school for many years and found, precisely at that school, the opportunity to speak directly to the hearts and minds of the people—to be understood—in the face of all that is drummed into them as “socialist theory” for the ruin of this people by those who call themselves “leaders of the people.” I came to understand—forgive this personal remark—what it means to convey this or that branch of knowledge to the simple mind directly from the universal human experience. But a certain longing to now also experience what modern art has to offer led my listeners to ask that I guide them through museums and the like on Sundays. And lo and behold: Of course, one could explain to the people what they were supposed to understand, for they, too, had the urge to become educated; but one knew full well: this did not have the same effect on these minds as what had been communicated to simple minds from a universal human perspective. It could be perceived as an educational lie when one told people about what had established itself in modern naturalism as a form of luxury art, far removed from real life. That, on the one hand.

[ 11 ] And don’t we see how, on the other hand, art has lost its connection to life? Here, too, very commendable efforts have emerged in recent decades, but they have by no means been far-reaching. Such efforts have emerged in the field of arts and crafts. These efforts have recognized how our everyday surroundings have become devoid of art. Art has made its apparent progress. Everything that surrounds us in our homes, everything we encounter daily in our everyday objects—all of it has become as devoid of art as possible. Practical life could not be elevated to an artistic form because art had separated itself from life. An art that merely imitates nature will find no way to design tables, chairs, and other everyday objects in such a way that, upon encountering them, one might simultaneously experience an impression of the artistic—because these objects must transcend nature, just as practical life itself transcends human life. If art seeks merely to imitate, it stumbles in the face of shaping practical life, which becomes prosaic, sober, and dry precisely because we are unable to shape it in such a way that we can immediately perceive how closely we are surrounded by the artistic in this everyday life. This could be characterized even further. I merely wish to indicate the direction that our artistic development has now quite clearly taken.

[ 12 ] And we have moved in a similar direction in other areas of modern civilization. Have we not seen how science has increasingly strayed from its role as a herald of that which underlies external sensory life? No wonder art has not found its way out of the realm of the senses, since science itself has lost that path! More and more, science has come to merely record external sensory facts or, at most, summarize them in natural laws. More and more, a pronounced intellectualism has spread over all scientific activity in modern times, and there is a terrible fear among scientists that, in their research, they might not succumb to this intellectualism but might instead introduce some element of imagination or artistic intuition into science itself. Read about it or listen to those scientists who speak out in this vein—you will hear what a terrible dread they have that anything other than sober, dry reason and sensory investigation might find its way into science. In all activities, these people say, that do not adhere to mere concepts, human beings lack sufficient distance from reality to judge it correctly. And so today’s researcher, today’s scientist, seeks to govern his work entirely through the intellect, because he believes that this keeps him far enough removed from reality to be able to judge it objectively, as he puts it. This might raise the question: Does intellectualism not seek to distance us so far from reality that we no longer experience it at all? And it is this intellectualism, above all else, that has led us to no longer be able to master this reality through our science, as I have already hinted at in my previous lectures and will elaborate on further today.

[ 13 ] And with regard to religious life: How is every such attempt—as is being made in the field of Spiritual Science, as referred to here—to penetrate the spirit met with suspicion and disparaging criticism by religious communities! For what reason? Indeed, people today do not understand the reason at all. From our official institutions, we hear of a science that seeks to confine itself to the mere external sensory world, and we hear how these institutions seemingly objectively justify the claim that only in this way can a rigorous, true science emerge. For those familiar with the historical development of humanity, this is not the case. To them, the situation appears rather to be that, in the course of modern times—indeed, for the past few centuries—religious communities have increasingly claimed a monopoly on developing views about the spirit and the soul, and have permitted only those views to be accepted that they themselves allow humanity to acknowledge. And under the influence of these claims to a monopoly, the sciences have refrained from dealing with anything other than the outwardly sensory. At most, they have attempted to penetrate the spiritual realm with a few abstract concepts. They believe they are doing this for the sake of scientific objectivity, and do not realize that they are acting under the influence of the religious denominations’ monopoly on knowledge and understanding of the mind and soul. What has been forbidden to the sciences for centuries is now declared by the sciences to be an objective necessity for their precision and objectivity. And so it is that, because religious communities have not advanced insight into the spiritual and psychological worlds but have instead preserved old traditions, research that employs new modes of thought and seeks new paths to the soul and the spirit is viewed as the enemy of religion, whereas this very research and these very paths should be seen as religion’s best friend.

[ 14 ] We will first discuss these three areas. For the anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science referred to here has set itself the task of working toward a new structure in these three areas. To explore this, I must say a few words about the very essence of this Spiritual Science. This Spiritual Science is based on entirely different premises than today’s mainstream science. It fully acknowledges the methods of the natural sciences. It also fully acknowledges the triumphs of modern natural science. But precisely because it believes it understands scientific research better than the natural scientists themselves, it must take different paths toward the knowledge of the spirit and the soul than those still regarded by broad circles today as the only correct ones. Indeed, it is precisely because people approach any research into the spirit and the soul with such deep-seated prejudices that the great errors and misunderstandings regarding what the Dornach Movement actually means have become so widespread.

[ 15 ] That this truly does not imply anything mystical or obscure can be seen from what I attempted as early as the beginning of the 1890s as a starting point for the Spiritual Science movement I am referring to here—a movement of which the Dornach building is the very embodiment. At that time, in the early 1890s, I summarized in my Philosophy of Freedom what I believed then to be most necessary for a social understanding of the present. Anyone who reads this Philosophy of Freedom will hardly accuse the Spiritual Science referred to here of any kind of false mysticism. Yet they will also recognize the gulf that exists between the conception of human freedom presented there and what otherwise emerges today from our modern civilization as an impulse, as an idea of freedom, directed toward human beings.

[ 16 ] As an example of the latter, I would like to cite Woodrow Wilson’s idea of freedom—a strange idea, but one that is quite characteristic of the education and civilization of our time. Woodrow Wilson, out of a sincere and heartfelt conviction, calls for freedom in contemporary political life. But what is his mental image of freedom? One comes to understand what he means by freedom when reading words like these from him: A ship, he says, moves freely when it is adapted to all the forces arising from the direction of the wind, the direction of the waves, and so on; when its design is precisely adapted to its surroundings, so that nowhere can the forces arising from the wind and waves create an obstacle to the ship’s forward motion. In the same way, the human being must be able to move freely through life, adapted to the forces it encounters in life, so that no obstacle arises from any source. - Woodrow Wilson also compares the free life of the human being to a part of a machine, saying: “Any component built into a machine is said to be able to move freely not because it encounters no resistance, but because the rest of the machine is designed so that the component runs freely within it.”

[ 17 ] I suppose I have only one thing to say: that one can speak of human freedom only if one understands it as the opposite of such an adaptation to the environment; that one cannot speak of human freedom if human behavior is merely like that of a ship at sea, which is optimally adapted to the winds and the forces of the waves, but only when one can compare it, for example, to a ship that can turn around and come to a stop against the wind and waves, without regard for the forces to which it is adapted. That is to say: Wilson’s view of freedom is based entirely on the mechanistic conception of the world, which is currently regarded as the only possible one and which has emerged from the intellectualism that has arisen in recent times.

[ 18 ] I had to confront such views in my Philosophy of Freedom. I know very well—allow me this personal remark as well—that this book, in a sense, bears the traces of the incubator from which it emerged. It naturally emerged from the European philosophical worldview. It had to grapple with the concepts that were common within that worldview. And so this book may seem academic to some, yet it is truly not intended to be academic. It is intended so that what is suggested within it as impulses may become ingredients of immediate practical life, and that what can flow into the human will through the ideas developed there may flow into the immediate social life of human beings.

[ 19 ] To do this, however, I had to frame the question of human freedom in a completely different way than is customary. Wherever you look, throughout centuries of human development, the question of the freedom of the human will and the human being has been posed in such a way that one asked: Is this human being free, or is it not free? — I had to show how this entire question, posed in this way, is posed incorrectly, and how it must be posed on an entirely new foundation. For if one takes what human beings regard as their true nature—based on the modern scientific worldview and also on modern human consciousness—but what human beings must regard as their natural nature: that can never be a free being. It must act out of inner necessity. If human beings were only what modern natural science regards them as, then what they consider their freedom would be what Woodrow Wilson considers freedom. But this freedom would not be freedom; rather, it would be nothing more than what one might call, in every single action, the necessary result of natural causes.

[ 20 ] But this modern human consciousness has given little thought to the other aspect, in which the question of freedom begins only within the human being. This modern human consciousness speaks only of what underlies the human being as that which is natural, as the essence that depends solely on natural causality. But anyone who delves deeper into human nature must acknowledge: In the course of their life, a person can become more than what they were born to be by nature. — It is only when one has this latter goal, when one says to oneself: One aspect of human nature is that for which a human being is born, what is inherited within them; the other is what a human being can make of themselves—something for which they are not predisposed by their physical nature—by awakening a slumbering human being within themselves. Because this is so, I did not ask the question: Is the human being free or not free? —but rather I posed the question this way: Can a human being, through inner development, become a free being or not? —And a human being can become a free being if they develop within themselves that which otherwise lies dormant, that which can be awakened and only then become free. This means that freedom is not inherent in human beings by nature. Freedom is inherent in that part of the human being which they can and must first awaken from within themselves.

[ 21 ] However, if what has been elaborated upon in my Philosophy of Freedom—I would say, with regard to external social life—were to become completely clear to a wider circle of humanity, then what I call anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science would have to be built upon the foundation of this philosophy. Then it had to be shown how a person can truly come to awaken a slumbering being within themselves by taking their own development into their own hands. I attempted to do this specifically in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? and in the other books I have contributed to the literature of Spiritual Science. There I sought to show that human beings can indeed take their own development into their own hands, and that only by taking this development into their own hands and transforming themselves into something other than what they were born as can they ascend to a true knowledge of the soul and the spirit.

[ 22 ] However, a large portion of humanity still considers this view to be quite unfortunate today. For what does it actually presuppose? It presupposes that human beings bring themselves to adopt a certain intellectual modesty. Very few people are willing to do that today. I would like to characterize this intellectual humility—which people today must bring themselves to embrace—in the following way.

[ 23 ] We can hand a five-year-old child a volume of Goethe’s lyric poems. The five-year-old child will certainly not behave toward this volume of Goethe’s lyric poems the way one is supposed to behave toward it; he will tear it up or do something else entirely. In any case, the child stands or sits in front of this volume of Goethe’s poetry, but does not know what it is looking at. But it is possible that the child will grow ten or twelve years older, that we will nurture and educate it; then it will stand or sit before this volume of Goethe’s poetry in a different way. And ultimately, viewed from the outside, there is no great difference: the child sat before the volume of Goethe’s lyric poems at age five and sits before it at age twelve or fourteen. Outwardly, there is little difference. But within the child, there is a difference. We have nurtured its development so that it can now engage with the volume of Goethe’s poetry in the right way. Much like the child facing the volume of Goethe’s poetry, so should a person feel—if they take it seriously with soul and spirit—when facing nature, the cosmos, and the world at large. They would have to say to themselves: I must first foster the development of my inner self in order to learn to read nature and the world, just as the five-year-old child must first be developed in order to understand what is written in the volume of Goethe’s poetry.

[ 24 ] We ought to acknowledge with intellectual humility that we cannot comprehend the world through that for which we were born, and then admit that there may be paths to self-development—to the development of the powers within the human being—which are then capable of discerning, in what is otherwise accessible only to the senses, that which is spiritual and that which is soul-related. And the writings mentioned are intended to show that this is possible in practice. This must be demonstrated today because the intellectualism that has emerged in the course of the last few centuries in the development of humanity is incapable of truly mastering life any further. It is capable of penetrating one realm of this life—the realm of inanimate nature—but it must falter in the face of human reality itself, namely social reality.

[ 25 ] And what I have just referred to as intellectual humility must also underlie every truly modern conception of the human impulse toward freedom. But it must also underlie a genuine understanding of the necessary transformation of art, religion, and science. Intellectual life alone has clearly—all too clearly—shown that it cannot lead to any insight that truly perceives the spiritual or truly penetrates the soul. As I have already indicated, it has confined itself to the external sensory world and its combination and systematization. Consequently, it could not stand up to the monopolies of the religious communities, which, admittedly, have not risen to a newer understanding of the spiritual and the soul, but have instead carried an older worldview into the modern era in a manner that is out of step with the times.

[ 26 ] But one thing will have to be overcome: namely, the fear—which I described just a moment ago—of becoming too deeply immersed in things when one is supposed to perceive them in accordance with the spirit. It is so convenient to profess intellectualism because, when one deals solely with abstract ideas—even those of the natural sciences—one moves so far removed from reality that one maintains a distance from it, so that one need not believe oneself to be influenced in any way by that reality itself. But with the kind of insight meant here—which one acquires only when one takes one’s own development into one’s own hands—one must immerse oneself precisely in the reality of life, and one must also descend within the human being to deeper depths of his being than one does through mere self-education within intellectualism. Within mere intellectualism, one reaches only the upper layers of one’s own life. If one descends into the depths of the inner human being with the kind of insight referred to here, one encounters not merely thoughts, not merely feelings—something that is a reflection of the external world—but rather events, facts of the human inner life, before which the purely intellectual observer recoils, yet which are of the same nature as what happens in nature, in the world. There, within one’s own inner being, one comes to know the very essence of the world itself.

[ 27 ] But one cannot come to know it by remaining at the level of mere abstract concepts or laws of nature. One must penetrate to a state of oneness with reality. One must not fear being close to reality; rather, through inner development, one must progress to the point where one can stand within reality without being consumed by it, burned by it, or suffocated by it—but rather, even while standing within it and lacking the intellectual distance required to grasp the reality of things, one is still able to comprehend it. Thus, in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, one finds a description of the inner development of the human being toward the spiritual realization that the human being immerses themselves in reality, but carries out this immersion in such a way that they gain insights through it—insights that, while lacking the intellectual’s distance, are nonetheless saturated with reality itself, and can therefore immerse itself in this reality. And you will find this to be a fundamental characteristic of the Spiritual Science referred to here: that it is capable of immersing itself in reality, that it does not merely speak of an abstract spirit, but rather of the concrete spirit that lives in the human environment just as the things of the sensory world live in the human environment.

[ 28 ] Abstract considerations—these are the results of modern intellectual life. Pick up any work from modern intellectual life that is not purely scientific or purely philosophical in nature, and you will see how far these worldviews are removed from real life and from a true understanding of things. Read, for example, something about the will in a modern treatise on the soul: the ideas found in today’s psychology or studies of the soul barely go beyond what one might call a mere literal meaning. People who devote themselves to such considerations lack, in their ideas, the power to truly penetrate the very essence of nature itself. They have external matter right beside them because they are unable to dive down into this external matter with their spirit. Let me illustrate this with an example.

[ 29 ] In my book On the Mysteries of the Soul, one of my most recent works, I hinted at how a traditional scientific worldview must be overcome by modern Spiritual Science. I know how deeply paradoxical what I am about to say will sound to many; but what will have developed in response to the demands placed on the human mode of thinking—demands that are already evident in the present and will become increasingly apparent in the future—will often appear to be something very paradoxical in comparison to what is still regarded today as the only correct view. Every natural scientist who has studied these matters speaks today of two types of nerves contained within the human and animal body—let us concern ourselves here only with humans. One type leads from the senses to the central nervous system; these are the sensory nerves. A stimulus is exerted upon them when one perceives something through the senses. This stimulus propagates all the way to the human nervous center. Then there is a second type, the so-called motor nerves. They run from the center to the human limbs. Through them—through these motor nerves—humans are able to move their limbs. Like the sensory nerves, they are the nerves of the will.

[ 30 ] Well, in my book On the Mysteries of the Soul, I have shown the following—albeit only in outline form for now—that there is no fundamental difference between the sensory nerves and the so-called motor nerves of the will, and that the so-called nerves of the will are not servants of the will. The very phenomena used to prove that they are servants of the will—such as the tragic disease of tabes—prove exactly the opposite, as can be easily demonstrated; they prove what I am about to state as my opinion: these so-called volitional nerves are also sensory nerves. While the other sensory nerves travel from the senses to the central organ so that what the senses convey can be perceived, the so-called volitional nerves—which are, in fact, nothing else—perceive everything within us that constitutes movement. They serve the perception of movements. On the other hand, there are no volitional nerves. The will is of a purely spiritual nature, of a purely spiritual-soul nature, and acts directly as a spiritual-soul force; and we need the so-called “volitional nerves” because they are sensory nerves for the limb that is to be moved—the limb that must be perceived if the will is to move it.

[ 31 ] Why am I citing this example? Because today you can see, read about, and hear about numerous debates in which the will is discussed. Yet the ideas being developed lack the momentum to penetrate to real understanding—to penetrate in such a way that you can perceive the will where it is at work. Such insights remain abstract and detached from life. Alongside them, natural science may speak of the existence of a motor nerve of the will. Spiritual Science develops ideas about the will that reveal the physical nature of the human system of will. This means that Spiritual Science will penetrate natural phenomena and natural facts. It will not remain in a realm alien to life; it will immerse itself in reality. It will have the courage not to leave the material realm outside itself, but to permeate the material with the spirit. Everything will become spiritual for it.

[ 32 ] Therefore, the Spiritual Science also aims to be able to delve into and penetrate the social order and, as such, will be able to contribute to the reality of social life—a reality before which abstract, intellectualistic natural science must falter. And so this Spiritual Science will once again have to speak of spiritual knowledge, of a new way to penetrate the spiritual and soul aspects of the world. It will have the courage to say: Those spiritual worlds that artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci gazed upon provided images of the spiritual world that can no longer serve as a standard for us today. In keeping with the further development of humanity, we must seek a new path into the spiritual world. But when we come to know the spiritual world anew, when we penetrate into the spiritual world, we do not come to recognize it as does nebulous pantheism, which speaks of spirit, spirit, spirit, it must be there, or of a general, abstract, dark spirit—but rather penetrates the actual manifestations of the spiritual world—not through spiritualism, but through the development of the human powers of spirit and soul, as described here—then one comes to know of a spiritual world again in a way appropriate to the present-day development of humanity; then the spiritual mysteries of the world are revealed, and then what Goethe—who, though he was only just beginning to explore these matters, had already sensed them, matters that modern Spiritual Science is further developing in his spirit—will come to pass; then what Goethe so beautifully describes with the words: “Whoever to whom nature begins to reveal her manifest mystery feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.”

[ 33 ] Then the artist will once again receive a revelation from a spiritual world. Then he will not be led to believe that if he depicts the spiritual in a sensory image—be it an abstract, straw-like symbol or a paper allegory—but rather he will know the living Spirit, and he will be able to express this living Spirit through sensory means. And the best aspect of a work of art will not be that in which it imitates external nature, but that in which it reveals what human beings receive as a revelation from the spirit. Once again, a spirit-imbued art will emerge—an art that is by no means symbolism, by no means allegorism, but which also does not betray its elevated nature by placing itself alongside nature—which it can never truly attain— but rather proves its necessity and its justification in human life by speaking of something that the present, immediate sensory perception of nature—immediate naturalism—cannot convey. And even if what a person creates—by creating from the spirit—were amateurish: they create something that has meaning alongside the life of nature because it transcends the life of nature, and they do not attempt to imitate what nature can do better than they can. Here the path opens up to that art which has also been attempted in the external architecture and design of the Goetheanum in Dornach.

[ 34 ] An attempt was made to design—for what is to be pursued there as a School of Spiritual Science—every wall, everything painted on the walls, everything carved in wood, and so on, in a way that reflects the Spiritual Science that is to be represented there. Thus, this building arose quite naturally. It could not be built in the old architectural style, because it is meant to speak of a new kind of spirit. Just as in nature itself—just look at a nutshell; it is shaped as the nut inside dictates—every shell is shaped as the inner kernel demands—so everything in the Dornach building is shaped as demanded by what is to resound within as music, what is to be performed in the Mysteries, and what is to be spoken as the revelation of the Spiritual Science. This is to resonate, as it were, in what has been carved into the building—in the columns, the capitals, and so on. It is to present an art—which, admittedly, is still in its infancy, and in this regard those working on it are likely its own harshest critics—that is truly born of a new spirit and, thereby, once again, of the Spirit itself. When one undertakes such a project, one must certainly expose oneself to the misunderstandings that are, in fact, natural in such a matter. There are people—including others who have not exposed themselves to these misunderstandings, which are growing by the day, and who view this Dornach building without prejudice—who have written: “Oh yes, these anthroposophists have erected a building that is full of symbols, full of allegories.” - The distinctive feature of this building is that there is not a single symbol, not a single allegory within it, but rather that everything that has been spiritually perceived has been dissolved into the immediate artistic form. What is expressed within it is neither symbol nor allegory. Everything is such that, through its very forms, it seeks to be something in and of itself.

[ 35 ] However, during this period—in which bank buildings are being erected in the ancient Greek style, the same style used to build temples to Athena—we have so far been able to create a physical structure only for an intellectual workshop. For external social conditions have not yet permitted us to build, say, a train station or even a bank building. For reasons that are perhaps easy for you to understand, we have not yet been able to find the style of a modern bank building or that of a modern department store. But these things, too, must be found. Above all, it is precisely in this way that the connection with an artistic shaping of immediate, practical life must be found.

[ 36 ] Just think for a moment what social significance this will have, even for the bread people eat! For—as I said recently and will elaborate on further—its preparation depends on how people think and feel. It will have great a social significance for people when what immediately surrounds them in life appears before the human soul in an artistic form—when every spoon, every glass, does not have a form that is merely incidental to the purpose for which it is intended, but when the form is well-suited to that purpose, so that when one looks directly at the form, one also perceives as beautiful the way the object fits into life. Only then will broad circles come to perceive spiritual life as essential to life, when this spiritual life stands in such a direct connection with practical life. Just as Spiritual Science is capable of shedding light on the material world—as I have shown using the example of the sensory and motor nerves—so too will the art born of a spiritual-scientific mindset be capable of advancing to the point of directly shaping every chair, every table, and so on.

[ 37 ] And if it is clearly evident that the most serious prejudices and misunderstandings toward this movement of Spiritual Science come precisely from religious denominations, the following must be said about this. What, after all, have religious denominations ultimately achieved? By their very nature, religious denominations can only deal with the supersensible if they are to have any validity. Yet ancient supersensible views, born of entirely different conditions of the human soul, have been preserved to this day. Spiritual Science strives to penetrate the spiritual world through the new mode of human mental images and inner soul life. Should humanity’s religious sense—if it understands itself correctly—hold this against Spiritual Science? Can it do so? Never in a million years. For what, in fact, should the religious sense—and thus all religious work—be concerned with? All religious work should not be concerned with proclaiming theories and dogmas about the supersensible world; rather, all religious work should be concerned with giving people the opportunity to revere the supersensible. Religion is a matter of revering the supersensible. Human nature needs this reverence. It needs to look up in reverence toward the sublime in the supersensible. If one denies people the opportunity to enter the supernatural world in the present, then one must, of course, hold up to them an ancient way of entering the supernatural world. But since this can no longer be in accordance with the sensibilities of modern humanity, one must command it, one must order it, one must bring about its acceptance through authority. Hence the external nature that religious creeds have in relation to modern human nature. Ancient insights into the supersensible world are imposed on people by their religious leaders.

[ 38 ] Shouldn’t communities that understand the true nature of religion—which consists in the veneration of the spiritual—have the greatest interest in ensuring that their members develop a living understanding of the supernatural? Will not those people who carry within their souls a vision of the supersensible, who are close to the supersensible in their cognition, be the ones most easily led to the veneration of the supersensible? And it is indeed the case in the more recent phase of human development that, since the middle of the 15th century, the development of the human being has been directed toward individuality and the formation of the personal. If we expect people today to perceive and grasp the supersensible not out of the power of their individuality and personality—free from authority—we are asking them to do something that goes against their nature. If one grants them freedom of thought with regard to the knowledge of the supersensible, then they will join with their fellow human beings so that, within the community, the reverence for that supersensible realm—which each person perceives in their own personal way—may be cultivated. And it is precisely this shared service to the supersensible—true religiosity—that will develop best when people have the freedom of thought to approach the knowledge of the supersensible world through their own individuality.

[ 39 ] This will become particularly evident in the conception of the Christ-being itself. This Christ-being itself was something different in earlier centuries than it has become for many theologians of recent centuries, especially the 19th century. How far has humanity strayed from a focus on the truly supersensible essence of Christ, who lived in the human being Jesus! How far has humanity strayed from recognizing that, through the Mystery of Golgotha, a union of a supersensible being with a human body took place so that the Earth might attain a true, deeper meaning in its evolution. This marriage between the supersensible and the sensible, which was accomplished through the Mystery of Golgotha—how little has it, in truth, even been understood by certain kinds of theologians in recent times! More and more, Christ has become the “simple man from Nazareth”; more and more, the conception of religion has become materialistic. Because people were unable to find paths into the supersensible that were appropriate for modern humanity, they also lost the supersensible path to the Christ Being itself. And many people today who believe they can look up to Christ—they merely believe it. They have no inkling of how little what they say or think about Christ truly corresponds to what is found by those who, through spiritual insight, once again approach this primal mystery of humanity.

[ 40 ] So one can say: Spiritual Science certainly does not aim to be a new foundation for religion—certainly not; Spiritual Science aims to be a science, a form of knowledge. But one should also recognize that it can serve as the foundation for a rejuvenation of humanity’s religious life itself. Just as it can rejuvenate scientific and artistic life, so too can it rejuvenate people’s religious life.

[ 41 ] In particular, this Spiritual Science will be able to have a fruitful influence in a field that must seem of very special importance to anyone who is in a position to take the social future of humanity very seriously—namely, the field of education. There has been a great deal—indeed, a great deal—of discussion about education in recent times. Yet one must admit that much of what has been said about education misses the point entirely. I have been trying to get to the heart of this matter, particularly in recent times, since I was tasked with conducting a seminar course for teachers who were to form the faculty of a school—the Waldorf School in Stuttgart—which was founded in September of this year in accordance with the threefold social order. In doing so, I sought not only to shape the external aspects of this school’s founding in such a way that they correspond to the requirements and the impulse of the threefold social order, but I also sought to structure the pedagogy and didactics I was to present to the teaching staff of this innovative school in such a way that it must be conceived so that human beings can be educated toward the future which, according to certain inescapable demands of human nature, is to become a social future in the true sense. This leads one to say to oneself: The old normative pedagogy, which establishes certain rules—that one should educate in such and such a way—this normative pedagogy is something that must be overcome. Certainly, many people today speak of the need to take the individuality of the human being into account in education and teaching. All sorts of rules are cited regarding how this individuality should be taken into account. Yet pedagogy in the future will not be a normative science; pedagogy in the future will be a true art of humanity. Pedagogy in the future will be based on an understanding of the whole human being. In the future, we will know: In this human being, who develops from birth through the later years, a spiritual-soul aspect works its way to the surface through the organs. One will observe how, from the start of school, different forces emerge each year from the depths of human nature. One will not be able to support this observation with an abstract, standardized pedagogy, but only through a living perception of human nature itself.

[ 42 ] There has been much talk lately about visual instruction. Within certain limits, some of this is certainly justified. But there are things that cannot be conveyed through external observation, things that must also be conveyed to the growing child, and that can only be conveyed if the teacher, educator, or instructor possesses a genuine understanding of the developing human being—if they see what sprouts anew each year, different from the previous year, and if they know what human nature requires in the seventh, ninth, and twelfth years. For only by educating in accordance with nature can one raise a person to become strong in life.

[ 43 ] Today, one sees many broken lives, many people who don’t know what to do with their lives—and whom life doesn’t know what to do with. There are far more such lives than is commonly believed. Where does this come from? It stems from the fact that the most important laws governing the developing human being are not taken into account, particularly in education and instruction.

[ 44 ] I’ll mention just one thing. How often do well-meaning educators today emphasize, time and again, that one should present to the child in a vivid way what one places before its soul—what it is capable of comprehending. Yes, in practice, the results become apparent: in practice, what emerges is banality, triviality! People want to lower themselves to the child’s level of understanding; they want to do so artificially, and educating in this way has already become second nature today. If one wants to educate in this way, if one works toward this false concreteness, what is left out of consideration? A most important law of life is left out of consideration. One does not know what it means for a person who, let’s say, has reached the age of thirty-five and recalls: “My teacher once told me this or that; it was perhaps when I was nine or ten years old. At the time, I simply took it in because I looked up to the teacher’s authority with reverence, because there was something alive in the teacher that caused what he said to pass into me.” Now I look back: it has lived within me, and now I am mature enough to understand it!—An immense radiance of life emanates when, at the age of thirty-five, one is led back through one’s own maturity to what one had taken in only out of love, what one could not yet understand at the time. This radiance of life—which is the power of life—is lost when one descends into the banal concreteness that is always extolled as an ideal today. One must recognize which powers one must develop in the child, so that these powers may then be present in human nature and remain throughout one’s entire life, so that the child does not merely have to look back in memory on what it absorbed between the ages of seven and fifteen, but so that what it has absorbed can reveal itself, transformed again and again, in relation to the later stages of life, and so that what the child has absorbed can become new in every epoch.

[ 45 ] I have just attempted to make what I have said the fundamental characteristic of a pedagogy through which education can truly become an art, thereby placing the individual in life in such a way that he or she is equipped to meet the social demands of the future. People today may—as you can see from the details—declare this or that social ideal, but they fail to grasp even the slightest bit of the vast scope of life that one would have to take into account if such ideals were to be considered. For example, people talk about transferring the means of production into common ownership, and believe that by removing them from individual management in this way, something has been accomplished. I have already expressed my views on this matter and will discuss it in even greater detail in the following lectures. But let me assume for a moment that one could actually transfer the means of production into common ownership for the immediate present. Would they then belong to that community that is growing up as the next generation? No, for even if one were to hand them over to that generation, one would fail to take into account that this next generation brings forth new, fruitful forces and must transform the entire system of production from within.

[ 46 ] One must immerse oneself in life in its fullness and entirety when considering any vision of the social future. From the view of the human being as a being composed of body, soul, and spirit, and from a genuine understanding of body, soul, and spirit, an art of education will also emerge—as I have shown—an art that can truly be perceived as a necessity in social life.

[ 47 ] It was from this way of thinking that what later emerged—and which was often misunderstood even within the spiritual movement inspired by Dornach—originated. After all, there have been people who, over the years, have come to think quite highly of our Spiritual Science movement. But when we began some time ago to perform the so-called art of eurythmy here in Zurich and elsewhere—an art that, in its conception, has sprung from Spiritual Science, though it is still in its infancy, as we know very well—people said: “Well, then Spiritual Science can’t be anything serious either, because if one can engage in such dancing alongside Spiritual Science, then Spiritual Science must also be considered crazy!”

[ 48 ] Well, in a matter such as this—as paradoxical as it may seem—one does not take into account what, based precisely on such foundations, works toward a reshaping of the world in the same way as that which serves Spiritual Science. This art of eurythmy aims to be a social art in the very best sense, for it seeks above all to convey the mysteries of the human being. It seeks to apply the innate capacities for movement that lie within the human being itself; above all, it seeks to draw them out of the human being in the manner that will be unfolded in the next performance to be held in the art of eurythmy. But here I would also like to point out that this art of eurythmy is, first and foremost, a true art in that it reveals the deepest mysteries of human art itself. Because it is a true language—a visible language—expressed through the whole human being, this art of eurythmy is indeed an art. But at the same time, alongside mere physical activity—which is based solely on the physiological and arises solely from the study of the structure of the limbs in physical form—it represents a human capacity for movement through which a person engages in movements that are imbued with soul and spirit. What a materialistic age has taught as mere physiological gymnastics can also be taught to children. To this must be added—as is already being done in the Waldorf school I have spoken of—movement imbued with spirit, which truly engages the whole human being, whereas mere physiological, mere material gymnastics engages only a part of the human being and thus causes so much in the developing human being to wither away.

[ 49 ] From the depths of human nature, a newly shaped spiritual life—which is what I wanted to explore with you today—must take root in the most important aspects of life.

[ 50 ] In the coming days, it will be my task to show how this outer life can truly take shape in the present and as we look toward the future, if we attempt to shape this life out of such a new spirit. All sorts of people—even some rather peculiar ones today—feel the need to master, from a spiritual perspective, the great demands of social life that confront humanity today. It is deeply painful to see how many people today remain oblivious to these social demands of life, and how many are attached to them only in a misguided, agitational way. One also finds subtle hints that all external programs will be of no help unless a rethinking, a reimagining, and a relearning take place from the spirit. But how superficial it often still is when this longing for a new spirit is expressed! And one can say that this longing for a new spirit is often felt today in a dull and obscure way by very peculiar people who certainly do not think of what the Dornach building is meant to represent outwardly. But one hears the desire for a new spirit being expressed. Let one example among many be presented here.

[ 51 ] In the near future, the many reflections on the catastrophe of the past World War will be joined by those of the Austrian statesman Czernin, which promise to be exceptionally interesting because—it is difficult to articulate this characterization I am about to offer without being misunderstood— I would like to say: because Czernin was, after all, a good deal less immodest than the others who have published their reflections on the war thus far. So I will put it mildly. But in Czernin’s book, the following might perhaps be read: “The war continues, albeit in a different form.” I believe that future generations will not call the great drama that has dominated the world for five years the World War at all, but rather the World Revolution, and will know that this World Revolution began only with the World War.

[ 52 ] Neither Versailles nor St. Germain will create a lasting peace. This peace contains the corrosive seed of death. The convulsions shaking Europe have not yet subsided; just as with a violent earthquake, the underground rumbling continues. Time and again, the earth will split open—here and there—and hurl fire toward the sky; time and again, events of elemental nature and elemental Powers will sweep devastatingly across the lands. Until everything that reminds us of the madness of this war has been swept away.

[ 53 ] Slowly, amid unspeakable sacrifices, a new world will be born. Future generations will look back on our time as if it were a long, evil dream; but even the darkest night is eventually followed by day. Generations have been laid to rest, murdered, starved to death, or succumbed to disease. Millions have died in the pursuit of destruction and ruin, with hatred and murder in their hearts.

[ 54 ] But other generations arise, and with them a new spirit. They will rebuild what war and revolution have destroyed. Every winter is followed by spring. This, too, is an eternal law in the cycle of life: that death is followed by resurrection.

[ 55 ] “Blessed are those who will be called upon to help build the new world as soldiers of labor.”

Q&A following the fourth lecture

[ 56 ] First, the following question has been submitted to me:

[ 57 ] Isn't your concept of freedom related to Nietzsche's concept of the “superman” in The Gay Science?

[ 58 ] Well, regarding my view of human nature, I can refer to the discussion of the concept of freedom first in my short work Truth and Science, and then in The Philosophy of Freedom. As for Nietzsche’s worldview, I then—I wrote the book in 1895—expressed my views in my book Friedrich Nietzsche: A Fighter Against His Time. It is entirely correct that even someone who, I myself, recognizes the necessity of deepening and renewing the concept of freedom—and, in connection with that, the whole of human existence—can see in Nietzsche’s worldview, which is certainly subject to strong criticism from certain quarters, the sprouting seeds of what is actually humanity’s deepest longing for shaping the future of civilization. Nietzsche’s life and worldview are, in general, extraordinarily interesting, and one might best gain insight by examining precisely what was characteristic of him in his relationship to the struggles of the last third of the 19th century. Nietzsche’s tragic life did, indeed, grapple with a conception of the freedom of human nature and being. But it emerged, I would say, from a profoundly tragic relationship to the entire development of worldviews in the last third of the 19th century.

[ 59 ] Nietzsche’s personality appears to me in the following way: Perhaps everything that lived within the finest people of the last third of the 19th century lived most intensely within Nietzsche. But it lived within him, in part, in a nature that was not up to the task of grappling with these problems in depth—that was not up to the task of fully shaping and thinking through the problems that weighed on his soul. One might say that Nietzsche was fated to suffer from every possible ideological current that could cause suffering in the last third of the 19th century. Consider, for starters, how he found his way—after having overcome the scholastic approach he had wittily adopted as a philologist—into the Wagner-Schopenhauerian worldview. Anyone familiar with Nietzsche’s beautiful essay “Schopenhauer as Educator” will know that this immersion in Schopenhauer and Wagner was, for Nietzsche, an inner struggle, an inner wrestling match, and ultimately ended—and had to end—with suffering caused by this worldview, which contained much of humanity’s future impulses but simply did not reach the point of what could truly shape society.

[ 60 ] Thus, one might say, Nietzsche abandoned this view in 1876 and turned to a more positivist, more scientific perspective. While immersed in Schopenhauer’s and Wagner’s worldviews, his aim was to work his way out of the scientific realm and to approach reality through an artistic state of mind—to come closer to it than science alone can. Having found this approach insufficient, he turned to the positivist direction, seeking—through an intensification of scientific endeavor—to penetrate reality, and ultimately ventured into what is recognized as his idea of the “Return of the Same” and his idea of the “Superman.” He attempted to express the latter, in particular, in a beautiful and lyrical manner in his Zarathustra. He then collapsed at the very moment when he sought to apply what had emerged to him as the idea of the “Overman”—the emergence of a higher human being from the ordinary human being—to the greater problems of human development in modern times.

[ 61 ] It is very significant, especially in Nietzsche’s case, to observe how he was able to immerse himself in everything that existed. For, fundamentally speaking, his concept of the Übermensch is nothing other than the extension of the Darwinian principle to the entire evolution of humanity: just as humanity itself represents something that has evolved from the animal realm, so the Übermensch is to be something that evolves from humanity.

[ 62 ] The tragedy of Nietzsche lies in the fact that he felt himself to be in constant opposition to certain defining characteristics of his time—that is, the last third of the 19th century. And it is interesting, for example, that Nietzsche went so far as to develop his idea—which seemed so grotesque to many—of the recurrence of the same, that is, of a world order in which what happens must always repeat itself in the same way in rhythmic movements. This idea of recurrence also seemed extraordinarily paradoxical to many from a psychological perspective. When I once had the opportunity to discuss these matters with various scholars at the Nietzsche Archive, the topic of this “eternal recurrence” in connection with Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch also came up, and I said at the time: Just as the idea of recurrence emerged in Nietzsche’s work, it strikes me as the antithesis of an idea held by a very pedantic, rigid 19th-century positivist, Eugen Dühring. Strangely enough, Dühring—I believe it is in his Course in Philosophy—touches on this at one point. I said: Nietzsche’s idea of the return of the same is the opposite idea, and it really cannot be any other way than that Nietzsche formed this idea by finding it in Dühring and saying to himself: Whatever a fellow like that from the 19th century thinks, the opposite must be true! — And, you see, we were right next to Nietzsche’s library; I took out the Course in Philosophy, opened it to the relevant passage in Dühring—and there, thickly underlined, was “donkey” written next to it! That’s exactly what’s written in the margins of so many of Nietzsche’s books. That’s when the idea sprang to his mind to propose the counter-idea to something he had found in a thinker from the last third of the 19th century.

[ 63 ] This happened time and again with Nietzsche: he elaborated on ideas he considered fundamental—ideas that were meant to develop further—by working through contradictions. If you ever pick up his copy at the Nietzsche Archive—“French Moral Research”—you’ll see that the entire pages are covered in underlines. You can trace how he struggled with the ideas of the 19th century and how he tried to develop them. Equally interesting is a copy of Emerson’s Essays, where not only are passages underlined, but entire sections are outlined in pencil and numbered; he had devised a systematic framework for himself based on Emerson.

[ 64 ] So it may become clear that Nietzsche did, in fact, strive to find such a concept of freedom. However, I cannot say that this impulse—which is supposed to emerge through the Spiritual Science, as I have characterized it for you today through the comparison with the five-year-old child and Goethe’s lyrical volume—clearly comes to the fore anywhere in Nietzsche’s work. Nietzsche simply did not possess within himself that spiritual disposition that would allow him to advance in that direction. You can see this in his Antichrist, right at the beginning, in the first, second, and third chapters, where he once again speaks of how the Übermensch is not something spiritual, but rather something to be physically bred in the future, and so on. So almost every concept in Nietzsche shimmers. But that is precisely what we must move beyond—this shimmering quality. And so I believe that Nietzsche is, to the highest degree, a stimulating mind, but that it is not possible to remain fixed on any one thing in Nietzsche. This is how I would like to answer the question posed earlier.

[ 65 ] It seems to follow from your lecture that we should draw closer to the Mystery of Christ once again. Does that mean we should ascribe to it the same meaning that was ascribed to it at the time of its creation?

[ 66 ] One of the best points made in Schelling’s Philosophy of Revelation is that he points out that Christianity is less about any particular doctrine than about the understanding of a fact. What happened at the very beginning of Christianity is a fact. If one speaks only of a doctrine, one can very easily be led to want to dogmatize on the basis of that doctrine. But if one is clear about the development of humanity, one must say to oneself: Doctrines are in a state of living, ongoing development; doctrines, like humanity itself, move forward. Facts, of course, remain at the point in historical development where they occurred.

[ 67 ] But isn’t this already the case with ordinary people? When we encounter them, we can learn something about their nature; perhaps we become a little wiser in life, and we come to know this nature differently and better. Especially when faced with a significant person, we can say: We understand this or that about them; as we ourselves have progressed, we understand more about them. This also applies to a fact that is deeper in its fundamental laws. Certainly, in some way, the Christians of the first century understood the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. But it is possible that our understanding of such an event continues to evolve. And this is what Spiritual Science has in mind: not to renew a view that has already existed, but to be able to intuit a more advanced understanding of this mystery, one in keeping with the human spirit. That is precisely what I would like to say in response to this question.

[ 68 ] Can one say that a scientific finding—such as that concerning the nature of nerves—is, in and of itself, social or antisocial?

[ 69 ] Yes, that is something I would very much like to discuss further in tomorrow’s lecture. Today, I would like to say the following about it: Ultimately, all external events in human social life really do stem from the way people think, feel, and will. It is merely a weakness of our time to want to derive everything that people think, feel, and will from external events—to view human beings, as it were, as a product of external events and institutions. In truth, all external institutions trace back to what people have thought, felt, and willed. Therefore, it is also the case that healthy external institutions point to healthy thoughts, while unhealthy external institutions point to unhealthy thoughts—and vice versa. An age that is compelled to think unhealthily about many things will not be able to develop healthy volitions or healthy impulses of will in its external life.

[ 70 ] Within our conventional socio-economic understanding, the most questionable concept is that of human labor. I have already touched on this concept of human labor. I said that in Marxism, the concept of labor power plays a major role, but the point is that within this Marxist theory, the concept of labor is viewed entirely incorrectly. Work, or labor power as such, has social significance through the output—or rather, through the function of that output—in people’s social coexistence. I said here a few days ago that there is a big difference between someone engaging in sports and expending their labor power in the process, and someone chopping wood. When someone chops wood, what is significant is the way their work flows into social coexistence, not the expenditure of labor power as such. And so it will become clear to us in the coming days that we do not do justice to work as a social function if we do not consider it in terms of how it flows into the social organism, but rather if we speak of the expenditure of labor power as such.

[ 71 ] Now one might ask: Where do these misconceptions about labor come from? — Anyone who has a correct understanding of the so-called motor nerves will surely soon arrive at a correct understanding of the function of labor in the social organism. For whoever realizes that there are no motor nerves—but rather that the so-called motor nerves are merely sensory nerves for the nature of the relevant limb to which the will transmits its power—will discover how strongly every impulse of the will, simply by virtue of being such an impulse, finds expression in labor, and how strongly it manifests itself in the external world. But through this—through a true understanding of the will and the relationship of the will to the human organism—one will gain a solid foundation for understanding the connection between will and work. And through this, one will also arrive at correct social concepts, correct social mental images, and even feelings regarding such an idea. One might say: How a person thinks socially depends in many respects on whether they can develop certain concepts of nature in a correct or incorrect manner. One must be clear about the fact that anyone who believes that the motor nerves within the human being itself are the stimuli of the will can never truly discover a real connection between the stimulus of work—the will—and the function of work within the social organism. That is what I wish to say in advance about this today.

[ 72 ] How should Expressionism be evaluated?

[ 73 ] Well, I can relate this to what was just asked here:

[ 74 ] To what extent modern art can be characterized as naturalistic.

[ 75 ] As I have already indicated in my lecture, I certainly do not believe that all artists stand on naturalistic ground. That would be wrong. For the last few decades in particular have shown us how many artists are striving to move away from naturalism. However, it is one thing to speak of this development of art in its various early stages—which still need to take further shape—and quite another to speak of the entire phenomenon of art in our present-day life. And that is what I am concerned with today.

[ 76 ] First, one could say: Our conception of art as such—the place of our art in public life—is such that only the naturalistic aspect of art underlies this position. Whatever strives to move beyond naturalism has by no means yet been able to assert itself socially in any way. You may recognize best that the essential, the defining element in our artistic endeavors is naturalism—not when you seek to characterize works of art, where you must look more to the artists themselves, but when you examine the public’s enjoyment of art today, examining how many people have as their sole criterion for whether a novel’s character is good or bad the ability to say: “That is absolutely true to life”—by which they mean: naturalistically modeled after external life. It is the most unartistic judgment one can make, yet it is the one most commonly passed today. And in many respects today, it is downright palpable how everything contributes to naturalism. Only, one does not see how things are naturalistic.

[ 77 ] Let us consider the art of recitation today. I would like to point out that, for the most part, people today recite—and consider it correct to recite—in such a way that they primarily attempt to express the prose content of the poem through intonation or some other means. Let us go back to earlier periods of human development. We find—and one can still observe this among primitive people in the countryside, especially if one has grown somewhat older in the present day—that people recited in such a way that they walked back and forth, bringing their entire bodies into rhythm. I would like to point out that this reveals something that points to the truly artistic nature of poetry, for example. When Schiller wrote a poem—and this was the case with many of the poems he wrote—he usually had an indefinite melody in his soul. Only then did he find the words to go with it. In other words, melody, rhythm, and meter were the original foundation. Goethe studied his “Iphigenia”—a dramatic poem—like a conductor with a baton, insisting that what is often overlooked in modern recitation was precisely what made the difference, while he attached very, very little importance to expressing what is today regarded as the essential element: the prose content.

[ 78 ] Only when we move beyond the naturalism of our time—which many do not even perceive as naturalism, but often, as in the art of recitation, regard as the very spirit of art—only when we move beyond naturalism in its various forms will we see how deeply our time was rooted in it.

[ 79 ] However, movements such as Expressionism seek to go beyond Naturalism. And here one must say: No matter how much one may object to the work of today’s Expressionists—though there are certainly some very respectable achievements among them—this is precisely a beginning toward giving form to what is not seen in external reality, but what can truly reveal itself to a person only through inner vision. Because people today have not yet progressed very far in their spiritual perception, the Expressionist attempts are often so clumsy. Impressionism, however, I count all the more among the ultimate extremes of Naturalism. For there is no attempt to grasp anything naturalistically in and of itself; rather, the attempt is made to capture the impression of a single moment. This Impressionism, however spirited it may be, has been the ultimate consequence leading toward Naturalism. And Expressionism is, I would say, a convulsive struggle to break free from Naturalism.

[ 80 ] From an external perspective, one could see in these things—even if one does not feel it inwardly—how deeply the modern art movement is rooted in naturalism. And finally: I believe that if something emerges today that cannot claim to compete with external reality, but rather seeks to reveal a spiritual vision, it is harshly criticized. That is what I primarily wanted to point out. I was also asked the following question:

[ 81 ] how what I discuss in these lectures can be put into practice.

[ 82 ] Anyone who takes the view that, ultimately, everything that is brought about in external social life comes from human beings will not doubt for a moment that when a sufficiently large number of people are imbued with a particular cause, the path to external practice is opened. It is simply a matter of finally recognizing how this relationship between what is truly experienced inwardly—and this is what is meant today in the context of Spiritual Science—relates to external practice. Take it on a small scale today—only those who have experience in these matters can speak of them—believe it or not, you may believe that when a person takes Spiritual Science into themselves, understands it inwardly, understands it in a living way, they thereby acquire knowledge, perhaps knowledge of very interesting worlds. That is not the case. This is what I wish to say: Believe it or not. It is true that when a person truly internalizes what I have meant today by “Spiritual Science,” it is not merely an abstraction; it is not merely ideas of the kind found in the natural sciences or in contemporary social economics, but rather it is inner strength—it is something that generates inner strength. Just as what I have meant today by “pedagogy” permeates the teacher with inner strength, so that he does not follow educational norms but rather what unfolds as intangible forces between the student and himself. Through what I have described today as Spiritual Science, a person also becomes more dexterous, right down to the tips of their fingers. But if one wants to understand such things, one must truly understand them even on a small scale. Then one will no longer have any doubt that if a sufficiently large number of people—and they naturally belong to social life—take these impulses into themselves, these impulses will also become immediately practical through these people.

[ 83 ] Take, for example—to illustrate this on a small scale—human handwriting. There are two kinds of handwriting. One is the kind of handwriting that people usually strive for. In this case, a person writes simply because they have a certain style of handwriting. Most people have this kind of handwriting. A handwriting emerges from their organism as if by necessity. But you see, others have a different kind of handwriting, which is, in essence, a completely different kind of handwriting than what is usually called handwriting. They, in fact, draw the letters. For them, writing lies in observation, as in the force pulsing through the hand. There are handwritings that originate solely from the hand, but there are also handwritings that are written down with the eye by tracing the shapes of letters. Here, the spiritual does not merely live organically in the limbs, but rather lives organically in the structure of the writing. What a person experiences spiritually becomes immediately practical.

[ 84 ] This is how one experiences everything related to Spiritual Science. And so the one who grasps the living spirit that has been spoken of today will also grasp these things with a disposition for practical application. Certainly, in this day and age, he will stand as a hermit, as a preacher in the wilderness, but that does not make things any better for life today. When one advocates the true practice of life today, one does, however, find oneself confronted by curious “practitioners” who have a certain routine only for their innermost circles, whereas the true practice of life consists in mastering external life through ideas that encompass all of life.

[ 85 ] So it can be said: The first thing that matters when it comes to matters such as those referred to in this lecture is to shed light on them and bring them to as many people as possible. If they take root in the hearts and minds of many people, then they will undoubtedly become practical. The only reason they are not yet practical is that they have not yet penetrated the minds of enough people. For social ideas, it is not merely necessary that the individual, standing alone, master them, but that he find those with whom he can collaborate in a spirit of mutual understanding. But with truly practical ideas, practice follows from the very existence of the ideas themselves. And it is only absolute disbelief, absolute skepticism—not the practice of ideas, not the practice of the mind—that prevents our lives from becoming truly practical.

[ 86 ] You see it everywhere, don’t you? The “unpractical” person—as many people would define him, as I explained to you at the beginning of today’s lecture—had to say in the spring of 1914: “Our social life is suffering from a cancerous tumor that is bound to erupt in a terrible way in the near future.” — A few months later came the catastrophe of the World War, which I had wanted to point out at the time. Of course, all the “practical people” would have laughed at me. But these “practical people” also spoke differently. I could cite statesmen who said as late as that spring of 1914—for example, statesmen from the Central European states: “We enjoy the most friendly and neighborly relations with St. Petersburg; and these friendly and neighborly relations will provide a secure foundation for world peace in the near future.” — The gentleman in question said something similar about the relations between the Central Powers and England. He then summed it up in these words: “The general political détente is making good progress.” - Well, the political détente made such encouraging progress that, just a few weeks later, events unfolded in which ten to twelve million people were killed and three times as many were maimed. The latter statement was made by the “practical man,” while the former was made by the one whom the “practical men” regarded as an idealist.

[ 87 ] This is what we desperately need: we must relearn, especially in practice, and come to realize that a foundation for true practice can only be laid when there is a genuine process of relearning with regard to the life of the spirit. Therefore, one should actually answer the question, “How can such insights be carried out into practice?” by saying: Let them first be carried into the souls of human beings; then, then one will soon see how they will radiate out from practice toward people.