The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. A Global Assessment of Contemporary Spiritual and Emotional Life

[ 1 ] When one looks today at the fact that individual countries and ethnic regions are so isolated from one another—to the point where it is sometimes completely impossible, and even within narrow boundaries extremely difficult, to travel from one ethnic region or country to another—one must say: If one has participated to any degree in the spiritual life as it has developed in the modern world, one can only say: This reality is as incompatible as it is possible to be with the deepest longings and the soulful and spiritual impulses that actually live within human beings. For if one looks impartially into this human inner world, one must sense how the substance of that inner world—how all the forces within a person who participates in culture—are composed of the elements of the spiritual and cultural striving of all civilized peoples on our earth; and no one today is in a position—if I may use this business term— to take stock of his spiritual life in any way without including in the individual items that which has flowed together into the totality of our soul and spiritual constitution from all cultural regions of the world. But what is the actual state of this taking stock of our soul and spiritual life in our immediate present? It seems to me that it is particularly fitting for the German people to engage in these reflections. After all, today we must, in essence, speak seriously about the affairs of our cultural life. Perhaps it is permissible to recall—without being misunderstood, given all that we have experienced—how the brooding and deeply probing thinker Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his cultural treatise *The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music* in the year of the rise of the modern German Empire. Regarding the moods that swept through the soul of the youthful, aspiring Nietzsche at that time, he himself writes that, when he looks back on the manner in which the Empire was inaugurated then, it seems to him that the extirpation of the German spirit in favor of the German Empire was imminent. There have indeed been years—and they are not far behind us—when such a statement must have seemed more or less frivolous to many people. But the facts have changed, and whether one agrees or disagrees today with the person who made such a statement is of little consequence. It always seems significant, in light of what has been said, that such a statement could have been made during the dawn of the modern imperial era by someone who truly suffered deeply from all that can be summed up in the words: the materialism of the 19th century. Perhaps, however, one may mentally extend the idea, the sentiment, that led to this statement. One might say: Could it not perhaps be precisely the plight of the German people that is once again instilling and breathing life into its very being that which Nietzsche believed had been extirpated, cut out, at that time?

[ 2 ] With these introductory words, I really do not wish to say more than to point out the seriousness that must underlie reflections that take a broader view of the current life of the mind and soul and its tasks. While Nietzsche may have cast only a fleeting glance back in 187: at the state of intellectual and spiritual life in his own time, we can say that many minds in 19th-century Germany—striving for thoroughness and seriousness—have already engaged with a comprehensive assessment of the intellectual life of their era. I could mention many figures who thought in terms of such a global assessment of intellectual and spiritual life. I would like to point out only David Friedrich Strauss, who—admittedly—is rightly unpopular with many people today because of his materialism. Those among you, my esteemed audience, who have heard me speak over the course of the last few decades will sense how much I take issue with a work such as David Friedrich Strauss’s book *The Old and the New Faith*; yet it is in this work that the great questions of the mid-19th century are raised. Questions such as: Do we still have religion? Are we still Christians?—David Friedrich Strauss poses them in a forceful manner. And once again, I do not wish to decide here whether the answer to these questions is “yes” or “no,” nor whether the answer is “yes” or “no” with regard to David Friedrich Strauss himself. But I would like to point out that despite all of David Friedrich Strauss’s materialism—and even though his work contains everything that Nietzsche perceived as mere trivialities in his worldview—honesty hovers over what David Friedrich Strauss wrote at that time.

[ 3 ] What questions did she want to answer, and from what perspectives, regarding David Friedrich Strauss? He incorporated everything that the 19th century had to offer in terms of scientific worldview and outlook. David Friedrich Strauss attempted to construct a worldview from the most modern elements, and it must be said: drawing on everything that had been achieved in modern times up to Darwin and Haeckel, David Friedrich Strauss shaped his worldview, honestly forming it as his conviction and as the entire scope of his inner life, and then unreservedly and honestly posed the question: Can I still have religion in the old sense if, in keeping with the spirit of modern times, I profess this worldview? Can I honestly still be a Christian if I profess this worldview? And Strauss answers both questions honestly with a “no.” In this sense, he takes stock of modern education and modern intellectual and spiritual life.

[ 4 ] As strongly as the advocate of Spiritual Science must speak out against this creed of David Friedrich Strauss—it must be said that at that time, he, like many others, took an honest stock of spiritual and emotional life. If one looks impartially at what has emerged in the way of similar endeavors since that time—roughly the mid-19th century—one cannot, at first glance, speak of an honest assessment; rather, one can only say that, in many, many respects, efforts are being made to obscure the overall picture of spiritual and soul life. The concealment of the global state of intellectual and spiritual life is something we encounter at every turn today. We see it at every turn when we look at what is asserted by numerous representatives of this or that creed. On the one hand, such people often find words that seem, as a matter of course, to be concessions to the scientific mindset; and at the same time, unaware of the honesty of a David Friedrich Strauss, they continue to speak in the old patterns of thought associated with Christianity and religion, and it does not occur to them to take a genuine stock of the various elements that flow into our spiritual life from all manner of directions. The obscuring of the balance sheet of intellectual and spiritual life—that is the mysterious hallmark of many contemporary cultural endeavors.

[ 5 ] But we simply cannot manage it if we try, from within a small circle, to once again arrive at an honest assessment. The very effort to arrive at comprehensive perspectives from within small circles is precisely what has led us to absurdity. Clinging to comfortable, narrow-minded ideas—that is what has prevented us from developing a sound relationship with the realities of the world; that is what ultimately brought about the terrible catastrophe of recent years. Humanity should learn from these terrible experiences, from the terrible suffering of this catastrophe, that it is truly time to turn our gaze upward, toward where the perspectives that govern life truly lie, so that we may learn to consciously master it, whereas we have unconsciously allowed ourselves to be led by this or that force.

[ 6 ] We are certainly not lacking today in all sorts of programs or programmatic ideas. One might say: Associations, programs, and programmatic ideas grow as easily as blackberries. After all, they can grow so easily because our intellectual life has come a long way, and from a well-developed intellectual life, one can always come up with one reasonable idea or another—something one can then swear by as if it were a sacred word. And so these numerous programs come into being—whether they are political programs or programs of intellectual life, programs in any area of morality, social action, and so on—programs whose proponents always think: What I regard as the right thing for humanity must take root as soon as possible throughout the entire contemporary world, for I have conceived of it as the right and salutary thing for humanity; it must spread across the sphere of humanity as it exists today—across America, Europe, and Asia. And very often, a “program person” also thinks to themselves: What I have devised must now apply, indeed, more or less until the end of time; for it is absolutely beneficial for the entire earth and for all future ages.

[ 7 ] In this way of thinking—this way of thinking that absolutizes everything—lies the downfall and the true sin of intellectual life in our time. Our age refuses to look at the concrete circumstances that exist among human beings; it refuses to look at how different the living conditions are—let us say, for the moment—in the East and the West. Today I would like to speak only briefly from this perspective about the global balance of spiritual and soul life, drawing attention to how different everything that springs from the soul is—as a vision of life and worldview—in the world of the East on the one hand, and in the world of the West on the other. And we here in Central Europe—are we not, in fact, intimately interwoven in our spiritual and soul life with that which, on the one hand, has flowed from the East—and has been flowing for centuries and millennia? And are we not, in turn, interwoven on the other side with all that has welled up as a distinctive new element and has been swelling for a long time in the West? When we look at what underlies all cultural development in our region and in our lives, when we look at Christianity—this most powerful impulse in all earthly development, which above all has shaped Western culture in every respect— then we find that, quite apart from the fact that the event of Golgotha took place in the East, the first current of Christianity flowed into Europe from the Eastern spirit; that, in having the Christ impulse in European spiritual life, we essentially have an Eastern influence. In ancient times, the entire configuration, the entire nature of Eastern spiritual life, was rejected. And today—to confirm this, you need only read the powerful words of a figure such as Rabindranath Tagore.

[ 8 ] When we look toward Asia, where once again everything is in motion among the educated, where everyone is taking part in taking stock of spiritual and soul life, we see something that has emerged, in a certain sense, as a direct continuation of the ancient spiritual life characteristic of the East. No matter how much we share in this Eastern spiritual life, no matter how much it has permeated our culture, we must always draw upon our deepest powers of understanding and insight if we wish to comprehend the forces of aspiration alive in the East today—and all the more so if we wish to grasp from which spiritual sources, once powerful in the East centuries and millennia ago, today’s Eastern spiritual life has developed. If we look at this spiritual life, we still find in it today what one might call spirituality, a spiritual quality. This spiritual quality is certainly in decline there, in a state of decadence, and what comes even from the finest minds of the East can hardly be compared to the profound, meaningful spiritual life that once blossomed in Asia for all of humanity. It bears a fundamental character—and this fundamental character becomes clearer to us the further and further back we go—it bears a fundamental character. If we examine everything we can know about the cultural life and the spiritual life of the Orient, we must say: It certainly did not arise from a state of mind or a spiritual disposition such as ours—that of the West—in normal human life; it arose in such a way that, in the creation of this spiritual life, different spiritual powers are at work than those we ourselves employ in our advanced science and our most advanced spiritual striving. In order to perceive, to truly feel the configuration, the entire nature of Eastern spiritual life—as I said, today it is in a state of decadence—one must ask oneself, as I have often asked here in these lectures and attempted to answer from a perspective of Spiritual Science: Can there not also speak from within the human being something of a higher order than that which makes use only of the external sensory and nervous organs—or indeed, of the physical organs in general—to express the life of the soul and spirit?

[ 9 ] It has often been demonstrated here, from a Spiritual Science perspective, how the spiritual researcher can advance—by remaining just as rigorously scientific as today’s natural science is—toward what might be called the Eternal, the immortal in the human being—that which enters the human body, that which enters the inherited body as that which must be brought in from the spiritual world as something not inherited, that which enters through birth or conception, and that which, in turn, when the human being passes through the gate of death, departs into the spiritual world. When we listen to what speaks to us especially from the older elements of Eastern spiritual life, we must say: It is not that part of the human being that makes use only of the outer physical instruments—as in our science, poetry, and art—that speaks; rather, beyond what physical instruments are capable of, it is the spiritual human being who, as an eternal being, descends from the spiritual worlds through birth or conception and who, in turn, returns through the gate of death to the spiritual world. The spiritual life of the Oriental is something like a revelation of what the human being has brought with them through birth or conception into physical existence—that which, in a certain sense, they cannot apply here, but must carry back through the gate of death. One might say: Everything that the educated person in the East regards as truly spiritual culture is an outflow of the higher human being within the human being—if I may use this expression, which has become somewhat trite; it is something that goes far beyond the everyday human condition.

[ 10 ] In our inner life, we essentially have only something like a part of our being from which we can truly form a thorough and accurate mental image of the entire way in which the Oriental, in his earliest, most pristine times, related to his spiritual life. To form such a mental image, we must look to the way in which—when we bring together the finest forces of our human nature—that which we call our moral impulses arises within us, that by which we measure the morally good and the morally bad within ourselves. When these moral impulses of ours make themselves known in the innermost depths of our being as intuitions, when they are to become the guiding principle of our lives in the moral realm, then we experience in these impulses something of the power of the soul—which we must now conceive of as extending to everything the Eastern person feels when he conjures his spiritual life into the physical world. Nothing of the mood we might have, for example, when we discern something in nature; nothing of the mood that pervades our philosophies, worldviews, and our trivial monisms—but rather that consciousness in the soul of receiving something supermundane, something supersensible—this is what defined the Easterners in everything that gave substance to what they might have called their worldview.

[ 11 ] With this way—I do not mean to say, of thinking about the supersensible world—but with this way of relating to the supersensible world, with this way of perceiving what can reveal itself from the supersensible world into the sensible world, members of Western civilization have, in essence, long been at a loss. In external moral life, what is called the “higher human being” within the human being has certainly manifested itself in an abstract way. But that powerful, immediate experience through which this higher human being brings into this physical-sensory world a spiritual culture that is the direct expression of the supersensible—that has been lost to Western culture to a great extent. Today, we should actually admit this as the honest result of a global assessment of our spiritual and soul life.

[ 12 ] Let us now turn our attention to individual phenomena. On the one hand, we see—as I have already pointed out—how the Christ impulse has permeated all the currents of our culture. It once entered Western life with tremendous momentum. It has since lost that momentum. If we go back to early Christian times, we find that people who sought to approach the Christian worldview in earnest sought to grasp the figure of Christ through supersensible knowledge. In the 19th century, it was precisely the most advanced theologians—the most advanced adherents of Christianity—who took pride in removing the supersensible from the figure of Christ Jesus, and there have been—and still are—university professors of Christian theology who take pride in viewing Jesus Christ merely as the “simple man from Nazareth,” who take pride in introducing as little of the superhuman as possible into this figure of earthly life. We see how, little by little, the sense of the supernatural has, so to speak, evaporated even in relation to the holiest convictions of Western humanity—often precisely among its leading minds. People in the West could make no sense even of what had developed for them over the centuries out of the spirit of the East. They reduced it to the material. The most significant phenomenon is the materialization of Christian theology, for it is indeed a materialization when the Christ-being—which must be conceived as otherworldly—united with the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, is obliterated, and when attention is focused solely on the personal characteristics of Jesus of Nazareth as if he were merely another historical figure.

[ 13 ] We can also see from other examples how strangely this Western spirit contrasts with the Eastern one. Some people—some consciously, some unconsciously, some with good intentions, some with malicious intent—confuse our anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science with what is called “Theosophy” in English-speaking regions. I truly do not wish to speak today about the relationship between our anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science and what is called “Theosophy” in England under Blavatsky and Besant, but I do wish to point out that England, the nation that conquered the world, witnessed in the last third of the previous century a phenomenon—albeit small in relation to the entirety of English culture, yet nonetheless remarkable—that found expression in the Theosophical movement there. What did this Theosophical movement seek within Western culture in the most eminent sense? It sought a deepening of spiritual life; it sought to rediscover the sources of spiritual experience. What did it do? The members of the conquering nation sought out the sources of the spirit; they went to the conquered people of India and drew upon ancient Eastern wisdom there. The very fact that we did not imitate this was precisely why we were so denounced by this Theosophical camp. And if one compares what lives within this English Theosophical Society—which is entirely borrowed from Indian Orientalism—with what once existed there as wisdom, one must see in all that is handed down there as, let us say, the “etheric body” or “astral body,” a materialization of what in the Orient was spiritual and purely intellectual. But what I have just mentioned is characteristic of another fact. It is so impossible for members of Western English culture to generate, from within themselves, a striving toward the sources of a new spiritual life that they turn to the then-decadent spiritual life of the East in order to borrow from it, to bring foreign treasures over to the West. This example in particular shows just how little innate talent exists in the West to produce something like the creations of that human being who lives as a higher human being, as a spiritual human being, as an eternal human being, as an immortal human being within the mortal realm—and whose expression is, after all, Eastern spiritual culture. The Eastern person therefore understands very well what the higher human being within a person is—what a human being is who does not live purely on Earth, but lives in spiritual worlds beyond the Earth.

[ 14 ] What kind of counterpart do we have in Western spiritual life—and what kind of counterpart do we find in ever greater measure the further west we go—to this “higher human being,” as I have just attempted to characterize in faltering words for Eastern spiritual life? What, in fact, is the equivalent of this in the everyday, ordinary, conventional spiritual life of the West? One must reflect at length to determine what the Western culture—which still sets the tone today—has as a counterpart to the higher spiritual human being of the East. If one looks today in standard handbooks on the world’s population, one finds, as is well known, the following statement: Approximately 1,500 million people live on Earth. This is essentially correct when one considers those human beings who contribute to human culture by walking on two legs across the Earth’s surface; but it is no longer accurate for our present time when we consider the amount of work that, until relatively recently, human beings performed almost exclusively on their own for the sake of human culture. Through the achievements of Western culture, we have managed to replace human labor with machine labor on a massive scale, and we can say: Over the course of the last three to four centuries, what is produced for our culture has become not only the result of human labor but also of machine labor. If machines did not exist, we would see how many people would have to work to produce what is produced today with the help of machines. One can now calculate how many more people would have to live on Earth if what is produced by machine labor had to be produced by human labor. I have tried to calculate this, and based on an eight-hour workday—one can estimate this roughly based on coal consumption and other factors—I find that approximately 700 to 750 million more people would have to be working on Earth than there are actual human beings today. This means that it is only partially correct—if we look at the amount of work performed—to say that our Earth has been inhabited by 1,500 million people. We have inhabited it with more than that, but with beings who are not really human beings, but rather homunculi, machines, who nevertheless perform the work that humans would otherwise have to do. In a certain sense, with regard to his own spiritual disposition, the Eastern person feels quite uneasy at this thought of human homunculi—those 700 to 750 million people bursting into human culture who are not human beings but machines.

[ 15 ] This kind of person who works alongside them—who is the vehicle, the mechanical vehicle of human power—is the true analogue, the true counterpart in normal Western culture to the “subhuman” in relation to the higher human being, to the spiritual human being of the East. And I do not believe that anyone today can honestly take stock of the state of spiritual and intellectual life in the world without including in that assessment the fact that, in the best of times—when humanity was given something of value—Eastern spiritual culture culminated in the higher human being, as opposed to what Western culture has ultimately produced: the “subhuman,” the machine that performs human labor.

[ 16 ] Certainly, in more recent times, the people of the East have by no means remained idealists, but have adopted what the Western machine is supposed to achieve; yet, for the overall configuration of their intellectual life, I still find the event that took place about 45 years ago to be characteristic. At that time, the Japanese received their first warships from the English and were proud that they could now do what the English could do: command warships. And they dismissed their English instructors and set sail on their own. People watched from shore as a captain maneuvered a warship about in the sea. But then they began to feel somewhat uneasy: the steamer turned and turned and would not stop turning. For it had to turn—the Englishman who would have known how to release the steam through the appropriate mechanism had, after all, been dismissed. And so the Japanese captain had to turn and turn out there at sea until the steam was completely exhausted. Now, of course, this is no longer the case in external life, but in the inner state of the soul and spirit, it is. The person educated in the Eastern tradition essentially stands before Western spiritual culture just as that Japanese captain stood on his warship, unable to operate the mechanism for releasing the steam. There is a vast chasm between the inner configuration of this Eastern and Western spiritual life. And just as it is difficult for Westerners to truly and honestly find their way into Eastern spiritual life, so too is it still difficult for Easterners today to find their way into Western spiritual life.

[ 17 ] This is why it has become a difficulty, particularly for us in Central Europe—who, I might say, are wedged between Eastern and Western spiritual life. What I have just explained to you regarding Eastern spiritual life is, in essence, a characteristic feature of Eastern spiritual life in ancient times. What remains of it today—and which is already undergoing a profound transformation—is, in essence, merely a final offshoot. Only to those who understand these things does this remnant point to what Eastern spiritual life actually was. But we, insofar as we ourselves belong to the West, have long drawn sustenance from what has come to us from this Eastern spiritual life. One must not say that the event of Golgotha itself came from Eastern spiritual life. It took place in the East, but it is a fact that unfolded for all of humanity. However, the way in which the West has hitherto understood the Mystery of Golgotha, based on the human soul and spiritual constitution, came from Eastern tradition. And our way of thinking Christianly about the Mystery of Golgotha is, for anyone who can observe such things impartially, precisely the ultimate result of what we have received from Eastern tradition.

[ 18 ] Our mainstream culture—our everyday culture today—still draws on the influences of the Orient and has not yet produced new approaches for understanding the events at Golgotha and other supernatural phenomena in a new way. But what is already in decline over in the East—yet is still an element corresponding to the modern Eastern mind—what has it become here, throughout Europe and even in the European outposts, all the way to America? It has become mere rhetoric. At key points, we can demonstrate how that which we still possess in the veins of our souls for understanding the supernatural—and which has flowed into these veins through ancient Eastern spiritual currents, to which we have yet to add anything new from our ordinary everyday culture—has become mere rhetoric. Anyone who truly observes our spiritual and soul life today will have to admit: Much—indeed, an infinite amount—of this spiritual and soul life is nothing more than a cliché; it has lost its substance. We still think in words that have been handed down to us either directly from the Eastern linguistic tradition or that are modeled after it. But they have become mere phrases, and our spiritual life has, for the most part, become a series of phrases. We utter these words to describe what once had a magnificent meaning in the ancient Eastern spiritual culture, but in our mouths, in our minds, and in our hearts, they are mere phrases.

[ 19 ] People still do not feel this to a sufficient degree today, and that is the misfortune of our time. For while party platforms may well arise from empty phrases, and worldviews of a similarly superficial nature may also be born from them, fruitful deeds and ideas for the genuine advancement of humanity will never emerge from empty phrases. One can agitate with empty phrases, but one cannot create anything with them. We look to Eastern spiritual life with its legacy for us and say to ourselves: What was once lived as a spiritual world has become mere rhetoric. And we now turn our attention to what—as we have been able to characterize to some extent—is the most essential aspect of Western spiritual life: the mechanistic element. How can this be experienced when it is not experienced at all with the same vitality of spiritual life as in the past, and when it is experienced only in a vague way—how can this mechanistic life be experienced? Can one really deny that what we have become accustomed to—that 700 to 750 million people on Earth have been replaced by machine power—can one really deny that this dominates our social and political thinking, that it has taken root in our minds—can one really deny that?

[ 20 ] There have, however—though these are exceptions—been people within Western civilization who have felt this in a profound way, and here again we may point to a significant work by the Austrian poet Robert Hamerling, his “Homunkulus.” In this *Homunkulus*, written in the 1880s, he sought to portray a human being whose entire spiritual and soul life—and indeed, whose very spiritual and soul nature—has grown out of modern mechanistic culture. He sought to characterize the way of thinking that arises from this, the peculiar form of egoistic striving. Robert Hamerling attempts to depict all of this in his *Homunkulus*. He portrays a person who has no soul, because the mechanistic way of thinking has driven his entire soul out of him; he portrays a person who has grown out of the customs of this mechanistic culture. This person becomes a trillionaire. And Hamerling foreshadows many things that were not yet an external reality at that time; he foreshadows air travel and all the things that were not yet a reality of this kind back then. To Robert Hamerling, Western man appeared like a homunculus, like an artificially mechanistic human being in his soul and spiritual life. Not like the person who shapes his life out of spiritual impulses, out of the supersensible that reveals itself in the innermost being of the human being, but rather the one who is shaped by the mechanistic forces of the external world—this is how Robert Hamerling characterizes the type of the normal Western human being as a homunculus.

[ 21 ] And one must say: Precisely when one looks at something like this, which vividly depicts the feelings that today’s educated Oriental has about life in the West, one empathizes with this Oriental—for example, Tagore, who, with all the fervor of a spiritual worldview, once again captures his own Oriental spiritual world—and feels just as he does: he observes everything he can in the Western world—its view of nature, its political philosophy, its social ideas—and describes it in such a way that one says to oneself—albeit with the nuances characteristic of an Eastern speaker—that this educated Eastern thinker of today portrays all of this as the homunculus. The Westerner carries within his intellectual and spiritual life the echoes of what was once great in the Orient across the way, now reduced to a cliché. The Easterners perceive what Western culture has produced as its greatest achievement to date as “homunculus culture.”

[ 22 ] I know very well that complacent people today say these things are exaggerated. But that stems solely from a lack of courage to call things by their proper names. It is, however, necessary to take an honest stock of our spiritual and mental life. And with that, we have pointed out what actually characterizes this Western culture—something that must be emphasized especially in our own time. Is it not glaringly obvious that conditions have developed out of the last world catastrophe which finally allow even those who are slow on the uptake to grasp what the impartial observer could have seen long ago, even before 1914? Is it not plain to see that, in the form of the English, the Anglo-American world empire, this Anglo-American essence—with its homunculus nature—is spreading across the earth to a large extent?

[ 23 ] I am not saying this simply because I am speaking to you here in Germany. I have said similar things in recent weeks—and for a long time now—to members of the Anglo-American community themselves. I have calmly told members of the Anglo-American population: “Basically, the Germans living in Central Europe are now better off than you are, because the way things have developed has relieved the Germans of a large part of that responsibility—and another has taken its place!—that responsibility which has now passed to the Anglo-American element.” Today, on this side, one has less to worry about regarding that—well, how should one call it?—a discerning Englishman recently referred to it to me as “the plundering of the various regions of the world”; perhaps it is more appropriate to use this expression than to employ a German national term—one has less to worry about this plundering; rather, one must consider that it is a fact that is taking its course, but that those in those countries who still possess any sense of humanity must feel the immense responsibility for the further development of humanity that weighs upon them because they find themselves within this expansion of the Anglo-American world.

[ 24 ] But how are we to determine what is actually essential to this world culture—represented by the Anglo-American world—with its mechanistic character? Do not think that I, as a member of the Spiritual Science, would want to rail against this mechanistic culture in a reactionary manner; do not think for a single moment that I would ever express any reactionary thoughts about reviving old institutions, or about wanting to do away with even a single achievement of this newer culture! This culture exists with the same necessity as spiritual culture once did. The necessities of world development must be given due consideration. But what is essential? Just as in the East the striving for the higher human being was once great—for that which can reveal itself in the human being as the spiritual, as the divine human being— yet just as over there in the East this striving toward the spiritual human being ultimately fell into decadence, so that today it is something that springs from almost martyr-like impulses—and which even now, across numerous regions of the East, confuses that social coexistence founded on a spiritual basis with the so-called social life imported from Western Europe—we see: What was once great in the East is no more; it has lost its true inner impulse; it is a thing of the past, and the shadow of the past hangs over the entire spiritual life and culture of the East. And it is the decadence of the West, a draining away of all the good spirits of Western humanity, when today many people seek to bolster their Western spiritual life by incorporating Eastern elements. Just as the past hovers there over what is outwardly present—however grotesque that may seem—so does the future hover over what Western mechanistic culture is.

[ 25 ] I am not speaking as a reactionary about this Western culture; I am not speaking as if only a mere iota were missing from this Western culture; but given the way it is spreading through the mechanistic subhuman—in numbers ranging from 700 to 750 million—it is a fact that we still do not have a spiritual and soul life today that can engage with full force and momentum in a world that is, in essence, mechanistic. And it is my belief—which I have often characterized here not as mere faith, but as insight arising from Spiritual Science— it is my belief that what is called anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science—which has been presented as such for two decades—arises from the very same spiritual force that, when it turns outward toward the mere temporal, spatial, and sensory, becomes external mechanics, culminating in magnificent technology. Such a spiritual life—which creates our machines and our mechanistic culture—would have shattered those people who once, drawing from the spiritual essence of the Eastern human being, created the spiritual culture of the East; it would have been impossible to reconcile this with their way of spiritual life. It was not their lot to have such an external, mechanistic life in their environment; it is ours in the West to have such a life in our environment, to apply our intelligence and all our human spiritual and soul powers in such a way that we possess the inner, powerful Powers to master everything that arises in our mechanistic, electrotechnical cultures.

[ 26 ] From this same spiritual configuration, through a rise above the sensory into the supersensory, must arise that power of the human soul which I have described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* ” and in the second part of my “Esoteric Science”—the power that leads us into the supersensible worlds in a way that has never existed in the East. But Western humanity is only just beginning this journey; the starting point has only now been established, and few people today realize that it is possible—indeed, necessary—to rise, out of the very same spirit that permeates the laws of our machines and operates in our electrical engineering, to ascend through inner spiritual development along such rigorous inner paths of the soul, just as only the most rigorous science ascends to its results—to that knowledge where one sees, in a different way, just as the people of the East once saw into the supersensible worlds. We must arrive at a Spiritual Science that has grown out of the entire nature of inner human spiritual and soul life, distinct from every form of scientific and intellectual endeavor of the modern Western era. We must not revert to what has in many cases become mere rhetoric in the confessional religions, nor to that facile use of old phrases to characterize, for example, the new Spiritual Science. This new Spiritual Science must be created with the same seriousness, with the same driving force—only in a spiritual way—as external science.

[ 27 ] This is what happens when one tries to reasonably compile the active and passive items of our time. If we continue to base even our social views solely on the foundations provided by external, sensory natural science, then our entries will appear only on the right-hand side of our soul and spirit ledger; with such a sociological or historical perspective, we will understand only that which is perishing in our social and historical life. For with external natural science we comprehend only what is dead, and if we apply this natural science of the dead to what is contained in social or historical life, we comprehend there, too, only what is dying. That is why the new social theories—which are now also setting out to reshape reality, having hitherto been merely critiques of the existing order—are so destructive to real life, because they are modeled on what is dead. We will not have a true social perspective until we draw it from the same sources from which, as I have described, we must today draw our spiritual life. We regard as merely passive elements only that which stems from a purely mechanistic view of nature. But we also regard as merely passive elements everything that is reflected in the centuries-old creeds that have lost their power, for present-day humanity needs the power of Christ more than any other. Yet it needs a new path to this Christ. Everything that leads along old paths—whether openly or veiled—belongs to the passive side. We need the active side. These are the elements that will emerge from a renewal of our spiritual worldview. Today this is still too difficult for many, especially in Western countries, where that peculiar spiritual movement originates—one in which the path into the spiritual world is not sought within the soul’s own powerful forces, but rather, in a manner that mimics scientific experiments, the gods, spirits, or even the souls of the deceased are induced to pay the physical-sensory world a visit now and then and to appear in the garb of that world. Spiritualism makes do with such occasional, theatrically embellished visits. This is precisely the antithesis of genuine spiritual seeking. If we truly wish to seek the spirit today, then this must not consist in living an outwardly materialistic life and seeking spiritual beings nowhere in our external existence, but rather in suddenly receiving spiritual beings on occasional “visits”—as if in a theater—so that they may prove to us that there is a spiritual world about which we do not care at all. What have even natural scientists of the Lombroso variety accomplished? Natural science has remained spiritless to them; their aim was to find something outside of nature in a spiritualist manner, so that they could then pursue human life and the human environment all the more materialistically. But we need a spiritual depth that can truly penetrate everything material, that can accompany our lives at every step.

[ 28 ] To describe to you such a spiritual worldview whose ideas are capable of give rise to deeds that, through the power of the soul, simultaneously become morality, and that, through the power of the soul, can simultaneously generate religious reverence—to show you that such a Spiritual Science exists in what I have been presenting to you for two decades now—that will continue to be my task. Today I wanted to point out the way in which this spiritual striving must be set against the many passive elements of our present spiritual and soul life as an active force. And since we, as members of the German people—the much-tried German people now facing great hardship—are wedged between the East and the West, should we not be able to find, in what existed as a first step toward spirituality among our great spiritual forebears, the path to a new spiritual quest? Whatever may come to pass in the external political sphere: if we have the strength to turn toward this spiritual path, so that in the future we may tell the Easterners something about a spiritual life that they once had in a different form, but which they have since lost—so that they may receive it anew from us; and if we are able to tell the West something about a spiritual life that will one day be able to meet all those demands that are so dragging us down from a purely mechanistic culture—then, if we seek such a path, we will fulfill a mission at the heart of Europe.

[ 29 ] It seems as though these catastrophic events proved to be something peculiar for the Germans. Indeed, the Germans, too, on the one hand, allowed themselves to be swept up in the still premature economic life of the West; on the other hand, they participated in that sluggish turning toward the East when it came time to seek spiritual renewal once again. But it seems—I say “it seems” so as not to say what would be more accurate for me: “it is so”—it seems that even during the time when the Germans were striving for materialism, they proved precisely that they have no talent for materialism. This talent must be sought elsewhere in the world. If, out of our distress, we recognize that the Germans have no talent for materialism, then perhaps this realization will give us the impulse to turn toward spirituality. But then, out of this necessity, we will also find the impulse for our own spiritual striving—not a borrowing from the East—and perhaps, from that purest, most refined form of intellectual striving that we found among the Germans at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, spiritual work will emerge for the future development of all humanity through a true understanding of the roots of German strength. Whatever else the fate of the German people may be—we may then say: Regarding what we can achieve by returning to the roots of our spiritual and soul forces, we may say: The German spirit has not yet reached completion; it seeks to live itself out in future deeds and future concerns, and, from this spiritual perspective, it will hopefully still have much—very much—to contribute to the future of humanity, alongside many others.