The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. Spiritual Insight as the Foundation for Action

[ 1 ] About two years ago, as the catastrophic events of recent times were drawing to a close, circumstances led the friends of our School of Spiritual Science, established in Dornach, to decide to change the name of this School of Spiritual Science. The intention was to express how, out of an awareness of German spiritual life, one wishes to courageously oppose everything that might arise in opposition to this spiritual life, whether in the present or in the future. At that time—and you will sense the significance of this naming—the building, which is also intended to reflect in its artistic design what lives within anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, was named the Goetheanum. And so this Goetheanum stands on one of Switzerland’s northwesternmost hills as a symbol of a truly international spirit—but a spirit that seeks to embody that significant element associated with the name Goethe. And for this reason, it will be permissible, in the course of reflections on Spiritual Science such as those practiced here, to recall Goethe’s teachings from time to time.

[ 2 ] Today I will take what may seem like a far-fetched example as my starting point, but this seemingly far-fetched example may serve to highlight a characteristic feature of the Spiritual Science referred to here.

[ 3 ] It is perhaps well known how Goethe, after assuming his duties in Weimar, devoted himself intensively to scientific observations as a result of certain circumstances in his life there. And when, after conducting a wide variety of experiments and studies on plants and animals in Weimar and neighboring Jena, he traveled through Italy in the mid-1880s, engaging with all aspects of natural science as he journeyed from region to region, he once wrote about the ideas he now had to form regarding the connection between plants and the earth. He wrote home to his friends in Weimar that he had now fully uncovered the “primordial plant”—that plant of which he was convinced was a form that could be grasped only in the spirit, that it was something which, while underlying all individual plant forms, was nevertheless only a unified entity grasped spiritually. And he wrote a remarkable phrase to his friends in Weimar at that time: With this concept in one’s soul, one must be able to perceive the plant world in such a way that, if one modifies this concept—Goethe called it a “sensory-supersensory concept”—in the appropriate manner by giving it concrete form, one must inwardly create something in the spirit that has the potential to attain external reality. With this primordial plant in one’s soul, one must have grasped plant life so deeply that one could invent an imaginary plant that would, however, have just as much a right to be external reality as the plants that grow out there in the meadows, in the forests, and on the mountains.

[ 4 ] What did Goethe mean, and what did he feel, when he uttered these words at the very moment he believed himself to be at the pinnacle of his understanding in a certain field of knowledge? Do we not see from this statement—especially when we take into account everything that lived within Goethe’s nature—that Goethe sought a kind of knowledge of nature that, as he puts it, is “in accordance with the spirit,” that is, a kind of knowledge in which not only the senses and not only the intellect are involved, but a kind of knowledge in which the entire spiritual essence of the human being is engaged? But do we not also see how Goethe strives for such an understanding that can delve into the very essence of things—an understanding that is so at one with things that, by creating the idea of things within itself, it can be clear to itself that in this creative power, which lives and is productive in the soul, the same force lives and weaves as in the growth force of the plant out there? Goethe was clear about this: When the plant out there grows, when it develops leaf by leaf, node by node, flower by flower, the power of growth lives within it. But Goethe wanted to connect himself to this power of growth that lives out there; he wanted to let it live within his own soul. In what he created as “ideas of knowledge” about things, something was to live that is the very same as what lies outside in the things themselves.

[ 5 ] Such knowledge strives for an immense intimacy of shared experience with external things. Even today, people still underestimate the impact that arises in humanity’s quest for knowledge when Goethe rises to such ideas; for, fundamentally speaking, we live today with entirely different concepts of knowledge. However, the anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science referred to here aims to be Goetheanism—that is, not merely a “Goethe science” in the manner of this or that collection of Goethe’s works, which deals with what Goethe said or wrote, but in the sense that it grasps what lived within Goethe in an initial, elementary form within Goethe, yet possesses an inner vitality capable of bearing ever more fruit—something that is entirely different today than it could have been in 1832, when Goethe died. A spirit lived within Goethe that continues to develop dynamically, even after Goethe had passed away from this earth. Today we can speak of a Goetheanism of the year 1919. It need not simply rehash what Goethe himself said word for word, but it must work in his spirit. And one can believe that one works best in his spirit by developing what he attempted for his own time—almost a century and a half ago—in a small field, that of the plant kingdom and to some extent also the animal kingdom — and there, too, only with regard to the outer forms — if one makes this the impetus for a comprehensive worldview and, above all, incorporates the human being into this comprehensive worldview. In doing so, however, one commits to a Goetheanism that will have to work transformatively on everything that today seeks to develop into a worldview from the most esteemed branches of our quest for knowledge—namely, the natural sciences.

[ 6 ] Perhaps I may—echoing somewhat what I have already said in previous lectures—once again describe the nature of the spiritual development of civilized humanity over the past four centuries. What, then, have we seen emerge as the main driving force in human development and in the pursuit of knowledge? We have seen the rise of intellectual, rational life, and even though we have experienced great “triumphs” particularly in the field of natural science, we must nevertheless say: Although natural science describes external facts to us in abundance, the way in which we, as human beings, approach the external world—namely, how we form ideas in our souls about external nature and about life—is thoroughly colored by intellectualism.

[ 7 ] It is true that, if one takes the intellectual aspect of human nature as one’s guiding principle, one enters into something very spiritual. Our abstract ideas and concepts are, of course, intrinsically very spiritual. As they have asserted themselves over the last four centuries, they are spiritual in themselves, but they are incapable of becoming anything other than reflections of external sensory facts. This is what characterizes our spiritual and soul life: We have gradually come to develop abstract, very subtle ideas and concepts filtered into the spiritual realm, but these are ideas and concepts that dare to approach only the external, sensory reality—they lack the inner power to grasp anything else in life besides the external, sensory reality. Those people who today exert their spiritual faculties in this intellectualistic direction often believe they are pursuing the paths of their research and thinking in a completely unbiased and unconditional manner. But this thinking and research, which moves along such intellectualistic paths, is by no means independent of historical development. And it is interesting to see how many who call themselves philosophers or scientists today believe they can somehow justify—based on human nature or the essence of the world—why they conduct their research in this or that particular way, whereas the very manner in which they conduct their research is merely the result of millennia of human education.

[ 8 ] If we first go back—and today I can only provide a general overview—through the post-Christian centuries to ancient Greece, we find in the final centuries of pre-Christian Greece the very first echoes of that intellectualist mode of thought to which we in the Western civilized world have been entirely devoted since the 15th century. In ancient Greece, we find the emergence of what has long been called dialectic. This dialectic is the inner stirring of a thought element that moves ever more toward abstraction. But anyone who observes Greek life with an open mind will see that this life of the intellect—which was still deeply spiritual in Plato but had already become purely logical in Aristotle—traces its origins back to a rich, soulful past. And if one goes back—as Nietzsche did, magnificently, though perhaps somewhat morbidly—to the earliest times of Greek thought and the development of Greek culture, one finds that in what Nietzsche called the “tragic age of the Greeks,” —that in this spiritual life the abstract dialectical, logical element is not yet present, nor is the orientation toward the merely external world. Rather, in this spiritual life there is still something present of that which can arise only from human nature itself at its very core, which, as if from within itself, bears forth the essence of the world in the most manifold forms. And if we trace the origin of what emerged in Greece—which was later filtered down to mere logic—we find in the Orient what I recently pointed out: what one might call a mysterious, esoteric knowledge that is a mystery to today’s humanity—but only to today’s humanity. It is a form of knowledge that is attained in a way that modern humanity, in its everyday life, can no longer even form a mental image of. In those schools of the ancient Orient, which were at once schools, art academies, and religious sites, a person did not merely have something to learn or to explore with their intellectual faculties; rather, before they were even introduced to the mysteries of existence, they had to undergo a transformation of their entire being. In these mysteries of the Orient, it was taken for granted that a person, as they exist in their outer life, could not penetrate the mysteries of existence. Therefore, one first had to guide the person, through rigorous discipline of their entire being, up to that state in which they became a different being; and to this different being one then imparted what was called the content of knowledge. In the East, a body of knowledge was once built upon a rich life—one that certainly no longer exists historically but can be verified through Spiritual Science—a life concretely shaped by the soul and spirit; this knowledge then spread to Greece, where it was filtered into dialectics, logic, and mere intelligence, and which was then filtered further and further until it became the very intellectualism in which we have been mired within modern civilization since the mid-15th century.

[ 9 ] Without unreservedly turning the eye of the soul toward such things as I have just described, one cannot gain insight into the various cultural currents and cultural realities of contemporary life, nor can one arrive at fruitful perspectives on what humanity needs today. Today, the task is to look truly unreservedly at what has come to be, and to recognize from this in which spiritual worlds we actually find ourselves. If one traces the way in which a spiritual life from the East—one that is more or less foreign to us—has been transplanted to Greece and filtered into our intellectualism, one arrives at the question: How, in fact, did this spiritual life develop?

[ 10 ] This spiritual life could not have developed in any other way than by being, in a certain sense, bound to something natural within the human being. If we examine what has actually been at work and interwoven within human nature to enable this spiritual life to develop through the transformation of the human being described above, we must say: The fact of heredity—the fact of heredity through the blood—plays a major role in this. And we can truly study how the development of knowledge in humanity has taken place only if we derive it from an understanding of the fact of bloodline development. That is why, in the periods I have referred to in order to explain the origin of our present-day knowledge, understanding was bound to individual peoples, individual races, bloodline connections, and hereditary relationships. Knowledge emerges differentiated according to the individual peoples. What had to be taken into account when the student was brought in from outer life into that school of mysteries of which I have spoken—what had to be taken into account in his training—was this: What blood, what temperament in the blood, what talent rooted in the blood lived within him? And this natural disposition was brought to development until what could arise from it came to light in the knowledge of the individual in question.

[ 11 ] Anyone who truly understands the history of human development—anyone who does not cling —I may use this word once more—to the “fable-convenue”-like narrative that is called history today, but rather to the true history of human development, will find that this binding of human soul and spiritual life to bloodline and blood-related facts came to a radical end around the middle of the 15th century within the Western civilized world. From that point on, something begins to set the tone that can never be bound to blood in human development. It is very interesting to observe, when considering everything that has developed artistically since the fifteenth century within modern humanity, how all of this springs from sources of human soul life that no longer have anything to do with that natural, elemental coloring—even in the greatest spiritual achievements of earlier times. This may be misunderstood in many circles. Anyone who wishes to truly understand what lives in Aeschylus, what lives in an ancient Greek philosopher such as Heraclitus or Anaxagoras, anyone who wishes to grasp what lived in those ancient cultures, must be clear that something lives within them that is bound to the blood of certain races. The Greeks were still aware that their entire spiritual being was bound to what their blood brought forth as a spiritual flowering. One can prove this to oneself by studying Greek works of art with insight—for example, the typical sculptural figures. If one tries to discern what lies within these types, one finds that three types exist within the realm of Greek sculpture: first, the satyr type; then the Mercury type, which appears in particular in all depictions of Mercury’s head; and finally, the type found in Zeus, Hera, Athena, and Apollo. If one carefully compares the shape of the nose, the shape of the ears, every individual detail of these three types, and one will naturally come to understand how the Greeks, in the satyr type and the Mercury type, sought to depict what constitutes a subordinate humanity—within which, as the blood-superior humanity, that Aryan essence has spread, to which the Greeks gave their likeness in the head of Zeus. One might say: This expresses the consciousness of how the Greeks felt their spirituality was bound to the blood-based, elemental aspect of human development. This gradually faded and ceased to hold significance for humanity in the middle of the 15th century. Since that time, the intellectual element—the element of imagination—has lived within the spirituality produced in ordinary, external life, so that everything that arises in the soul—everything that is a product of the soul—no longer has anything to do with what surges in the blood or what the blood produces. Even trivial philosophers today must admit that what lives in intellectualistic mental images is not bound to the physical, least of all to the blood, and in any case has nothing to do with what played such a great role in ancient spirituality: with heredity, with the fact of blood kinship within heredity.

[ 12 ] Since the middle of the 15th century, something has emerged in human development that, while it is, so to speak, something quite thin-spirited—merely intellectual—nevertheless educates modern humanity toward independence from everything merely natural; yet this also simultaneously distances humanity from everything that was formerly perceived as truly human. And something peculiar—I would say tragic—occurred in this development of modern humanity. It had to rise to a level of experience independent of the natural and elemental, but it could no longer understand itself through what it had thus taken into its soul. In that ancient spirituality, in that spiritual insight that was still grounded in blood, one had gained, along with inner insights, an understanding of human nature and essence itself; now one had risen to an abstract spirituality that can achieve great triumphs in the natural sciences, but which cannot possibly address the essence of the human being itself, which remains distant from the essence of the human being.

[ 13 ] But that had another consequence. If we look back at that development, which I have characterized as bound up with the natural, elemental, and now turn our gaze not toward the being of knowledge, but toward the good or evil, sympathetic or antipathetic deeds that run through history, we find that these deeds are connected to natural cognition, to natural spiritual experience; they are the expression of natural spiritual experience: Human beings experience themselves through their blood, rise to spirituality through their blood, and experience what their blood gives them in powerful images, in imaginations that are representations of the spiritual experienced; and what they experience in the soul flows into their whole being. And the outflow of what pulsates from his mental images—from his felt mental images, his felt ideas—becomes his actions.

[ 14 ] And today? We have reached a turning point. We have three to four centuries of intellectualistic life behind us; we look around at the modern civilized world and find everywhere an intense development of intellectualistic, research-oriented life—the most diverse ideas—but all these ideas are so abstract and so detached from real life that they cannot translate into impulses for action. When one sees today—at a time when social and other human problems are so urgent—the general spiritual slumber in which people find themselves, from which they refuse time and again to admit just how far down a slippery slope we are and how desperately we need to draw deeper forces from our spiritual life in order to find once again the impulses that can translate into action — then one is reminded of a folk saying that was addressed in earlier centuries to the Germans, who were already considered sleepy even back then: “Sleep, Michel, sleep; in the garden walks a sheep, in the garden walks a little lamb, that will lead you to heaven.” Sleep, Michel, sleep! — Yes, that is the prevailing attitude today: listening to some abstract religious notion that has no connection to immediate external reality and life within that reality. We have lost the connection between the external understanding of nature—which we can grasp only intellectually—and that which lives in our soul and was incorporated into the ancient, blood-based understanding of nature: the conception of the essence of the human being.

[ 15 ] I know how reluctant people are today to listen to such characterizations, which they regard as something outlandish, as fantasies intended to exaggerate things. Nevertheless, it must be said: Unless one listens to what comes from this corner, one will not arrive at fruitful ideas about a reorganization or a rebuilding—which seems so necessary today when one observes things impartially. The spiritual and the soul—well, our school philosophers still speak of something “soul-like” in relation to the external world; but that clear grasp of the essence of the human being as body, soul, and spirit has long since ceased to exist in our Western worldview. Here one can perceive a very remarkable fact. One can only come to terms—as I have already explained in other lectures—with the essence of the human being if one is able to divide this human being into body, soul, and spirit. For the body is what serves as the instrument for the spiritual powers between birth and death; the spirit is what makes use of this instrument; and the soul is that which is neither body nor spirit, but rather the link between the two. Without understanding this trinity, one cannot penetrate the essence of the human being. But even outstanding philosophers speak of this: Human beings consist of body and soul. They believe they are practicing unbiased science. Yes, unbiased science! They simply do not realize that, in our intellectual life, we are dependent on the entire Eastern tradition. Thus, in our focus solely on body and soul, we are dependent on the Eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 869, at which the dogma was established that, as Christians, one need not believe in body, soul, and spirit, but only in body and soul, and must believe that the soul possesses certain spiritual qualities. From that point on, this became the dogma of the Catholic Church; it became a commandment for those who engaged in external research. And today, people believe they are pursuing unbiased research that they devise on their own, while in fact they are merely following the old tradition established by the General Council of Constantinople in 869, where the spirit was abolished.

[ 16 ] All of this has contributed to our spiritual life becoming so abstract, so intellectualistic, that it no longer contains—but humanity is, after all, undergoing a process of development, and it can no longer contain—what once lived in the old spiritual life, impelling the will. And a time would have to come when human beings would appear completely paralyzed in regard to their actions if we were to retain only materialism within our Western spiritual life. One must sense, from the course of Western spiritual development, that a renewal of this spiritual development is necessary; that we must regain from another source what we have lost of the old, blood-bound elements. It was right that humanity underwent an intellectualistic development, independent of the blood, over the course of three to four centuries. Through this, humanity cultivated freedom—a certain emancipation from the merely natural. But the intellectualism we have developed must once again be imbued; it must once again be filled within our being with a kind of knowledge that can flow into human actions, that can permeate and spiritualize the human being through the will. Anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science strives for such spiritual knowledge—a modern spiritual knowledge that has no desire to be associated with a revival of the ancient Eastern spiritual knowledge. And in this sense, it now seeks to achieve—not only for plant and animal forms, but especially for human beings—that intimacy with all that lives in the universe, through which one can say: The forces that live outside enter into our being; they awaken within our being itself; and as we recognize this, the forces of growth from nature and the spiritual world live within us—above all, our own human forces of growth. So if we imbue our intellectual life with the experiences of the spirit, then we find ourselves in modern civilization in such a way that what lives within us is no longer something bound to the blood, but rather something perceived in the free spiritual realm—which in turn can have an inspiring and invigorating effect on our active life.

[ 17 ] It is certainly true that human life of will and action would lose its vigor if it were not influenced by what can be perceived in the spirit. It is reasonable to say today, for example: “Yes, but the insights of this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science are, after all, gained in an inner, contemplative, secluded life!” Certainly, they are gained in an inner, contemplative, secluded life, just as, after all, chemical knowledge is also gained—separate from the application of chemical achievements in the practical world—in isolated laboratories and study rooms. What must be gained is that which can provide us with insight into the nature of the human being—that which today can constitute the content of true spiritual knowledge—by means of which, once again—but in a completely different way than in the ancient mysteries — the human being transforms himself and comes to gain a spiritual perception, just as he has, here in the sensory world, a sensory perception through his sense organs and an intellectual perception through his intellect. This humility, of which I spoke here in the penultimate lecture, this intellectual humility, must be developed so that one says to oneself: Just as a five-year-old child must first be educated to learn to read, so must the human being living in the outer world first transform himself in order to approach the true mysteries of the natural and spiritual worlds. And what yields true knowledge of the human being is linked to self-denial and voluntarily borne suffering. You can already see this from the fact that it becomes necessary for the truly knowing person—the person who penetrates into the spiritual world—no longer to view the world as one would with ordinary eyes, no longer to hear as one normally hears, no longer to think as one normally thinks, but rather to view the world through an independent spiritual organism. But between birth and death, one is not adapted to this world into which one enters; one enters a world that is alien to oneself. This lack of adaptation, this sense of being placed within it, is a world to which one does not belong insofar as one makes use of one’s body; it is something that must be characterized by a spiritual and psychological pain, which, of course, can only be recognized through experience. Through such and similar things—which certainly lie apart from the outer storms and tides of life—one must penetrate into the spiritual world. But one slanders what is gained through the Spiritual Science referred to here when one says: “This is an otherworldly mysticism”; when one says: “This is something alien to life or hostile to life.” No, what is gained in this way—admittedly apart from life—through spiritual research is something that, when presented to humanity, constitutes knowledge and insight that can be grasped by sound common sense, but which then impels people in such a way that it can become the driving force behind their will and their active life.

[ 18 ] What kind of insight does anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science strive for in its effort to develop a comprehensive Goetheanism? It strives for an insight into the spirit that can serve as the foundation for a vigorous life of will and action. Our world can be helped in no other way than by allowing what can be perceived from the spirit to enter into our life of will and action. Intellectualistic knowledge and its application—the knowledge of nature—is a contemplative endeavor; it is something that, at most, can spill over into technology, into the non-human realm. But what is perceived from the spirit will become an impulse to steer social life—this social life that is becoming so difficult—toward truly healing paths.

[ 19 ] One might do well to reflect a little and consider whether the claims of Spiritual Science, as characterized here, should not after all be taken into account, given the infinite suffering they cause humanity, that social life today is so badly mishandled, that Leninism, Trotskyism, and the like are being introduced into it—ideologies that are nothing other than that intellectualist poison which, for four centuries, had to be employed for the liberation of humanity, but could only be employed as long as the old social form had not yet been overtaken by it. The moment it is overtaken, the toxic effect of mere intellectualism in social life must become apparent. It begins to manifest itself in terrible phenomena, and it will become increasingly evident. It is a terrible illusion for people to believe that in this area they are not merely at the beginning, but at a point where one can calmly stand by and watch. No, we are at the very beginning, and healing can come only if it springs from the Spirit. Spiritual insight must become the foundation. Instead of uttering all sorts of—sometimes well-meaning—declarations, for example, about how the Spiritual Science has no place in religion, it would be better to look the phenomena of life squarely in the face.

[ 20 ] I was told, for example, that a lecture on anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science was given here in Stuttgart, in which it was said: All sorts of things may indeed be brought to light through clairvoyant powers, as Spiritual Science discusses; but that has nothing to do with the simple childlike quality that is supposed to be at work in religion, in the religious understanding of Christianity as well. One can declaim in this way; one can believe one is permitted to speak this way when one is forsaken by all the spirits of historical perspective, by all the spirits that explain the course of human development. If one has not been abandoned by them, then the spirit of human development proclaims loud and clear that this abstract talk of an abstract unification of something within the human being—which cannot even be defined—using an indefinable word, or “Christ”—that this enthusiasm for a childlike element has led us into the social misery in which we now find ourselves. First, the psychological and spiritual elements were monopolized by the creeds. This gave rise to a natural science devoid of spirit, which depicts nature in a spiritless manner. And by admitting that all manner of spiritual realities can be revealed to humanity through Spiritual Science, people now demand that we acknowledge that nothing in these spiritual realities is alive—nothing of what human beings should seek as their divine essence. Indeed, the materialism of natural science has successfully managed to de-spiritualize nature. This form of religiosity will increasingly lead to the de-divinization of the spirit. And then we will have a de-spiritualized nature, a de-divinized spirit, and a religion devoid of substance. This religion devoid of substance will not inspire any actions whatsoever. Spiritual insight must lead to action; otherwise, our moral impulses—which are central to our Western spiritual life—are essentially left hanging in the air. Our moral impulses spring from within us in a manner entirely different from intellectual insights. Anyone who is able to look at themselves impartially knows that intellectually grasped insights—such as those in the natural sciences—are, in the life of the soul, something entirely different from those impulses that arise within us as moral drives and moral intuitions, demanding that we bring them to life. But this modern spiritual life, through its intellectualism, has no bridge between its knowledge of nature and its moral life. What, in the end, has become of the moral worldview? If we set aside a religious worldview that has today become more or less devoid of substance, and if we look at those honest people who construct a worldview out of natural science—one that is certainly highly one-sided, yet honest—then we must say: They form the mental image that, at some point, some kind of interconnection of vortex phenomena arose from a Kant-Laplacean cosmic nebula, and that, little by little, what we today call our world—with its natural beings and human beings—came into being. But moral ideals and moral intuitions arise within human beings. If one believes only in the natural order, then these moral ideals, these moral intuitions, are merely what evaporates—what remains valid only as long as people tell each other about them. Many old instincts from that phase of human development—which actually came to an end as early as the 15th century—still persist. If these instincts were not to persist, if they were eventually to be eradicated and nothing else were to enter into human spiritual life, then one would have to rely solely on the external documentation of what we call moral ideals. And instead of feeling an inner commitment to one’s moral ideals—instead of feeling a commitment to one’s moral ideals in relation to the spiritual life that transcends all physical life—the most that might occur is that one might find it honorable when others regard one as a moral person, or that one might find it expedient not to violate the laws established by the state. In short, that fervor inspired by a living spiritual force would, if our intellectualism were to remain, also vanish from human moral life. For our moral life can only be given reality if, once again, spiritual insight permeates and impregnates everything we have acquired over the course of three to four centuries. This is by no means meant to be a reactionary critique, but merely to emphasize what is necessary. But what does this spiritual vision reveal to us? What is the moral dimension of our spiritual vision? This spiritual vision perceives external nature; it already discerns in it, in a rudimentary sense, what rational geologists—to speak by way of comparison—assume regarding the geological formation of the Earth. Such geologists say: A large part of our geological evolution is already in a state of decline. In many regions of the Earth, when we walk across the soil, we are walking over a form of existence that has already died. Such a dead existence, however, is present on a much more universal scale than merely in the geological realm; it also pervades our cultural life, and in recent times we have developed a natural science directed solely toward the dead and the inanimate, because we are gradually becoming surrounded by what is dying in our culture. We come to know what is dying—that which stems from ancient times of evolution and is now reaching its final phase in the Earth’s development. But then we can compare what is reaching its final phase with what blossoms within us as our moral ideals and intuitions. What are these moral ideals and intuitions? These moral ideals and intuitions, when they arise within us, reveal themselves to what is here called anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science in such a way that one sees in them something that could be compared to the seed for the next plant contained within a flower, while what dies in the flower is the legacy of the previous plant. We see our moral life sprouting within us. As we experience the natural, we experience what has developed and come down to Earth from ancient times; as we feel the moral ideals blossom, we experience what, when the Earth is one day cast off like dross—as a corpse—will go forth with the human souls into a cosmic, immortal life, just as the individual human being, when he sheds his physical body, enters into spiritual-soul existence. Thus, as we unfold our moral life, we see the seeds of future earthly metamorphoses sprouting within us.

[ 21 ] Consider this: if one were able to take such an idea—which certainly may still seem fantastical to humanity today—in all its seriousness and depth, what would then become of a concept such as moral responsibility! One would ask oneself: What are you, human being? You are the result of the past and of the entire evolution of the Earth. As such, you are on a path of decline. Your moral nature is awakening within you; this is the seed of the future—still seemingly unreal, so that we regard it as something merely abstract—but it is the very beginning of a future rich reality. And one must surely say to oneself: If you do not practice this moral life, if you do not connect with it, then you sin not only against your fellow human beings—against them, of course—but you sin against all spiritual worlds. For they have planted within you the seed to grow, through your moral life, into the future of the world. If you are immoral, you exclude yourself from the future of humanity. To the strength that flows from spiritual knowledge for the will and the life of action, such a seriousness—I would say, a cosmically and universally oriented human responsibility—can be added to the moral life. We can sense this: In ancient Greece, the horizon of the educated person was limited. One was a citizen of one’s country. Then came the modern era. America was discovered; the spherical shape of the Earth was rediscovered through direct travel around the globe, through experience. Human beings became citizens of the Earth. Now we have advanced yet another stage. Humanity has passed through the stages of being a citizen of a nation and a citizen of the Earth. Today, the call goes out to humanity to become citizens of the world in the true sense of the word—that is, to feel themselves as citizens of those worlds that lie beyond our Earth but belong together with it as a whole, and also as citizens of those future worlds to which I have alluded.

[ 22 ] In this way, moral perspective can take root in spiritual insight in a new way. Only when such a force permeates our moral life will we be able to transform moral teaching into a socially effective philosophy of life.

[ 23 ] Approaches such as those hinted at here have been attempted in concepts such as the threefold social order and in ideas such as those presented in my book *The Key Points of the Social Question*. Many people regard these as abstractions, as utopias, and yet they are the very essence of reality, because they rest in that new understanding of reality which no natural science can attain, since the latter is too deeply afflicted by intellectualistic thinking. This intellectualistic thinking has gradually caused human beings to withdraw entirely into themselves. Today one can observe striking examples of how human beings have become selfish precisely because they no longer understand humanity itself “based on their external knowledge of nature.” Egoism has, at the same time as intellectualism, crept into all aspects of human life—both external and internal—over the last three or four centuries; above all—and this, too, must be viewed impartially—this intellectualism, this egoism, has also taken hold of religious life. Today, it is only possible—and this has, unfortunately, been brought about by centuries of human education—to speak of the immortality of the human soul from a certain egoistic standpoint. People today recoil at the thought that—as is of course not the case, though it would be possible—the cessation of their spiritual-soul life might occur when the physical body is returned to the earth. This contradicts what remains of the natural as a clear ultimate reality; it contradicts a distinct egoistic impulse. One indulges this egoistic impulse when one speaks—as is again done under the compulsion of dogmas—only of the continuation of human soul life after death, which is, of course, fully substantiated by Spiritual Science; but when one does not speak of the fact that our spiritual-soul being existed in a spiritual world before our birth or conception. Before we descend into physical embodiment and take on that outer shell given to us through inheritance from our father and mother, we undergo a process of development in a spiritual-soul world just as we do here on Earth. And just as our life after death is a continuation of life here on Earth—an expansion of the experiences we have here—so too is the life we undergo between birth and death a continuation of the life we had before birth.

[ 24 ] This, for example, imposes great duties on the educator when he is fully aware of the responsibility that weighs upon his soul—namely, to develop that which has descended from eternal spiritual heights into a human body and which, through its outer form and shell, becomes more and more pronounced from year to year. This is the other aspect that can be added to that insight—which panders to egoism—that takes into account only the fact, admittedly self-evident, of the immortality of the human soul in the face of death. This is the other side that Spiritual Science, in particular, must emphasize for modern humanity: life before birth or before conception and its continuation through life here. Those who speak only of the afterlife easily become escapists. Anyone who seriously considers the pre-birth phase will feel compelled—since the order of the worlds is such that human beings must descend into physical existence—to make that existence an active one. For only in this way can we develop what we seek to develop, when we know that we descend into physical existence through birth. While the mere prospect of what comes after death leads to the de-spiritualization and de-animation of physical existence, the awareness that we have descended as spirits into this physical-sensory existence must lead to the strengthening of our will and the active shaping of our entire lives. Human hopes for the future can arise with certainty only from a spiritual worldview if we root our perspective in the spirit, if we thoroughly shape and permeate our intellectual nature with what Spiritual Science gives us. Then, in turn, the impulse to act and the impulse of the will can return to our lives. And our lives will need these spiritual impulses, for this life is one of descent. Older generations could still rely on their instincts. Among the ancient Greeks, we could see that those who had matured for public life needed only to develop their blood instincts. That will no longer be possible; education would have to disappear if we were to rely solely on what the earth could still offer us through human instincts. Today’s Eastern European socialism counts on these instincts; it counts on nothing. One will be counting on a reality when one places one’s hope in building a socialism oriented toward Spiritual Science. However, views such as those presented here are not yet taken entirely seriously—at least not by a large number of people. Some take them seriously, though from a very specific point of view. For example, while I was still working in Dornach, I read in our journal *The Threefold Social Order* how certain circles take Spiritual Science quite seriously; and a remarkable lecture—I believe even with musical accompaniment—is said to have been given here, based on something that appears as a program from a certain quarter, for example in *Stimmen der Zeit* by the Jesuit Father Zimmermann, in almost every issue, and which produces precisely the kind of repercussions as the one that is said to have occurred here. It was said there—and by a cathedral canon, no less—that one could learn about what Steiner says from the writings of his opponents, since Catholics were not permitted to read the writings that he himself produces, nor those of his followers, because the Pope had forbidden them. In fact, the Roman Holy Congregation issued a general edict on July 18, 1919, containing a ban on reading theosophical and anthroposophical writings—at least according to Jesuit Father Zimmermann’s interpretation of this general edict. And yet one cannot believe that this Jesuit Father Zimmermann always lies. He did lie: He had claimed that I was a former priest, that I had fled from a monastery. I was never in a monastery. Then he said: “The claim that Steiner is a runaway priest can, of course, no longer be maintained today.” A strange way to make amends for what one has falsely claimed! Now, I do not believe that what has found such a peculiar expression—namely, that one can learn from the writings of my opponents because the anthroposophical writings were banned by the Sacred Congregation on July 18, 1919—is also a lie. Yes, on this page one senses that something within anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science—something that possesses very real powers—is seeking to make its presence felt in the present.

[ 25 ] This anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science—let me say this in conclusion, I would like to add, as an objective and at the same time personal remark—this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science will continue to advocate, as best it can and against all opposition, what it must uphold as the foundation of knowledge for active life, for moral and social life, and for humanity’s most beautiful hopes. They can strangle it if they wish: as soon as it is able to stir even a little, it will once again assert what it believes it can recognize as the truth necessary for humanity. And just as, at the very moment when the prospect of victory began to turn against us, a testimony to international spiritual life was established at the Goetheanum for the entire international community—without shying away from the fact that what is today known as developed Goetheanism does, after all, stem from the roots of German spiritual life—so, in the face of everything else that seeks to stand in its way as an obstacle, this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science will fight for the knowledge that has become its conviction, as if it were the very substance of the world.

[ 26 ] It has now been 35 years since, in one of my earliest essays—in which I sought to characterize how the German spirit must return to the finest intellectual sources of its strength—I wrote the following words as a call to arms for the German people: “Despite all the progress we have made in the most diverse fields of culture, we cannot deny that the character of our age leaves much—very much—to be desired. Our progress is mostly only in breadth and not in depth. Yet for the substance of an age, only progress in depth is decisive. It may be that the abundance of facts that have assailed us from all sides makes it understandable that, while gazing into the distance, we have momentarily lost sight of the depth. We can only hope that the broken thread of progressive development will soon be picked up again and that the new facts will be grasped from the intellectual heights once attained.”

[ 27 ] Driven by the feeling that, unless the intellectual decline of that time were countered by a genuine intellectual revival, a catastrophe was bound to follow—and with this conviction and a heart-wrenching pain—I wrote down these words 35 years ago and had them printed. I believe that today, in particular, from the perspectives I have outlined, I am justified in drawing attention to these words in an objective and personal manner. For the course of events over these three and a half decades is proof that it is justified to let the call for spirituality ring out once more. May this call—since it went unheard back then—be heard by the Germans today and in the near future, so that they may rebuild from within, out of the spirituality they have grasped, what has been destroyed in such a terrible way among them in recent years, indeed, what has only just begun to be destroyed, and what will certainly continue down the path of destruction unless spirituality is incorporated into the process of rebuilding.

[ 28 ] That is what we wish to appeal to today: the will toward spirituality, especially among the German people. And we may appeal to this will toward spirituality; for one thing is certain: if the German people develop this will toward spirituality, they must find spirituality. As for materialism, I said recently, it apparently has no aptitude for it—as the events of the last few decades clearly prove; but it does have an aptitude for spirituality, as evidenced by the spirit of our development over the centuries. That is why we may appeal to the will toward spirituality: the German people, if only they develop that will, will find spirituality; they have the aptitude for it. But since it possesses this aptitude, it also bears a great responsibility in response to the call for spirituality. May the awareness of this responsibility awaken—awaken in such a way that the German people may once again actively participate in the development of humanity on a spiritual foundation and driven by spiritual impulses, continuing what it has accomplished for the benefit of humanity over many centuries through its greatest minds.