The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Moral and Religious Forces in the Sense of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] A view of the world—such as the one pursued by Spiritual Science—must prove its worth by providing people with a foundation for what they need in life. This foundation for life must be what we might call moral competence, moral strength. But support for life must also include, among other things, what we might call the inner state of mind that a person can attain by feeling themselves to be a part of the great whole of the world—by feeling so integrated into the whole of the world in a way that corresponds to what might be called their religious need. Now, as far as a person’s inner moral strength is concerned, Schopenhauer spoke a most apt word, even if the further elaborations he attached to these words in his own way seem quite open to criticism. He said: “Preaching morality is easy; justifying morality is difficult.” — This is indeed a true word of wisdom. For generally speaking, understanding what is good and what a moral life demands of us is, as a matter of the intellect, relatively easy. On the other hand, drawing from the primal forces of the soul those impulses that are necessary for a person to position himself within the fabric of life as a morally powerful being—that is difficult. But that is what it means to establish morality. Establishing morality does not mean merely stating what is good or moral. Establishing morality means imparting to human beings such impulses that, as they are absorbed into their inner life, become a real strength and a real capacity within them.

[ 2 ] At our present stage of civilization, human beings, in terms of their moral consciousness, are situated in the world in a very peculiar way—a way that is by no means always fully and consciously observed, but which is the root cause of various forms of uncertainty and instability that manifest themselves in people’s lives. On the one hand, we have our intellectually oriented knowledge, our understanding, which enables us to penetrate natural phenomena, which enables us to take in the totality of the world into our mental images to a certain degree, and which enables us—albeit, as we have seen in the last two reflections here, to a very limited extent—to form ideas about the nature of the human being.

[ 3 ] Alongside what shines within us as our capacity for knowledge—as everything that, I might say, is guided by our human logic—alongside all of that, another element of our being asserts itself, must assert itself in human beings: the very element from which spring our moral duty, our moral love—in short, the impulses toward moral action. And one must say: modern man lives, on the one hand, in his cognitive faculties and their results; on the other hand, he lives in what constitutes his moral impulses. Both are contents of the soul. But for this modern human being, there is, in essence, initially little mediation between the two—so little mediation that, for example, Kant could make the statement: “Two things are most precious to him in the world: the starry heavens above him and the moral law within him.” — But it is precisely this Kantian mode of thought that has faded in modern man; it knows of no bridge between what leads to the knowledge of the world on the one hand and what constitutes moral impulses on the other. How abruptly Kant considers the life of cognition in his *Critique of Pure Reason* and the moral life in his *Critique of Practical Reason*.

[ 4 ] And if we are completely honest with our sense of time, we must actually say that there is a chasm here between two different ways of experiencing human nature. As modern science forms mental images about the course of world development across a wide variety of fields of knowledge, it observes the processes of nature—from the simplest living beings, indeed from inorganic nature itself, all the way up to human beings. It forms mental images about how, for example, this totality of the world that lies immediately before us came into being. It also forms mental images about the processes through which the eventual end of this totality of the world—which we initially perceive—might unfold. But now, from human beings—who are, after all, woven into this natural order—springs forth what they call their moral ideals. And human beings perceive these moral ideals in such a way that they can truly feel themselves to be of value only when they follow these ideals, when there is harmony between themselves and these ideals. Human beings make their value dependent on these moral ideals. But if we have a mental image of the situation in which, through the forces of nature—which become accessible to human beings through their knowledge—the totality of the world as we know it is one day heading toward its end, what remains for today’s sense of time of that which human beings create out of their moral ideals and moral impulses? Anyone who is honest—who does not shroud contemporary consciousness in a fog of obscurity—must admit to themselves: From the perspective of current scientific thought, these moral ideals are something by which human beings must certainly guide their lives, but through which nothing arises that could one day triumph when the Earth, together with humanity itself, is heading toward its demise.

[ 5 ] For today’s sense of time—and we must simply admit this—there is no bridge between the cognitive abilities that lead to knowledge of nature and the abilities that govern us as moral beings. Human beings are not aware of everything that goes on in the depths of their souls. Much remains unconscious. But what stirs unconsciously down there makes itself felt in life through disharmony, through psychological or even physical symptoms of illness. And anyone who simply wishes to look impartially at what is happening today will have to admit: our life is in turmoil, and people are caught up in this life with all manner of psychological and physical conflicts. And what is surging there rises up from a depth in which something is indeed at work—namely, those weak human forces that are unable to build a bridge between moral life and the understanding of nature. Anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science approaches these questions in the following way. It must abandon everything that, on the one hand, is merely a theoretical view of external reality. It must therefore recognize—as I have explained in my last two lectures here—everything that, so to speak, seeks to shut the human being out of this view of nature, so that true objectivity may indeed arise.

[ 6 ] What I have characterized as the path into the spiritual world—and I would like to summarize this once more—takes the following form: First, the person who wishes to walk this path into the spiritual world must devote themselves to a certain inner psychological and spiritual work. In my books, I have summarized this inner practice—this inner spiritual and psychological work—as a form of meditation and concentration. This work enables a person to relate to their imaginative life in a different way than occurs in ordinary life, when we observe natural phenomena or even social life. It is a complete oneness with the mental images that otherwise merely accompany external impressions like shadows. Just as we normally—as I said—relate to people, nature, or anything else in physical life through our feelings, our sympathies, and our antipathies, and just as we relate to facts through our volitional emotions, so do we—as those seeking the path into the spiritual world—relate to mere mental images. The way mental images arise stirs us, provokes our sympathies and antipathies, and stimulates our entire life force. This becomes our destiny. While we remain outwardly calm, we undergo an inner experience that is by no means weaker than what we otherwise experience as the destiny of life in the outer world. In a sense, we double our life. Whereas we would otherwise become agitated, develop sympathy and antipathy, and assert impulses of the will only in external life—in response to external events—we carry what would otherwise concern us only in this external material world into our inner life of thought. If we can do this—and every person can, if they practice in the manner I have described in my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* or in my *Esoteric Science* — if a person actually manages to do this, there eventually comes a moment when they have images of the world not only when they open their senses—when they hear or see—but when they have images arising purely from their imaginative life: images so rich in content—if I may use that expression—and so vivid that they are otherwise accessible to us only through sensory perception. These arise through this thus intensified and sharpened life of the imagination. Without relying on sensory perception, we live in a world of images such as we otherwise experience only through sensory perception.

[ 7 ] But this is linked to another significant experience—these things can only be understood as experiences; abstract logic and so-called reasoning cannot lead us to them—another experience is connected to it: Through such practice, we come to know what it means to develop a mental and spiritual activity independent of physical activity. There comes a moment for human beings when they may—if I may put it this way—rightly admit to being materialists, however strange and paradoxical that may sound. At that moment, they may say: yes, in ordinary life we are entirely dependent on the instrument of our body. There, we think through the instrument of our nervous system. But that is precisely the defining characteristic of this outer life: we navigate it by being able to develop the spiritual-soul aspect only when it makes use of the physical instruments. Yet this spiritual-soul aspect is not bound to making use solely of the physical instruments. Through the efforts described, it can detach itself from the physical instrument and become body-free. One can speculate and philosophize as much as one likes about materialism. If one only brings to bear against it what one can know from ordinary life, one will never refute it, for in ordinary life materialism is correct. Materialism can be refuted only through spiritual practice—by detaching the spiritual-soul aspect from the physical in direct experience. One creates mental images—I called this “imaginative visualization” or “imagination” in the books mentioned—one creates mental images, but outside the body, whereby “outside” is of course not to be understood spatially, but rather as independent of the body. This is one aspect of what one must come to know within anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science in order to truly build the bridge that cannot be built in the manner we have described. What one attains in this way as the content of imaginative knowledge is not within the human body; it is outside the human body and provides the practical explanation that our innermost being, before it clothed itself in this body, was in the spiritual-soul world. For one is not only outside the body; one is outside the time in which one lives with the body. In this way, one truly experiences the prenatal, or, let us say, that which lies within the human being prior to physical conception. Just as a light shines into a room from outside, so does our prenatal life shine into our present life in this imagination.

[ 8 ] What shines through here is not merely thoughts; it has a living content. This living content reveals itself as something quite special. It reveals itself as a certain—I would say—content of intelligence. So as we cultivate, sharpen, and strengthen our life of imagination in the way I have described, we step out of ourselves and into a content of will that, at the same time, possesses a living quality. It is the content of the will that creates within us that which clothes itself in the physical body—that which we do not receive through heredity, that which we do not derive at all from the physical world.

[ 9 ] Anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science does not arrive at an understanding of immortality through speculative reflection on ordinary life, but rather through the cultivation of a capacity for knowledge that is not initially present in ordinary life. What is particularly important for us today, however, is that we humans can in this way transcend our physical bodies—and even transcend the time in which our physical bodies live. There we arrive at ideas that are still difficult for most people today to imagine, but which must become an important link in the future development of humanity.

[ 10 ] And now something very strange becomes apparent when one does exercises not only on the one side—that of the life of the imagination—but also on the side of the life of the will. We humans live, I would say, just as Faust goes through life, saying: “I have only run through the world.” — We rush through the world. Certainly, we undergo a process of development between birth and death, from month to month, from year to year, from decade to decade; but we undergo this development by, so to speak, surrendering ourselves to external objectivity. Hand on heart, how many people do anything other than let themselves be carried along by life—whether in childhood, when adults raise them, or in later life and its fate? They become more perfect because the world makes them more perfect. But what else do most people do other than simply surrender themselves to the flow of life? However, this surrender to the flow of life does not lead one onto the path of Spiritual Science meant here. It is necessary to take on self-discipline through one’s own initiative, to actually work on oneself in such a way that one develops not only through the life that comes to one through fate, but also by resolving: “You want to instill this or that attitude in yourself.” Now one works on instilling this attitude in oneself. One can undertake such a task on a small scale or on a large one. But there is a great difference between merely allowing one’s own nature to be shaped by life, and taking the discipline of one’s own self into one’s own hands. Through this taking matters into one’s own hands, one comes to know the will in its effectiveness; for one learns to recognize what kinds of resistance stand in the way of this will when one now wishes to cultivate it through self-discipline. Oh, one learns all sorts of things in this way; above all, one strengthens one’s own spiritual and soul forces, and one will very soon notice—if one engages in such exercises of self-discipline (though one must practice them for years)—that inner forces then grow within one. These inner forces are of such a nature that we do not find them in the external world. They are of such a nature that we do not find them even in the ordinary life of the soul that we carried within us before our exercises. We discover these powers only when we engage in such inner practice. These powers are capable of something very specific: They are capable of assimilating into our own self—in a far more conscious way—the moral impulses that otherwise well up in the soul almost instinctively, indeterminately, and separately from the faculties of cognition. But please understand me correctly: not into the self that we develop within our body, but into that self which we develop when we step out of our body with our imagination in the manner described earlier. We cannot bring the true form of moral impulses into our physical body or into our sensory cognition; but we do bring in that which stands so isolated—so much so that Kant presented it in complete isolation as the categorical imperative—we bring it into our self that has separated itself from the body.

[ 11 ] And then what I described earlier as imagination, as mental images, becomes imbued with what might be called the objective power of moral impulses; it becomes imbued with moral inspiration. We now recognize that what wells up within us as moral imperatives, as moral ideals, is not rooted merely within us, but is rooted in the whole of the world. By stepping outside our physical selves, we learn to recognize that what does not appear in its true form within the physical organism—in this true form, which we perceive through imaginative contemplation—is an objective force of the world.

[ 12 ] Such a perspective can dawn on a person who, using their sound common sense, truly takes in what the spiritual researcher is able to convey based on their perception of the spiritual world. Anyone who allows themselves to be imbued with such a perspective will feel something quite special in contrast to what are today’s popular public lectures. It may sound strange when I say this, but I would like to say: Anyone who openly takes in this inspired content in the imagination—which corresponds to the moral forces present in human life—and creates a mental image of how such things can be understood today through spiritual knowledge would most likely think to themselves: if only such insight could take hold of people, at least as strongly as they are moved when they hear that X-rays or wireless telegraphy have been discovered! In view of what sinks into the soul of a spiritual researcher, one is tempted to say: it is very necessary for contemporary civilization that people come to value what can be found through spiritual means—for the strengthening of the human being—just as much as what can be useful and beneficial in external life.

[ 13 ] With this, I believe, we have touched upon an important challenge facing civilization today. The insights of Spiritual Science—and I’ll say it again—are not speculation; they are experiences. And the fact that so few people accept them today is because most allow themselves to be blinded by materialistic, natural-scientific views, let their own prejudices stand in their way, fail to apply their common sense, and therefore do not approach the matter in the right way

[ 14 ] can verify what the Spiritual Science scholar says. They always say: “We can’t see for ourselves what the Spiritual Science scholar says.” I’d like to know how many people who believe in Venus transits have ever actually seen one! I’d like to know how many people who say that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen have ever observed in a laboratory how one determines that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen, and so on. There is, after all, a logic of common sense. Through it, one can verify what the spiritual researcher says. I certainly cannot paint a mental image of illusions for those who use their common sense, nor can I spout fanciful nonsense to them, for they can use their common sense to discern whether I am speaking like a dreamer or whether I am speaking in logical terms, whether I am speaking like someone who builds one idea upon another, just as one does in the most exact of sciences. Anyone who acquires such sound human insight and a sound view of humanity will be able to distinguish whether they are dealing with a fantasist or with a person who, by knowing how to clothe their views in sound, logical forms—and who otherwise does not give the impression of being a dreamer—is to be taken seriously. We must make many decisions in life in this way; why should we not apply this approach to what is among the most important matters: insight into the order of the world? For those who cannot become spiritual researchers themselves—though to a certain extent everyone can become a spiritual researcher, as I have described in the aforementioned books—there is no other way to determine this; for Spiritual Science is something experienced, something that must be lived through, not something that is attained solely through logical conclusions.

[ 15 ] If one thus comes to know these worldviews—I would say, the combination of imagination and inspired morality—then one comes to know something else as well; one learns to recognize the nature of the contradiction between so-called natural causality, natural necessity, and the element in which human beings live in their freedom. For it is only within the realm of freedom that we can live in accordance with our moral impulses. We look out at the external natural world. The view of nature that has developed over the last three to four centuries is overwhelmingly influenced by what is called the necessary connection between what follows and what precedes—what is known as general causality. Thus, nature—including human existence—presents itself as if everything were governed by a natural necessity. But then our freedom would be in a dire state; then we could not act otherwise than as natural necessity compels us to act. Freedom would be an impossibility if the world were constituted as the scientific view of nature—which has become popular over the last three to four centuries—would have it.

[ 16 ] But once one has attained the perspective I have just described—the perspective of observation from outside the human body—then everything that is imbued with necessity presents itself, as it were, as a kind of natural body. And this natural body gives rise, in all manner of places, to a natural soul, a natural spirit. The natural body is, as it were, that which the emerging world has cast out and cast off; the natural spirit, the natural soul, is that which grows into the future.

[ 17 ] Just as, when I see a corpse before me, that corpse no longer has any possibility of following anything other than the necessities predetermined by the spiritual-soul element that once dwelt within it, so too does that which is corpse-like in external nature contain nothing within itself but impulses that are mere necessities. But everywhere, that which grows into the future is sprouting forth. Our natural science has become accustomed only to observing the physical body of nature; therefore, it sees only necessity everywhere. Spiritual Science must be added to this. It will see the life that is sprouting and growing everywhere.

[ 18 ] Thus, on the one hand, human beings are situated within natural causality; on the other hand, they are situated within that which also exists there but contains no causality—rather, it contains something that is identical to the inwardly experienced element of freedom. We experience this element of freedom, as I have described it in my *Philosophy of Freedom*, when we rise to a state of inwardly transparent, pure thinking—which is, in fact, an outflow of our volitional activity. You will find more detailed information in my *Philosophy of Freedom*.

[ 19 ] Thus, what we attain by creating for ourselves a means of knowledge outside the human body carries us into a world where the contrast between natural necessity and freedom becomes understandable. We come to know freedom itself in the world. We learn to feel at home in a world in which freedom exists. |

[ 20 ] When I describe something like this to you, I am not describing it to you merely to show you, so to speak, the content of what I am describing, but I would like to present what I am describing to you for the reason that I wish to show how a person enters a certain state of mind by imbuing themselves with insights drawn from such realms, by being enlivened by such insights.

[ 21 ] Just as we are filled with joy when we experience an extraordinarily joyful event for my sake, just as some people, after drinking a certain amount of Mosel wine, are completely filled with that mood that comes precisely from the Mosel wine, so too can a person’s entire state of mind be seized by something so truly spiritual that it permeates the person. When is a person’s state of mind seized by something that at first affects them only in their outer life, but then seizes them in a shadowy way? When, in the face of moral obligations, the categorical imperative or conscience stirs. But the content of this conscience now becomes clear, and it will also take on a different emotional nuance. For what has actually happened—whether the person is a spiritual researcher themselves, or whether they take in what the spiritual researcher offers through their common sense and incorporate it as insights of their soul—what has happened to this person? They have merged with something, have united with something that one can only come together with by stepping outside of oneself, by becoming estranged from oneself. You will find no better, more realistic definition of love and the feeling of love than that which can be described as the state of mind that overtakes one when one penetrates, free from the body, into the essence of the external world. While moral imperatives may otherwise seem like a compulsion, they can be cast in such a form that they appear imbued with the same mood that Spiritual Science insights must be imbued with. These moral impulses, these moral imperatives, can learn from what one experiences as a state of mind when absorbing Spiritual Science; this morality can be imbued with what must live in Spiritual Science in the highest sense: love.

[ 22 ] I attempted to demonstrate this once again in my *Philosophy of Freedom*: that love is the most noble motive for human moral action. Within the development of modern thought, these matters were once discussed more instinctively than is possible today, given how far we have advanced—if we so choose—in the Spiritual Science. Kant once spoke of the compelling duty, of what I would call the categorical imperative that tames human beings, which allows no interference from any form of sympathy. What one does out of moral duty, one does because one must. Kant therefore says: “Duty, you sublime, great name, which carries within you nothing that implies flattery or the like, but only the strictest submission.” — Schiller found this slavish submission to duty undignified. And he countered Kant’s argument with what he so beautifully and magnificently expressed in his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.”

[ 23 ] But we need only take a short epigram that Schiller coined against Kant’s rigorous, rigid concept of duty to find an important human contrast with regard to moral life: “I gladly serve my friends,” says Schiller, “but, alas, I do so out of inclination. And so it often gnaws at me that I am not virtuous.” He means that, in the Kantian sense, one should not serve one’s friends willingly, but rather submit to duty out of obedience. But what can truly make human life worthy of humanity is the fulfillment of what Goethe expresses so monumentally in just a few words: duty, where one loves what one commands of oneself. — But the disposition to love what one commands of oneself can only be kindled by that state of the human soul that arises through the acquisition of Spiritual Science.

[ 24 ] Thus, when one delves into Spiritual Science, it is not something that runs parallel to life—like preaching morality—but rather it involves a development of power within it that directly engages the moral will. There is a foundation for morality here. It is that which pours moral love into human beings. Spiritual Science does not merely preach morality; when taken in all its seriousness and with all its power, Spiritual Science establishes morality—not by offering words of morality, but by imparting the power for virtuous love and for loving virtue.

[ 25 ] Spiritual Science is not merely theory; it is life. And when one takes Spiritual Science to heart, it is not merely a matter of reflection; it is something like taking in life itself, just as one breathes. This is what Spiritual Science seeks to achieve for modern civilization in the moral realm—what it must achieve for it. For in ancient times—as I hinted at the day before yesterday—people also had a Spiritual Science, but an instinctive one. Where did the Spiritual Science of the ancient Eastern wisdom, which developed millennia ago, come from? It was a vague, dreamlike visualization of the world. It arose from human instincts, from human instinctual life. This Spiritual Science was instinctive. People looked into nature through a kind of clairvoyance. And this clairvoyance was connected to their blood, was connected to their outer physicality. But the moral impulses of that time were also connected to this blood, to this outer physicality. Both sprang from a single source. Humanity—as I have said repeatedly in recent days—is undergoing a process of development and believes that we could be like the people of millennia ago; that is tantamount to believing that a grown man could be the same as a child. We can no longer stand on the ground of the primitive clairvoyant arts of the ancient Orient or ancient Egypt. We have advanced to Galileanism, to Copernicanism. We have advanced to a way of seeing that arises from the intellect. In those ancient Eastern worldviews, the intellect was not yet developed. Consequently, however, we must also draw the impulses for our moral actions from the spirit, not from instinct. The worst thing today is that when people speak of ideals or life impulses, they always make everything absolute. When some party member or an enthusiastic theorist who wants to bring about the Thousand-Year Reich appears today, they say: “I want this or that for humanity,” and they imagine that what they are saying is good for humanity for all time to come and across the entire earth. That, they believe, is good in the most absolute sense. Anyone who truly looks into the life of evolving humanity knows that what is good, what is valid for a worldview, is always appropriate only for a certain age, and that one must understand the nature of that age. I have often said in previous lectures here: Spiritual Science, with an anthroposophical orientation, as I present it here, does not presume to be something absolute. It does, however, believe that it speaks from the heart of the present and the near future in such a way that it says to human souls what those human souls need in the present and in the near future. Yet the Spiritual Science knows very well that if, in five hundred years, someone were to speak again of the great mysteries of the world and of the affairs of humanity, they would speak in different tones, in a different way; for there is nothing absolute in this sense, nothing that lasts forever.

[ 26 ] It is precisely by being able to perceive life in its vitality and metamorphosis—even in the very midst of it—that we exert an influence on it. It is easier to establish absolute ideals in abstractions than to first get to know one’s own age and, from the very essence of that age, to express what is appropriate to it. Then, when—through taking in the impulses of Spiritual Science—a person becomes imbued, as has been described, with what comes to them from the spirit, they will know that as a human being they are spirit, they are soul; they will know that they live through the world as spirit and soul. And then they will address every other human being as spirit and soul. Something immense, one might say, will emerge when Spiritual Science becomes a way of life, a mindset that permeates human existence to such an extent that one approaches another human being with full consciousness as a riddle to be solved, because in every human being one gazes into the infinite, into spiritual depths and abysses.

[ 27 ] What emerges from this genuine perception of our fellow human beings as spirit and soul will give rise to social and moral forces that must form the foundation for a genuine approach to the burning social issues of our time. I cannot help but have the mental image of “those who truly grasp the essence of the social question and at the same time allow the current state of humanity to take its toll on them suffering a certain kind of spiritual anguish.” We live in a time when the social question demands to be resolved in a specific way. At the same time, we live in an age in which the advocates of social order are imbued with the most antisocial impulses, where the demand for a social organization of life appears to be the very antithesis of what lives in human souls as antisocial impulses. One may draw up the most beautiful programs; one may indulge in the most beautiful mental images about what should become of the solution to the social question—but a path to a solution can only be found when Spirit is seen, felt, and sensed among people, when people relate to one another in such a way that they respect, protect, honor, and love the Spirit and soul in their fellow human beings, not merely what one finds in one’s fellow human beings today.

[ 28 ] That is why, in my book *The Key Points of the Social Question*, I called for the separation of spiritual life from the rest of social life, so that this spiritual life can be grounded solely on its own foundations, independent of the state and of economic impulses, and can follow human nature in its purest form. Only such a free spiritual life will truly spread social impulses, social views, and attitudes among people. Social morality, too, depends on people taking into their inner being what they can become by following what is to be said based on the findings of Spiritual Science.

[ 29 ] And that in which human beings must find rest as part of a valuable and dignified whole—so that they do not feel like mere solitary wanderers in the world, but rather as members of the universal whole—the religious element—can, in the sense that modern human beings need it, likely only be kindled and stirred by that which is attained as a state of mind through the pursuit of Spiritual Science.

[ 30 ] Those events in the world order or in human evolution to which religious feelings point stand as facts. The Mystery of Golgotha, for example, stands as a fact. What took place in Palestine at the beginning of our era—the Incarnation of the Christ in Jesus—stands as a fact. One must distinguish this fact—this objective fact—from the way in which human beings approach the understanding and contemplation of such a fact. In the times when Christianity first spread, it was able to flow into the attitudes of humanity that had carried over from the ancient Orient; people understood what had happened in Palestine as the event of Golgotha through mental images that, in a certain sense, stemmed from ancient times and from primordial human worldviews. Throughout the centuries, those who were capable of it were honest and sincere in their understanding of the event at Golgotha through such mental images. But then came the time when Galileanism emerged, when Giordano Bruno, in such a remarkable way, transcended the limits of human perception by showing that what appears above as the blue firmament is merely what lives within us—the boundaries we ourselves set—while in a vast expanse of space, the stars exist in infinity. All that Copernicus brought—and all that has been brought into the modern worldview of the external world by the spirits who have lived up to the present day—came to pass. During this time, people have inwardly become accustomed to a different way of viewing the world than the one through which Christianity was first understood. During this time, a new relationship must also be established with the religious foundations of human development. It is not a matter of undermining the facts that underlie the religious development of humanity. Rather, it is a matter of appealing to the modern human conscience today in such a way that people of the present age can understand the Christ event from the state of their souls, just as they must.

[ 31 ] Those who are most sincere and reverent in their approach to religion are those who say: a new path must also be sought on religious ground to the old truths. Spiritual Science, with an anthroposophical orientation, provides the best preparation for understanding Christianity or other religious teachings in a modern way. Those who do not admit this are not sincere in their religious life, for they wish to preserve paths to the foundations of religious life that people today—even if they otherwise adhere to the views of their time—cannot uphold.

[ 32 ] In recent times, we have come to embrace materialism. Certainly, various kinds of people have become the driving forces behind materialism; but among these people are also those who have preserved certain old ways of life in the course of human development—ways of life that amounted to granting the creeds a monopoly on everything that can be said about the spirit and the soul. Because the religious denominations alone had the right to decide what one must believe about the spirit and the soul, this led to natural science conducting its research without the spirit. Natural science today believes it has taken its current form precisely because that is how it must be in scientific inquiry—that one must set aside the spirit. Oh no, natural science has become this way because in earlier times it was forbidden to investigate nature with the spirit, for the Church had the final say on matters of the spirit and the soul. And today, these habits are perpetuated and, moreover, trumpeted as unbiased scientific judgment.

[ 33 ] One need only look at those researchers who deserve the highest praise in the spirit of materialist research—such as the Jesuit priest and ant researcher Wasmann, an outstanding materialist researcher in the field of natural science—a researcher who, however, does not allow even a shred of spirit to flow into his work from what constitutes dogma. Spirit and soul must be left out. Therefore: external science is materialistic. The adherents of confessional religions are, by no small measure, the founders of modern materialism. As paradoxical as this may sound today, it is true: because the Church did not permit the spirit to be brought into the study of nature, natural science has become spiritless. The others have merely adopted this as a habit. Anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science must bring the spirit back into the study of nature. I would like to say once more: This Spiritual Science is not based on the premise that the spirit should only make occasional stopovers or brief, fleeting visits—as in materialism—so that human beings can convince themselves that a spirit exists—no, this Spiritual Science seeks to show that in the small and the large, in all that is material, the spirit is present always and everywhere, and that one can trace the spirit always and everywhere. But because anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science investigates the spirit always and everywhere within the most material of phenomena, it demonstrates that there is no such thing as a material realm independent of the spirit, just as there is no such thing as ice in water that exists independently—ice is transformed water, water that has cooled; matter is spirit, solidified. One need only explain this in detail in the proper way. By showing how, wherever there is matter and wherever there is external life, the Spirit reigns and leads human beings to connect with the reigning Spirit, anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science continues to provide the impetus for a genuine deepening of religious life even today.

[ 34 ] But one does experience all sorts of things in this field. Look, here is an account from a man who is, in fact, well-meaning. Someone says: “I cannot verify the Spiritual Science as presented by Steiner; it may contain truths, but it should be kept entirely separate from any religious life, for religious life must, apart from all knowledge, represent a direct relationship, a direct unity between the human being and God.” And now this person says something very curious: “In our time, we have too much religious interest, too much religious experience; people just always want to experience something religious. They want to have religious interest. None of that is needed in religion. In religion, all that is needed is the direct unity of the human being with God. Away with all religious interest, away with all religious experience,” says this churchman.

[ 35 ] Well, an open-minded person today must acknowledge that even if people still yearn for an unclear religious experience, even if they still awaken an unclear religious interest within themselves, this is precisely the beginning of that longing to truly find a path—as I have just described to you—into the religious realm. Anyone who is honest and sincere about religious life should embrace that impulse of religious interest and religious experience. Instead, the churchman frowns upon religious experience and religious interest. People today ask: Where is true religious understanding—among those who speak this way, or among those who try to speak as I have spoken to you today? Of course, one must also recognize people by their fruits.

[ 36 ] A man who is a clergyman—but also a university professor—recently attempted, in a lecture, to refute the anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. Two young friends of mine attended this lecture, and they were able to speak during the discussion afterward. Since the context called for it, these two young people—who had, however, taken the impulses of Spiritual Science to heart—cited passages from the Bible to demonstrate how what is written in the Bible, when properly understood, agrees with what anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science has to say in this area. And then the chairman, who was a true man of the church, could think of no other way to respond than to say at one point: “Here Christ is mistaken!” To which it could be replied: “So you believe in a God who makes mistakes!” What a fine religious attitude. It bears strange fruit today. A religious attitude is genuine only when it translates into a truly moral life. There, however, one has strange experiences. I now find that pretty much the most common thing that can be said—as expressed in a whole series of German newspapers regarding the social consequences of this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science—is a lie from beginning to end. But people today find it compatible with morality—even in an age when the following can happen, so to speak, as a moral consequence of religious practice. Recently, in a certain city, a cathedral canon—that is, a Catholic clergyman—gave a lecture on this Spiritual Science represented here, and at the end he said: “Find out for yourselves from the opposing writings what kind of worldview this man holds, for you must not read his own writings or those of his followers.” The Pope has, in fact, forbidden Catholics from reading them.

[ 37 ] The recommendation to learn something from the most malicious, from the most malevolent opposing writings—that is the moral consequence of many contemporary religious practices. No wonder that what we have experienced over the past five years has poured out across the world from such depths of life. Or was it not rather a surfacing of lies and misanthropy and much else that was—and still is—rooted in the depths of the human soul? Shouldn’t the reality we have experienced prompt us to ask ourselves in all seriousness whether a fundamental re-education is necessary? Hasn’t something akin to world-historical immorality come to the surface of world history in the present? Or is it a religious mindset that has run its course in the world over the past five years? The attitudes that have not had centuries—indeed, millennia—to work toward the betterment of humanity are now bearing fruit! Nineteenth-century theology knows nothing more of the spirituality of the event at Golgotha. This spirituality—this divine Christ in the man Jesus—will be rediscovered through the path of anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. From there, he will once again enter into human souls to inspire them not merely to preach morality, but to establish within them the right instinctive drive, the right impulse for moral action and work in the world. Is renewal and reconstruction not clearly necessary? Does this necessity not become apparent when one considers the events of the last five to six years? Do we not see there the fruits of what has been lying dormant beneath the surface for centuries and has now come to the surface? Should this not be proof that thorough religious and moral work is necessary?

[ 38 ] Anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science would like to contribute to this work, the necessity of which any impartial person must acknowledge today, unless they are spiritually asleep in the midst of the great events of our time. And those who wish to criticize it or condemn it should first ask themselves this fundamental question: Does it sincerely wish to contribute to the true progress of humanity? — And once they have conscientiously informed themselves about it, so that they have been able to form a judgment, only then will it become clear to what extent this anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science has a right to contribute. For it wishes to contribute honestly and sincerely to the necessary progress, to the necessary rethinking and relearning of humanity.