The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. Evil Spirits and Spirits in the Present and for the Future

[ 1 ] Among the somewhat authoritative assessments that have been made in recent times regarding today’s chaotic world situation, one of the most significant is undoubtedly that of the Englishman John Maynard Keynes, who, in his book *The Economic Consequences of the Treaty of Versailles*, offered such an assessment of the current general world situation. Keynes was undoubtedly called upon to form such an assessment due to his external circumstances as well. During the war, he was assigned to the British Treasury and was in a position—naturally based on the information available to him there—to establish a foundation for such an assessment. On the other hand, he was among the delegates and staff members involved in the Treaty of Versailles itself. However, he resigned from this position as early as June 1919. And this resignation, as well as the conclusions he reaches in his book on the economic consequences of the peace treaty, are precisely what shed significant light on the way this figure views the current world situation. Keynes, too, was among those who, at first—probably even as they made their way to Versailles—likely still saw in Woodrow Wilson, the figure who had come over from America and been received with such great glory, something of a prophet and organizer of the current world situation. He has thoroughly abandoned this view. And anyone who, like me, even in the days when Woodrow Wilson was virtually proclaimed a liberator of the world by a vast crowd—I, too, from this very place, have done so —here in Switzerland, I have openly expressed the view that Woodrow Wilson’s empty and abstract arguments and his manifestos can contribute nothing to a genuine rebuilding of the destroyed civilization—may well point today to such a definitive judgment. In his book, Keynes portrays the man—as it were—with intense vividness, one might say. He describes how Woodrow Wilson arrives in Versailles, how he participates in the meetings, how his thinking is slow, how he, so to speak, lagged behind in everything. While the others are already far ahead in their assessment of things, he is still far behind on something that was mentioned five, six, or ten sentences ago—truly a man who suffers from the slowness of his thinking. Much else is vividly described with regard to the personality of this supposed liberator of the world.

[ 2 ] But Keynes also addresses the other leading figures who played a role in this peace settlement—and he does so forcefully. He describes Clemenceau as a man who has essentially slept through the entire development of European society since the 1870s, and who, in this peace settlement, wanted nothing more than to, in a sense, turn the clock back to the state of affairs that existed within Europe in the 1870s. And he then describes, no less vividly and vividly, how Lloyd George is actually superior to everyone else, how he possesses a certain instinct for sensing what is being thought, done, and intended by the figures around him. Yet one can see from all this how difficult it is today—even for a perceptive observer like Keynes—to gradually form a judgment under the weight of the facts. This is precisely what contributes more and more to the chaos of our current world situation: that the very leaders who have dealt with the issues brought to the surface by public life in recent decades are simply not up to the great demands of the present age. This is precisely what emerges from the book in question and its assessment. It becomes clear from this that all the destructive forces at work in the world cannot be brought under any kind of rational framework by those who have been called to leadership precisely through public life. And since Keynes saw that nothing could possibly come out of this conference that would lead to a wholesome and prosperous further development of European civilization, he resigned his office right at the outset of the negotiations. And the way in which he now constructs his judgment is extraordinarily significant. And in fact, what is needed today is to build something real upon judgments that rest on such foundations. Keynes’s judgment is, I would say, calculated. Only those individuals who possess a certain sense and instinct for calculating the future with complete objectivity—based on the forces still available—can truly have a say in the present. There is therefore a special reason to listen to them, because by far the greatest number of judgments today are made on the basis of some kind of nationalistic-chauvinistic or other prejudices, while the number of those who allow their judgment to be dictated objectively by the language of the facts themselves is small. Keynes is among them. He is surveying what might emerge—above all in economic terms—from what the three leading figures mentioned above have concocted in Versailles, and what must indeed gradually come to pass in the economic life of European civilization if nothing else occurs except that the forces brought to bear in Versailles at that time continue to take effect. And Keynes calculates—I say this explicitly and emphasize it very strongly—Keynes calculates that nothing other than the economic ruin of Europe can result from this peace treaty. Naturally, the economic ruin of Europe must be accompanied by its intellectual and political ruin.

[ 3 ] The book on the economic consequences of the Treaty of Versailles is interesting enough simply because of its content. But in a certain respect, it becomes even more interesting because of its conclusion. In this conclusion, Keynes admits quite openly that he actually has no idea what needs to be done or what we should aim for in order to emerge from the chaos into which we are entering. And in making this admission, he says something truly extraordinary; he sums it up meaningfully in a single sentence. He says that one can only hope that some salvation for European civilization will come from the convergence of all relevant forces into a new state of mind and new imaginations.

[ 4 ] Ladies and gentlemen, these are the words of a man who has been intimately involved in these circumstances, who was called upon to play a part, and who, through his analysis, demonstrates that he is a person capable of making sober assessments on the broadest scale. A new state of mind, a pooling of all forces toward a new perspective on the Powers at work in humanity’s public life—where are these to be found? How can they be attained?

[ 5 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, one need only be a little open-minded to admit that the first step must be this: to explore, with complete impartiality, the essence of contemporary public life; to ask oneself: What, in fact, are the active forces in this contemporary public life? In earlier lectures that I had the honor of delivering here, I pointed out what kind of historical analysis is necessary to identify the truly effective forces in human life. Above all, one must look for certain symptoms that vividly reveal what is at work in the depths of human development. And that is why, in order to highlight what is perhaps one of the most prominent forces that have contributed to the work of destruction, I would like to point specifically to the worldview that underlies the present day—albeit as it has taken shape over the course of the last three to four centuries. Not that I wish to give the impression that a worldview conceived in the secluded study of a solitary thinker would somehow go out and influence every single soul, or that public affairs arise, as it were, from such a worldview. That is certainly not the case. But just as public affairs arise from the will, from feeling, from the life of the soul, and from the thoughts that constitute the total constitution of the human being, so too does the worldview arise from this total constitution of human life—namely, the human soul. And one can see, as if through a symptom, what the people of an era are like in all their activities, in all their actions, when one, so to speak, takes the symptom of worldview into account, insofar as one wishes to point to the worldviews that are currently dominant and have come to the fore. This prevailing worldview is characterized, in particular, by the fact that everything that has not entered our worldview through tradition from ancient times has developed from the foundation of natural science, which seeks to base its knowledge solely on external, material observation. What, upon deeper reflection, does this natural-scientific worldview reveal?

[ 6 ] Perhaps only those who can admire it are truly capable of judging it correctly. And in earlier lectures, I have certainly expressed my admiration for the scientific worldview strongly enough. The remarks I am making here are not intended to be driven by any desire to oppose this scientific worldview, which is certainly extraordinarily justified within its own field. This scientific worldview has led to magnificent achievements for humanity, particularly in its technical and economic consequences. But let us suppose that there were today some mind—which is hardly possible anymore, first because of the vast scope of scientific knowledge and second because of its specialization—but let us suppose there were today a mind that encompassed the entire scope of the scientific worldview—from mathematics and mechanics all the way up to biology and even to what can be gained beyond biology for the study of the human soul: such a mind would undoubtedly be able to gain significant insights into certain areas of natural creation and natural existence. However, if such a mind were to pose the all-encompassing question of humanity with complete clarity: What is man, actually, in his very essence and in his entire relationship to the world? — then precisely the one who stands firmly on the ground of natural science, who is able to assess the scope of scientific knowledge correctly, would have to say: the scientific worldview has nothing to say in answer to these questions about the human being and about humanity’s relationship to the rest of the cosmos. This question remains unanswered even by the most recent findings of physical science. There are already magnificent insights into how human beings have evolved, in terms of external physical development, from lower, animal-like forms to their present human form. But precisely these insights have led humanity far astray regarding what human beings are in their relationship to spiritual worlds. Anyone who cannot admit this impartially will also be unable to form a judgment regarding the inner impulses that drive present-day humanity as it organizes public affairs or even dismantles public institutions. For even if we are not always conscious of what we consciously think about the nature of the human being and his place in the world, even if we are not always conscious of the thoughts we harbor in this regard—these thoughts, however unconscious or instinctive they may be—they influence our feelings and our decisions. They therefore become the creators of all public, intellectual, political, and economic life. Anyone who simply wishes to view things correctly will come to realize that economic relationships—since they are, after all, created by human beings, who in turn act out of the impulses of their souls—are, like all other economic relationships in the world, a reflection of what human beings are capable of feeling about themselves and their relationship to the world. Now we must say: the scientific worldview has become all-encompassing regarding everything that is extra-human. It is unable to provide an answer regarding human beings themselves. It is powerful when information is sought about the realms that lie below the human level. But how do the insights we gain as human beings relate to what we are meant to infuse into social life—and indeed into human coexistence, both between individuals and within groups—from our ideas and our inner soul impulses? Is it possible to receive any impulses from those realms that lie outside of human beings for human activity and human coexistence? The best way to see that this is not possible is to observe the relationship between human beings and language.

[ 7 ] Essentially, language encompasses everything that connects one person to another. Through language, we also shape economic life. Through language, we establish external political and intellectual relationships. Now there is something most remarkable that, unfortunately, is not often enough examined in depth. When we attempt to apply our language to scientific knowledge, we can never really do anything other than take the words, the phrases—indeed, everything through which we express the laws of nature, those very laws we now admire so much as the great progress of modern humanity— we can do nothing other than extend to nature what we have formed in words as expressions of inner states of the soul or of human conditions. Subtle minds like Goethe noticed this. That is why Goethe said: “Human beings do not realize at all how anthropomorphic they are.” — When we say, “One elastic sphere strikes another,” and from this we derive the laws of elastic collision in physics, we are essentially proceeding from the meaning we ascribe to the word “collision” as we experience it in our own bodies. And anyone who is truly willing to investigate will see that everything that can be applied at all from language to the natural sciences—which deal with the non-human—must be derived from human experience.

[ 8 ] How, then, did our language come to have meaning?—It would have had very little meaning if we could only imitate the mooing of a cow and other animal sounds. How, then, did our language come to have meaning? Anyone who can observe the course of human development with an open mind will find that all the meaning in language stems from the fact that humanity, in times that certainly predate our civilization, possessed a certain instinctive-spiritual insight—I say: an instinctive-spiritual insight—connected to the natural, elemental emotions that arise in the human soul. Through the impulses of the will and through pictorial mental images—which found their full expression in myth and mythology—human beings gained spiritual insights, and from these spiritual insights they formed the content of the soul, which then became the content of their language in more recent times—a period distinguished by the fact that, in a certain sense, it looked down upon what instinctive spiritual faculties had given to people of an earlier era. In this modern era, in which we have grown great primarily in the realm of the natural sciences, our words have not acquired any new content. And one thing is historically significant, particularly in the last two to four centuries: our language—all the languages of our civilized world—have lost their old content. No new content could be poured into them, because that which cannot provide such content—mere knowledge of nature—is precisely what has come to dominate in this era. And during the period that we must otherwise admire so much, what took place was what might be called the emptying of civilized languages of their old spiritual content.

[ 9 ] What became of the civilized languages when they lost their ancient instinctive content and the natural sciences could not provide them with a new one? — They became what has now reached a certain peak in the present. They became what developed into empty rhetoric—and truly, not something that would make sense only within a limited sphere—but rather, what is referred to today as exercising world domination when one speaks of empty rhetoric. And the four or five terrifying years we have left behind have revealed the world domination of the phrase at its zenith. We are living today, quite literally, under the world domination of the phrase. What remedy is there against this world domination of the phrase? Solely the acquisition of a new spiritual content, a conscious spiritual content. The old spiritual content, acquired instinctively by earlier humanity, which made language the sum of words rather than phrases—that is gone; humanity, truly rooted in the present, can no longer believe in it. A new, conscious spiritual content must be attained.

[ 10 ] That, my esteemed audience, is what the anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science—represented by the Dornach Building—consciously strives to achieve: to gain conscious spiritual knowledge alongside the scientific understanding that provides such magnificent insights into all that is beyond the human—to gain, with the same clarity of thought, logical rigor, and scientific conscientiousness, spiritual knowledge that can now provide answers to the great questions concerning the nature of the human being and the human being’s place in the rest of the cosmos. However, one must admit—before one can proceed to such knowledge—that while the external scientific method must indeed be emulated in its conscientiousness by all forms of knowledge today, it cannot in and of itself lead to spiritual knowledge. To attain spiritual knowledge, it is necessary for people today, above all, to bring to bear those inner capacities that are to develop precisely on the foundation of the anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science referred to here. I have described how human beings can arrive at such insights through their own inner life, for example in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* and in the second part of my *The Secret Science*. However, one thing is necessary—as I have already emphasized here on several occasions—one thing is necessary for human beings, to which they yield only with the greatest reluctance today. What is necessary is what I would like to call intellectual humility. After all, modern human beings are so proud of their intellectual development. Intellectual humility only comes into play when one says to oneself, for example: Suppose one were to hand a five-year-old child a volume of Goethe’s poetry. What will the child do with that volume of Goethe’s poetic works? It will probably tear it up or play with it. It will certainly not derive from the volume of Goethe’s poetry what an adult can derive from it—and what is, in fact, the very purpose for which the volume of Goethe’s poetry is intended. The child’s abilities must first be gradually cultivated so that they can enable the child to allow the volume of Goethe’s poetry to affect them in the proper way. Little attention is paid to this development of a child’s abilities in human life today. But the fact is that a person, once an adult and equipped only with the abilities that can be acquired in today’s normal, external, sensory human life, might then stand before the world itself just as a five-year-old child stands before the volume of Goethe’s lyric poems—that is, that such a person must first develop through actively engaging their own soul capacities in order to draw from what lies before him in the world, something comparable to what the child, only when he has grown up, draws from the volume of Goethe’s lyric poems—that is, what he does with the volume of Goethe’s lyric poems at the age of twenty-five—yes, to admit this is something the human being of the present, in his intellectual arrogance, is unwilling to do. But above all, it must be emphasized that true knowledge of the human being—the ultimate fulfillment of the Apollonian maxim “Know thyself”—necessitates taking the human soul’s faculties into one’s own hands. How this is possible in detail will be the subject of tomorrow’s lecture.

[ 11 ] Today I simply wish to emphasize in general terms that it is indeed possible for a person, through a certain approach to thinking—which I will describe tomorrow—to strengthen this thinking so that it no longer drifts passively along with phenomena, but rather is seized from within as if by a will, becomes active, grows more intense, and manifests itself in such a way that the person knows through inner experience in direct perception: now thinking has become a spiritual-psychic act of perception. Whereas with ordinary thinking one is dependent on one’s thinking apparatus, on one’s body, on the nervous system—and whereas, precisely when one develops one’s thinking to some extent, one sees through this dependence clearly—one also knows that when thinking strengthens itself through the appropriate methods described in the books mentioned, it becomes free from the body; it becomes an activity that is no longer guided by the instrument of the body. Certain meditations, which one engages in with the same objectivity as one conducts an experiment in a chemistry laboratory or observes the stars at an observatory, strengthen this thinking and free it from the body as an instrument. It is only when this thinking is to be used for a genuine view of the world that self-discipline of the will must come into play. When self-discipline of the will, combined with inner meditation, develops into a form of thinking imbued with the will and independent of the body, only then does spiritual knowledge arise—conscious spiritual knowledge—which in turn can give human beings what instinctive spiritual knowledge once gave them: content for their speech, content for language. In order for human beings to feel within themselves the impulse to give content to their language from within themselves, human development, in a certain sense, came to a standstill; the old instinctive spiritual insight ceased, and external knowledge of nature took its place—which cannot give language any content. But human beings must recognize, from the signs of the present, that through conscious inner soul work, through the development of their thinking into spiritual vision, and that only through this can that which once again gives our language content come into being—that which can put an end to the world domination of empty phrases.

[ 12 ] But such a realization also brings the insight that, as we observe the external world with our senses, we grow into it over the course of our lives between birth and death; that these external observations cannot provide us with what is truly spiritual; that this—the truly spiritual content—is carried into the world by us; that we bring it with us ourselves as we descend from spiritual worlds — as I said, we will speak more precisely about these things tomorrow — we descend through birth into this physical world; that when we speak of spiritual content, we must look to what human beings bring with them, what they develop little by little, year after year, solely through the instrument of their bodies. It is not what approaches us in outer experience as an ever-richer content of the world that brings the spirit into reality, but rather what we, as human individualities, bring into the world through our birth. People today are simply afraid of what the human being himself brings into the world. They fear it because they believe that if a person were to assert it, it would lead to fantasy. Yet there are certainly methods to avoid such fantasy. But anyone who sees through the fact that, fundamentally, all spiritual content must come from human individualities will readily admit that a fruitful development of this spiritual life can only come about if human beings are given the full scope for human development, if they are not dependent, in their spiritual development and in the expressions and revelations of their spirit, on any external powers that serve only here in the physical world. For with the rise of pure scientific knowledge—that knowledge which derives its information solely from the non-human realm—there has also arisen, as an organic corollary, the dependence of spiritual life, not on what a person brings into the world at birth, but on what external political life dictates, on what economic life makes of the human being. At the very same time that the natural sciences have grown in prominence, we have witnessed the omnipotence of the state reach its peak as the state extends its tentacles over everything that constitutes spiritual life; it has begun to organize school life, while economic life, on the other hand, has become the determining factor in shaping the personalities of those who were able to enter this spiritual realm. But this has gone hand in hand with the fact that human beings have lost the ability to draw spiritual content from within themselves and to imbue their words with spiritual content. Consequently, in the age of the natural sciences, spiritual life has become dependent on political and economic powers, and under this influence, the global dominance of empty rhetoric has emerged.

[ 13 ] This is the first link in the chain of present-day organizations working toward destruction: the world domination of empty rhetoric, of speech devoid of substance. If a person is unable to imbue words with spiritual substance—which he draws directly from his connection to the spiritual world—then words must become mere phrases; they must gradually take such root within the person that he is, so to speak, merely carried along by the mechanisms of language. And, unfortunately, we see this emerging all too clearly in recent times: that which bursts forth with primal force from the spiritual and soulful innermost being of the human being—that which, in a sense, merely discharges itself through language—is disappearing. Life within the mechanisms of language has become increasingly intense, reaching its peak in recent years. Because people, in speaking to one another across the civilized world—speaking directly or indirectly, driven by pressure that was, in essence, about nothing—and because words played out solely within their own mechanisms, this gave rise to the chaotic forces driving toward destruction.

[ 14 ] I am well aware that there is little inclination today to delve into these intimate aspects of human life when discussing the causes of the current chaos. But no one will gain a clear understanding or form clear judgments about these causes unless they are willing to explore these intimate aspects of human inner life. Nor will harmony replace chaos in public affairs until, through spiritual deepening and through genuine Spiritual Science, the urge arises once again within people to give their words full meaning. For whatever first emerges in the realm of science—whatever is born there—forces its way into the rest of our way of life and sets the tone in public life. And anyone with a keen eye for observing life can see how, in everyday life, what ultimately plays out are merely the final consequences of what is, in the end, the defining characteristic of the realm where worldviews are formed. Admittedly, people have long since ceased to properly grasp the connections that arise there. Here in Switzerland, a boisterous spirit once made his presence felt—I explicitly call him a boisterous spirit so that you can see I’m not overestimating him: Johannes Scherr. Through his boisterous tone and judgment, he spoiled many things, though there were certainly sound ideas in what he had to say publicly. In the 1960s and 1970s, based on a truly penetrating observation of historical and social life, he made a very significant assessment. He said: If the materialistic evil spirit—which relies solely on what human beings perceive and experience in the external world—continues to prevail, it will also permeate everything human beings do in external public affairs; it will enter into economic and financial life, and a social structure will develop that will ultimately lead one to say: ‘Nonsense, you have triumphed!’

[ 15 ] Ladies and gentlemen! People don’t like to listen to such individuals. This judgment by Johannes Scherr, too, was ignored. But now, fifty years later, it must be said to anyone who looks closely at everything connected with the so-called World War catastrophe: The words of this observer of the world, Johannes Scherr, which culminated in the sentence, “You will have to say: Nonsense, you have triumphed”—those words have come true! For this Johannes Scherr saw clearly how that which is spirit has gradually been squeezed out of human life, how the materialistic anti-spirit has taken the place of the spirit, and he was able to turn this observation into a true prophecy. The world simply does not know that what is at first merely a worldview, merely a theory, ultimately becomes—after two generations—a moral, public force, an action. Oh, one should be much, much more attuned to certain connections in the world! One should form a much more thorough judgment, a realistic judgment, about certain things!

[ 16 ] A philosopher named Avenarius also once worked here. He is a kindred spirit of Mach, who, in turn, had a student working here in Zurich quite recently. These people have drawn the ideological conclusions from the prevailing materialistic “unspirit”—I call it “unspirit” because mere knowledge of nature cannot imbue our language with any substantial content. They—the philosophers, Avenarius and so on—have drawn the ideological conclusions from the materialistic “unspirit” of the age. The philosophy they have arrived at, and the entire manner in which people like Avenarius conducted themselves, is thoroughly bourgeois. Naturally, no one would look at these people and see them as anything other than upstanding citizens. But today we should take note of something else. Today we should examine the question based on the facts: What has become of the political philosophy of Lenin and Trotsky? What is the political philosophy of the Bolsheviks? — It is that of Avenarius, that of Mach! There is not merely the temporal connection that a number of these people studied here in Zurich; there is the inner factual connection that what lives in human souls as a worldview in one generation becomes action in the third generation. And in these actions one can see the causes at work in the world. But humanity today wants only abstract logical judgments and fails to understand that something deduced logically is not yet a factual judgment or a factual conclusion; that one must look deeply with true spiritual insight into the real context, into the context of reality, and then the seemingly most dissimilar thing—Avenarius’s bourgeois worldview, which, however, arose from materialistic unspirituality—comes to life again deep within that which fundamentally destroys all human society, that which leads to the gravediggers of the entire European civilization.

[ 17 ] This also implies that this “world domination” of the phrase is not something that applies only to a narrow sphere. It is something that, as a fundamental force, permeates our entire public life, above all in the realm of the spirit. And there will be no salvation until spiritual life emancipates itself from what has emerged as the very foundation of this rhetoric—until spiritual life emancipates itself from external political or legal life, from economic life, and is built solely upon that which the spirit itself brings forth from within—that is, that which the individual human being produces from what he brings with him at birth from the spiritual world into the sensory world. Arriving at spiritual content is the only way to overcome the world domination of empty rhetoric. And there is something else intimately linked to empty rhetoric. Because empty rhetoric does not connect the word with its content, the word very easily becomes a vehicle for lies in the age of empty rhetoric. And there is a direct path from empty rhetoric to lies. Hence, too, the dominance, the triumphant march of the lie over the past four to five years—which, in turn, plays such a significant role in the process of destruction we are heading toward, unless the spirit is called to take the place of the unspirit!

[ 18 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is in one area of public life—the realm of intellectual life. But there are other spheres as well. All of them, however, are dependent in a certain sense on spiritual life. If spiritual life is dominated by empty phrases and meaningless speech, then what arises from this speech—namely, what can be learned in the context of speech within the social community—is not suited to finding expression in feelings and emotions. But what develops in the feelings and sensibilities of social life—what is kindled in the interaction between people as one person empathizes with another—that is custom; that is what emerges from the social community to become established custom. And only from this customary practice can law develop historically. But this law can develop only if empty phrases do not intrude into the sensations that arise in the interaction between people, if the word filled with substance—speech carried by thought—becomes integrated into these sensations. And in the age of empty phrases, the feelings between people cannot be kindled in the proper way; only an external relationship between people can result. The consequence, therefore, is that in an age when empty rhetoric develops in the realm of social spiritual life, conventions develop in the realm of social feeling in place of the immediate, substantive relationship between people—namely, the empty behavior of one person toward another, which can at best be regulated by external treaties—so that even among nations there is a frenzy over treaties, because people fail to achieve the elementary expression of what can be revealed from person to person. This age of convention renders a second sphere of our public life equally devoid of substance: it desolates human coexistence, just as empty rhetoric desolates intellectual life and the life of the soul.

[ 19 ] This is what leads to the mere external human being, not to the law born from within the human being. For this law can only be kindled when the thought-borne word flows from the head to the heart. Just as true law—which can flourish only in social life—belongs to the true spiritual life, which is filled with substantial spirit, so convention belongs to the spiritual life that exists in mere rhetoric. With this, we have characterized two spheres of our public life in the present.

[ 20 ] The third realm from which public life arises is human volition. Conscious volition—a volition that places a person within human society in such a way that this person brings into society something that flows from his or her very human nature—such volition cannot come about unless it is driven by genuine, substantial, spiritual content. Phrases are unsuitable for evoking a truly conscious will. Just as spiritual life becomes mere phraseology when it becomes dependent on external political or legal life, dependent on external economic life—just as legal life itself dissolves into convention when it can be sustained only by phraseology— then the realm of economic life—the realm of external human coexistence—is sustained not by genuine lived practice but by mere routine, when volition is not driven by the spirit. Alongside empty phrases, alongside convention, we therefore see routine emerging everywhere in the era from which our present has developed—in the realm of life, in the realm of the external representation of life, and in the realm of economic life.

[ 21 ] What this means is: our economic life is dominated by routine— this may become clear when I say: A realistic examination of our public life has shown that, in the realm of economic life, the chaos that currently prevails—where everyone seeks to acquire solely out of selfishness and no one understands the context in which their own production fits within the production of society as a whole—must come to an end. Only when we realize that this economic life, which has gradually descended into chaos, can be restored to health only by the various professional and social spheres associating with one another—so that people with common interests in different professions truly interconnect— so that associations arise from one profession to another, that associations arise between the consumers of a profession and the producers of that profession—in short, that our economic life acquires a structure in which producers, organizing themselves internally, join forces with their consumers—so that the individual, whether consuming or producing within a profession, can see how his consumption and production fit into some economic cycle—only when people live within such an organization, when our economic life is founded on association, only then does the individual see how he contributes to the economic process through what he produces or how he participates through what he consumes. Then the individual not only knows how to handle this or that within some routine of life; he also knows that what he does is part of the overall process of humanity’s economic life. Then they act out of different motivations. Then what they do is not governed by a superficial routine, but by a way of life that exists only when one can connect an idea to it, when one places oneself economically within the overall organism of humanity. Because empty rhetoric has taken hold in life, because convention has taken hold in human interaction, people have not found the opportunity to associate with one another in this way; as a result, they have been turned away from the tasks before them and have become mere routine-followers. And routine has spread from individual mechanical actions to the mechanisms of our entire organization and our entire financial system. The era filled with phrases gave way to the era of the routine workers. And the routine workers brought about that catastrophe which, on the surface, manifests itself in this or that way, but which, in its depths, reveals causes that lie in the realm that has just been characterized.

[ 22 ] If we examine, with an open mind and free from sympathy or antipathy, what dominates life today, we must conclude: in the realm of intellectual life, it is empty rhetoric; in the realm of legal life, it is convention; and in the realm of economic life, it is routine. Only those forces—which I shall take the liberty of describing tomorrow—can lead to salvation; that is, when empty rhetoric is replaced by speech imbued with substantial spirit and contemplated spirit, which can arise only from an intellectual life grounded in itself, which brings forth what the human being must bring into external life—a spiritual life that does not seek to dominate this external life in the same way that the laws of nature, derived from external experience, do. In place of the convention of what is externally established, there must come the living interplay that can arise when, on a strictly democratic foundation, all people who have come of age stand up for what are generally human affairs—that which a person does not bring with them at birth, but which can only develop through the human coexistence of those who have come of age. True life practice can emerge from the routine that clings to transitory economic objects only if human beings, through words free of clichés and filled with thought, arrive at a worldview in which they know: he must establish associations that bear witness to and reveal that what is accomplished on the basis of economic life is more than what is produced by machines—that it is a link in the overall process of humanity’s development on Earth. One will not attain this by standing as a routine worker at one’s machine, in one’s factory, in one’s bank, or anywhere else; one will attain it only when the threads of association extend from one person to another, when one learns from another how one’s consumption and production are connected to the social organization closest to one. Then, in the way these people work together—in these associations—it will become evident that they are establishing something in their economic life that is more than what a person can have in economic life alone. Human beings must engage in economic activity, but with their entire being they rise above it—from the transitory to the eternal. And they will learn from their economic life that, precisely by becoming practitioners here in life, they have a school in practice whose results they can carry with them even beyond death.

[ 23 ] Thus, an observation of contemporary life that is more attuned to the spirit—specifically of the three most characteristic spheres of influence: that of phraseology, that of convention, and that of routine—reveals the necessity of working toward a threefold social order, toward a revitalization of our spiritual life through its independence; toward a revitalization of our legal life, which can only be liberated from convention when a living democratic interaction takes place among all people who have attained maturity; and toward a revitalization of economic life, in which the independence of economic life overcomes routine in favor of a genuine way of living. But this can only happen when people unite in association with one another; for only through this social interaction does what the individual can produce give rise to something that leads all of humanity, through its own efforts, from mere matter toward the spirit. In the realm of spiritual life, empty rhetoric signifies the anti-spirit; in the realm of state and legal life, convention signifies the anti-spirit; in the realm of economic life, routine signifies the anti-spirit. The spirit must take the place of the anti-spirit. That it can do so, and by what forces it can do so—I shall take the liberty of describing this tomorrow. For only when phrase is replaced by thought-filled speech—and thereby by the spirit, by true spiritual life—only when convention is replaced by a legal life imbued with human social feeling, and only when economic routine is replaced by a spirit-infused economy—an economy ordered by the spirit and permeated by association— only then will our entire public life be able to be healed of what ails it at present—and it must be said: of what would inevitably lead to its ruin if no healing process were to take place.

[ 24 ] Unfortunately, in the present day we all too often notice mere platitudes, conventions, and routine. We see the result: chaos. For the future, we need words grounded in thought, a spirit filled with substance, and the living law that arises from the interaction of all people who have come of age. That is spirit rather than anti-spirit at this juncture. In the realm of economic life, we need associations arising from the spirit; we need routine to be replaced by a true, spirit-driven economy. In the realm of economic life, this means replacing the anti-spirit of the present with the spirit for the future. And only through this can we rise above pessimistic moods—which, after all, are all too justified today when observing external life—to certain hopes for the future; not by building on whatever might be thrown at us today as hope for the future, but by building on our own human will, which seeks to establish, out of its own strength and perseverance, from its fire, from the present, to secure the victory of the Spirit over the unspirit for the future.

[ 25 ] [A brief discussion follows.)

[ 26 ] Concluding Remarks

[ 27 ] The first speaker in the discussion began by concluding his remarks by pointing to an international language as a unifying force among humankind. Since this can only truly be decided through detailed discussion, I do not wish to go into the pros and cons that can be raised regarding such an international language. However, I am willing to concede that those who strive to establish such an international language have a certain justification. We are familiar with the attempts and efforts that have been made in this direction. Well, the club-like manner in which such a language has been pursued so far is not enough, for such a language would have to find entirely different ways to reach people than it has so far if it is to have any truly practical significance. However, I certainly do not wish to speak out against such a language. For you see, on the one hand, I know that what arises artificially in our present age also bears within itself the characteristic qualities of everything that our present age is capable of producing—a certain rationality, a certain intellectualism. And I cannot help but admit that it seems to me that precisely what has brought us down to this point today—intellectualism, the anti-elementary—has also played a significant role in the development of the international language being attempted today. I can very well appreciate the viewpoint of those who say: what will ultimately become of that primal nature of human self-expression in poetry and speech—which is truly connected to the very core of human existence—if we pour an abstract language over all of humanity? On the other hand, however, I have also heard truly beautiful poetry in Esperanto, and I must say that I have already tried to achieve a certain objectivity in this matter.

[ 28 ] However, my esteemed audience, what I have presented today is in no way affected by the question of such a language. For even if—hypothetically speaking—we were to succeed in spreading such a language among humanity, it could contain nothing but empty phrases unless we were to achieve a new revival of the substantive spirit. Whether we ultimately cobble together phrases in Esperanto, English, German, French, or Russian makes no difference at all. What matters is that we find a way to bring the substantial spirit into Russian, German, English, French, and Esperanto. And that is one of the issues I have addressed today.

[ 29 ] So, as I said, I don’t want to say anything against the efforts of those who are working toward such an abstract language. I believe that perhaps this perspective might not be entirely fruitless: if we were to succeed in establishing an international language for what is actually taking shape in international economic life, for example, then perhaps this would precisely create the opportunity to liberate the other languages for the actual spiritual life—which, after all, must always spring from individuality — which can only happen if they are allowed to develop entirely individually, just as the spirit itself must develop individually, provided their development is not disrupted by any conquering or domineering ambitions on the part of political powers. I do believe, however, that the hopes of Esperantists and similar people rest on even weaker ground than the hopes of those who believe that if only a sufficiently large number of people can come together today to contribute to a renewal of our spiritual life from the true spirit, then a better time might dawn—though, of course, not a perfect one. Anyone who sees through the reality of things cannot share in the hope of an earthly paradise. I believe that people of the latter kind still stand on firmer ground in reality than those who hope for an international language.

[ 30 ] What the second speaker in the discussion put forward was essentially a kind of interpretation of what I had said in part of my remarks, and I would just like to note that when discussing such matters today—speaking from the foundations I have attempted to lay in my lecture—we must not forget that it is essential not to view people as though we could simply approach them and improve them through instruction. I have often used the following analogy to illustrate the purely didactic method in public life: If I have a stove in front of me, I can say: Look, it is the stove’s duty to heat the room; its categorical imperative is to heat the room. I can keep preaching—with all of Kant’s insight I can keep preaching—but it won’t get warm. If I remain silent and simply put wood in the stove and light it, the stove will warm the room without any preaching at all. The same is true with regard to human beings. When the whole person is at stake—when it is not merely a matter of what might provide a theoretical echo within the person—when the whole person is at stake, preaching is of extremely little use, for there one is dealing, above all, with the person’s place within a social whole. And the person within a social whole is something other than the single, individual person. If one demands that the individual human being contribute in some way to the betterment of humanity through a concentrated life of thought, then it must first be possible for such a concentrated life of thought to develop in a fruitful manner. Ultimately, this is possible only within a free spiritual life. Further elaboration can be found in “The Key Points of the Social Question.” The issue today, therefore, is not so much to examine what benefits the individual human being, but rather what must be brought about within the human social organism so that the individual can truly come into his or her own.

[ 31 ] I first published my *Philosophy of Freedom* in the 1890s, in 1894. In it, as a consequence of a spiritual worldview, there is also a certain ethic that is based precisely on the individual human being. But a prerequisite is established there—and this prerequisite must be accepted by anyone who grasps the problem of freedom in a serious and realistic sense—namely, that if it is indeed possible to have intuitions that ground the individual’s true freedom, then from this individual human being can also emerge that upon which one can build in social coexistence. But one’s gaze must be constantly directed toward this social coexistence. Therefore, I may say that, in a certain sense, my *Key Points on the Social Question* serve as a complement to my *Philosophy of Freedom*. Just as my *Philosophy of Freedom* examines the sources of the forces of freedom within the individual human being, so my *Key Points on the Social Question* examine how the social organism must be structured so that the individual human being can develop freely. And these are, in essence, the two great questions that must occupy us in contemporary public life. A genuine answer to this question will, at the same time, shed some light on the chaos.

[ 32 ] I would like to note that I have structured today’s and tomorrow’s lectures in such a way that, in a sense, today’s lecture is intended to be more of a critique of our times, pointing out what has been the case in the present up to now—that this present has become what we see it as, driven into chaos and armed with immense destructive forces. Tomorrow I would like to elaborate precisely on what needs to be done so that the life of the people—to the fullest extent possible—and the life of civilized humanity as a whole can once again extricate itself from this chaos. I would like to show how the forces that already lie within human beings—and which lie particularly in human coexistence—can be unleashed, even though they are currently bound. Therefore, the positive aspect—which the previous speaker evidently intended to highlight—will come to the fore more in my lecture tomorrow than in today’s. Yet it was precisely necessary to point out what ails us, so that, based on this understanding of the present, we can build an understanding of the will that is essential for a prosperous development in the future.

[ 33 ] I would like to mention one more thing before concluding, however. Anyone who takes the great questions of our time seriously must not, in the traditional sense, be a supporter of something akin to a “Thousand-Year Reich” or the like; nor must they believe that we can establish a paradise on earth here, but must believe that every reality can unfold only within the conditions of existence appropriate to it, and that within the span of life between birth and death, one can arrive at an affirmation of this life only if one is able to constantly compensate for the imperfections of physical life through the prospect of a spiritual life: One of the greatest errors of our time is that a large number of people are gradually coming to expect everything that makes life worth living from mere external life alone. And this is precisely how social questions are formulated today: What must external life be like in order to provide people with everything they roughly have in their mental image of a paradise? Anyone who poses the question in this way will never arrive at an answer. One can arrive at a true, genuine answer only if one is imbued with a sense of reality. And as for what such a sense of reality can offer as an answer to the great question of our time—I will take the liberty of speaking about that tomorrow.