The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. The Path to Healthy Thinking and the Life Situation of Modern People

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Today, it is impossible to form a judgment about the major issues of our time without first and foremost looking to what is at work as the deeper forces of labor and longing within all of humanity—forces that have been at work for decades but are now reaching a very special culmination. Nor is it possible in the present moment to form any kind of opinion about the significant events actually unfolding within humanity without casting at least a few glances at the deeper foundations of all human striving—as these deeper foundations are expressed precisely in the present. Therefore, allow me, in this first of my two lectures—the continuation of which will be presented to you the day after tomorrow—to point out, at least with a few sketchy observations, such deeper forces of longing within present-day humanity.

[ 2 ] It was in July 1909 that Charles Eliot, who had been president of Harvard University since 1868 and remained so at the time he delivered this speech, gave a significant address in the United States. As can be seen from his speech, Charles Eliot spoke at that time out of a sense of responsibility to view the spiritual and intellectual affairs of all civilized humanity from his own perspective. He titled his speech “The Religion of the Future,” and he sought to express what this religion of the future should not be and what it should be. But when I look back on this speech, what seems far less significant to me is the specific content of what Eliot said at the time than rather the overall attitude conveyed by his words. Above all, it seems to me that the most significant thing is that, at that time, a representative figure of today’s civilization was seeking a path to sound thinking regarding the great questions of worldview and philosophy of life facing humanity.

[ 3 ] Well, my esteemed audience, when pointing out something like this, one must never forget today that between what was said at that time—even by the most outstanding people of the present—and the present day lies that terrible catastrophe of the World War, which, after all, teaches us more than all such words ever could —a catastrophe that, in a flash, sheds light on everything those people described as the great questions of the world and of life in a way entirely different from what they could have imagined at the time. Eliot wishes to guide humanity toward a sound way of thinking about the world and life. He looks back on the nature of religions in those times when the natural sciences had not yet shed light into the souls of the broadest masses of humanity. What troubles him about the old religions is that they point people toward a God who, in a certain sense, exists outside of that which modern science claims to have revealed so profoundly and powerfully. The man felt himself to be entirely a man of his time. To him, the old mental images of the spiritual world seemed to be precisely those that a childlike humanity had formed for itself. And it was particularly important to him that this age of natural science could no longer see demonic, spiritual beings in mountains and rivers, in trees and clouds, and that even an age of natural science could no longer retain the figurative, ancient conceptions of God. Furthermore, it was important to him to show that the understanding of life and of social conditions in the world had suffered greatly because the religious creeds—which were, after all, the guides of thought for the vast majority of people— those who were oppressed, who were miserable, who could not cope with life, were banished from physical, sensory existence into a supernatural afterlife—so that, for many people, instead of working through life and courageously intervening in it, a gaze beyond immediate physical and social existence inevitably took its place.

[ 4 ] Everything that the various confessions have to say about the reasons why one person is struck by this or that fate, as well as everything the ancient creeds have to say about the divine justice that reigns in the world, seems outdated to Charles Eliot—the modern man, the man who places himself in the era that begins for him with Darwin, an era that has attained particular significance for him through those advances in medicine that are physically dedicated to alleviating the suffering of humanity—as no longer relevant. And in a certain sense, he would like to see the old priest—who always refers humanity to an indefinite supernatural realm—replaced by the physical physician, who is capable of alleviating even the pains that a mother must endure as her child enters this physical world; he would like to replace the old priest with one who is capable of lending a hand in the work performed in the physical realm, for his concern is to shape the physical conditions of this earth in such a way that as many people as possible derive joy and satisfaction from life. All of this—so it seems to Charles Eliot—must, in a sense, be embraced by sound thinking, and he hopes that from the insights that the natural sciences have recently provided to humanity, that which is capable of leading humanity toward this goal he so ardently desires may come to light. I mention this in particular because, in this short speech on the religion of the future, everything that the so-called educated—namely, the scholarly educated—have formed in their mental images as the path to modern, sound thinking is, in a sense, condensed into one representative individual.

[ 5 ] Now, this discourse on the religion of the future—which deals with what I have just described—has something highly peculiar about it. And since I said things similar to what I am saying now about this discourse even before the catastrophe of the war, no one—if I say this openly—will be able to accuse me of what many are accused of today: that now, after the war has raged for so long, they are, in a strange way, proving themselves to be right about what existed before the war. Charles Eliot speaks like a man who holds certain mental images—as one might expect from a man who is fully immersed in modern scientific knowledge and who, from the bottom of his heart, wishes to offer humanity a view of life that leads to its happiness and fulfillment based on these scientific concepts. But how does he speak? If one is able to read between the lines—what can one say about the way he speaks? You can see it in the ideas themselves: they are born of the spirit of the times, but they can only be spoken when one is surrounded by a world in which—at least in social and immediate living conditions—these ideas do not become reality. They can only be spoken when one is surrounded by a world whose views on life are rooted in a much earlier time, when one is surrounded by a world where certain mental images live in people’s souls—mental images that by no means stem from what such a scientifically educated religious person seeks, but which have a profound influence on the shaping of social life. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, one might say: Such a man can speak, but one senses in his thoughts that the moment what he says is to be realized in its full consequence, in its unvarnished form—that is, when the old traditions no longer exert their influence in the surrounding environment—these thoughts will ultimately prove powerless. And anyone who can understand even a little of the terrible events of recent years will say: These events since 1914 have significantly intervened between what could be said back then and what now confronts us as the great, overwhelming issues of our time. In a sense, Charles Eliot also points out at the end of his speech that he cannot know how what he regards as sound thinking will be realized in the immediate practice of life; only experience can show that.

[ 6 ] Well, my esteemed audience, as strange and paradoxical as it may sound to you, today a part of the world is in the process of providing these experiences. What an educated, learned man could once afford to voice in an environment that had no need to draw the ultimate consequences of these thoughts is now being attempted—out of a different disposition, a different state of mind—in Eastern Europe and already in a large part of Asia today—as paradoxical as that may sound. And while one could calmly voice Eliot’s ideas—that is, the ultimate social consequences of a scientific worldview—and still be regarded as a good, law-abiding citizen in the midst of a society that did not even consider drawing the ultimate practical conclusions from them, one destroys people’s existence; one destroys life the very moment one makes a tabula rasa of the old conditions, when old traditions no longer form the foundation of the state in that environment, when one does not allow that which stems from the old traditions—even if through particular tyranny—to live on in that environment. If one draws the ultimate consequences of these ideas for external reality, then one becomes a Leninist, then one becomes a Trotskyist, then one begins to realize that which is meant to stem purely from what Eliot sought as sound thinking, from that which seeks to be born out of a purely scientific worldview. But if one attempts to put this into practice, one does not build anything up; rather, one merely continues the process of destruction that began in 1914 and through which humanity will yet undergo bitter, bitter experiences. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what a look back at a relatively recent past teaches us regarding what a man—imbued with the entire cultural heritage of the present and speaking out of sincere conviction—put forward in 1909.

[ 7 ] If we now ask ourselves what connection exists between what a person, I would say, a certain kind of materialistic Sunday sermon in a world that is otherwise quite different, and what is actually taking shape in Eastern Europe and across a large part of Asia, then—in order to understand the social interrelationships of the present and the entire life situation of modern humanity—we must delve a little into the deeper foundations. And it is instructive to take a look at the question: How, exactly, did this materialistic worldview—which was supposed to bring happiness and contentment to humanity—come into being in recent times?

[ 8 ] If I were to identify what precisely characterizes the most modern way of thinking—the way of thinking that is now poised to become social reality—I must say: This way of thinking is characterized by its inability to bridge the gap between what constitutes knowledge of the natural side of the world and what constitutes the moral world—that is, ethical ideas and moral forces. On the one hand, there is what constitutes the natural aspect of the world, firmly established in mental images that are immensely compelling to anyone imbued with the contemporary mindset as it has developed over the past few centuries, and especially in the 19th century. On the other hand, emanating from the very center of the human being, are moral demands—demands that are meant to elevate human beings to the realization that these moral demands are rooted in a spiritual world order—a world order in which the moral and the immoral can have consequences for the shaping of the world, in which the moral and the immoral can intervene in the events of the world, just as a bolt of lightning intervenes in the events of the world.

[ 9 ] There stand these two worlds, pushing each other apart for decades. And there lives the newer way of thinking, which does indeed strive for sound reasoning and thereby seeks to establish a natural religion. It is capable of taking into account, on the one hand, the knowledge of natural facts, and—if the person is conscientious—it is also capable of taking into account, on the other hand, that the voice of morality speaks from within the human heart, which should then point the way to religious consciousness.

[ 10 ] But today there is no bridge between these two worlds. There is one world—the world of knowledge of natural facts. It believes it has discovered a fundamental law that, as the achievement of the 19th century, should stand unshakable: the law of the conservation of matter and energy —the law that is supposed to tell us that everything that takes place in the universe occurs as a result of a sum of forces that may well be transformed but can never be increased or decreased, that are uncreated and imperishable. The interaction of these forces gives rise to the structure of the world and brings about the events of the universe that present themselves to our senses and from which we ourselves, as physical human beings, have emerged. If, then, the forces in question are uncreated and imperishable, if one can speak in an absolute sense of the conservation of matter and energy, then all the views that necessarily follow from this perspective cannot be dismissed out of hand. Then we are led to assume—based on the same patterns of thought that have compelled humanity to accept this law of the conservation and transformation of matter and energy—that everything earthly and cosmic within which we exist arose from the famous Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula, from which the entire solar system took shape through condensation, and that in the course of this natural process, human beings also evolved after passing through the various forms of animal life. And we come to assume that those things which appear to the human soul as the forces that alone can guarantee its dignity—moral ideas and that which leads to religious consciousness—flash up within the human soul like inner illusions of life.

[ 11 ] But anyone who, with all that this entails, clings to this world—which thus emerged from the Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula—must also think this way about the end of the world. He must believe that this world will transform into one in which everything that humanity has produced—including everything that has ever lived in human souls and minds—will vanish; he must believe that, within a great cosmic process, all of humanity’s delusions of morality and divinity are merely phenomena born of the laws of nature—just as lightning and thunder, the alternation of day and night, and so on are born of the laws of nature. And so we look toward a non-spiritual, soulless origin of the world; so we look toward a non-spiritual, soulless end of the world. For the one [who clings to this world with all its consequences], the best that humanity conceives and dreams is woven into the processes that lie between these two extremes—the origin of the world and the end of the world; the best that humanity imagines is, for him, merely an episode, vanishing into the purely natural universe.

[ 12 ] Ladies and gentlemen, even with the best will in the world, there is no credence to be given to all the quackery that people still try to put forward in support of the validity of a moral and religious worldview, if they fully acknowledge the implications of the scientific mindset on which it is based. I know how much is preached today along the lines that, despite this scientific mindset, an ideal worldview is still possible. It is possible only for those who do not truly wish to follow their thinking to its logical conclusions. And one is surely prompted to ask today: Why do people have so little clarity about what has just been indicated, even in the present? Why, indeed? One might find an answer to this by recalling what I would call the “springtime” of that which, although it is now also common opinion, is not openly acknowledged as such among the so-called enlightened—by looking back to that springtime of theoretical materialism that swept over the civilized world around the middle of the 19th century. Today, however, it has become fashionable to portray those who at that time boldly drew the ultimate conclusions of the scientific mindset—such as Moleschott, Büchner, and so on—as shallow; and indeed, they undoubtedly are. But then more is needed than what is put forward by scholars or laypeople alike to characterize the entire relationship we must maintain toward them.

[ 13 ] One need only consider a few facts to appreciate the full gravity and significance of this matter for the social conditions of modern people. I would like to cite one example: a cultural historian who was frequently cited in the 1970s said, “One of the most important outcomes of modern times is that scientific knowledge has shattered everything that emerged from the ancient religions as an ethical ideal.” — Yes, this cultural historian states it matter-of-factly: what has been characterized from this perspective as truth or falsehood is merely a scientific finding, much like the falling of rain, and should be viewed from this standpoint. But particularly interesting is a letter from a bold—truly bold—individual to a natural scientist of that time. The letter reads something like this: The modern worldview teaches us that everything humans experience is just as subject to the natural law of causality as what we perceive with our senses in the external world. Everything that people bring forth from within themselves in the form of so-called good deeds and good thoughts, everything they produce in the way of religious ideas—all of this is nothing other than the result of purely natural processes taking place within human beings, just as cloud formations take place out in nature. Therefore, for me,” said that individual, “everything that people have formed in their mental images as a moral imperative is an illusion. And I am of the opinion that someone born with the predisposition to be a thief, a robber, or a murderer is just as entitled to fully act out their murderous and robber tendencies as someone born with the opposite predisposition. I am convinced, as that personality writes, that it would even be a detriment—that is, an immorality—to the moral integrity of a personality predisposed to murder if they did not act on their inclinations. - Of course, people today will say: That is a paradoxical truth. - But why do they say that? They say it because, on the one hand, they have immense respect—and an unquestioning faith in authority—for everything they are told from the realm of natural science; but on the other hand, they lack the same courage as the person who wrote this letter to draw the necessary conclusions. They stop halfway because they do not want to admit to themselves that, once one draws these conclusions, the other follows.

[ 14 ] Well, I would like to say: Just as Charles Eliot was able to speak as he did in 1909—in an environment that had no intention of translating his ideas into social reality—so, too, could that individual at the time have enthused about the full expression of criminal instincts, since the full expression of one’s dispositions is part of the moral integrity of the personality. At that time, the moment had not yet arrived when social institutions were to emerge—though they certainly could not emerge—from what people believed in this regard. But then the other question arises: How are these institutions to come into being, institutions that must now take shape as a reconstruction of our social order, which is in decline?

[ 15 ] Ladies and gentlemen, when one considers the circumstances of modern human life, and when one looks at what actually lives within a person—and it is from within, after all, that everything that takes place in external, business, industrial, and practical life ultimately takes shape—when one considers all of this, one certainly arrives at a, one must admit, a bitter judgment regarding the condition of modern human beings. For what would it look like if a sufficiently large number of people had the courage to awaken the soul—to rouse the sleeping soul—and say to themselves: If we accept in its entirety what has flowed into our thinking from scientific knowledge over the course of the last three to four centuries, then we must shape everything that is to flow into social life according to laws that are devoid of everything that springs from within the human being as an impulse of morality, as an impulse of the religious world order, for such laws can then, after all, only come from a scientific mindset.

[ 16 ] And the true beginning—a social order that structures society only in the same way that natural phenomena are structured in the outside world—we see it taking shape in Eastern Europe and spreading across Asia; we have seen it taught theoretically in Marxism for decades. This Marxism could also speak freely as long as those around it did not think to engage with it in terms of shaping reality. Now the face of the world has grown more serious. Now the task is to raise the question in its fullest sense: Is what has been conceived as the path to sound thinking also a path to a possible life for humanity on Earth? - Precisely because the matter is so serious, we must address the whole nature of human beings—especially those who today believe they can build social life based on achievements that are beneficial only to a certain branch of the natural sciences. What have these achievements brought us?

[ 17 ] I have frequently pointed out, here in Stuttgart for many years now, the scope and significance of the scientific worldview, and those who have heard me speak often will certainly not see me as someone who scorns this scientific worldview—within the limits in which it is justified. But what is at issue here is something else. The question is: Is a scientific worldview possible when it comes to applying the laws of human knowledge to what is meant to shape social life?

[ 18 ] To answer this question, one must examine the supposed path to sound thinking that this scientific worldview has taken. There we see that this scientific worldview has explored everything in the facts of nature that can be applied to the fields of technology, industrial life, and transportation. There we see that what could be realized through the understanding of natural laws in technology, industrial life, and transportation has been developed on a grand scale. All of this had reached a peak when the catastrophe of 1914 struck, revealing just how little social thinking had kept pace with the kind of thinking that, based on scientific knowledge, built machines, flooded the world with means of transportation, and so on. Indeed, what we see in our technology—regardless of whether it leads to construction or destruction—is related to a certain strand of scientific thought. This strand of scientific thought sought to become universal, to become universally valid, and to have significance for all of human life.

[ 19 ] There we see—and indeed, I might say—isolated spirits living as eccentrics set apart from the general course of development, even though they had originally shared the sentiment that “we have come so wonderfully far”; we see how they observe what is looming and look toward the future with immense concern. One need only point to Soloviev, the Russian philosopher, who, unfortunately, has only become known in Central Europe since the war years, but who died at the beginning of the century. He cast profound glances into human life, but he was also enlightened enough to observe practical life and to contemplate it with his immensely benevolent, gentle soul. This philosopher, Soloviev, was overcome by the bitterest anxiety when he told himself: “Even across my Russia, through an internally rotten regime, everything that the modern worldview derives from a scientific foundation is spreading.” And so this Russia is being covered with all the splendors—he does not say this ironically—with all the splendors of modern technology and modern transportation, and that which ought to provide the foundation for healthy Russian thought is disappearing from the world as if stolen away. With every railroad that is built, with every industrial facility, that which should give rise to the health of Russian thought disappears: the land itself. — And as one listens to Soloviev speak, one hears that he understands how sound human thought is linked to the land, in a different way than the kind of thought that breaks away from this land—a thought that exists, so to speak, at an abstract height, even if within a physical reality, and manifests itself as modern culture on a scientific basis. Certainly, one might call this one-sided; it was, after all, one-sided in a certain way. But how can one be comprehensive when living in a world that, as it were, strives with external forces to introduce into the world absolutely everything that can arise solely on the basis of a scientific mindset? How can one who wishes to arrive at a sound, calm judgment stand up against the materialistic dream of all humanity? how can one accuse him of one-sidedness when he expresses his concern, which must indeed have seemed, in a certain sense, insane at a time when this modern culture had not yet plunged so deeply into its decline as it has now, twenty years after Soloviev’s death? Now, even that Charles Eliot, of whom I have spoken, outlines roughly what he envisions as a kind of religion of the future, when people will no longer believe in an otherworldly God or when, in wide circles, they will no longer believe in demonology. He says: There will be a focus on a unified God who is inherent in all things, who is also inherent in the human soul, and who acts through all the laws of nature. — But one can see from this speech—and indeed it is clearly stated therein—that even for a well-meaning person such as Charles Eliot, this God is linked to what he knows about the matter spreading throughout the world, about the eternally changing yet indestructible force. Essentially, for him, the unity of God is nothing other than the unity of matter and force. And based on such theoretical convictions, he then preaches to the world what is intended to serve as a practical foundation for human life. He says: “The maxim ‘Serve your fellow human beings’ will shine eternally.” Serve your fellow human beings—this is repeated over and over again in that speech. But with such a statement, such a demand, it is truly not merely a matter of the words being spoken; rather, the question is whether what is demanded of people can actually be fulfilled by them—fulfilled by forces being released from the depths of their souls, forces that ultimately find their expression in social service to humanity, in social action in accordance with the maxim: “Serve your fellow human beings.” In other words, one must ask: Is a worldview capable of forming a foundation for true love of humanity? Is a worldview capable of being the root of that plant which, when it grows out of the ground, blossoms and bears fruit as love of humanity? This question cannot be answered one-sidedly, logically, or theoretically. This question can be answered only on the basis of what is happening historically. And if Eliot had only waited for the experience that is now emerging—and will continue to emerge—through the shaping of Eastern Europe and Asia, he would have had cause for concern. For the historical outcome is that the socialist doctrine—which seeks to build solely on the same scientific premises upon which Eliot wishes to see the world of the future, indeed life itself, built—is incapable of grounding social life in the free love that springs from within the human being and bears fruit in the world. For what resounds to us from this social doctrine and social tyranny is not that which would awaken love for one’s fellow human beings. What resounds to us is not the fulfillment of the saying, “Serve your fellow human beings because you love them”—but rather the dry, empty, soul-destroying words about the duty to work, about people being driven to work as if by military drill.

[ 20 ] And I would like to say: When one hears Charles Eliot in 1909—at a time when the experience of the present had not yet been gained—delivering his paradigmatic speech from the lectern at Harvard University, the speech recently given by the Russian socialist Minister of War sounds like an echo from a later era, in which he said: Those who are sincere about social order will not fail to recognize what we owe to this war. It has sent our sons back to us as soldiers. They have become capable soldiers. They have learned to obey and to submit to authority. Let us not fail to recognize what we owe to this war in that it has trained us officers who can command, who know how to place people in their proper places through coercion. And let us not forget the war’s leaders, who are capable of organizing in such a way that everyone submits to the authority of this organization. - Like an echo, this discourse on translating militarism into the organization of social life resounds in contrast to what—merely as a worldview, since no one in their circle thought to put it into practice—resounds from Eliot’s speech. People simply do not realize that they have sought sound thinking through paths which, taken to their ultimate conclusion, yield precisely what is so clearly visible today. And people are reluctant to admit the connection between what they have believed for centuries—but especially in recent decades—they must think about the world and human existence, and what now presents itself to them as the will to shape the world socially—a will that is, however, entirely powerless to shape this world in such a way that a life worthy of human dignity is actually possible within it. It is from this unwillingness to understand that everything which is sought as a path to sound thinking within the life situation of contemporary humanity essentially arises.

[ 21 ] My book *The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life for the Present and the Future* sets forth everything that subsequently gave rise to the efforts of the Federation for the Threefold Social Order. The aim is to seek the path to sound social thinking without succumbing to illusions, by keeping at least one thing in mind when dealing with these questions: What ideas underlie what is currently seeking to manifest itself in life-destroying structures? What ideas lay at the root of what led itself into absurdity through the events that began in 1914? But anyone who is unwilling to form a clear, sound judgment on these questions cannot—no matter where they stand—contribute to what every human being is actually called upon to contribute to today, in accordance with their abilities and their position in life. What matters today is clear, consistent thinking. But this clear, consistent thinking also leads us to raise the question: Where, then, does that which has developed as so-called “sound thinking” on a scientific foundation actually come from?

[ 22 ] Anyone who understands the context—the historical context—knows that, when it comes to shaping our ideas and formulating our concepts in public life, we have not yet progressed any further than the Middle Ages did. People speak a great deal about the darkness of the Middle Ages, but we still think in the modes of thought of that era. Where we have made progress is in the achievements of scientific knowledge of nature—achievements that find their counterpart in technology—the achievements of understanding inanimate nature, or rather only a part of inanimate nature, for only that part finds its counterpart in technology. What we have achieved there—what can be mastered through the means of calculation and geometry—has become our worldview. This has gradually secured such a position in the realm of human imagination that, in this realm, it appears, as it were, as the self-evident foundation of our entire outlook on life.

[ 23 ] Has humanity, in addition, made any effort to further develop the inner power of thought—the inner power of the soul in general? No, that cannot be said. The form of thought, the mode of thinking, the entire configuration of thought with which natural science—even the most seemingly exact and rigorous natural science—works today are the same as those employed by the Scholastics of the Middle Ages. Among the medieval scholastics, these thoughts were grand; these thoughts were incisive. Why were they so? Because these thoughts set themselves the task of looking beyond into a spiritual world. One may think whatever one likes about a subject such as the one I have just outlined; but what emerged from the training and development of scholastic thought—when viewed calmly and objectively in the context of the course of modern culture—cannot be interpreted in any other way than as I shall now attempt to do.

[ 24 ] Who knows with what acuity, with what mastery of the art of thinking, such concepts and ideas as those of the Trinity, the sacraments, and the Incarnation of Christ were pursued—ideas that were, at that time, part of the social life of all humanity— who knows with what acuity these concepts were pursued—concepts that have no counterpart in the sensory world, where thought must rely entirely on itself—will say: Whatever one may think of the Trinity, whatever one may think of the Incarnation of Christ—what developed at that time in terms of thought techniques, logical rigor, and inner responsibility toward the forms of thought was magnificent. It lives on as a legacy. Today we think in no other way than the scholastic Catholic scholars did; we have merely transferred these thoughts to the fields of the natural sciences. We think with the thought forms of the Middle Ages in the materially explored realms of modern times. We simply do not think with the same sharpness, because we do not cultivate this sharpness of thought. If we are enlightened people, we refrain from training this way of thinking through mental images such as the Incarnation of Christ, the Trinity, and so on; we do not train this way of thinking through the contemplation of a supersensible world. When we ask for the reason—why is this scholastic thinking so well-trained, why does it proceed with such sharp inner contours?—we must say: it is because—whatever the positive religions may say, which often seek to obscure the fundamental truth of the matter—because this way of thinking developed out of that perception of the soul which, in antiquity, was still prevalent up to Plato, indeed up to the Neoplatonists; because this way of thinking developed out of the perception, the spiritual-soul perception, of a spiritual, a supersensible world. Anyone who wished to attain true thinking had to look toward a supersensible world; they had to develop their thoughts in such a way that they could master not only what lies before our eyes in its gross, sensory form, but also that which must be grasped with the same subtlety and precision as the things of the supersensible world. In an instinctive way—not in the conscious way advocated by the worldview I have been presenting here for years—in an instinctive way, yet in a spiritual way—the thinking of that ancient era was grounded in the tradition of Augustine, the high Scholastics, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas—in a mode of thinking that was schooled by the contemplation of the supersensible world, because this thinking was an offshoot of contemplation of the supersensible world, even if this is denied by the positive theologians. This way of thinking had already begun to wane in the Middle Ages. In antiquity, people sought to penetrate into a spiritual world through the inner power of the human being using this way of thinking. In the Middle Ages, this spiritual world was regarded as something that was not to be investigated, but only interpreted through the soul itself. Now, with regard to the training of thought, we are heirs to scholastic thought. We are very much within the same current of thought, only we can no longer bring it to perfection. We can no longer logically and sharply develop the correct contours for our thoughts because we do not train them on [spiritual] problems where thinking is left to its own power; we can only pursue what is observed in the laboratory.

[ 25 ] And where is the last offshoot of medieval Catholic scholastic thought today? Where is the last offshoot of that which emerged as a social philosophy from the City of God of Augustine and his successors—from this rigid organization, this militaristic arrangement of human coexistence? Where is the last offshoot, the very last offshoot of medieval Catholic theology in terms of its modes of thought?—It is Marxism. It is that which is today being presented to the masses as socialist doctrine. All the forms of thought that constitute modern socialism—it is nothing other than the last, decrepit offshoot of a mode of thinking that still reached half its height in high Scholasticism, that was born of supernatural contemplation, but which is no longer suited to a scientific age. We have come to the point of having described the vast world of natural existence, of having geometrized and mechanized it—and people like Charles Eliot speak entirely from this vantage point—but we have not yet managed to find, through thought, the path into this world. That is why we had to speak, as Du Bois-Reymond did, about the limits of knowledge of nature and the seven mysteries of the world. What question did Du Bois-Reymond answer back then in his sensational lectures “On the Limits of Natural Knowledge” and “The Seven World Mysteries”? — The question that the legacy of scholastic thought cannot penetrate natural science. That is no wonder. Thomas Aquinas had the doctrine of revelation before him; he was confronted with the doctrine of the supernatural worlds, as was customary at the time. Modern natural science did not yet exist back then; he could not grapple with modern natural science. If one were to carry on in his spirit—not in the sense of the Catholic revival of Scholasticism, of Neo-Thomism—then one would have to say: This is something that has grown old, something that, in the theoretical socialism of Lenin and Trotsky, seeks to be realized in Eastern Europe and Asia out of scholastic and supra-scholastic forms of thought. All this thinking, which has grown feeble with age, must once again be transformed into a way of thinking rooted in insight into the supersensible worlds. Just as there was, in the beginning, that scholastic thinking—which has now grown feeble with age, which has become too weak to cope with real social conditions, and which cannot be the root from which love blossoms and bears fruit—this thinking must be replaced by a form of thinking rooted in a knowledge of the supersensible world.

[ 26 ] When Charles Eliot lamented that the mental image he has of sound thinking does not really resonate with the vast majority of people—but that most are only willing to pay lip service to it out of hypocrisy—he said: On the one hand, those who take the natural sciences seriously cultivate such a natural religion and seek to lay the groundwork for it in the future and develop it later; yet we see how some of those who certainly count among the educated seek a substitute for the old traditions in all manner of secret societies—in Masonic lodges, in Odd Fellows lodges. We see—as Charles Eliot says—how a large portion of people who are earnestly seeking the supernatural look to spiritualism and Christian Science as a path to the spirit. We see how the masses, out of old habit, nevertheless cling to the traditional denominations. — Charles Eliot laments this. He regards it as an obstacle to pursuing this path toward sound thinking. But it does not occur to him that what he is developing actually lies outside the realm of scientific reality. It does not even occur to him to realize that what has emerged must be grasped with a different kind of thinking than that which is merely the legacy of the scholastic Middle Ages: with a way of thinking reborn from the spiritual world. Truly, what has emerged today as socialism—what is it other than what lived on through the centuries of the Middle Ages, what has not yet been overcome in the minds of the masses by modern culture? And even if these people present themselves as opponents of the creeds—their thought forms are entirely in keeping with the spirit of those creeds. With the very same thought forms with which medieval man sought to penetrate the supernatural God, with the very same thought forms, today’s natural scientist, the layperson popularizing the modern worldview, and the theoretical socialist turn their attention to the unity of matter and force.

[ 27 ] What must be gained as a new way of seeing—this is what has been advocated for many years from this venue and in Stuttgart in general. The point is to recognize how even what is now cultivated as a social perspective through the threefold structure of the social organism is a necessary result of this new way of seeing—the necessity of a renewal of thought, a rebirth of thought from the spiritual world. Only this rebirth of thought can lead us to build that bridge which could not be built in the past centuries up to the present day: to build that bridge between the world that stands as the world of natural facts—which can be overlooked through pure natural causality—and the world that springs from within the human being: the world of morality, of religious elevation, and of the religious world plan. And only by having the courage to exert one’s thoughts in the spirit of this worldview—only in this way—will one arrive at clarity regarding what is necessary for the present, both in terms of one’s outlook on life and in the social sphere.

[ 28 ] Ladies and gentlemen, this spiritual-Scientific worldview—which is the focus here—is so deeply, because it is based on knowledge, so deeply imbued with the existence of a spiritual-divine world. It is clear to this worldview that in everything that lives in human cognition—in what human beings experience inwardly as their thoughts about the world, and even in what springs from human beings as human will in individual or social relationships—the divine lives just as it lives in the external natural world. This is what I sought to express in my *Philosophy of Freedom* as early as the beginning of the 1890s, and what has now been expressed once again through the publication of this book’s new edition. This is what sought to build a true bridge between the contemplation of nature and the contemplation of those impulses of humanity that must arise from human freedom and can, solely out of freedom, give rise to a legitimate structure of social coexistence. But one thing is certainly necessary here: it is necessary to muster a little more inner courage of thought than the slumbering souls of the present generally possess. It is necessary, then, to seriously engage with the question: In what does that which we expect to be the future of humanity have its roots?

[ 29 ] The external view of nature states: What we expect to be the future of the Earth, the future of the entire solar system, must result—through the transformation of matter and force—from what we see around us, from what already exists today. There, calculations are made; there, mechanics is applied; there, the mechanics of atoms is applied—atoms of which so many have spoken, formerly in an absolute sense, now in a hypothetical sense or in the sense of fictions. One then comes to the conclusion: What we must regard as the end of the Earth occurs through the transformation of matter and energy, and without what takes place within human beings, for that is merely an episode in these cosmic realities. — This is a necessary consequence of a purely naturalistic worldview. This naturalistic worldview appears to me—who have held a different worldview for decades now—as if someone were to look at a plant’s root and say: everything that arises there must arise from the plant’s root. That is to say, he would assume: There is the root; it produces stems, leaves, stems, leaves, and so on. They would look only at what can develop from this root, and they would not see that this root, which they now have before them, rots and disintegrates, but that from the plant that has grown from the root, a new seed emerges, in which the new plant is already predisposed. Read what is available in the literature of anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, and you will see: This Spiritual Science, which is based on supersensible perception as described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, judges the great cosmic context in this way. It holds that: On the foundation we now have before us as the physical-sensory world, there arises—as if rooted within it—that which takes shape within our soul as moral impulses, as ideal vision, as ideal thought-forms, as religious courage in the pursuit of truth—one need only see this in the right light. There it develops, just as the seed develops within the plant on a small scale. When one day this entire world, which surrounds us as a world of matter and force, has decayed, become a corpse, and disintegrated into the cosmos, what will the end be? The end, when everything around us has disintegrated into the cosmos, will be that which now arises as a spiritual seed within the human soul. This disintegration, this destruction of the material, this destruction of force—that is what we are looking toward; but just as the human soul rises from the human corpse at death, so too does [from this disintegration] that which lives as a seed in the human soul—that which is a moral impulse, an ethical idea, an elevation toward the Divine—rise up; that shapes the future; that is the new world. The future of the world does not arise through the transformation of matter and force—which appear to be changing—but through that which now lives in our soul as spiritual insight, as insight into the spirit. There, within the human breast, the future lives, albeit as a seed. And because we look toward a cosmic future that has its seed within us, we must have the courage to combat this law of the conservation of matter and force. We must have the courage to bring back to this true foundation that which, in the 19th century, spread from a scientific mindset into a worldview and outlook on life. One must build a bridge between what is external and sensory and what is internal and spiritually real. One cannot build this bridge as long as one is hindered by the illusion of the conservation of matter and energy. One can build it only through the newly perceived spiritual world, which opens up a way of thinking for us that has also grown out of social life.

[ 30 ] This social life—when a person is able to look within—becomes such that, with all inner conscientiousness, with all inner strength and emotion, he says to himself: And when everything that my eyes see, that my ears hear, that I feel in the outer world—in other words, everything of which the natural sciences alone speak—has vanished, then that which I now kindle within myself will live on as a metamorphosis; then that which is of moral value, that which gives human beings their dignity from within, will live on. —This is how Spiritual Science establishes the reality of the ethical, the reality of the moral, and the reality of the religious, because it does not succumb to the illusion of the eternity of force and matter. Look at the metamorphosis of force and matter, as Charles Eliot described it in 1909, and you will see that a spiritual-science worldview such as the one presented here has within itself the power to say “yes” to spiritual life as the seed of the future. And let us imagine a human community that lives with such souls. Let us imagine that people enter social life with this sense of responsibility—not with illusions about the causality of social life—then we may hope that out of such inner conscientiousness, out of such a cosmic sense of responsibility, will arise that which can bring the social organism to health. What emerges from a new Spiritual Science is the path to healthy thinking.

[ 31 ] This is also what can establish a proper relationship to the circumstances of contemporary human life, provided it is present in a sufficiently large number of people. But that which cannot build this bridge—to which the moral world order must appear merely as an episode—will, if it seeks to prevail on its own, if it seeks to suppress everything else, if it opposes a true worldview based on Spiritual Science, will always be reduced to absurdity, just as everything in which we have made such magnificent progress has been reduced to absurdity by the terrible catastrophes of recent years. Anyone who cannot learn from the lessons of these past years cannot grasp the social forces inherent in the idea that seeks, through contemplation, a new way of thinking—a way of thinking with which, once equipped, a sufficiently large number of people can begin to tackle what confronts us today as the great questions of worldview.

[ 32 ] Ladies and gentlemen! With that, I have essentially—albeit only in broad strokes—outlined what I intend to discuss today by way of introduction to what I will elaborate on in more concrete terms the day after tomorrow. And now that I have fulfilled my task, perhaps I may also take a few moments today to revisit some of what I said here last time, because otherwise, people always draw the wrong conclusions when one remains completely silent on certain matters.