The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Questions of the Soul and Questions of Life: A Lecture on the Present

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! When one looks at all the conditions of the present—at hardship, misery, and hopelessness—and when one considers the causes from which all this has arisen, then it becomes clear—to an unbiased view of life, as I see it—that the foremost mystery of our present, so to speak the most pressing mystery, is this: How does humanity—in order to work productively toward the future development of our social and other conditions—how does humanity unite the paths of the soul with the paths of life?

[ 2 ] Since I intend to provide a supplement to various things I have said here in Stuttgart over the years from the perspective of anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, you will forgive me if today I take up one or the other point in a sort of historical context and thus perhaps give the impression that these references are at times more personal than what I have presented here over the course of many years. However, that will only be an illusion.

[ 3 ] Right at the outset of my lecture on the present, I would like to take the liberty of pointing out that it was precisely this question—How can humanity today bring the paths of the soul into harmony with the paths of life? —how precisely this question was on my mind as I developed my *Philosophy of Freedom* (published in 1894) in the late 1880s and early 1890s as the foundation for the worldview that had emerged for me over the course of many years. For, fundamentally speaking, in the way I was able to present it at that time, this *Philosophy of Freedom* was already intended to answer the fateful question of humanity that today stands at the starting point of our reflections. I do not intend to speak today about the content of this *Philosophy of Freedom*, but I would like to briefly touch upon the intentions underlying this work by way of introduction.

[ 4 ] The underlying intention was to answer the question: How can a person living in the present cope with the great social demands of the present, guided by the most important feeling and the most important longing of modern times—the feeling of freedom and the longing for freedom? And indeed, a key aspect of this very examination of the nature of freedom is that it broke with the entire way in which, up until then, people had always inquired into the justification of the idea of freedom, of the impulse toward freedom. The question had been: Is a human being a free being by nature, or is he not? — This kind of question seems to me to have been rendered obsolete for our time by the entire development of modern humanity. Today, given what humanity has gone through in the last three to four centuries, we can really only ask: Is human beings capable of establishing a social order such that, as they develop from childhood to the mature stage of life, they can find within it that which they are justified in calling the freedom of their being? The “Philosophy of Freedom” did not ask whether human beings are born free; rather, this work deals with whether it is possible for human beings to find something in the depths of their being that they can bring up from subconscious or unconscious depths into full, clear, luminous consciousness, and whether, through this bringing forth, he can nurture a free being within himself. And this reflection led me to the conclusion that this most essential aspect of modern human development can be grounded only in two things: first, in what I then called intuitive thinking; second, in what I then called social trust. And since I did not use these two terms to denote anything abstract or theoretical, but rather things of reality, things of life, what was meant in my writing was understood very, very slowly—for we live, after all, in an age of abstractions, as I have often explained here. We live in an age of theorizing. And when someone asserts something that stems solely from a sense of reality, and this assertion is then expressed in ideas, people confuse what has been drawn from reality and appears clearly in the form of ideas with what lives within them as abstract, unrealistic ideas. And they then regard what can actually take effect in a person as a real impulse as something utopian or the like—especially those people who themselves have only utopian ideas in their heads; they then view such a thing as a utopia.

[ 5 ] What was the idea behind this pursuit of a universal education for humanity in the spirit of the “Philosophy of Freedom”? It was the idea that human beings could never become free if they were to absorb into their consciousness only those mental images that have emerged from the scientific worldview over the past three to four centuries, if they were to fill themselves only with what can be learned from nature. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have often said here before that the objection is raised: “Yes, but how many people today actually fill their entire consciousness with mental images derived from the observation of nature?” — People argue that it is true that only a few individuals study the natural sciences, and that perhaps from among those who gain some knowledge of the natural sciences, others may emerge who establish a monistic—or whatever else it is called—worldview; yet this still has no decisive influence on the vast majority of humanity today.

[ 6 ] That is not the case, my esteemed audience; it is different. The fact is that, gradually, over the course of the last three to four centuries, we have entered into a spiritual life—indeed, into life itself—that is essentially nourished—even now, extending to the farthest reaches of the country, not merely among city dwellers or the so-called educated—by what flows through our magazines, newspapers, and books: People absorb into their imagination, without even realizing it, what stems from fiction, popular science, and journal and newspaper literature. They fill their souls with it. When they go to church on Sundays, they may think they are good Catholics or good Protestants; they may indulge in a mental image that they honestly believe everything that is preached to them there. But in what they are, so to speak, in everyday life, the form of their thoughts—the entire configuration of their imaginative life—is shaped by what unconsciously flows in from all the sources I have just mentioned. We can verify this through a kind of cross-check:

[ 7 ] I believe that a great many of you certainly hold the view that a certain group seeks to infuse ancient religious concepts—ancient religious concepts—into contemporary life with great intensity. Who, after all, doubts that, for example, the members of the Jesuit order are striving to infuse ancient religious concepts into contemporary life? —Certainly, that is the case when the Jesuits write about what they believe must be said on the basis of their creed, when they speak about what people are supposed to believe, when they speak about what expresses the relationship between people and the Church, and so on. But when the Jesuits today write about subjects of nature, including subjects of human nature, and believe they must take science into account, what then are these Jesuits? They are, in fact, the most outspoken materialists. Anyone who follows what a Jesuit presents to the world as secular literature alongside his theological and religious writings will find that the entire aim of this secular literature is precisely to establish materialism in the broadest sense. One can even form quite clear mental images about the “why” behind this. From this perspective, the aim is to remove everything that pertains to questions of the soul—questions of spiritual life—from human inquiry and from direct human thought. With regard to these questions of the soul and these questions of life, people are not to engage in inquiry, but are to devote themselves to what has traditionally been handed down. As a result, everything pertaining to the questions of the soul and the questions of spiritual life is excluded from the scope of what research is supposed to cover. One must not look at nature—at the real, true sphere of life—from the standpoint of the spirit or the soul, for such research is, from their perspective, unchristian and irreverent. But if one is not permitted to investigate life from a spiritual perspective, then research becomes materialism; for if one is not allowed to bring the spirit into the investigation of matter, then the spirit remains outside of research into matter, and one is left with nothing but the most blatant materialism. That is why, alongside the assertion of all traditional mental images on religious or theological grounds, you see the most blatant materialism when [in addition to theological literature] secular literature emerges precisely from this circle. It does no good today to indulge in any delusions about these things; rather, only an unbiased view of them can help.

[ 8 ] And so one can say: Even those who, in a sense, officially represent piety—for how could one not believe that Jesuitism, of course, officially represents piety?—even they, judging by what has transpired in recent times, are blatant materialists. And so, of course, we can always see that people go to church on Sundays and cling to what they do not understand, while during the week they understand only what emerges from the depths of a materialistic worldview. It is actually this situation—as I have often emphasized here—that has led us into the distress of recent times. For it is easy to see that, under such circumstances, human beings cannot find those paths of the soul that lead them to the ways of life. From what is, on the one hand, a spirit that is misunderstood, handed down only traditionally—and, moreover, traditionally and incorrectly—and from what is merely materialism, the soul cannot carve out those paths that lead it into a strong, secure movement along the paths of life.

[ 9 ] Therefore, in my *Philosophy of Freedom*, I sought, on the one hand, to point out how human beings must once again come to fill their consciousness not only with what they glean from nature—the ideas and mental images that modern natural science imparts to them—but also to emphasize that a source of inner life can develop within human beings themselves. And when a person grasps this source of inner soul life—when they grasp that which in the soul does not come from outside through sensory perception, but rather arises from the soul itself—then, through this grasping of the soul’s intuitive content, they train themselves toward free decision-making, free will, and free action. And in my *Philosophy of Freedom*, I sought to show that one is always dependent when one merely follows natural impulses; I sought to show that one can become free only when one is able to follow what develops within the human soul itself as intuitive thinking, as intuitive, pure thinking. This reference to what a person must first attain through self-education within their own soul in order to truly partake in freedom—this reference then led me to necessarily seek to provide a continuation of what had been hinted at in *The Philosophy of Freedom*, and I have attempted to provide it over the course of the last few decades through what I call anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. For once it has been pointed out that human beings must draw the impulse of this freedom—intuitive thinking—from the depths of their own souls, it must also be pointed out what emerges when human beings turn to this inner source of their soul life. And, in essence, the writings of the coming years, grounded in anthroposophy, are simply a synthesis of everything that was pointed out back then in my *Philosophy of Freedom*. I have pointed out that within the soul there are paths to be followed in the spiritual realm toward a form of thinking that does not merely intellectually synthesize the external world, but rather, arising from inner vision, rises to the experience of the spirit. And I was compelled to show what one beholds when one looks into the spiritual world.

[ 10 ] However, this must—indeed, it is essential to emphasize today: That nebulous mysticism which many people have in mind when they speak of this inner wellspring of the soul—that vague drifting and rambling that gives way to inner daydreams—was not what was meant here. Consequently, a twofold reality has emerged. One is that those people who did not wish to turn toward the task—which is, after all, perceived as inconvenient today—of pursuing the paths of clear thinking felt little attraction precisely to what lay in the direction of my *Philosophy of Freedom*. That is one thing that has become apparent. - The other thing that has emerged is that a sufficiently large number of waverers and ramblers—who wish to seek all manner of things along unclear, nebulous paths—have attached themselves to that which should be pursued with clarity through anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. It has turned out that, as a result of this attachment, enough malevolent spirits have emerged who today fight against what people say—people with whom I have nothing to do—and who, in their struggle, attribute to me everything that the drifters and ramblers, the nebulous mystics, extract as their own fabrication from what was actually intended as most urgently necessary for the culture of the present.

[ 11 ] For that is what we need most of all on the one hand: clarity of inner striving—that clarity of inner striving which, after all, distinguishes the true natural scientist today in his outward striving, but precisely a clarity of inner striving. That is what we demand on the one hand. Not darkness and twilight, not twilight mysticism, but bright, luminous clarity in everything with which thought has anything to do. That is one thing. The other—upon which we should build and which I sought to articulate through my *Philosophy of Freedom*—is social trust. We live in an age in which every individual, within the confines of his or her own consciousness, must strive to determine the direction of his or her own thinking, feeling, and willing. We no longer live in a time when people tolerate being guided solely by authority; nor do we live in a time when people truly tolerate having their entire lives organized for them. Organization has, after all, merely emerged as a kind of counterpoint.

[ 12 ] In 1908, I once attempted to point out the facts underlying this in the following way. I said: On the one hand, for three to four centuries now, there has been a general force at work in humanity—the desire of people to rely more and more on their own individuality, to find within themselves the impulses for everything they actually strive for in life.

[ 13 ] But while for many people this lies at the root as something deeply unconscious—something they simply do not want to acknowledge because, deep down, they still fear this innermost essence of their own being—there now emerged —I would say, like a shadow in bright light—something has now arisen in opposition to this striving for freedom, this striving for the individual’s personal fulfillment, something that actually worked against everything that had developed in human nature over long periods of time; in the last three to four centuries, something has emerged that worked against every impulse of human nature, and this has grown ever larger as we approach the present. I said: While it is actually natural for people today to strive for individual self-realization, one sees how people—because they do not understand themselves in this most modern of their aspirations—actually set themselves, outwardly, the polar opposite goal. I characterized it somewhat grotesquely in 1908, but people will still understand me today, just as many understood me back then. I said: It looks as if people were not striving at all for the development of individuality, but rather for a form of state, societal, and social organization that leaves people with no other option but to move along all the paths and byways of life in such a way that the doctor stands to their left and the police officer to their right —the doctor, so that he can constantly look after their health without the individual having the slightest need to rely on his own judgment regarding his health; the police officer, so that he can ensure the individual finds the direction of life without the individual himself setting that direction.

[ 14 ] One need only observe what, despite all enlightenment and despite all supposed commitment to freedom, has been—more or less unconsciously—oriented toward this ideal in recent times. It had to be said at some point: If we continue in this direction, we will head toward a terrible decline. We can only achieve progress if we strive to cultivate within humanity what gradually makes possible a social coexistence among people that is filled with complete mutual trust. We must gain faith in people; we must gain faith that through an appropriate education—one grounded in a truly human sense—and through the development of our humanity, it can indeed become possible for us to get along with one another in the affairs of life that demand a little more than simply being able to pass each other on the street—and to do so in the same way we get along when we encounter one another on the street. For when people meet on the street, one goes to the left and the other to the right; they pass each other by, and no one bumps into the other. That goes without saying. If that source within humanity—which I refer to as true intuition in my *Philosophy of Freedom*—is opened up, then in the higher matters of life, a social community can be founded on trust just as everyday life must ultimately be founded on trust; for it is simply not acceptable that, when two people meet on the street, a police officer steps in and tells one of them: “You must move along so that you do not bump into others.” — This self-evident truth of everyday life can also be carried over into the higher life, where the seriousness of life exists, where the seriousness of life is cultivated.

[ 15 ] However, two demands regarding the paths of the soul were set forth in *The Philosophy of Freedom* at that time. One of these demands was that one should not be satisfied with the kind of thinking that is popular today—popular in everyday life, popular in science—but that one must rise to cultivate within the human being what the new age demands: a way of thinking that flows from its own original source in the human soul, a way of thinking that is luminous and clear in itself. And here I must once again draw attention—without regard for the possibility that I might be accused of speaking in a way that is difficult to understand—to what traditional education actually leads to in human life: it leads to the opposite of what I described in my last lecture here as a necessary requirement for the future.

[ 16 ] If a person today educates himself through nothing other than what he can draw from the traditions of religious confessions and from the newer world of scientific ideas, if he bases his everyday thought patterns on nothing other than what he has gleaned from the presentations of scientific worldviews, from popular literature, from literature in general, from journalism, and from the press, then, my esteemed audience, then that person becomes a materialist. Why does he become a materialist? He becomes a materialist because he does not free his thinking from physicality, because he does not seek to find that source within his soul which detaches the soul from physicality; as a result, however, the person falls into dependence on physicality in life.

[ 17 ] Why are we materialists today? Not because we misinterpret life, but because we live it wrongly. We live and raise our children in such a way that they do not think with their souls, but only with their brains, for the brain can become an imprint of thought. We shut out the soul and think with the brain. No wonder, then, that we speak of this thinking as if it were dependent on the brain; for the majority of people today, it is indeed dependent on the brain. People are materialistic because their entire lives have become materialistic; because they do not strive to attain freedom through a way of thinking that detaches itself from physicality, that becomes free of the body—if I may use this expression today, one I have often justified. Anyone who wishes to develop themselves in accordance with the demands of our time must free their thinking from physicality. They must transform thinking into a self-contained, free mobility of the soul. They must know what it means to think within the thought itself, not to think in such a way that what is thought is merely the result of the brain.

[ 18 ] Today, the question is absurd: Is thinking merely a product of the brain, or is it not?—It is a product of the brain unless we first separate it from that brain. Here I would like to point out a whole tangle of errors in which humanity today is entangled, for today—thanks to what humanity has achieved in the course of historical development—we are in a position to detach our thinking from physicality with complete, lucid clarity. How does one detach it? Not—as I have often emphasized—by inevitably having to become a spiritual researcher oneself, although to a certain extent anyone can become one if they heed what is written in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, in my *Secret Science*, and other similar books; but one does not even need to do that. One need only accept from the spiritual researcher what he has to say to the world—just as one accepts from the astronomer, the chemist, and the physicist what the astronomer, the chemist, and the physicist have to say. One need only approach what is to be accepted with one’s common sense. But one will then make a certain discovery. You will make the discovery: No matter how long you pursue what the Spiritual Science says with your thinking—which is shaped solely by the natural sciences and modern life—with your materialistic thinking, it will appear to you as fantasy, as fanciful rambling, as something you must reject. You will only understand what the spiritual researcher says when you are aware that thinking can be detached from physicality, that you can immerse yourself in the very thinking that was drawn in from spiritual worlds at birth or conception, and that will draw you into spiritual worlds when you pass through the gate of death. - The detachment of thought from physicality is a first major goal on the paths that the soul must follow in this present life.

[ 19 ] And another major goal is still necessary: If we train the will as Spiritual Science methodically describes—as presented in the books just mentioned—then this will take the opposite path from thinking. Thinking frees itself from the body; it detaches itself from the body. The will, however, through precisely the training described in these books, will grasp the body all the more firmly. For this is what is characteristic of modern human beings in particular: that through the will they lose themselves in abstractions, devote themselves to abstract ideals with their will, and hear abstract commandments proclaimed from the pulpit—yet these abstract commandments do not enter their arms, their bodies, or their actions. The second stage of the education and human development referred to here leads to the individual becoming one with what he experiences as the impulses of the will within his own body. The spiritualization of the body through the will—the infusion of the will into all that is sensory, physical, and social—is what the Spiritual Science imparts as its second aspect.

[ 20 ] And what becomes of these ideals when they are, as it were, “inoculated” into the body in this way, according to the method of Spiritual Science thinking? These ideals are taken up by that which is otherwise directed from this body only toward the ordinary sensory world. That which gradually awakens from the body during our childhood—love, sensual love—becomes, when a person is gripped by Spiritual Science, such that all ideals no longer remain mere abstractions, no longer remain mere thoughts, but are loved—loved with one’s entire human being; it becomes such that one loves the spiritual—which underlies our morality, our ethics, our sense of right and wrong, and our religious impulses—just as one loves a beloved person, so that what otherwise remains abstract becomes entirely concrete, like a being of flesh and blood.

[ 21 ] Therefore, the “Philosophy of Freedom” had to overcome all of Kant’s categorical imperatives, which had already greatly troubled Schiller, because these categorical imperatives intrude into human life like something to which one must submit. And what Kant says from a perspective that must be overcome today if we are to move forward: “Duty! You sublime, great name, which contains nothing beloved, nothing that carries flattery within it, but demands submission,” you who “establish a law … before which all inclinations fall silent, even if they secretly oppose it”—this must be replaced by the other: Freedom, you wondrous creation of the spirit, which encompasses everything, to which my humanity would gladly surrender itself! — Schiller was troubled by Kant’s inhuman categorical imperative, and he said: “I gladly serve my friends, yet I do so, alas, out of inclination. And so it often gnaws at me that I am not virtuous.” — “There is no other advice; you must try to despise it, and then, with loathing, do as duty commands.” Schiller intuitively perceived all that was philistine and inhuman in this categorical imperative. He had not yet lived in an age in which it was necessary—as it is today—to point out that, beyond all natural foundations, one must seek in spiritual foundations that which, as a spiritual science, unites with the human being, and that which transforms what is meant to live spiritually within us into an impulse of love. If such an impulse of love among human beings becomes a social driving force, then social community is founded on trust. Then human beings relate to one another in such a way that what happens between them arises from the experience of each individual, rather than from people living like a herd of animals, with some organization from above commanding them and dictating everything—the direction and path their lives are to take.

[ 22 ] And so one might say: Back in the early 1990s, with my *Philosophy of Freedom*, I wanted to raise a call for something—the very opposite of which, the terrible, murderous opposite, is now asserting itself in Eastern Europe, and from there spreading to many other places and across a large part of Asia.

[ 23 ] In recent times, we have found ourselves caught up in social conditions that—stemming from perverse human instincts—sought the exact opposite of what we should have strived for based on an understanding of the true, deeper purpose of modern humanity—that is the terrible “tragedy of recent times.” But it is also the absolute necessity of our time—in our striving toward the future—that we recognize: The social order must be built, as it can only be built, upon free thought, upon trust, upon what Goethe meant when he sought to define duty and said: “Duty is when I love what I command of myself.”

[ 24 ] Ladies and gentlemen, if an education works toward the paths of life and the paths of people’s souls in such a way that these people, out of a keen interest in their surroundings, know how to relate to others—with human dignity permeating their entire existence—then and only then can the ideal of modern times be fulfilled. No organization [can fulfill this], for it takes away precisely as much from what people today must strive for [in freedom] when they follow their nature, and this must lead not to freedom, but to bondage and decline.

[ 25 ] And I have never made a secret of the fact that, in advocating the *Philosophy of Freedom* and then the anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science built upon it, I have never made a secret of the fact that I was not concerned with this or that specific content, with this or that particular detail. I have always spoken with a certain irony about those for whom the main thing is to hear: How many parts does human nature consist of? What can be found in this or that region of the spiritual world? — I have always spoken with a certain irony about such pursuits; on the other hand, what has always mattered to me is answering the question: What becomes of the whole human being—of the human attitude, soul, body, and spirit—when this person strives not to think as mere natural science dictates today, not to will as organizations instill in them, but rather in accordance with the “Philosophy of Freedom” and anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science? — I always drew attention to the fact that the thinking generated simply by taking in this Spiritual Science becomes flexible, that it opens one’s interest wide to the affairs of the present, and that it provides a free and unbiased view of what is necessary and of what hinders our progress in human development.

[ 26 ] That there are many things holding back our necessary progress in human development—I may say, this became apparent to me quite early on, well over forty years ago, when, through a student of Gervinus, I came to know more closely those people within German intellectual life who thought like Gervinus—Gervinus, that remarkable German who, under the influence of the revolutionary years around 1848, wrote his History of German Literature and his History of the German People in the 19th Century. If one delves into Gervinus’s History of German Literature, one still finds oneself saying today: He actually laid out the guidelines that all subsequent literary historians have followed. He laid out the broad outlines by which German antiquity, the German Middle Ages, minnesang, and meistersang—as well as the early phase of the German classical period—are to be judged. But he also laid out the guidelines for a sound assessment of the Goethe-Schiller era. One might find some of his views pedantic today—but those who followed him are even more pedantic. And one can clearly see in many who today believe themselves to be standing on the heights of a particularly modern, expressionist era how, through their snobbery, a pedantry emerges that is far greater than that of the old-fashioned traditionalists—whose pedantry I do not, however, wish to defend in any way. But something peculiar struck one about Gervinus—this Gervinus, who grew quite bitter in the 1870s, so that—even though so much was owed to him —caused quite a stir among those who, under the auspices of those 1870s, believed they were sailing into the golden age of German culture and who, in any case, had no inkling that the seeds of what has now come to pass were already sown back then.

[ 27 ] This Gervinus—what was the well-intentioned conclusion he drew specifically in his History of German Literature? He made a remarkable statement: German poetry came to an end with Goethe’s death. — Just consider, my esteemed audience, the man who was the first to describe this German literature with such deep love; stated at the end of his account that the German people should no longer pay attention to what comes from all sorts of lyric poets and the like, but rather that they should become aware of what, up to 1832, had struggled to the surface from the deepest essence of Germanness. Furthermore, however, Gervinus believes that the German people should no longer devote themselves to poetry and drama, nor to fiction, but rather to politics and practical action. The time for practical action has come. In a remarkable way, the first seed of this idea came to me; I sensed it back then, a good forty years ago, when, at the Technical University, Karl Julius Schröer—my dear old friend Schröer—conveyed the entirety of Gervinism to me in this manner. At that time, I perceived something that was a seed of something else, which, I would say, confronts us today in its full-blown form.

[ 28 ] There were, in fact, quite a number of people who, like Gervinus, said—based on a largely justified insight—that the time of inner contemplation, the time when one strove for spiritual heights while cut off from practical life outside, is over. The task now is to devote oneself to the practice of life. — But by perceiving this seed, one could already sense something: that all these people who spoke this way were pointing toward practical life in a wholly abstract, reality-shy manner; that they regarded the old ideals, as it were, as fulfilled and were pointing toward a new, practical life—yet they had no inspiring ideas, no inspiring forces for this practical life. For if one asked Gervinus, for example: “What, then, is the spiritual content of what you so beautifully described up until 1832?” One was presented with a vast, grand tableau. If one asked: “What is to live in the hearts and souls of those people who are now to set out into practical life, who are to lead this practical life, who are to find the paths of life through the paths of the soul?” —there was nothing there; no new ideals were there! And the thought had to arise in the soul: First, the world—the spiritual world—must be found, from which the new ideals for a new way of living can be derived; this spiritual world must first be scientifically explored, just as the natural world has been scientifically explored for the past three to four centuries.

[ 29 ] And, essentially, time has shown that the world has remained cut off from these spiritual sources; that it sought to establish practice, but practice without spirituality—and this very desire to establish practice without spirituality has led us into the present age of decline, into a time of hardship, misery, and hopelessness. And many things have been said to point out, time and again, the direction toward which we are actually heading. Indeed, many such thoughts permeated the lectures I have had the privilege of giving here in Stuttgart over the past two decades, much of what seemed necessary to me to bring to people’s awareness from the anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, if things were to move upward—not through cannons and rifles, but through a way of life sustained by spirituality, though a spirituality that must first be newly created. And today I would like to point out something that I have spoken about from a wide variety of perspectives as belonging to our Spiritual Science.

[ 30 ] I have said: If someone applies the same perspective—which we have derived from the natural sciences and which fills our thought forms with scientific concepts—to history, then they will see in history only that which leads to decline. For in history there are always forces that bring about phenomena of decline. And if one studies history solely with the methods customary in the natural sciences—as, for example, the English cultural historian Buckle did, and those who followed him—then one sees in history only that which leads to decline; then one sees only the twilight of history. To see what has brought about the periods of ascent in history, one must look into the spiritual world. What brings about these periods of ascent in history are impulses that arise from the spiritual world. I have already pointed out here that we have, for example, in Gibbon, an excellent account of the decline of the Roman Empire written from the perspective of the age of natural science. But what we still lack today is a historical account of what entered the declining Roman world as the impulse of Christianity. One can describe what was coming to an end in Roman civilization using a scientific way of thinking; but one cannot describe what was rising in Christianity using a scientific way of thinking. I have pointed this out. And what follows from what I have pointed out—perhaps seemingly only in an ideal sense, seemingly only in thought, but in reality with regard to the paths of life? What follows from this?

[ 31 ] This follows from the following: If someone were to appear in our age, in which the natural sciences have taken hold of all circles and all minds—even extending into the circles of the Jesuits, as I have indicated—if someone were to appear and offer a view of life and history based on this scientific spirit, what would he have to say? He could only see signs of decline, for he views our Western culture through the lens of scientific thought. What would such a person have to write if he were to write about the present from a scientific perspective?—He would write: “The Decline of the West.” And have we not—in contrast to all sound thinking in the Spiritual Science—now also received this dreadful literary work: *The Decline of the West*—a morphological view of history by Oswald Spengler. Ladies and gentlemen, the fact that this is possible can only be understood in light of the fact that those who today are saturated solely with a scientific mindset can see only the signs of decline, so that they are compelled to prophesy: The entire culture must perish. — That is the content of Spengler’s book: the prediction of the decline of our culture.

[ 32 ] Must it not perhaps decline if all people think the way Spengler does? Just as one is bound to become a materialist if one does not detach thought from physicality, so too must one think about Western culture the way Oswald Spengler does if one views this Western culture solely from the perspective of the natural sciences. But if everyone views it that way, if everyone believes we are doomed to perish, then we will indeed perish. That is why I call this book a terrible book. For those who are infected by these ideas, by these impulses, and who take them in with sincerity—they must become bearers of decline from the very depths of their souls; they must embark on spiritual paths that lead into the abyss along the paths of life. One must look at such phenomena from time to time, because only they reveal just how deeply the signs of decline are present in human life today, and just how deeply the paths of life—which plunge into the abyss—are prepared from the paths of the soul.

[ 33 ] However, the anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science stands in contrast to such views. It focuses its attention on that which is rooted in the spiritual world within the human being. It is precisely this aspect that is, of course, most frequently attacked—namely, its assertion that human beings can, if they only develop the soul forces within them, come to perceive a spiritual world. Today, this is bluntly rejected from almost all sides as fanciful nonsense, even though one could easily see that those paths leading to the spiritual world—which I attempted to open up in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* and in my essay on meditations regarding self-knowledge, and so on—that these paths are just as reliable as those that lead into the fields of mathematics with absolutely clear, sharply defined thinking. However, in this spiritual research, one does not merely think; other, more real powers of the soul than those involved in mathematics also come into play.

[ 34 ] Here, spiritual science must, of course, speak about the spiritual world; it cannot take the same stance as many traditional creeds do today. What do these traditional creeds proclaim? One thing they proclaim, for example, is something that, in fact, emerges fully and naturally through Spiritual Science: the indestructibility of the human soul when the body is returned to the earth, and the human being’s entry into the spiritual world when he or she passes through the gate of death. But it is not merely a matter of arriving at such conclusions; rather, it depends on how these conclusions are instilled in the human being. And how is the idea of immortality cultivated today? By appealing to the selfish instincts inherent in the human soul’s development. Read the countless sermons, read the countless reflections on this topic—you will find everywhere that people speculate on the fact that human beings have an intensely selfish interest in not perishing with death. Fundamentally, all talk of immortality is a concession to this spiritual selfishness. The way in which this idea is presented—that is what characterizes it. And in sharp contrast to this half-baked notion of immortality stands the other view—the one that Origen had already articulated, though he was, of course, regarded as a heretic by the Church: the pre-existence of the soul, to which the unbiased spiritual researcher returns. What, fundamentally, do today’s creeds have to offer? The conviction that two people come together in the world, conceive a child, and that the soul is then newly conceived from the spiritual world; that every time a sensory process takes place here, a spiritual process is added from the spiritual worlds.

[ 35 ] Ladies and gentlemen, this idea is not a Christian one. It is an Aristotelian idea. It was Aristotle who, emerging from the decadence of Greek culture and from a Platonism that was no longer understood, taught this origin of the soul in conjunction with the body—and thus the one-sided immortality that exists only after death. And so, by denying pre-existence, the Christian creeds do not represent something Christian, but rather something Aristotelian—something that, at its very core, has nothing to do with Christianity. And when Spiritual Science, as understood here, comes along and reveals the whole truth, then the “Traubs”—like the pastor, Professor Traub—come along and claim that Spiritual Science is merely copying others. No, that is not the case. In truth, with regard to certain elementary matters, it agrees with ancient truths just as we agree today in geometry with the ancient Euclid. But people like Traub have every interest in casting a veil of obscurity over what existed in earlier times, because if one were to study it impartially, one would recognize where their own wisdom comes from. It is precisely their wisdom that is derived from all of this—which they, however, wish to bury so that no one will discover it. That is why they paint a grim picture, as if anthroposophy drew from Gnosticism and the like, so that people will regard Gnosticism as something dangerous and will not look for themselves to see how this Gnosticism has flowed—not into anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, but certainly into modern religious doctrine—by reducing what lived in Gnosticism to decadence.

[ 36 ] The Spiritual Science must point out precisely how the human being descends from the spiritual world; how it is not a whim of the physical world that prompts the divine-spiritual world to create a soul for what human beings bring forth on Earth, but rather how the soul descends from the spiritual world with the experiences it has had there; it must specifically point out how physical life is a continuation of spiritual life. To this partial immortality, Spiritual Science adds complete, full immortality. If one follows this path, one recognizes how the spiritual flows from spiritual worlds into the individual human being. One also recognizes how the spiritual flows in from spiritual worlds—but through human beings—into cultural progress, and how this cultural progress has very specific, distinct epochs and periods. We are standing today in the very period that, in terms of our conception of culture and civilization, must inevitably lead to something new. That is the case.

[ 37 ] When you go through a book like this one—it’s quite thick, after all—such as the one by Oswald Spengler, you see how he views individual cultures from his scientific perspective. He says: Cultures—they are always evolving; they had a childhood, a youth, a maturity, and a decline. This was the case with the Eastern cultures. They arose, grew, matured, and died. This was also the case with Greek culture. And this is also the case with our culture; and our culture is now in its decline. For, he says, we are compelled to view cultures the same way we view an oak tree or a pine tree. An oak tree comes into being, grows, matures, and dies. We view cultures in the same way. — Yes, we view them that way when we are thoroughly imbued with a purely scientific way of thinking. If we come to know spiritual perception and learn to cultivate it properly, then we will also know how to view cultures differently.

[ 38 ] Then what I presented here during my last stay in Stuttgart—as an outline of the historical life of humanity—enters our souls, in which I pointed out that in primeval times, people did indeed possess an instinctive knowledge, an instinctive spiritual life, but one that was higher than what we can attain today with our intellectual faculties. Compared to what existed in the beginning, arising from human instincts of wisdom, we are indeed living in an age of decline today. But if we understand—as Spiritual Science intends—how to open the wellspring within our souls for free, luminous thinking, for freedom that is at the same time love, for social trust, and for spiritual insight in general, then what lives within us will permeate our souls and flow into this earthly culture, into this earthly civilization—which in turn brings about an ascent. But if we were to fill ourselves merely with what the observation of nature and the scientific worldview can offer us—if we were to believe only in what exists today through this perspective—then there would be an inevitable decline. There will be no decline if we become aware that within us lies the source of a thinking that can detach itself from physicality, that within us lies the source of a will that can love the ascent into the spiritual world just as much as sexual love can love anything. Let us raise in freedom that wisdom which ancient humanity received through instincts—and which today can only be raised because physicality no longer provides us with anything—let us raise it in freedom; then we will infuse what seeks to decline with the impulses of ascent. The fact is that humanity today is faced with the question: Is the world not in decline?—Yes, it is in decline if human beings are willing to follow only what is given to them from outside, if they allow themselves to be bound only by a natural or social organization imposed from outside.

[ 39 ] Decline will not occur if people build and establish a new world from within themselves. The Lenins and Trotskys, who—in every extreme—seek to build a new world based solely on the natural sciences, are the ones who lead most swiftly and most intensely into decline. Those who seek to build a new world from the spirit—they alone lead to social progress. For all those who still believe today that the world can be patched up through external institutions, through all manner of external expedients—Marxism or the like—Oswald Spengler spoke the truth. If only these people apply their energies to shaping the world, if only they direct the course of world history, then Spengler’s prophecy must come true. For he merely drew the logical conclusion from what anyone must conclude who today is guided solely by a scientific worldview. The paths of life are serious today, and it is necessary that the greatest seriousness take hold of the paths of the soul. But one must also take such great matters seriously. And one must be able to judge based on symptoms.

[ 40 ] I told you that a good forty years ago, when as a young man I became acquainted with Gervinus’s way of thinking through Schröer’s mediation and approached Gervinus myself, I was deeply moved by how Gervinus calls for practical action but has no ideas for putting it into practice, and by how he claims that the world—in which those very ideas he alone knows how to speak of still existed—came to an end in 1832 with Goethe’s death. It made a deep impression on me how he called on people to stop writing poetry, to stop writing plays, to stop writing fiction, and instead to devote themselves to the practical tasks of life; how he directed people toward practical action, yet had no ideas for these practical tasks of life. And that is exactly how people behaved. Poets were only there for school, or at most for the concert hall; that’s where their works were recited. But what flowed from intellectual life could not intervene in the course of life. There was a dissonance between the paths of the soul and the paths of life. And that is how we have developed. Now people like Oswald Spengler come along and say: Everything that Western culture, Western civilization, has produced is finished; it is doomed!—So what is to be done? This is particularly interesting, and let us consider, in Spengler’s own words, why he actually claims to have written his book and for what kind of minds he actually intended it. He says it himself: “If, under the influence of this book, the people of the younger generation turn to technology instead of poetry, to the navy instead of painting, to politics instead of the critique of knowledge, then they are doing what I wish, and one could not wish them anything better.”

[ 41 ] Well, my esteemed audience, I believe that in an age when people believe they have made such magnificent practical progress—an age in which people have already turned to technology instead of poetry, to the navy instead of painting, and to politics instead of the critique of knowledge—even before Spengler wrote his book—all of this was truly already there; after all, there has certainly never been a shortage of politicians. To make prophecies of decadence now about the downfall of Western culture, to have to admit now that one wants to urge people to turn away from spirituality and toward a practical world for which one has no ideas—indeed, in principle, one does not wish to have any ideas—now to prophesy the downfall of Western ideas because one believes them to be in their twilight years—that is spoken from the very heart of an age of decline. And perhaps I may—without falling into presumption, for I wish only to characterize a desire, an attempt, a beginning—perhaps I may draw attention to the fact that what has been presented here as an anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, and what now seeks to take on practical form precisely here from its headquarters in Stuttgart, stands on the opposite standpoint. We do not tell people: Turn away from all spirituality, for it is in decline, and turn toward the coming day. — We tell people: New spirituality must be created; we need to delve into new sources of spiritual life. We need to enter the soul paths of spiritual vision so that we may find precisely that practical life which is sustained by ideas grounded in reality. Without ideas, we have ridden ourselves into decline; with ideas—which, however, cannot now be the traditional, the old ones, but must be newly created—with these new ideas alone will we be able to enter into the ascent. Admittedly, it seems as though this cannot happen so quickly, for what can be observed on a large scale also manifests itself on a small scale. But I wish to speak of this only in a symptomatic sense.

[ 42 ] The way in which one assesses such a will, as it emanates from here—this had to be outlined in Issue 50 of our newspaper *The Threefold Social Order* by Eugen Kolisko under the title “Criticism of Theologians and Conscientiousness.” Once again, it had to be illustrated using the book by a university professor, Dr. Philipp Bachmann, professor of theology at the University of Erlangen. This book, *Death or Life?*, was published here in Stuttgart. Read the article written by Dr. Kolisko, and you will see that he rightly summarizes his review at the end with the following sentences, which are indeed a characterization of that branch of scholarship which today exerts its influence solely through diplomas and external status, yet is inwardly hollow and consistently develops precisely those forces that, stemming from its supposed spirit, can only lead to decline. Today we must have the courage not merely to characterize the signs of decline in general and abstract terms, but to shine a bright light on how we currently have a so-called spiritual life that, even in the simplest matters, operates with a lack of conscience that is matched only by its thoughtlessness and ignorance. This, my esteemed audience, must not be concealed from ourselves if we wish to speak today of the harmony between the paths of the soul and the paths of life.

[ 43 ] Thus, Dr. Kolisko had to describe what is characterized by such a small book, which is in itself insignificant:

[ 44 ] It would not be necessary to examine this book so thoroughly if it had not been written by a university professor. Such a person must know what the purpose of an objective critique is. This critique, however, is frivolous.

[ 45 ] In particular, the way the train of thought in my *Secret Science* is presented in this book is reckless.

[ 46 ] One can proceed with impunity in this way only in the realm of theosophy. For here, one is not called to account even if one asserts the most absurd things. Anthroposophy, theosophy, and spiritualism are all considered equally valid by many, and according to the saying that “all cows are gray in the dark,” one can lump everything together with impunity and produce disparaging critiques. - If a critique were written in such a reckless manner in any other scientific field—without sufficient knowledge of the field being criticized—and if, instead of in many places, the writer’s train of thought were distorted so senselessly in just one instance, so senselessly the author’s train of thought be rendered, the existing literature on the subject be disregarded in this manner, and the opinions of various authors be conflated—then, in scientific circles, the person acting in this way would be held accountable, lose his reputation, and perhaps even his position. Anyone who conveys to his readers the content of what is said in the book *An Outline of Esoteric Science* regarding the constituent parts of the human being with the words: “The physical body dies, the etheric body sleeps, the astral body forgets, the ‘I’ (the sentient soul) is the memory,” is either incapable of conveying another’s train of thought or is doing so with the intent to maliciously distort it. In either case, he is condemned as a critic. It is a sad reflection on today’s educational system that a university professor can unhindered publish such a piece of drivel. I leave it to those who can still muster some indignation at such reckless and unscrupulous conduct to judge what is to be made of the Christianity of a professor of theology who writes such critiques.

[ 47 ] That is precisely what Bachmann, in his “Bachmann-like” way, identified as the content of what is written in my book *The Secret Science*. That is how university professors read today.

[ 48 ] Well, my esteemed audience, this is precisely what stands in the way today, coming from all corners, of the desire for progress; these are the people who do not want to allow anything to come near that might in any way lead to progress. These people exist in great numbers; they are the ones educating our youth. And then there are the “Spenglers,” who write that we are inevitably doomed to decline. Why do the “Spenglers” write this way? Because they are incapable of turning their eyes to anything other than the “Bachmen” with their ignorance and frivolity. These matters must be taken very seriously today. And now that I have given three lectures, I may well conclude today by saying: Having attempted in my first two lectures last week to shed some light on the paths that anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science seeks to follow—both epistemologically and socially—scientifically, not in the way the “Bachmen” and “Trauben” slander it— and having also spoken of what is to be developed artistically in Dornach, I may say today that, indeed, among those who strive in this way toward science and art, one is reminded of a beautiful saying that stands out from Goethe and will remain eternally true: “Whoever possesses science and art also possesses religion.” Spiritual Science and its art possess religion—but a religion that is not built on blind faith, but rather on a clear, luminous science that truly recognizes the spirit, and on an artistic will striving toward spiritual deepening. And after Goethe said, “Whoever possesses science and art possesses religion,” he continues: “Whoever does not possess those two, let him have religion!”

[ 49 ] In our time, however, the spiritual scientist—the proponent of the threefold social order—may perhaps say, from the depths of his heart and drawing upon Spiritual Science: Indeed, whoever possesses science and art also possesses religion. — But today, religion can lead to spiritual ascent only if it draws its vitality from a living science itself, not from a science of the dead; it can lead to spiritual ascent only if it springs from an artistic will that is connected to such a spiritual insight that one can say: Whoever today possesses a science rooted in spiritual vision, whoever today attempts—even if only in the faintest beginnings—an art that is wholly connected in its most intense will to this spiritual vision, should not be reproached for resisting the religious element on the path of life in the present. For whoever seeks the Spirit, whoever seeks to embody the Spirit artistically, certainly also has the will to carry over into social life that which—linked to human worth and human dignity—truly cultivates, within the social community, an aspiration toward the divine guidance of the world and toward the divine primal forces of life —a genuine aspiration that does not merely speculate on human selfishness, but on the connection between human beings and the great, eternal laws of existence. Only a religion that does not seek to capitalize on selfishness, but rather points to the deepest harmony between the individual and the entire world, can lead to spiritual ascent.

[ 50 ] And to the same extent that such religion, drawing its impetus from such science and such art, permeates the human soul, to that same extent will we make social progress. To the same extent, despite hardship and misery—though perhaps, if the opposing forces are too strong, still through much hardship and much misery—we will be moving not toward the downfall of Western culture, but toward the rise of true human life—a life in which, on the paths of the soul and the paths of life, work can be and will be done religiously, scientifically, and artistically—and in which work is carried out from the spirit, from spirit-filled art, and from spirit-inspired religion, for the human present and into the human future.