The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. Today’s Major Challenges in Intellectual, Legal, and Economic Life: A Third Lecture on Contemporary Issues

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! To the casual observer, the state of public life in the civilized world over the past 50 years has been impossible to overlook; the interrelationships between its various elements have become difficult to fathom and confusing. Today’s misery has emerged from what one might call the great—namely, the economic—boom prior to 1914; our decline is marked by the most complex circumstances arising from the most diverse facts—facts that are, in turn, of a nature that is difficult to grasp. It is no wonder that, for people who today must live, work, and strive amid this decline, a longing for a new beginning wells up from the depths of their souls—that people first begin, somewhere within small circles, to ask questions and try to explore how this or that particular aspect might be improved. But as understandable as this is—anyone who looks more deeply into today’s circumstances must recognize that, from this decline to a process of rebuilding today and in the near future, nothing else can lead the way except a grasp of the great tasks of our time—tasks that must be drawn from certain sources which, in fact, cannot lie within the confines of small spheres. As best as I can in the course of one evening, I will endeavor to offer some modest reflections—I would say, for one cannot do otherwise in the face of these challenges—on individual aspects of these great challenges of our time.

[ 2 ] It seems that if anything clearly points to how we must tackle the great challenges facing us, it is the major mistakes that have been made in this era. Two stages currently define our entire public life in its immediate, present development, and it seems to me that these stages point not only to external, economic conditions, but also to legal conditions, to moral conditions, and, in particular, to intellectual conditions within our present civilization. But when one names these two stages—Versailles, Spa, and all that followed in their wake—and recalls everything they have brought us, it becomes somewhat difficult to characterize them, for today one is viewed with suspicion when striving for a certain objectivity. People’s opinions stand in stark contrast to one another: Anyone who, as a member of Central European civilization, wishes to pass judgment on the West can be quite certain that their objectivity will be very, very strongly questioned by the people of the West. I would therefore prefer, for the time being, not to offer my own judgment on what happened at Versailles—an event that still casts a shadow over our present; rather, I would like to draw on the judgment of the Englishman John Maynard Keynes, who wrote the significant book *The Economic Consequences of the Peace*, to which I have already referred in my Stuttgart lectures from a different perspective than I am taking today.

[ 3 ] Keynes was, after all, a man who, up to a certain point—until things became too much for him—held a prominent position at the Versailles negotiations, and he offered his assessment [in his book] of what had happened, as well as of what, in his opinion, should have happened. One might say that in three sentences he roughly sums up the essence of the events at Versailles—that which is so symptomatic of our present time. He, the Englishman whom Lenin had only recently called the “English petty bourgeois,” says quite simply: Nothing—absolutely nothing—was done at Versailles to address the great task that should have fallen to those who could consider themselves victors. What did Clemenceau do? He ruined Europe’s economic resources and did nothing to rebuild the economy in France itself. What did Lloyd George do? He made a few deals that allowed him to shine in London for a short time. What did Wilson accomplish? Wilson had good intentions regarding what was right and just—so says Keynes—but no way presented itself to him to somehow translate what he perhaps meant well into reality. These three most important men committed the great errors of the age.

[ 4 ] And now let’s take a look at what has actually come of the terrible events that have unfolded since 1914 for Germany. I certainly don’t need to describe it to you. To the southeast of Germany, Czechoslovakia has emerged as a relatively large state. Born of national aspirations, the government there has proven economically powerless in the face of the challenges that the economy in particular poses for these regions. To the north of it lies Poland. Well, you need only recall the past few weeks to see, on the one hand, how what has been established there has only contributed to Europe’s unease; and on the other hand, you need only recall the helplessness of Europe’s leading figures in the face of what is simmering and boiling there. One need only think of the “tragicomic nature of the shift in perspective from Polish ‘defeats’ to Polish ‘victories,’ how, without a clear stance or overarching principles, one found oneself facing one thing today and its opposite tomorrow. And if one goes further east, it may seem today as though Leninism and Trotskyism—especially when one considers the devastating conditions in Italy—have no other guiding principles than to develop, out of a phenomenal delusion of grandeur, all those forces that can serve to destroy the achievements of modern civilization. The Germans in Austria are down and out, not to mention Hungary, where the sad spectacle is unfolding in which members of the party that was at the helm until recently are paraded through the streets, captured and bound, only to have ladies in elegant, sumptuous attire stab them in the eyes with their umbrellas. This account could go on at length, and one could see what has emerged for humanity from these circumstances since 1914.

[ 5 ] And when one looks at what comes from figures who are somehow active within this terrible decline—figures who can often even indulge in tragicomic illusions about a resurgence that might be brought about by their intentions—one is tempted to say: To the short-sighted and the uninsightful, the speech Lenin delivered at the Second Congress of the Third International was nothing short of monumental; there, once again in the old Marxist style, he leveled all the familiar platitudes against Western capitalism that have been heard so often. If one considers, from a certain world-historical perspective, what is said in this sweeping speech about how capitalism—having grown into imperialism—oppresses five-sevenths of humanity, then today, on the other hand, the question must surely be raised: What would have become of modern civilization as a whole if, in the end, there had been no accumulation of capital? And must we not ask: Is it not self-evident, given all the forces that have shaped our modern era, that such accumulations of capital have also contributed to the progress of humanity? In the face of our collapsing world, can we still get by today with such an abstraction, which merely proclaims the struggle in a wholly abstract form, or must we not ask: Is there not also, precisely when this tone is struck, something clearly moral underlying our decline? Do not fighters like Lenin perhaps confuse the harmfulness of capitalism itself with the kind of morality—or rather, immorality—with which capitalism has operated? Can one not also trace this spiritual tone in the effects of capitalism? And does this not perhaps lead us to impulses that are deeper than those that are constantly being proclaimed today—proclamations that have, after all, brought about so very little practical success for the better?

[ 6 ] Now one might well say: What is truly characteristic of today’s intellectual, legal, and economic situation is, after all, the counterpoint offered once again by Keynes, the Englishman—a sharp critic of the Western powers—though his words sound somewhat different from Lenin’s. Keynes says, for example: “Yes, terrible things happened at Versailles. Instead of doing anything to rebuild Europe, everything was done to turn Europe into a heap of civilizational rubble; bad things are already here, and worse things will come in the years ahead.” — I am quoting the gist, not the exact wording. And in an even more remarkable way, Keynes addresses some of the underlying mindset that has brought us into our current situation. It is interesting how this man, who sat in on the negotiations for weeks—those led by Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George, how this man comes to understand what actually caused Wilson—who had beguiled so many people with his abstract Fourteen Points—to fail so completely. This becomes a significant problem for the Englishman Keynes, and something highly peculiar comes to light.

[ 7 ] Keynes constructs—as I said, based on his observation of the way Wilson was sitting there—how the others did everything they could to deceive him, to make sure he never figured out what they actually wanted. This is a remarkable psychological event that Keynes describes and analyzes here—one that, I would say, sheds profound light on the entire cultural state of the present. Keynes evidently believes that if Wilson had been told—if it had been stated plainly and clearly that France’s wish was that the Germans of Austria not be allowed to unite with the Germans of Germany—and if Wilson had actually heard those words, his sense of justice would have rebelled against it. Now one must observe the struggle of such a narrow-minded mentality—if I may use this “Entente” term—and one must understand how Wilson feels—as Keynes does—when one considers the following as an observer. Keynes says: Yes, the people around Clemenceau and Lloyd George did not say: ‘The Germans of Austria shall not be permitted to unite with the Germans of Germany,’ for Wilson would have rebelled against that; therefore, they said: ‘The independence of German Austria shall be guaranteed by a treaty with the Entente powers until the League of Nations issues a different ruling.’ That is what Wilson understood: the independence, the freedom of the Germans of Austria, must be guaranteed. — If they had told him: “They are forbidden to unite with the Germans of Germany”—Wilson would have interpreted what he otherwise understood as freedom and independence as the ultimate form of coercion. If they had told him—as Keynes goes on to explain—“Danzig is to become a Polish city,” he would have objected; that quite obviously contradicts the Fourteen Points. So they told him: ‘Danzig will be a free city, but all customs matters are to be handled from Poland, as is the supervision of all transportation matters, and the Poles are to become the protectors of citizens residing abroad.’ Oh, that sounded different from if they had said that Danzig was to become a Polish city. And one might even say: Yes, when phrased this way—“Danzig is to become a free city”—it stirs the enthusiasm of Wilson’s narrow-minded mentality. But if one had told him that Danzig was to become a Polish city, that would have contradicted Wilson’s view that every people should be led toward freedom. And if one had further told Wilson that the Entente should exercise supreme control over the German rivers, he could not have agreed to that; but instead, it was said: “Navigation, where it passes through several states, is an international matter.” With that, Wilson was satisfied again.

[ 8 ] If one wants to understand what are currently the major forces at work in the world, one must look at what is developing within the—I will now speak in German and translate the Entente term—“state of mind” of the leading figures who have emerged from earlier circumstances. Is there still integrity and honesty to be found there? Is there still sound judgment and openness? The exact opposite of all that prevails—and what’s more, it prevails in such a way that people remain convinced, despite everything, that they are honest, open individuals, because what is actually at work has become an unconscious habit. How, in fact, could Wilson have been so deceived, as he was in the manner I have just described, following Keynes? People who still cannot bring themselves to believe that such an abstract, theorizing mind as Wilson’s is a misfortune for Europe sometimes utter these well-meaning words: “He—this Wilson—knew far too little about European conditions”—so, hypothetically speaking, even though I do not admit it, let us concede that Wilson knew far too little about European conditions. But Wilson wrote a work spanning nearly 500 pages on the state, in which he describes in great detail the conditions of European states—their governmental and legal structures, and so on. So we are faced with the fact: Either it is not true that Wilson did not know European conditions, or a leading figure of our time has written a work on European conditions—a work of great significance for America—without actually having any knowledge of those European conditions. The latter, in particular, would shed a bright light on the sheer superficiality of our time—on everything that draws solely from the spirit of the surface and does not engage with what lies in the deeper foundations of things as the actual cause of current events, current developments, and the entire process of human evolution. But there is something even more significant behind what I have described.

[ 9 ] It has been many years now since, during a series of lectures in Helsingfors—at a time when Wilson was revered everywhere because two of his literary works, which seemed significant at the time, had just been published—I drew attention to something that characterizes the entire nature of Wilson’s mindset. Wilson says at one point: If one looks back at the time in which, for example, Newton, the great physicist, lived, one finds—as, for instance, in the doctrine of constitutional law or among those who reflect on economic conditions—that the same patterns of thought, the same conceptual frameworks, apply to economic and political conditions as those that Newton, the physicist, developed for physicists. - And now Wilson says: We must free ourselves from such a dependence of thought with regard to public, political, or economic conditions; today we must think about politics, the global economy, and so on in an organic sense. And now he develops a kind of political ideology about which one must say: Just as those he criticizes were dependent on Newton in their time, so he, as a politician, an economist, and a legal scholar, is entirely a follower of Darwinism and thinks in Darwinian terms, just as those he criticizes thought in Newtonian terms. Darwin is in vogue—and so Wilson, the world reformer, thinks in Darwinian terms. But I said back then: We are now in such a time that we must no longer allow our view of the real conditions of public life to be clouded by what comes to us from the natural sciences. What comes to us from the natural sciences—as I have often said here—is perfectly suited to precisely investigating the surface of things; but anything that seeks to form ideas about human action and human coexistence must delve into deeper foundations of the world than natural science ever needs to. And that is why—as I said—the danger of our time lies precisely in a way of thinking such as that of Woodrow Wilson.

[ 10 ] That was long before the war, at a time when Wilson was still being glorified as a world hero for many years afterward. For what matters today is this: to turn our gaze away from everything that binds people solely to the external. It is necessary to be able to sharpen our gaze toward the deeper causes of becoming and events. But this, ladies and gentlemen, is what that school of thought attempts to do—a school that, with a spirit just as scientific as that of the natural sciences, turns its attention to the spiritual and soul aspects of the human being. It is the anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science that I have been presenting here in my lectures in Stuttgart for nearly two decades now—more frequently each year.

[ 11 ] What must we strive for in our spiritual life in the sense of the Spiritual Science referred to here? I would like to briefly point out that this Spiritual Science does not arrive at its results through external means, but rather through the fact that the individual first engages in certain exercises—which might be described as “intellectual.” A person must tell themselves over and over again what I characterized as a comparison in one of my recent lectures here. I said: If a five-year-old child picks up a volume of Goethe’s poetry—the child will not be able to make sense of it; in any case, the child will do something entirely different with it than what the volume of Goethe’s poetry is intended for. But when the child is ten years older, the child will have undergone a development and attained a maturity during that time, through which the child will then be able to make sense of this volume of poetry. - The spiritual researcher referred to here says to himself: With the form of consciousness that we use in ordinary life—and that we also apply in conventional science—we stand before the higher world forces just as the five-year-old child stands before a volume of Goethe’s poetry. Thus, powers lie dormant within every human being that they can develop from within themselves, and which then reveal to them a different, spiritual understanding of the world—one that shows them, above all, that while scientific thinking magnificently explores the surface of things, and that in this regard the natural sciences have, to their credit, achieved the greatest triumphs, They show us, however, that with a scientific way of thinking we can never, even for a moment, get to the bottom of the natural forces that influence human action unless we resort to methods and ways of thinking that are imbued with the spirit—and through which we can also grasp human beings and the powers lying within them in a thoroughly scientific manner. But then, through such an understanding of the human being, we arrive at a completely different understanding of the world than that offered by the conventional spiritual life in which we are currently mired. In contrast to this conventional intellectual life, one is reminded of a profoundly moving statement made by Hölderlin when his mind was still clear, not yet clouded, but finely attuned and sensitive to what existed in his cultural environment. Hölderlin, who had immersed himself in the harmonious humanity of ancient Greece and had come to love it, viewed the people around him—exaggerating, as such a spirit is prone to do in its own time—in such a way that, comparing them to the Greeks, he characterized them as follows. He said: “Do human beings live among us ordinary Germans? I see no human beings around me like the Greeks were; I see civil servants, teachers, professors, but no human beings; I see lawyers, artists, and scholars, but no human beings; I see young and mature people around me, but no human beings; what I lack in my surroundings is that whole, full, fully developed humanity that can also attain a harmonious relationship with the universe. - Such a humanity also lived—consciously and unconsciously, sensually and supersensually—within Goethe, and it was out of such a humanity that, for example, what Goethe himself valued even more highly than his poetry came into being—even though it was so poorly understood after Goethe’s time: his scientific works. In these scientific schools of thought of Goethe’s, it is not merely the physicist who lives one-sidedly when he presents a theory of colors, nor is it merely the botanist who lives one-sidedly when he describes plants, nor is it merely the anatomist who lives one-sidedly when he characterizes human bones; rather, in this way of thinking, the whole human being lives always and in everything; and the whole human being perceives in the individual aspects of nature that which can only reveal itself when one experiences it inwardly in its effect upon all of humanity.

[ 12 ] Over time, this way of thinking was increasingly countered by something that has been highly praised, though also occasionally criticized: specialization in all areas of life—that specialization which has made its way into our higher knowledge in particular and has exerted its influence from there, extending, for example, all the way down to elementary school education. This specialization turned people into physicists, botanists, lawyers, professors, teachers, and so on, but it drove the human element out of them. And we must ask ourselves: Is it truly a promotion of knowledge itself when, in recent times, this knowledge has developed in such a way that the body of knowledge that once led to a worldview has fragmented into those small compartments from which the human element has been lost, and through which one could no longer maintain a view of the world? Time and again, a few influential figures have been portrayed as if they were knowledge itself. But anyone who can look into the development of modern times will find that this is not the case. They see that knowledge and the striving for the abstract unitary state, as it has developed across the civilized world over the last three to four centuries. They see that the unitary state, which absorbed everything that we now wish to restructure through the impulse of the threefold social order, that this unitary state—with its mixing of spiritual life, legal life, and economic life—turned physicists and chemists, professors and teachers, in short, specialized people, into a single fabric; and, if it followed its own principles, it had to fill its positions with these very people. It was this unitary state that drained from human beings the wholeness of humanity that lived so vividly in Goethe and that Hölderlin so longed for his fellow Germans. It is Spiritual Science that seeks to restore this “whole humanity” to today’s humanity, for it is from this “whole humanity” alone that can arise what is at once knowledge, what is feeling in harmony with all that is human, what is true justice, and at the same time a rational economic life.

[ 13 ] If one proceeds according to the methods of spiritual research, one does not merely gain a superficial overview of something cobbled together from the individual disciplines, but rather one gains fully living spiritual knowledge. This, however, is like a light that can be shed on the individual fields. And with it, one regains the ability to place the human being above the specialists; one gains the ability to put the human being first and the social structure second—and not, conversely, to put the social structure first and the human being second, thereby allowing the human being to wither away into a mere template of the system. Because Spiritual Science is something that truly arises in this way from the fullness of the human being—though it must first be gained through spiritual research—it can therefore have a fertilizing effect on that which is fragmented in the world. Fragmented in the world, for example, is our contemporary legal science, as are the individual branches of our contemporary economic life—everything is fragmented.

[ 14 ] Well, anyone who has listened to me for any length of time and is able to understand the true meaning of what I have said knows that I do not say such things out of immodesty or frivolity. But I may well point out that in February, before an audience of over thirty medical specialists in Dornach, I attempted to present the therapeutic element of medicine—based on a understanding of human nature derived from Spiritual Science—in such a way that one might truly receive a genuine therapy that addresses the human being directly. In this particular case, I sought to demonstrate how fruitful a central perspective on the essence of the natural, the psychological, and the spiritual can be for a single scientific discipline. And anyone who now considers the social impact of the efforts of individuals imbued with our insights will surely recognize the significance of what I have said,

[ 15 ] Consider A. It makes a difference whether a physician is educated within a closed circle and cannot look beyond the boundaries of his science, or whether he grasps his science in such a way that it becomes a source of insight for everything physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of the human being—and that, through this, he simultaneously gains a true sense of all social interaction and coexistence among people, thereby enabling him to form a lively, fruitful judgment—based on his medical practice—regarding the handling of major social issues.

[ 16 ] This fall, beginning on September 26, more than twenty individuals who have become deeply immersed in the anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science referred to here will hold a series of new college lectures in Dornach. We have, after all, established our School of Spiritual Science in Dornach; although we cannot officially open it yet because it is not yet complete, we will hold these college courses at the as-yet-unopened Dornach School from September 26 through October 16. Leading figures from the fields of physics, chemistry, political science, economics, and history; practitioners with a practical approach to life, whether in industry or elsewhere; and artists from all disciplines—they will first demonstrate in this pilot course how that which is specialized [into individual fields] is illuminated by living Spiritual Science—which is anthroposophically oriented—in such a way that these sciences are no longer merely theoretical—not something one acquires and then, for the most part, has to shed again, only to end up in a corner of life from which one can survey nothing but specialized matters. No, we will show how, through this enlivening of knowledge that can emanate from Spiritual Science, specialization is overcome, and how, through the new spirit—a spirit that is just as rigorously scientific as that cultivated in universities today, indeed, ‘even more rigorously scientific,’ how this spirit brings specialists together so that they will not go their separate ways—isolated and yet harmful to humanity—out of mutual incomprehension, but will instead work together socially and, through the spirit, be able to lift our downtrodden age back up again.

[ 17 ] These university lectures are held in our Goetheanum in Dornach, where every detail seeks to embody a style—an architectural, sculptural, and painterly style—that arises from the whole sensually-based conception, from the artistic expression that flows from our Spiritual Science. Everything there—right down to this setting—is meant to serve, as it were, as a symbol of what is to happen, what must happen, from the spiritual side. For it must be the spirit that, following its true threads, returns to the truth—to a truth from which goodness, morality, and a healthy, strong will arise. This does not arise from superficial understanding; it arises from deep spiritual understanding. And far more than mere characterizations can express, I hope that these lectures of ours in Dornach will show how the forces for rebuilding our fallen civilization are to be sought from the spirit. We do not wish to refute such arguments [about the decline of the West], as I characterized them here last time, through logic; rather, through action, we wish to create that which can stand in opposition to the forces of decline. And I am convinced that we truly would not be able to accommodate all the listeners who would come to Dornach and its surrounding area today—who, I hope, will come in large numbers despite the current drowsiness of the souls—if the transportation difficulties arising from our decline were not so insurmountable.

[ 18 ] If I may point out something more immediate, I would like to return once more to what we aim to achieve with our Waldorf School here. This Waldorf School, which we opened today for its second school year—we described it here some time ago in terms of its successes during the first school year—has become exactly what it is today—it could not have become more than this in its first school year—precisely because our teachers were deeply inspired and animated by those feelings toward the developing human being, the child — feelings that stem from the research of Spiritual Science, that Spiritual Science which, however, with regard to certain spiritual matters, must take a completely different approach than what many people have hitherto assumed regarding these very same matters.

[ 19 ] After all, in our time we have creeds that speak of the eternal nature of the human soul. Why have all these creeds come into being? If one can truly observe the world with an open mind and listen to everything that is conveyed to people today in sermons or theological treatises regarding the eternal in the human soul, it is not an appeal to the thirst for knowledge, but is, at its core, an appeal to the finer spiritual instincts of the human being. Anyone who has frequently attended my lectures will know from what underlying foundations the Spiritual Science referred to here speaks of the immortality of the human being, and how it provides specific insights into what a person becomes once they have shed their physical body, having passed through the gate of death. But the discourse here stems from a different foundation than the one we have become accustomed to hearing for centuries in Western civilization. What is it that is repeatedly appealed to in this Western civilization? The finer spiritual instincts; human beings do not want their entire being to cease to exist when their body crumbles to dust. It concerns humanity’s desire for eternity. And I ask you to examine everything that is presented in this vein in traditional creeds, sermons, and theological treatises: it is an appeal to this human egoism—the refusal to die. And because it is solely this appeal to egoism, people have even conveniently separated matters for the sake of life: knowledge for the sensory world—faith for the supersensory world. Of course, one can speak of the instincts discussed here only if, with regard to the eternal in the human being, one arrives at faith rather than knowledge. But when one investigates the human being using the methods of Spiritual Science—which are no easier than chemical or astronomical methods, but in fact considerably more difficult—further details on this can be found in my books *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* or *An Outline of Esoteric Science* and in others—then one arrives at a point where one does not merely speak of immortality, that is, of the forms that the human spirit and soul assume after death—but one then comes to look at what the human being was before birth or conception, before descending as a spiritual being from the spiritual world into the physical world through birth and assuming a physical body through descent from father and mother. Such knowledge can be attained, but it is a knowledge of such inner power that it pierces our entire being.

[ 20 ] When we, as educators, approach the child with this understanding, we view the child in an entirely different light. Then we gain some understanding of how the spiritual-soul aspect shapes the human body from the deepest human depths, and how the features of the face and the skills that emerge from one year of life to the next are formed in the body from the spiritual-soul aspect. As a teacher and educator facing a human being, one develops a feeling without which fruitful education is simply impossible—the feeling that what you come into contact with through this human body originates in spiritual worlds; it has been entrusted to you; the gods have sent it down to you—and you stand before it with sacred reverence.

[ 21 ] Dear attendees, just as there are forces that can only be explored through their effects in the external, physical world—such as electricity or magnetism—so too does what one acquires as a teacher or educator, such as reverence, act like an imponderable force, like something that one can only

[ 22 ] One learns to believe when one beholds its effects, when one sees how that which radiates from such holy reverence for the teacher is something that envelops the child’s spiritual and emotional growth just as sunlight envelops a plant, causing it to bloom and thrive. A pedagogy rooted in the fullness of humanity, sustained by feelings and sensibilities, but by a sensibility that penetrates the realities of the world and human relationships—a pedagogy that naturally becomes an art, that does not speak abstractly about education—it is such a pedagogy that may aspire to shape the generation that will be decisive for the coming decades into that which can lead us from our decline toward a new dawn. And we may say: What anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science has been able to achieve among our teaching staff has, at any rate, borne fruit in the first school year.

[ 23 ] There is only one thing that stands out eerily today, as we open the second school year, in the mind’s eye of those whose whole heart and whole mind are devoted to this Waldorf school. From the spirit, we could bring Waldorf school after Waldorf school to life; and in this way, one of the great tasks of our time would gradually be solved through the power of the spirit—in a practical, not merely theoretical, way. But we need understanding—understanding in the broadest circles. We may hope that the spirit will continue to stand by us in our endeavor, because that depends, in a certain sense, on us. But we need understanding, for the buildings in which school is held must be constructed; the teachers need places to live, and they also need to eat. All of this is necessary. And already the specter of destitution—for such matters and for what lies behind them: the lack of understanding in the broadest circles regarding what belongs to the great tasks of our time—looms before our souls and hinders what we would like to accomplish in these very days for the second school year. Thus, what is needed today for the great tasks of our time, in the broadest sense, is understanding. Many possess the idealism that says: Ideals are lofty; it is unworthy to associate them with the material circumstances of the day, for the material world is something base; ideals are lofty; they must find their own way—therefore, we keep our hands on our wallets and spend nothing at all on our ideals, for why should we give up base money, which is unworthy of serving the ideal, for the sake of the ideal?—That sounds trivial. But if one wishes to do something necessary for the Waldorf School in our day, then it may well be stated even in this case. Today, idealism often manifests itself more through the enthusiasm to keep the material aspects in order and to nurture the ideal within them.

[ 24 ] I have now been able to describe to you something that is once again connected to something entirely new in our spiritual life. For a long time now, we have lost precisely that direction and current in our spiritual life that looks toward what I wish to characterize: the pre-born human being. Language itself bears witness to this: when we speak of what is eternal in the human being, what do we say? Immortality. — With this, we point only to one end of life, toward which human egoism also looks. We have no word for the other: “unbornness,” for example, is what we ought to say. For just as we do not lose our eternal being when we shed the body, neither did we acquire it at birth. And when we speak of the eternal in the human being, we must speak of “unbornness” just as much as of “immortality.” We do not even suspect what we are lacking in this regard. What we hope for in the time after death does little to inspire us to action. But if we know what lives within us—what lives within us as having descended from the spiritual worlds, as it were, merely as a reflection of the spiritual world—then we can say that we feel ourselves to be—I would like to use the word—missionaries of the spiritual world. In our earthly work, our feelings are stirred and our actions inspired by what constitutes our task as human beings in earthly existence. We must draw the strength from the spirit to truly penetrate into what our task as human beings in earthly existence is; it is not enough to limit ourselves to the immediate spheres of what surrounds us in life. We must look to what surrounds us in spiritual life—what lives within us as the spiritual and permeates all of life, right down to the economic sphere. In this regard, people succumb to the most remarkable illusions.

[ 25 ] Anyone who, endowed with a genuine sense of reality, follows the historical course of humanity will see that they must look to the Orient for the true sources of those spiritual impulses in human life that lie somewhat further back in time and are not found on the surface—though not in the Orient of today, for the Orient of today is in a state of decadence in this regard. The source of this very special spiritual life—as I described it here in that lecture I gave on the historical development of humanity—existed in the Orient millennia ago. There lived a humanity that understood nothing of what we call “demonstrative” or “logical thinking”—a humanity that, drawing from the same sources that also open up Spiritual Science (as understood here) to human beings—albeit in a different way, in a Western way—was once able to know that something can live within the human soul that reveals to the individual the spirit that permeates the world. But a form of spiritual knowledge that is neither demonstrative nor logical lives on in the East. Today, if we do not wish to render ourselves obsolete, we can no longer fully immerse ourselves in this Eastern spiritual life; yet something of it still lives on in our ordinary intellectual development. There is a direct line from that spirit which shone forth in the Vedas, in Vedanta philosophy, in the ancient Indian yoga system—a spirit that lived even in Chaldean teachings and in ancient China—a direct line that moved toward the West through many currents and channels. And in what we today regard as the truly spiritual in our everyday lives, we still see traces of that Eastern spiritual life before us. Even when the Mystery of Golgotha entered human development, when it became necessary to comprehend Christ Jesus, it was Eastern wisdom that sought to grasp this event—which could be comprehended only through supersensible knowledge; it was Eastern wisdom that then passed into the teachings of Christianity and, together with Christianity, spread throughout the entire West. Within this Eastern wisdom lives something that modern people can no longer perceive or feel in the right way; they need a foundation for it. What existed in the Eastern soul as an original spiritual life had to be anchored in the West—for centuries now—in religious communities held together by dogma; because the inner source of spiritual life no longer flows in the same way, people needed such religious communities. This is what initially extends into our public life like a first branch—a branch that still carries the “life sap” of the East within it. And if one were to look impartially at our spiritual life, one would discover, in what modern people think, feel, and sense—and in what lives on even in the sciences, right down to physics, but above all in religious creeds—the lingering effects of that which originated in the East.

[ 26 ] Added to this peculiar Oriental spirit—which, in its entirety, is little understood today and which, in its own unique way, permeates the West—was a completely different school of thought, one that traveled more via the South and spread into Central Europe, while also enriching the West. What emerged was what I would like to call, in a broad sense, legal, statecraft, and political thought. In the marvelous Greek civilization, we see a remarkable blending of what resonates from the East—what still lives in the Greek people as having come from the Egyptians—with the legal thinking that had not yet fully revealed itself in Greece but was already present, a thinking that introduced a distinctive, demonstrative mode into the mental image of humanity. There, in Greece, we see life only sparsely permeated by logical, legal, and political thinking, which did not exist at all in the East. If, for example, there were commandments in the East, they were something entirely different there than commandments were in the West. We then see the legal spirit essentially taking shape in ancient Rome. We see how, there, the process of proving, reasoning, and the grouping and separation of concepts developed into a distinct art form. We see how a second element intermingles with what flows in from the East, how the legal and political currents—the “state apparatus”—pour into the spiritual current. And we see even the spiritual-religious and the spiritual-scholastic realms permeated by this legal element. It would have been entirely impossible for an Oriental, within the original framework of his worldview, to conceive of such things as “guilt and atonement” or “redemption” in place of the concept of “karma.” What lived in the East in “karma,” in the destiny of the world, was something entirely different. But then the legal element resonated into the worldview; it established itself within the religious conception of the world. Human beings were conceived differently at the turn of the ages than in the Eastern tradition. Now human beings were conceived as being “judged” by the judges of the world because they had incurred “guilt.” In the East, people spoke of things other than “guilt” and “judgment.” In the West, the legal-evidential, the divisive-judgmental, has crept even into the religious element. And when, for example, we go to the Sistine Chapel in Rome and see Michelangelo’s painting “Christ as Judge of the World,” in which he judges the good and the evil, we see even there a legalistic, world-political spirit carried into the religious worldview. This is the second branch of our civilization, which continues to exert its influence in Fichte and Hegel and permeates what emerged in German intellectual life at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is no coincidence that Fichte and Hegel based their thinking precisely on the roots of law, on political and state conditions, and the way these thinkers conceive of human development must be understood, in contrast to earlier times, in a “state-centered” sense.

[ 27 ] It was only later, in more recent times, that a third current joined this second one—a current that developed in the West out of the Western character traits and instincts of the people. In the East, in the days when the East was at the height of its power, nature provided what people needed in such a way that they organized the distribution of natural products—as well as the distribution of what they themselves produced—based on their spiritual life. There was no economic thinking there; there wasn’t even any legal thinking. If we go back to the 18th century, we still find only a limited degree of economic thinking in Central Europe. However, we find everything dominated by an increasingly intense legal mindset, by a state-centered, political mindset. In the West, this economic thinking had already been developing for a long time, and it developed more and more out of people’s natural instincts and dispositions. Conditions developed in such a way that where people think in a truly “Western” way, economic thinking is now also applied to what was previously grasped from the standpoint of logic—to science, to truth. It came from America. There, the doctrine of pragmatism holds, roughly speaking, that “true” and “false” are merely illusions; we have derived this from the legal worldview. Our view is this: If something proves useful in practical life, then it is right, it is true, and everything that proves not to be useful is harmful, is false. According to this view of life, everything is judged solely on whether it is “useful” or “harmful.” These mental images have become ingrained in people’s ways of thinking there and are also present among philosophers. Indeed, if one wants to understand Herbert Spencer and other philosophers correctly, for example, one can only do so by telling oneself: Herbert Spencer devises philosophical systems, but his mental images, as such, are simply out of place; instead of devising philosophical systems, he should use his way of thinking to build factories, establish labor unions, and get the economy back on its feet; his mental images are useful for that, but not in the field of philosophy.

[ 28 ] When we trace the path that humanity has taken throughout its historical development, we see: First, a spiritual life takes shape, one that in later times points back to a legacy from earlier millennia; then, little by little, a state-based, political life and a legal way of thinking emerge; later, economic life develops alongside these, and this life spreads across the earth in its various forms. But as we draw ever closer to the present age, we also see how that spiritual life, which came over from the East, has died out, and the dry, pedantic, and philistine nature of today’s educational system stems precisely from the withering away of that ancient spiritual heritage. But this also points out with the utmost vividness that we should not return to the East, but must redevelop a free and original spiritual life through our own efforts by opening ourselves to the sources of this spiritual life. The old heritage has come to an end. Our time calls for a new spiritual life, and this is precisely what Spiritual Science now seeks to proclaim from Dornach. With this new spiritual life, it will shape pedagogy, permeate education, and, through institutions such as the Waldorf School, make it fruitful for modern life.

[ 29 ] But even for the old legal spirit, little remains today. I advise you to read characteristic, symptomatic manifestations of the present, such as the little book on jurisprudence by the Mannheim professor Rumpf; then you will see: Just as religious worldviews today must rely on external forms because the inner life no longer bubbles forth, so too do jurisprudence and political theory draw upon economic conditions because they have nothing living left to bubble up from within. Thus we see that today a mixture of economic and legal thinking is emerging, which spreads chaos throughout our lives. And anyone who sees through these things knows how much of this chaotic confusion has penetrated our public life, right into the sphere where social upheavals and social trials and tribulations then manifest themselves in action. We can only move forward if we seek a new spiritual life of the kind I have described. The old spiritual life has passed away as a legacy. But we will find this new spiritual life only if we do not hand over the school to the state, if we ground the entire spiritual life in itself; for only then can we lift the spiritual life out of the state in which it now finds itself. From human individuality and personality, when a person enters the physical world from spiritual heights, they bring with them a new, real spiritual element for each generation; that is what we wish to cultivate. We do not want to allow anyone to dictate that a person must develop according to this or that set of rules; rather, we want this real spiritual essence to develop powerfully through love—from the teacher and educator to the child. This spiritual life can be managed only by those who are active within it. A new spiritual life will reintroduce into the present the living spirit that our social life so desperately needs; it will make the deep wellspring—which the human being brings with them when they enter physical existence through birth—fruitful for human coexistence. This is one of the great tasks of our time.

[ 30 ] A second task is how we can once again—not by regurgitating old Roman or any other ancient concepts and logical constructs, but in an original way, through person-to-person interaction within the democratic framework of the state—how we can once again develop, in a living way, the human sense within the social community for the interplay between rights and duties. No law imposed by decree will ever develop a sense of duty. Only the law that arises among equals—between one person who has come of age and another who has come of age—in living interaction; only this law will also inspire a joy in work, and this law will have to incorporate the [regulation of] work.

[ 31 ] The spiritual life, as I understand it, is described in my “Key Points of the Social Question” in such a way that it must become the regulator of capital itself. Then what is necessary for recent development—the accumulation of capital or means of production—will be guided by the spirit—which illuminates it, provided the spirit, in its freedom, in its fruitfulness, and in its progression from generation to generation, is able to renew itself—and then capital, through the spirit, will also embody within itself what Keynes and others, for example, find lacking: morality. And then economic life will no longer be dominated by a capitalism based on selfishness and mere self-enrichment; instead, a capitalism imbued with the spirit will prevail—arising precisely from an understanding of the necessities of the world, of humanity, and of existence—and will operate in accordance with the values of people educated in the new spiritual life. Then, too, labor will no longer be a commodity, but will be incorporated into the independent, self-developing constitutional state; then, within that social fabric in which the mature human being acts alongside every other mature human being on the basis of equal rights, labor will come into its own. And it is only from a sense of the duty to work in freedom that a new upsurge in our lives can emerge—not from the demand for regimentation and duty, which must stifle every sense of justice in human beings. It is from an independent spiritual life, from an independent legal life, that we must grasp the great tasks of our time.

[ 32 ] If we turn to economic life, we see—when we break down everything that is currently part of it and must be separated out— — the right to land, for that belongs in a constitutional state; labor, which is paid for today as a commodity, for that belongs in a constitutional state; and the means of production, insofar as they can be capitalized, for they belong to the intellectual component of the social organism—if we remove all of that from economic life, what remains is the production and consumption of commodities. A commodity, as a human product, does not concern just one person; a commodity passes from one person to another. It is not merely the person who produces the commodity and has experience with its production who has a say in the matter, but also the person who, through their experience, establishes the conditions of exchange for the commodity or who must judge the needs. People of many different kinds are thus involved in economic life, and everything in economic life is a commodity. If, within economic life, we have on the one hand the management of capital in the intellectual sphere and the management of labor in the legal sphere, then what remains for the management of economic life is the only thing that is truly justified: the price structure, the mutual exchange value of commodities. But if this is to be elevated from chance to reason, it can only be determined by associations. Associations must bring together the various groups of people who, from the perspective I have described, are involved with a commodity; for people engage with commodities from different starting points in order to determine the price of one commodity in relation to another, so that money can be nothing more than the external marker of a commodity’s value. It is only through associations in economic life that it is possible to determine the true price of a product for economic life—that is what matters. And this cannot be determined by decrees and the like, but only through the experiences gained from association to association.

[ 33 ] So, for example, if a person is employed in a particular industry and works there, the price of the product of his labor must be set so that it is neither too expensive nor too cheap. So if I make a pair of boots, once I have finished them, I must receive, in exchange for what I get for them, enough of all kinds of goods to satisfy my needs and those of my family until I have made another pair of boots. This cannot be calculated; it can only be experienced in the living interaction of associations. To understand that the problem of price lies at the very heart of all economic life, however, a more detailed study of the “Key Points” and of those writings that point to this will be necessary—in particular, for example, my essays in the *Dreigliederungs-Zeitung*, which will soon be published in collected form by the Verlag des Kommenden Tages. There, one can trace what we need to rediscover the spirit necessary for our ascent.

[ 34 ] To solve this one great task of our time, we must cultivate a new spiritual life dedicated to fostering individuality; we must bring to the fore human self-significance and human capacities, which can only be properly integrated into the human context through a correct understanding of the human personality and human individuality. In order to bring spiritual life into effect in the right way, we need a state, legal, or political life—in its parliamentary structure—that stands on its own—not one that encompasses spiritual life, but one that allows it to emerge from within itself; this can never be found in spiritual life or in economic life. From this, morality and mutual aid can then be fostered—in other words, everything that must exist among all human beings so that a dignified existence can be realized. And in economic life, we need to address the problem of prices as a major task of the present. We can only solve it if we first ground economic life in itself, on the basis of association.

[ 35 ] And we can only move forward if we allow these three independent components to interact in a certain free manner and do not fear a possible “division” or “fragmentation” of these three components. One need only reflect a little on the human organism to overcome this fear. In my book *On the Mysteries of the Soul*, I have indicated how the human organism, too, consists of three independent components: nervous-sensory activity, rhythmic activity, and metabolic activity. The entire function of human life is structured from these three activities—as activities. Just as one cannot breathe with one’s eyes or see with one’s lungs, so too should the state not dictate spiritual life, nor should spiritual life interfere with legal life. And just as one cannot think with one’s stomach, so too should economic life not be used to issue political dictates or determine laws. And it is precisely because the lungs breathe, the head sees and thinks, and the stomach digests that these three independent parts of the human organism work together as a unity; this unity does not exist in the abstract, but arises as a living whole from the three independent parts.

[ 36 ] This is how the true unity of the social organism will come into being when we grasp the three great tasks of the present day in spiritual life, legal life, and economic life. These three great tasks are certainly a utopia for many. But even to people in the 1830s, what developed in Central Europe from 1870 to 1913—from a purely economic perspective—would have been a utopia. If we merely consider that in 1870, 30 million metric tons of coal were mined and processed in Germany, whereas in 1913, 190 million metric tons were mined and processed—truly, for a person living in the 1830s, it would have been a utopia if anyone had spoken back then of such a surge in coal mining and processing. One should not fear such an accusation of utopianism or fantasy. And even if what is presented as this threefold social order could not be realized immediately, let us recall a statement Fichte once made to his audience when he spoke about the nature and purpose of the scholar. He said something to the effect that: We know, of course, that ideals cannot be realized immediately in practical life, but we also know that such ideals contain great impulses and great forces capable of propelling humanity forward; if the so-called practitioners do not acknowledge this, then they thereby testify to nothing other than the fact that they were not counted upon in the course of world history; and so may a benevolent deity grant them, at the right time, light and sunshine, good digestion, and, if possible, a little common sense as well! — Whoever is a true practitioner relies on the real, practical forces of life and does not allow himself to be disheartened by those objections that are so very much in the style Fichte characterizes, and which then say: “What is a defeated Germany to do, what is humanity—now reduced to misery in Central Europe—to do on its own, if everyone else refuses to participate in the threefold social order?”

[ 37 ] Ladies and gentlemen, if we work with all our might—even today, when it is almost too late—to ensure that this threefold structure of the social organism takes root in as many minds as possible, and if we present it to the world in a truly living way, then others—even if they are the victors—will accept it as something fruitful and beneficial for the world and for humanity. When the “Key Points” were translated into English, it became apparent that almost every review of this book began with the words: “One can hardly help but read this book with preconceptions”—but even then, the reviewers approached the content with a certain objectivity. There is only one thing missing: the people who will help us make these ideas fruitful for life. We need people in whom the spirit of progress lives—but the spirit of progress, not mere progress-speak. And the more we win over such people, the less we need to fear the accusation that we in Central Europe are powerless against the others.

[ 38 ] Another objection that is often raised is this: What can the individual actually do, even if he sees through something like the fruitfulness of the threefolding impulse? — Oh, let no one be disheartened that the “others” do not see through it; let him simply see for himself, as an individual, that he does see through it—then he sets an example for others and steps onto the path where the few become many. Nor should the other criticism cause us to lose heart when people say, time and again: If one seeks to ascend along such a path, it takes a long time. — Let us not waste time wondering how long it will take, but let us be clear about this: The more strongly we want it, the faster it will come! Let us not engage in “speculation,” but let us think and act in such a way that, through our actions, our will, and our thinking, it must come as quickly as possible.

[ 39 ] When a person brings to life within their soul the right paths to proper social coexistence, when they ignite their soul and live fully in accordance with these impulses—which show us how an ascent is possible from spiritual life, from legal, civic, or political life, and from economic life— then, even from a single territory on Earth, they can work against the prejudices of the entire world in such a way that many individual territories arise which take up these impulses and carry them forward for the progress and salvation of humanity. In this way, a long period of suffering can be shortened; in this way, one can overcome space, time, and manifold [obstacles] if, drawing from an independent sense of justice and a sound economic consciousness of the present, one truly seeks the true salvation of humanity for a new ascent.