The Problems of Our Time
GA 193
12 September 1919, Berlin
Lecture I
My dear friends,
Speaking to you here for the first time in these rooms on an Anthroposophical subject, I feel I must express gratitude first of all-gratitude to those friends who, in my unavoidable absence, have devoted themselves to the arrangement of these rooms, which are to be used for our work and discussions. At the present time man's soul is of, necessity involved in great and far-reaching events of world and human development. So strong is their demand upon our will and energy if we would understand our place as man within world-history, that we cannot as in earlier, more peaceful times, attend with so great care to such outward things of beauty as the arrangement of a place devoted to ideal spiritual aims, so devoted that men can work towards them together, co-operating as in social life. Rightly seen, there is a certain connection between the recent great events throbbing through the world and such a dedication. The vital claims of the historical development of mankind demand that what men have hitherto sought in the form of beauty, artistic adornment for their personal life, should be transferred from that egoistic realm and centred more and more where separateness gives way to social co-operation. It would argue a very poor understanding of the future if we judged it by what appear today as aims. The social movements of the present do, of course, wear a “democratic” look, but we need only observe their transitory nature in the right light to make no mistake as to their character. Yet these social movements contain a hint of menace lest the beautiful, which runs through our earthly civilization as artistic quality, may not find in the future the same comprehension as in the past, when only the better-endowed classes could devote themselves to its culture.
A time of transition may result in some dimming of the appreciation of beauty, but it is essential, if a really social kind of living is to come into being, that whatever occurs in space and time should tend to encourage appreciation of the beautiful: otherwise mankind will sink into mere philistinism. So the simple beauty of these rooms, which our friends have tried to make appropriate to the serious things of life to be fostered here, may be taken as symbolical of the great events throbbing through our time. Out of such feelings I speak, as from you all, to thank our friends most heartily for the work which they have accomplished in this time of stress. It would, further, be wrong to assume that the future will so develop that personality and all that has its origin in the personal and individual will diminish in value by reason of what men call the “objective events.” That will not be the case. The three or four centuries ending with the nineteenth have made it seem justifiable, in the general evolution of mankind, to regard man as a “cog” in the world-machine. The task of the immediate future will be for man to work himself out of this world-mechanism.
We may say without hesitation that the great movement of the present day displays a thoroughly egoistic character. It is true, its aim is Socialism—but its basis is that of anti-social impulses and instincts. No mistake should be made. We see that the real reason in striving for Socialism is that men have become so anti-social in development and constitution of soul. If the social sense were more natural and obvious, fewer socialist “programmes” would be formed; they have been largely evoked by anti-social feeling and experience. In times like the present, filled with bewilderment, in which the basic cause, of social feeling is egoistic and anti-social, the moment comes when an immense impression is made by the sight of a noble, selfless devotion to an ideal, through genuine, unselfish human feeling. It was well if, in these serious times, we did not hold outward festival, but turned our thoughts to this—how valuable it is, amongst the vehement, egoistic strivings of our times, to find the opportunity to create, as has been done here, something for the furtherance of an ideal, spiritual task, even if it be on a small scale. So the highest festival we can hold is to consider subjects connected with the seriousness of the present time, drawing that seriousness into our souls, as well as fostering in our hearts thoughts deeply concerned with human evolution, thoughts of worth and value in the tasks to which these rooms are dedicated.
Looking at our own time critically, yet not captiously, we should be dishonest if we shut our eyes to the many forces of decline prevalent in all spheres of life. If with due earnestness we consider the present day, we cannot forget how frequently what is present in, consciousness and finds expression in the spoken word stands far apart from truth and reality. Indeed, any feeling for the gulf yawning between words and the truth is lost in many of our contemporaries and in place of the elementary flow of truth out of the human soul we have the catchword, the “slogan!” What is the characteristic of a “catchword?” The lack of connection of the word used with the inner fount of truth. We need only look at the expressions of universal untruth which have been prevalent in the world during the last four, five, or six years, to be convinced that the estrangement of the world from genuine reality has led to the “empty phrase” and, if uncountered, it will become more dominant. Nor is there anything, outside of this growth of “the phrase,” which has flourished so much in the present age, as indulgence in face of untruth, as a definite bias towards falsity. Nowadays we can find plenty of people forbearing enough to make excuses for the “catch-saying” with its absence of truth. These “tolerant” talkers always ask: “How did the person mean this? Had he not the best intentions? Did he not think he was actuated by the best of motives?” And how little there is of the conscientious regard for truth which lays the duty on a speaker to test the ground of his assertion before he makes it! The time must, come when it will not be enough to say of a man “he meant well” when he has given expression to an untruth. Rather when men will feel the deepest responsibility for testing truth, when even in good faith to have said something which does not correspond with facts will not excuse it, when a man will realize that subjective belief in the truth of what he says matters nothing to the objective knowledge of the world. It does matter whether his speech corresponds to facts or not, is true, or is not, in the objective sense. The very seriousness of our times demands that we should learn what phrases and catchwords really are.
Nowadays many people feel, although not altogether consciously, that we may hold any view if it is agreeable to us, a belief easily to be studied in the attitude they adopt towards current events. We have passed through a serious period, but men only judge of it as is agreeable to them, not according to its importance for the general development of humanity. We have seen some of our contemporaries, in the centre of the stage during the happenings of the last four or five years, thrust forwards into the first place in dealing with them. These men—their destiny has overtaken them—but how little are we inclined to acquire an objective judgment of what has really happened, or to ask by what method of selection, in these critical times, our leading men have been raised to their dominant position to the detriment of mankind! Nothing is so essential today as to work our own way through all subjective opinions and reach some sort of objectivity with regard to these things. An idea is prevalent that it is easy to speak the truth. Far from it: truth has many enemies and to speak it brings swift retribution on a man, since it is taken amiss in all sorts of ways.
During the last few months I have often been told that what I have put forward on the subject of the social question is so hard to understand as to be incomprehensible, and I have had to assert over and over again that to grasp this social impulse requires a different frame of mind from that which has predominated in mid-Europe for a long time, coming to a climax within the last four or five years. In these recent years people managed to grasp a good deal which I honestly could not grasp. All sorts of statements, elegantly set forth, have been made and people have taken them in. They could not have done that if they had possessed, a straightforward sense of truth—yet, they did it “to order,” everything “commanded by headquarters” was received. today the essential things are not to be so acquired, out of “obedience,” but through man's own freedom of soul. Men must first regain that quality: the last four or five years have made that plain. In face of the delusions men have grown accustomed to during these last years, it is no pleasant duty to speak the truth now, for truth is so serious a matter and people resent it so deeply.
In time to come our age will be envisaged in a quite peculiar way. Men's present duties differ from those of the immediate past. Therefore, we ought to get some idea how future ages will look at today's events.
Men must learn to turn their eyes, their spiritual gaze, to the great and revolutionary impulses occurring in the earthly path of development. One such change took place in the middle of the fifteenth century A.D. According to Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, it is the beginning of the fifth postAtlantean epoch, which we know bears an entirely different character from the earlier Graeco-Latin one, which began in the eighth century B.C. The “fable convenue” usually called “history” gives no information regarding the vast difference in the qualities of the human soul in, for instance, the tenth century, and the centuries following the fifteenth. New soul-qualities and attitudes arose in humanity and we can really only understand what has entered its evolution if we turn our spiritual vision to the forces active within it and see, for instance, their effects in the revolution which occurred in the middle of the fifteenth century. Some time has passed since then, and we are now approaching the crisis due to what swept over civilized mankind at that point and has developed up to the present time—this critical moment, when man's full consciousness must be brought to bear upon it.
We have reached a time when man must awake to the consciousness that, as man, he has his position within the Earth's history, and that outside of him are the three natural kingdoms, the animal, plant and mineral. (We shall speak later of how this awakening is to be achieved.) To speak of this fact expresses only a half-truth from the standpoint of our modern consciousness, the consciousness, that is, of the fifth post Atlantean epoch. Before that epoch people could still speak of the three kingdoms as outside of themselves, because their view of the kingdoms of nature was essentially different. In earlier times people understood them as being spiritually controlled. Modern man has lost that; he must regain the consciousness in which he looks at the three kingdoms, knowing that, as he is related downwards to them, so he is related upwards to the three kingdoms of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. The half-truth becomes a whole truth when so completed, when we can look up to the realm of these three spiritual kingdoms. Our physical body has a relation to the three natural kingdoms, our soul-spiritual to what lives in the three Hierarchies; and while we change on the one side our relation to the three kingdoms of nature, so also, we alter our relation to the three kingdoms of Hierarchies which stand above us. I want to draw your attention today to this important fact in human evolution, for by holding fast to this thought we can best celebrate the inauguration of this Branch.
If we look back to earlier epochs, which culminated in the middle of the fifteenth century, we must say, if we still keep in view the higher Hierarchies: the Beings belonging to the Angels, Archangels and Archai have always occupied themselves with man in so far as he goes through his existence between death and a new birth, but have also been occupied and concerned with him in so far as he goes through his existence here upon earth. In our age, however, this preoccupation with mankind has in a certain sense come to a conclusion. Among the many activities belonging to the beings of these three Hierarchies is this: to work together upon the pattern, or picture, which underlies the physical organization of earthly man. We enter physical existence, at birth and grow therein: the pattern or image of humanity is stamped upon us.
In the primal times of human evolution this picture was quite different and it has passed through many changes. We need only call to mind what appears when we look back into the Atlantean period or even into the Egyptian: men were different even in their outer structure. The pattern of humanity has altered and it was the task of these three Hierarchies to work at it, giving it first the form it had in Lemurian times, then the form for the Atlantean, and lastly that of the post Atlantean age. The Beings of these higher Hierarchies gradually came to the point where, through transformation of older forms, they brought forth the model which today underlies the form of man.
Then is to be observed the peculiar fact, shown by true spiritual observation that, with the actual working out of this human model, the Beings of these three Hierarchies have essentially finished their task in our age. This picture of mankind, in so far as it underlies the physical organization of man, is really completed. Let this significant fact work on you—the Beings of the Hierarchy of Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai have worked for thousands and thousands of years at the accomplishment of a picture as the basis on which man's physical organization has been achieved; and we live in the age in which these Beings of the higher Hierarchies say: we have laboured at the human picture, but we have finished; we have set man as physical man into this earthly world, and this part of our task is now completed.
If we survey this fact in spiritual vision, we shall feel with terrifying force that in these times the interest of the Beings of these three higher Hierarchies has not only waned—it has vanished as far as the production of the physical picture of man is concerned. Looking back into the Graeco-Latin age, we find that they had a lively interest in the bringingforth of the picture of humanity on Earth. today they really have no further interest in it. They feel that they have finished their task and their interest from that point of view has disappeared. Men might see this as a very important fact, piercing deeply' into human nature, if they would only take time and trouble to observe even the outer facts of human evolution. In earlier times, as we can see from what has been handed down to us so that we are able to judge of it, certain thoughts rose up in people instinctively. Those in whom this happened we call “geniuses.” today at best we “believe” that such thoughts arise in some men. There is little “genius” on Earth now, for the forces of genius no longer arise from the bodily organization because the Beings of the three higher Hierarchies no longer work on it. They have lost their interest in the bodily formation of man.
It is because modern man is complete, with reference to the formation of his body, that he is in a certain respect so arrogant. There will be no further perfecting of the physical earthly form as man passes through the remainder of our Earth-evolution; the body itself can contribute nothing more to its own perfection. What had arisen in earlier times as instinctive originality and genius in man's soul had come from the body; at the same time, because it was the work of divine beings, it had an organizing power on the body. Homer's poems, for instance, possessed an organizing force which formed the Greek body. That which arose, with such concrete force, possessed at the same time a body-building power. What we moderns proudly exhibit as our “laws of nature” are in the main abstractions and have no formative force at all. We construct abstract thoughts, unable to govern social life, and abstract “laws of nature,” because the Beings of the higher Hierarchies no longer work upon us and we have no organizing thoughts arising within us. The being of our soul has become abstract, dwelling in us in such a way that, through the body itself, it is forsaken by the activity of the beings of the three higher Hierarchies.
The important thing now is to seek afresh, from ourselves outwards, the connection with the activity of these Beings. Hitherto they have approached us; they have worked on us. Now we must work for ourselves on the soul-spiritual that is in us. The result of that work, what we unveil out of the spiritual world through spiritual investigation, will become something in our human soul which will restore the interest of the Beings of the three higher Hierarchies. They will be in the thoughts and feelings belonging to us, which we acquire out of the spiritual world. In this way we shall once again link our own being to that of the higher Hierarchies.
So important is what is happening in our time that we must describe it as “a change in the attitude of the divine world to the human world.” Till now divine Beings have worked at the perfecting of the physical picture of humanity; man must now begin to work from his own soul-content, in order to find the way back to the higher Hierarchies. The difficulty of our time is that men are so proud of their external picture of a body, which has now reached its completion, and develop thoughts independently of the picture, thoughts having no connection with the spiritual world. Our real task, thus made so much the more difficult, is to seek this connection from out of ourselves, through devotion to spiritual knowledge, sensitiveness to it, and a will obedient to it. We can only acquire a right attitude to our times if we have felt and experienced this great revolution, which, of course, lasts through centuries. Outer observations will not help, us to this attitude; today we must have the possibility of achieving it by an inner work on our own being. We have entered the period of the Consciousness Soul, and have passed out of that of the Intellectual Soul—which was the Graeco-Latin age. The Consciousness Soul must develop more and more in such a way that the Beings of the higher Hierarchies no longer work into man, for that would darken man's consciousness—but that he may consciously raise himself to them. Man's full clear day-consciousness is established when he works his way upward to the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. Spiritual Science is the beginning of such work, for it has not sprung from any arbitrary choice or caprice, but from the recognition of this revolution in our time.
But man must consciously develop many other things as well. He has always had to live according to karma, the great law of destiny; but he has not always possessed a knowledge of it. How amazing it was when, in Lessing's Education of the Human Race, the consciousness of repeated Earth-lives sprang forth from the new spiritual evolution! We are at the beginning of a time of change in man's relationship to his fellows—that is changed, even as is his relationship to the Beings of the three higher Hierarchies. The way in which human life was nurtured in the past does indeed extend into our own, time; but we would fail in our, duty to the present if we did not emphasize that new relations between human beings must now enter. It was of no moment in earlier times, when the duty was not yet laid upon man to develop consciousness embracing previous Earth-lives, that he should have, in contact with his fellows, no realization that they stood before him as souls which had lived in the spiritual world before birth, and before that in another Earth-life. Now it is of moment—the time is beginning when we may not leave this out of consideration. I will show this in a concrete case.
Among the things we have tried to set up as a part of the life of human society, is a school based on a real new spirit of humanity, the Waldorf School, in the first instance connected with the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory. The opening ceremony took place last Sunday, 7th September 1919, preceded by a course for teachers which I ventured to hold. The important thing was to establish a pedagogy, an art of teaching and education which would take into account the fact that in a child a soul is growing, which has been through other earth-lives. Hitherto the teacher, however advanced in educational ideas, has felt no more than that he was dealing with the soul of a child, whose capacities it was his duty to develop, but he could only, more or less, take note of what could be perceived through the bodily nature. That will not be enough for the teacher of the future. He will need a fine feeling for what is developing in the growing child as a result of earlier earth-lives, and this comprehension will be the great achievement in the education of the future. A social attitude must be created, built up upon a spiritual relation to other men in the consciousness that when a fellow-man stands before us, we have to deal with a soul which has been through a previous incarnation. To hold the theory, of repeated earth-lives, based on intellectual philosophy, is not enough. The theory must become so practical that it forms the foundation of something like a real art of teaching and education. That is what first gives theory a living quality. It is natural that there is as yet very little willingness to receive such things and that the spiritual attitude of men who do realize the need of the times should be looked at askance. Further, it is necessary not merely to converse in terms of some sort of spiritual view of the world, but to establish institutions concretely and in the full light of knowledge, not only to profess some formula but to carry this knowledge right into the lives of men. Then that attitude will make itself evident as the foundation for a new pedagogy; the old times and the new meet in that phrase.
I have taken the trouble to find out a great deal about what is demanded in education on various sides. To give but one example: the question is often raised whether education should be more “formal” (classical) or “technical.” Should teaching be directed to fitting a pupil for this or that calling, so that he may be suited to serve the State or conduct other business; or should it aim at calling forth in him the common being of man and “developing what is universal in a humanistic sense?” All the arguments on the question are: simply words, words, because fundamentally what is said and what is the inwardly grasped truth have no correspondence at all. Is a man, then, anything but what he grows into? How is it, for instance, that men who follow certain callings in public life are fitted for them? It is due to the work of bygone generations; the public life of today is only the result of what they brought into being. How about the earlier teachers—did they educate “technically” not “formally?” Certainly not the latter. But it is all one and the same thing! Men dispute over things that are not really different. What is really important is this: that in the children of today we have the tendencies which will grow in the next generation and the one after that—which means that education is prophetic. “Technical” or “humanist” education are mere words. What matters is that we should educate prophetically, foreseeing the task of the next generation. That does concern the world, urgently.
“So difficult to understand,” people comment on all this! They must take the trouble to understand it, however, otherwise they will more and more fall out of the general evolution of the time—a momentous alternative, indeed! We must become conscious, in the most serious meaning of the word, of two necessities—first, the discovery of our connection with the activity of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, and second, the establishment of a new relationship of man to man in the educational sphere. No longer must we contemplate mankind as simply the personalities standing before us, but as souls which have come over from earlier earth-conditions. We must keep that fact in our consciousness, but it is important to find a concrete relationship to the Spirit. Certainly what we know of karma, of repeated earth-lives and the constitution of man is a theoretic view of the world and mere theory will not carry us very far. Only when this theoretic view becomes “Life” is it what man needs for the immediate future—truths concerning the relation of man to the higher Hierarchies and about karma. A third thing may be added.
From my description in Knowledge of Higher Worlds you know that man, when he wishes to look into the spiritual world, must in some way pass through the experience, we call “the crossing of the Threshold.” It is described there by drawing attention to three forces of soul (or mind) in man, thinking, feeling and willing, and showing how the three, which in physical life work chaotically into each other, become ordered and self-dependent. This is the result of passing over the Threshold. In many ways the life-course of human evolution corresponds to that of the individual man, but not completely. This, the crossing of the Threshold, which a man must experience consciously if he wants to reach vision in the spiritual worlds, will be experienced unconsciously by the whole of humanity in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. They have no choice, they go through it unconsciously—humanity, not the individual, but humanity in, general, and the individual together with the totality of human beings. What does that imply?
What now acts in man unitedly in thinking, feeling and willing, in the future will take on a separable character, and will assert itself in various fields. Man is just at the stage of passing unconsciously through a very significant gateway, easily perceived by the forces of seership. When a man goes through, this “crossing of the Threshold,” the spheres of thinking, feeling and willing fall apart. This imposes on us the obligation to shape the forms of external existence so that this revolution in our inner life may be carried through the external life as well. Since thought, feeling, and will, are to be more independent in the life of man, we must provide a basis on which that independence can be built up healthily. What has hitherto interacted chaotically in public life must be divided into three separate fields, those of economic life, political or juridical life, and the cultural or spiritual life. This demand for the “Threefold Order” is connected with the secret of man's development in this age.
Do not imagine that what is to become effective as the Threefold Social Order is a capricious, invention. It is born from the most intimate knowledge of human evolution, of what must come to pass if the aim of this evolution is not to be belied. The difficulty of finding an aim of a spiritual kind, of even admitting such aims, is one of the reasons for our having been involved in the terrible worldcatastrophe of the last few years. From this chaos we must work our way out; the course of human evolution itself dictates that. For this reason, I think that the necessity for the Threefold Order will only be thoroughly recognized by those who start from an anthroposophical attitude, from knowledge of what is actually happening in human evolution. As yet there is no disposition to recognize such facts. Men like to attend to the problem immediately before them, to avoid involving themselves in aims of the deeper questions of existence.
This, it is which weighs so heavily on the heart of a man who can see into these secrets—humanity is little disposed to heed what is most necessary for it. Yet it is impossible to wish to remain stationary in the forms of ideas already expressed. We may say that all pessimism is wrong; but it does not, therefore, follow that all optimism must be right. But it is right to appeal to the will. It is not a question of whether a thing happens this way or that, but that we use our forces of will in that direction where lies the true course of human evolution. Over and over again we must impress upon ourselves that; the old era is done with and that to reach a proper relation to the present we must close our account with the past. The new era will not allow us to reckon with it otherwise than spiritually. We dare not deceive ourselves into thinking it possible to carry over into the new what has been dear to us in the old; we must begin by turning to active new thoughts in outer life. Two paths stretch before mankind. One leads through the “mechanization” of the spirit; very mechanical has the spirit become, especially as abstract “Laws of Nature,” which man has also carried over as laws governing social life. Mechanization of the spirit and “vegetization” of the soul. The plant-world sleeps; the human soul, too, tends to sleep. The most important events of the last years have literally been “slept through.” And the same thing is true of the important occurrences of today.
In Central Europe men have accepted the falsehoods told them from day to day about leading personalities in the world, and the same thing is being carried on now without their noticing it. They study the rate of exchange and find that the mark has fallen to 2.15 centimes, but I have not yet met anyone who sees the connection of the fall in the mark with other obvious events. Three syllables—I can only hint at them—would give the reason for the fall in the mark; but men's souls prefer to sleep, to sleep so soundly that in mid-Europe great disappointment has come over what we looked forward to with joyful anticipation. We were to have “double intelligence” in particular elections, because women were to take part in them. Then we had the “National Assembly”; but the intelligence, as compared with the old Reichstag, was not double. We have seen the old parties continuing in existence at a time when they should have vanished, root and branch—and men have no inkling of what has happened, for their souls are asleep. Mechanization of the spirit, and souls as much awake as a cabbage [Vegetarisierung der Seelen]!
Look eastward. There we, see the active beginning of the “animalization” of bodies. The world of spirit is becoming mechanized in the American mechanical atmosphere, bodies are becoming animalized in the Bolshevism of the East. Criticism out of the emotions, comments on this and that; but what true life is, men will not grasp.
So humanity has its choice today—to go along the path which leads to mechanization of the spirit, plant-like sleep of the soul, and animalization of the body. Or to seek, on the other hand, to discover the way to the re-awakening of the spirit through the impulses corresponding to the age of the consciousness soul; to find the re-awakening of the spirit in the connection between the human soul and the activity of the higher Hierarchies, in the recognition of the fact that the soul comes forth from earlier earth-conditions, in the threefold ordering of social life. These things are all intimately bound up with each other. Those who are united in the movement we know as Anthroposophical Spiritual Science should feel themselves as a centre from which may radiate the force for this new social edifice. Much that comes from other sides for the reorganization of social life may be useful, but it must be worked on, for only spiritual impulses can bring genuine social transformation. The best understanding of these conditions should be expected from circles belonging to this Movement.
I have put before you some of the important things which may give you an idea of the necessities of our present age. I speak in these new rooms with the wish that in our work here we may always retain the consciousness of these truths, so important for human evolution. The more we carry such a consciousness into our anthroposophic work, the deeper is its consecration. And these rooms will be best consecrated through our feelings and perceptions, drawn forth from such deep sources of reality and truth.
Sechster Vortrag
Heute, wo ich zum ersten Male hier in diesem Raume zu Ihnen über Anthroposophisches zu sprechen habe, ist es vor allen Dingen das Gefühl der Dankbarkeit, dem ich Ausdruck geben möchte denjenigen lieben Freunden gegenüber, welche in der Zeit, in der ich selbst nicht hier in Berlin verweilen konnte, hingebungsvoll sich gewidmet haben der Einrichtung dieser Räume, die unseren anthroposophischen Betrachtungen und Arbeiten dienen sollen. Es ist ja heute eine Zeit, in der die Menschenseele in der Hauptsache großen, umfassenden Ereignissen im Weltengeschehen und in der Menschheitsentwicklung zugeneigt sein muß. So sehr nehmen diese großen, umfassenden Ereignisse und Umwälzungen der Gegenwart unser Wollen in Anspruch, wenn wir unsere Stellung als Menschen innerhalb des Weltgeschehens verstehen wollen, daß wir nicht, wie manchmal in früheren, ruhigeren, wenigstens scheinbar ruhigeren Zeiten, mit gleicher Aufmerksamkeit solchen schönen äußeren Ereignissen zugewendet sein können wie der Einrichtung einer solchen Räumlichkeit, die idealen Zielen, geistigen Zielen gewidmet sein soll, so gewidmet sein soll, daß in ihnen zusammenwirken Menschen als in ihrem sozialen Leben. Es ist aber, wenn man die Sache richtig bedenkt, doch ein gewisser Zusammenhang zwischen den großen Ereignissen, welche gegenwärtig die Welt durchpulsen, und einer solchen Einrichtung. Wird es doch durch die bedeutungsvollen Forderungen der geschichtlichen Entwicklung der Menschheit selbst so sein müssen, daß dasjenige, was die Menschen gesucht haben an Schönem bisher, an künstlerischer Ausgestaltung für ihr einzelnes Privatleben, immer mehr und mehr sich wird hinziehen müssen nach denjenigen Räumen, welche die Menschen nicht einzelegoistisch für sich haben, sondern in denen sie sozial zusammenwirken. Man würde schlecht verstehen, was sich als Zukunftsziele in die Menschheitsentwicklung hineinstellen will, wenn man es beurteilen wollte nach dem, was sich heute zuweilen anzukündigen scheint. Die soziale Bewegung der Gegenwart trägt nicht nur vielfach einen «demokratischeren» Charakter - dessen vorübergehende Wesenheit man nur im richtigen Sinne zu durchschauen braucht, um das, was in dieser Bewegung steckt, ob dieses demokratischeren Charakters nicht zu verkennen -, sondern diese soziale Bewegung trägt auch etwas an sich, das schon den Menschen in die Furcht jagen könnte: das Schöne, das, was als Künstlerisches unsere Erdenkultur durchzieht, das würde in der Zukunft nicht das gleiche Verständnis finden wie in der Vergangenheit, da materiell bevorzugte Kreise dieser Pflege des Schönen sich widmen konnten!
Eine Übergangszeit mag dazu führen, daß die Empfänglichkeit für das Schöne etwas zurücktritt. Aber gerade wenn im Ernste eine sozialere Gestaltung unseres Lebens Platz greifen wird, dann wird es unerläßlich sein, daß auch das äußere räumliche, das zeitliche Geschehen angepaßt werde dem Geschmack, dem Schönen; sonst würde ja die Menschheit im Banausentum und in der Philistrosität verkommen. So dürfen wir in gewissem Sinne gerade die einfache Schönheit, die unsere Freunde hier in dieser Räumlichkeit dem anzupassen versuchten, was an ernsten Dingen des Lebens hier gepflegt werden soll, wir dürfen gerade dieses ansehen wie etwas Symbolisches für die großen Ereignisse, die unsere Zeit durchpulsen. Und aus solchen Gefühlen heraus glaube ich im Einklange mit Ihnen allen zu sprechen, wenn ich in dieser ernsten Zeit für eine Arbeit, wie sie hier verrichtet worden ist, auch in diesem Zeitensinne unseren Freunden den allerherzlichsten Dank abstatte. Es wäre auch ein falscher Glaube, wenn man das, was in der Gegenwart sich vorbereiten will, so beurteilen wollte, als ob durch die sogenannten «objektiven Ereignisse» in der Welt der Wert der Persönlichkeit und der Wert dessen, was aus dem Persönlichen, aus dem Individuellen stammt, zurückgehen könnte. Das wird nicht der Fall sein. Nur die Jahrhunderte bis zum Ende des 19., die drei bis vier letzten Jahrhunderte, haben gewissermaßen so gewirkt, daß es in der Gesamtentwicklung der Menschheit gerechtfertigt scheint, den Menschen mehr als ein Rad in den allgemeinen Weltenmechanismus hineinzustellen. Die Aufgabe für die nächste Zukunft schon wird sein, daß sich der Mensch aus diesem Weltenmechanismus herausarbeite. Deshalb darf schon gesagt werden: Zunächst trägt ja die große Bewegung der Gegenwart zumeist einen durch und durch egoistischen Charakter. Gewiß, man strebt Sozialismus an, aber aus lauter antisozialen Trieben und Instinkten heraus. Das darf man nicht verkennen, daß wir eigentlich heute aus dem Grunde Sozialismus anstreben, weil die Menschen so antisozial in ihrer Seelenentwicklung, in ihrer Seelenverfassung geworden sind. Wäre das soziale Fühlen selbstverständlicher, so brauchten nicht so viele sozialistische Programme zu existieren; die sind gewissermaßen nur durch die Reaktion auf das antisoziale Fühlen und Empfinden der Menschen hervorgerufen. Aber gerade in einer solchen Zeit, in welcher - weil die Dinge so ungeklärt sind - das Soziale aus dem Egoistischen und Antisozialen sich herausgebären will, gerade in einer solchen Zeit übt der Anblick desjenigen, was in edler, selbstloser Hingabe an eine ideale Sache zustande gebracht worden ist aus echten, wahren, unegoistischen Menschenempfindungen heraus, eine ganz besondere Wirkung aus. Und es wird gut sein, wenn wir nicht in einer äußerlichen Weise in dieser ernsten Zeit heute geradezu ein Fest feiern, sondern wenn wir unsere Gedanken zu solchem wenden, wie ich es eben ausgesprochen habe: wie wertvoll es ist, neben dem durchgreifenden egoistischen Streben in unserer Zeit die Möglichkeit zu finden, daß so etwas geschaffen werde, wie es hier geschaffen worden ist - wenn auch in sehr kleinem Maßstabe - für ideelle, spirituelle Arbeiten. Und so erscheint es mir auch heute das Allerfestlichste zu sein, hier Betrachtungen anzustellen, die auf der einen Seite zusammenhängen sollen mit dem Ernste der Zeit, damit wir aus diesem Ernste heraus diejenigen Empfindungen in unsere Seele hereinbekommen, die uns vielleicht begleiten können durch die Arbeiten, die hier in diesen Räumen gepflogen werden sollen, so lange wir sie in diesen Räumen durch die Zeitverhältnisse eben werden pflegen können, und wenn wir auf der anderen Seite Gedanken auf uns wirken lassen, die, weil mit der Menschheitsentwicklung innig zusammenhängend, wert und würdig sein können, wenn wir diese Räume betreten, aus den Aufgaben heraus, denen diese Räume dienen sollen, oft und oft uns durch die Seele zu ziehen.
Wenn wir in einem kritischen Sinne - nicht böswillig kritisch, aber doch kritisch - unsere Zeit ansehen, dann würden wir ja nicht wahr sein, wenn wir uns täuschen wollten über die zahlreichen Niedergangsströmungen auf allen Gebieten des Lebens, die in dieser Zeit waltend sind. Wenn wir unsere heutige Zeit betrachten, dann dürfen wir, damit wir den Ernst des Lebens nicht verlieren, nicht vergessen, wie stark dasjenige, was der Mensch gewöhnlich in seinem Bewußtsein heute trägt — so trägt, daß er es in Worten ausspricht -, wie sehr entfernt dies zumeist steht von demjenigen, was innerlich wahr und wirklich ist. Sogar die Empfindung dafür, wie weit das Wort, das wir sprechen, sich heute oftmals entfernt von der Wahrheit, sogar die Empfindung dafür ist großen Kreisen unserer Zeitgenossen eigentlich verlorengegangen, und an die Stelle des elementaren Ausfließens der Wahrheit aus der Menschenseele ist getreten, wir dürfen sagen, die Weltenphrase. Denn worin charakterisiert sich am meisten die Phrase? Sie charakterisiert sich dadurch, daß die Menschen sprechen, ohne daß das Wort, welches aus ihrem Munde kommt, innerlich verbunden ist - nur innerlich kann es ja damit verbunden sein - mit dem Quell der Wahrheit. Wir brauchen nur auf das zu sehen, was im Laufe der letzten vier, fünf, sechs Jahre geleistet worden ist an Offenbarungen einer allgemeinen Unwahrheit durch die Welt hindurch, und wir werden nicht daran zweifeln können, daß dadurch jenes Entfernen der Welt von der wahrhaften Wirklichkeit groß geworden ist, zur Weltenphrase geführt hat und, würde nichts dagegen arbeiten, noch immer mehr und mehr führen würde. Und nichts hat eigentlich außer dem Großwerden der Phrase, der Unwahrhaftigkeit, so sehr in der neueren Zeit gedeihen können als die Nachsicht gegenüber dieser Unwahrhaftigkeit, als der Hang zur Unwahrhaftigkeit. Überall wo man heute der Phrase begegnet, trifft man auch auf diejenigen Menschen, die nachsichtig sind gegenüber dem Geltendmachen der Phrase, dieser Unwahrhaftigkeit. Denn diese Nachsichtigen fragen überall: Wie hat das der Betreffende gemeint? Hat er nicht überall die besten Absichten gehabt? Glaubte er nicht überall mit den besten Absichten vorzugehen? - Und wie wenig herrscht demgegenüber das gewissenhafte Wahrheitsgefühl, daß der, welcher den Mund aufmacht, dazu verpflichtet ist, die Gründe einer Behauptung ernst zu prüfen und zu unterlassen die Behauptung, che er geprüft hat. Die Zeit muß kommen, in der es nicht genügt, daß man von einem Menschen sagen kann: Er hat es gut gemeint -, wenn er eine Unwahrhaftigkeit gesagt hat. Die Zeit muß vielmehr kommen, in welcher die Menschen das intensivste Verantwortlichkeitsgefühl gegenüber der Prüfung der Wahrheit empfinden, und daß sie selbst auch dann, wenn sie entdekken würden, daß sie etwas in gutem Glauben ausgesprochen haben, was nicht den Tatsachen entspricht, daß sie dies sich nicht würden verzeihen können, sondern eingedenk wären der Tatsache, daß es für die objektive Welterkenntnis gleichgültig ist, ob wir subjektiv glauben, wir hätten die Wahrheit gesagt oder nicht, daß es aber für die objektive Welterkenntnis durchaus nicht gleich ist, ob wir in einem einzelnen Falle etwas sagen, was im objektiven Sinne wahr ist, das heißt, den Tatsachen entspricht, oder etwas, das nicht den Tatsachen entspricht. Gerade dem Ernste der Zeit gegenüber wird man es lernen müssen, was wirklich Phrase ist.
Heute haben viele Menschen eigentlich das Gefühl - sie sind sich dessen nicht klar bewußt -, daß man doch eigentlich das behaupten dürfe, was einem angenehm ist. Man hat das ganz besonders studicren können und kann es weiter studieren an der Stellung, die sehr viele Menschen zu den Zeitereignissen nehmen. Ernstes ist an uns vorübergegangen. Dieses Ernste beurteilen die Menschen doch nur so, wiees ihnen angenehm ist, nichtnach der Tragweite, welche dieses Ernste für die Gesamtentwicklung der Menschheit hat. Wir haben Menschen als Zeitgenossen gehabt, die im Mittelpunkte dessen standen, was in den letzten vier bis fünf Jahren geschehen ist, Menschen, welche durch die Verhältnisse hinaufgeschoben worden sind in erste Stellungen in bezug auf das Weltgeschehen. Diese Menschen, ihr Schicksal hat sie ereilt! Aber wie wenig Menschen sind geneigt, sich ein objektives Urteil anzueignen über das, was eigentlich geschehen ist. Wie wenig Menschen sind geneigt, danach zu fragen, durch welche Selektion, durch welche Auswahl in der entscheidenden Zeit gerade die führenden Persönlichkeiten in ihre führenden Stellungen zum Unheil der Menschen gekommen sind. Nichts anderes ist aber heute so notwendig, als sich gegenüber allen subjektiven Meinungen durchzuarbeiten zu einer gewissen Objektivität mit Bezug auf diese Dinge. Manche Menschen glauben, es sei heute leicht, die Wahrheit zu sagen. Es ist nicht leicht, die Wahrheit zu sagen, weil die Wahrheit heute so viele Feinde hat, und weil der, welcher die Wahrheit sagt, sich selbstverständlich heute sehr schnell abnutzt. Denn die Wahrheit wird heute vielfach übelgenommen.
Ich mußte in den letzten Monaten, da mir oftmals gesagt worden ist, daß das, was ich auf sozialem Gebiete geltend mache, so schwer zu verstehen sei, man könne es nicht begreifen, ich mußte demgegenüber immer wieder geltend machen, daß allerdings das Begreifen gerade dieses sozialen Impulses eine andere Seelenstimmung notwendig mache, als jene Seelenstimmung war, die in Mitteleuropa, namentlich in den letzten vier bis fünf Jahren und auch schon lange vorher, geherrscht hat, aber in den letzten vier bis fünf Jahren besonders zu ihrem Höhepunkte gekommen ist. Da haben die Leute in diesen letzten vier bis fünf Jahren viel begriffen; da haben sie Dinge begriffen, die ich wahrhaftig nicht begriffen habe. Man konnte bei vielen Leuten, eingerahmt in schönen Rahmen, allerlei Aussprüche finden; die Leute haben sie begriffen. Mit einem geraden Wahrheitssinn konnte man solche Aussprüche nicht begreifen, aber die Menschen haben sie begriffen. Denn es war ihnen befohlen, daß sie sie begreifen: es kam der Befehl dazu aus dem Großen Hauptquartier. Da begriffen sie alles. Jetzt aber sind die Dinge notwendig, die man nicht aus Gehorsam begreift, sondern aus seiner eigenen freien Seele heraus. Das müssen sich vielleicht die Menschen erst wieder aneignen. Die letzten vier bis fünf Jahre haben in ernster Weise gezeigt, daß die Menschen sich dies wieder aneignen müssen. Und gegenüber dem, was sich die Menschen in den letzten vier bis fünf Jahren angewöhnt haben, ist es wahrhaftig keine angenehme Pflicht, die Wahrheit zu sagen, erstens, weil die Wahrheit ernst ist, und dann, weil die Menschen die Wahrheit so sehr übelnehmen.
Es werden Zeiten kommen, die in ganz besonderer Art auf diese unsere Zeit sehen werden. Aber die Menschen haben in der Gegenwart noch manche andere Verpflichtung als in der jüngsten Vergangenheit. Daher muß man sich heute schon in gewissem Sinne eine Vorstellung machen, wie künftige Zeiten auf das sehen werden, was in unserer Zeit vorgeht.
Die Menschen werden lernen müssen, in unserer Zeit den Blick, den geistigen Blick, wieder hinaufzulenken zu den großen Umschichtungen, zu den großen Impulsen des Menschenwerdens auf der Erde. Ein solcher großer Umschwung hat begonnen in der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts in der christlichen Zeitrechnung. Wir nennen ihn in unserer anthroposophisch orientierten Geisteswissenschaft den Beginn des fünften nachatlantischen Kulturzeitraumes, und wir wissen, daß er gegenüber dem früheren, dem griechisch-lateinischen Kulturzeitraume, der im 8. vorchristlichen Jahrhundert begann und im 15. Jahrhundert unserer Zeitrechnung endete, einen ganz anderen Charakter trägt. Die Menschen schauen durch das, was sie heute als Fable convenue gegeben haben und das sie Geschichte nennen, nicht auf den gewaltigen Unterschied der menschlichen Seelenstimmungen etwa des 10. Jahrhunderts und derjenigen Jahrhunderte hin, die mit der Mitte des 15. begonnen haben. Neue Seelenstimmungen und Seelenverfassungen sind in die Menschheit hereingebrochen, und wir können nur verstehen, was eigentlich in die Menschheitsentwicklung hereingekommen ist, wenn wir den Seelenblick hinaufwenden zu den Kräften, die im Menschheitsgeschehen selber walten, zu den Kräften, wie sie zum Beispiel indem Umschwung in der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts spielen. In unserer Zeit - es sind ja seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts wieder einige Jahrhunderte vergangen - kommt gewissermaßen das zu einer Krise, was in der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts über die zivilisierte Menschheit hereingebrochen ist, was sich langsam bis jetzt entwickelt hat und jetzt in einem entscheidenden Augenblicke steht, weil das menschliche Bewußtsein diesen entscheidenden Augenblick ergreifen muß.
Heute ist die Zeit, in welcher der Mensch - auf welche Weise er das macht, davon werden wir noch sprechen - in sein Bewußtsein aufnehmen muß: Hier stehe ich innerhalb des Erdengeschehens als Mensch, und außer mir sind die drei Reiche der Natur, das Tierreich, das Pflanzenreich, das Mineralreich. Wenn aber der Mensch heute diesen Satz ausspricht, so sagt er damit vom Standpunkte des gegenwärtigen Bewußtseins, des Bewußtseins des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraumes, nur eine halbe Wahrheit. Der Mensch, der vor diesem Zeitraume lebte, konnte noch sagen: Außer mir sind das Tierreich, das Pflanzenreich und das Mineralreich, weil er etwas anderes darunter verstand als das Bewußtsein von heute. Der Mensch der Vorzeit verstand das Tierreich, das Pflanzenreich und das Mineralreich noch so, daß Geistiges in diesen Reichen waltete. Dem heutigen Menschen ist das Bewußtsein dafür abhanden gekommen. Er muß es sich erst wieder aneignen, indem er auf die drei Reiche hinschaut und weiß: So wie wir nach unten angegliedert sind an die drei Reiche, an das Tierreich, Pflanzenreich und Mineralreich, so sind wir nach oben angegliedert an die drei Reiche der Angeloi, Archangeloi und Archai. Und erst dann sagen wir nicht eine halbe, sondern eine volle Wahrheit, wenn wir nicht nur sagen, wir blicken nach unten auf das Tierreich, Pflanzenreich und Mineralreich, sondern wenn wir auch nach oben hinblicken können auf das Reich der Angeloi, der Archangeloi und der Archai. So wie unser physischer Leib ein gewisses Verhältnis hat zu dem Tierreich, Pflanzenreich und dem Mineralreich, so auch unser Geistig-Seelisches zu dem, was die drei Hierarchien über uns ausmacht. Aber gerade in unserer Zeit ist es so, daß, während wir auf der einen Seite das Verhältnis zu den drei Reichen der Natur sehr ändern, wir auch das Verhältnis zu den drei Reichen der Hierarchien, die über dem Menschen stehen, ändern. Auf diese ernste Angelegenheit der Menschheitsentwicklung möchte ich Sie heute hinweisen, und indem wir dies festhalten, begehen wir am besten das Weihefest für diesen Zweigraum.
Wenn wir auf das zurückblicken, was sich in der Menschheitsentwicklung in den früheren Zeiträumen zugetragen hat, die gewissermaßen mit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts ihren Abschluß finden, so müssen wir sagen, wenn wir von den höheren Hierarchien noch absehen: Die Wesen der Angeloi, der Archangeloi und der Archai haben sich immer mit dem Menschen beschäftigt, haben sich beschäftigt mit dem Menschen, insofern er sein Dasein durchmacht zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, haben sich aber auch mit ihm beschäftigt, insofern er sein Dasein durchmacht hier auf dem irdischen Plan. Aber die Beschäftigung der Wesen dieser drei Hierarchien mit dem Menschen hat in gewisser Beziehung einen Abschluß gefunden in unserem Zeitalter. Unter den mannigfaltigen Tätigkeiten, denen die Wesen dieser drei Hierarchien obgelegen haben, ist diese: mitzuarbeiten an dem Bilde, das dem physischen Erdenmenschen, der physischen Organisation des Erdenmenschen zugrunde liegt. Wir treten durch die Geburt in unser physisches Dasein, wachsen heran in diesem physischen Dasein: das Bild der Menschheit prägt sich in uns aus. Dieses Bild war in uralten Zeiten der Menschheitsentwicklung ganz anders: Es hat manchen Wandel durchgemacht. Sie brauchen sich nur an das zu erinnern, was herauskommt, wenn wir in die alte atlantische Zeit oder auch in die Zeit der ägyptischen Kultur zurückblicken: die Menschen waren in ihrem äußeren Bau noch anders. Das Bild der Menschheit hat sich geändert, und an diesem Bilde zu arbeiten, oblag den Wesenheiten dieser drei höheren Hierarchien. Man kann schon sagen, es gehörte zu den Aufgaben dieser Wesenheiten, das Bild des Menschen auszuarbeiten, so daß es zuerst die Gestalt hatte, die es in der alten lemurischen Zeit zeigte, dann jene Gestalt, die es in der atlantischen Zeit hatte und dann die, welche es in den nachatlantischen Perioden hatte. Damit sind die Wesen dieser drei höheren Hierarchien allmählich dazu gekommen, das Bild, welches heute dem Menschen zugrunde liegt, durch Umwandlung älterer Bildformen hervorgebracht zu haben.
Aber nun liegt das Eigentümliche vor, und eine wirkliche geistige Beobachtung der Menschheitsentwicklung zeigt dies: mit der eigentlichen Ausbildung dieses Menschheitsbildes sind die Wesenheiten dieser drei Hierarchien in unserem Zeitalter im wesentlichen fertig. Dieses Menschheitsbild, insofern es der physischen Organisation des Menschen zugrunde liegt, ist eigentlich abgeschlossen. Fühlen Sie diese bedeutungsvolle Tatsache: Die Wesen der Hierarchien der Angeloi, der Archangeloi und der Archai haben durch Jahrtausende und aber Jahrtausende an der Ausarbeitung eines Bildes gewirkt, und dieses Bild ist dasjenige, nach welchem die physische Menschenorganisation sich vollzogen hat. Und wir leben in dem Zeitalter, in dem diese Wesenheiten der drei höheren Hierarchien sich sagen: Wir haben gearbeitet an dem Menschheitsbilde, aber wir sind fertiggeworden. Wir haben den Menschen hineingestellt in diese Erdenwelt als physischen Menschen, und wir sind nun fertig!
Wer im geistigen Schauen diese Tatsache überblickt, der empfindet namentlich erschütternd die Tatsache, daß das Interesse der Wesenheiten dieser drei höheren Hierarchien in diesem Zeitalter nicht nur abgenommen hat, sondern geschwunden ist für die Herstellung des physischen Menschheitsbildes. Blickt man zurück noch in die griechisch-lateinische Zeit, so findet man bei den Wesen dieser höheren Hierarchien ein lebhaftes Interesse an dem Zustandebringen des physischen Menschheitsbildes auf der Erde. Heute haben diese Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien eigentlich dafür kein Interesse mehr. Sie haben das Gefühl, sie haben für den physischen Menschen auf der Erde das Ihrige getan. Ihr Interesse ist von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus geschwunden. Die Menschen könnten dies als eine besonders bedeutungsvolle, tief in die Menschennatur einschneidende Tatsache ansehen, wenn sie nur sich Zeit und Muße nehmen würden, heute auch die äußeren Tatsachen der Menschheitsentwicklung zu beobachten. Wir blicken zum Beispiel zurück auf frühere Zeiten. Aus manchem, was geschehen ist und was uns so überliefert ist, daß wir es beurteilen können, können wir uns sagen: In den Menschen der früheren Zeiten stiegen wie instinktiv gewisse Gedanken auf. Man bezeichnet ja gerade diejenigen Menschen als genial, in denen gewisse Gedanken instinktiv aufsteigen. Heute glaubt man höchstens, daß solche Gedanken in manchen Menschen aufsteigen. Heute ist wenig Geniales in den Menschen der Erde vorhanden. Denn es steigen nicht mehr aus der Leibesorganisation die Kräfte des Genialischen herauf, weil an dieser Leibesorganisation nicht mehr die Wesenheiten der drei höheren Hierarchien arbeiten. Sie haben ihr Interesse an der Leibesgestaltung des Menschen verloren.
Das macht den Menschen der Gegenwart gerade in gewisser Beziehung so hochmütig, daß er eigentlich in bezug auf seine Leibesgestaltung fertig ist. Den Rest der Erdenentwicklung wird er nicht mehr in der Vervollkommnung seiner physischen Erdengestalt durchmachen können. Es wird sich aus dem Leibe selbst keine Vervollkommnung seiner Organisation mehr ergeben. Was früher instinktiv genial in der Menschenseele aufgestiegen ist, das war aus dem Leibe und das hatte zu gleicher Zeit, weil es Götterarbeit war, eine organisierende Kraft an dem Leibe. Wenn zum Beispiel Homer dichtete, so dichtete er mit einer Kraft, die im Griechen zugleich eine organisierende Kraft war, die den Griechenleib gestaltete. Was mit einer so konkreten Kraft auftritt, auftreten kann, das hat zu gleicher Zeit leibbildende Kräfte. Was dagegen heute bei uns auftritt als die von uns aufgestellten Naturgesetze, auf die wir so stolz sind, das sind im großen und ganzen Abstraktionen, das hat keine leibbildende Kraft. Wir bilden deshalb abstrakte Gedanken aus, die das soziale Leben nicht zu beherrschen vermögen, und abstrakte Naturgesetze, weil nicht mehr die Wesen der drei höheren Hierarchien an uns arbeiten, weil wir keine Gedanken mehr in uns aufsteigend haben, die organisierend sind. Unser Seelenwesen ist abstrakt geworden. Unsere Seele ist in der Tat so in uns, daß sie verlassen ist durch den Leib selber von der Tätigkeit der Wesen der drei höheren Hierarchien.
Und das ist nun das Wichtige, daß wir jetzt wieder suchen müssen, von uns aus, die Anknüpfung an die Tätigkeit der Wesen der drei höheren Hierarchien. Bis jetzt sind uns als Menschen diese Wesenheiten entgegengekommen, sie haben an uns gearbeitet. Jetzt müssen wir an unserem Seelisch-Geistigen selber arbeiten. Und was wir seelisch-geistig arbeiten, was wir durch geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung aus der geistigen Welt heraus offenbaren, das wird in unserer Menschenseele etwas werden, was die Wesenheiten der drei höheren Hierarchien wieder interessieren wird. Sie werden in den Gedanken und Empfindungen sein, die wir aus der geistigen Welt herausholen. Dadurch werden wir wieder die Beziehungen zu den Wesen dieser Hierarchien anknüpfen. So bedeutsam ist das, was in unserem Zeitabschnitt geschieht, daß wir es darstellen müssen als eine Veränderung in der Stellung der Götterwelt zu der Menschenwelt. Götter haben bis in unsere Zeit gearbeitet an der Vervollkommnung des physischen Menschenbildes. Der Mensch muß an seinem Seeleninhalt anfangen zu arbeiten, damit er wieder den Weg zurückfindet zu den drei höheren Hierarchien. Deshalb hat unsere Zeit es so schwierig, weil die Menschen so stolz sind auf ein zu einem Abschluß gekommenes äußeres Leibesbild und unabhängig von diesem Leibesbild, das heißt unabhängig von jeglicher höheren Welt, abstrakte Gedanken entwickeln, die keinen Zusammenhang haben mit der geistigen Welt, und weil eigentlich unsere richtige Aufgabe die ist, aus uns selbst diesen Zusammenhang nun zu suchen durch Hingabe an geistiges Wissen und Empfindungen über geistiges Wissen, und zu wollen aus geistigem Wissen heraus. Nur wer ganz eindringlich diesen großen Umschwung, der allerdings durch Jahrhunderte dauert, fühlt und empfindet, nur der kann heute zu einer richtigen Stellung innerhalb seiner Zeit kommen. Heute kann man nicht durch äußere Betrachtungen eine richtige Stellung zur Zeit gewinnen, heute muß man die Möglichkeit haben, diese Stellung durch innerliche Arbeit dessen, was innerlich ist, zu bekommen. Wir sind eben eingetreten in das Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseele, sind herausgetreten aus dem Zeitalter der Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele, welches das griechisch-lateinische Zeitalter war. Und diese Bewußtseinsseele muß sich auch immer mehr und mehr so entwikkeln, daß nicht mehr in den Menschen hereinarbeiten - das würde ja sein Bewußtsein trüben - die Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien, sondern er muß sich bewußt zu ihnen hinaufarbeiten. Das macht sein volles, helles, klares Tagesbewußtsein aus, daß er sich zu den Wesen der höheren Hierarchien hinaufarbeitet. Geisteswissenschaft ist der Beginn eines solchen Hinaufarbeitens, denn sie ist nicht aus irgendeiner Willkür entsprungen, sondern aus der Einsicht in diesen Umschwung in unserer Zeit.
Aber bewußt muß der Mensch auch manches andere entwickeln. Der Mensch hat immer leben müssen nach dem Karma, nach dem großen Schicksalsgesetz, aber er hat nicht immer sich ein Wissen von diesem großen Schicksalsgesetz angeeignet. Wie war es eigentlich überraschend, als durch Lessings «Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts» heraussprang aus der neueren Geistesentwicklung das Bewußtsein von den wiederholten Erdenleben. Heute beginnt die Zeit, wo man nicht mehr in derselben Weise von Mensch zu Mensch leben kann wie früher. Wir haben gesehen, wie man nicht mehr in derselben Weise zu den Wesen der drei höheren Hierarchien lebt. Aber auch zu den Menschen selbst kann man nicht mehr in derselben Weise leben wie früher. Ihr Leben ragt allerdings, wie es früher gepflegt worden ist, in unsere Zeit herein, aber wir versäumen unsere Verpflichtungen gegenüber der Gegenwart, wenn wir nicht darauf aufmerksam machen, daß auch ein neues Verhältnis von Mensch zu Mensch eintreten muß. Es hat bis jetzt nichts gemacht, kann man sagen, weil die menschliche Bewußtheit nicht verpflichtet war, in der vorherigen Zeit sich zu entwickeln. So daß man in der früheren Zeit dem Menschen entgegengetreten ist ohne Bewußtsein: Du Mensch, in dir lebt eine Seele, die durchgemacht hat eine Zeit vor der Geburt und davor ein anderes Erdenleben. - Es wird eine Zeit kommen, und sie ist schon im Anbrechen, wo es ein Mangel der Seelenverfassung wäre, wenn wir bei einem anderen Menschen nicht wüßten, in seiner Seele lebt etwas, was sich herüberlebt aus einem früheren Erdenleben. Bisher hat es nichts gemacht, wenn man dies nicht wußte. Jetzt beginnt die Zeit, wo man das nicht außer acht lassen darf. Ich will das an einem konkreten Falle zeigen.
Unter den Dingen, die wir im sozialen Leben zu erarbeiten begonnen haben, haben wir versucht, eine Schule aus wirklich neuem Menschheitsgeist heraus ins Leben zu setzen, die Schule, die zunächst an die Firma Waldorf-Astoria Zigarettenfabrik angegliedert ist: die Waldorfschule. Wir haben sie am letzten Sonntag feierlich eröffnet. Vorausgegangen ist ein Seminarkursus für Lehrer, den ich mir zu halten erlaubte. Da kam es vor allen Dingen darauf an, solch eine Pädagogik, solch eine Erziehungs- und Unterrichtskunst zu begründen, welche mit der Tatsache rechnet: in dem Kinde wächst eine Seele heran, die aus einem anderen Erdenleben kommt. Bisher konnte der Lehrer sich sagen, auch wenn er pädagogisch sehr fortgeschritten sich glaubte: Du hast eine Kinderseele vor dir, aus der kommen gewisse Fähigkeiten, die du zu entwickeln die Verpflichtung hast. - Aber er konnte mehr oder weniger nur auf das sehen, was aus dem Leibe herauskommen konnte. Damit wird der künftige Erzieher seiner Aufgabe nicht genügen können. Er wird ein feines Gefühl haben müssen für das, was sich aus den früheren Erdenleben herüberentwickelt in dem werdenden Kinde, und das wird das große Ergebnis sein in der künftigen Erziehung, daß dies wird herausentwickelt werden müssen. In diesem Verkehr muß sich zuerst das soziale Verhältnis ausgestalten, das gebaut ist auf der spirituellen Beziehung zu anderen Menschen in dem Bewußtsein: hast du einen Menschen vor dir, so hast du die wiederauferstandene Seele aus der vorhergehenden Inkarnation vor dir. Dies als eine Theorie aus einer begriffenen Weltanschauung zu haben, als Lehre von den wiederholten Erdenleben, das ist nicht genug, sondern es muß diese Lehre praktisch werden, so praktisch werden, daß sie der Untergrund werden könnte für so etwas wie eine Erziehungs- und Unterrichtskunst. Das ist es, was diese Lehre erst zur lebensfähigen macht. Es ist daher selbstverständlich, daß noch eine geringe Empfänglichkeit für solche Dinge herrscht, daß man diejenigen Menschen schief anschaut auf ihre geistige Verfassung, welche erkennen, was der heutigen Zeit not tut. Und not tut nicht bloß so, daß man es hinausplärrt in Form von irgendwelchen spirituellen Weltanschauungen, sondern daß man konkrete Verrichtungen des Lebens in die Sonne der Erkenntnis stellt, nicht bloß daß man sich bekennt zu dieser oder jener Formel, sondern diese Erkenntnis hineinträgt in das Leben der Menschheit selber. Dann merkt man gerade an einem solchen Punkte, wie es die Begründung einer neuen Pädagogik ist, wie die alte und die neue Zeit zusammenprallen in der Phrase.
Ich habe mich bemüht, viel kennenzulernen von dem, was von der einen oder anderen Seite heute pädagogisch zutage gefördert wird. Da wird oftmals - ich will nur ein Beispiel herausnehmen -die Frage erörtert: Soll man mehr formal oder mehr materiell erziehen? Soll man mehr darauf sehen, daß der Mensch erzogen werde für diesen oder jenen Beruf, so daß er sich richtig hineinstellt in das Staats- oder sonstige Leben, oder soll man mehr sehen auf das Wesen des Menschen, daß man heraushole, was das allgemein Menschliche ist im humanistischen Sinne? - Über diese Frage haben sich die Menschen des Erziehungswesens viel gestritten. Es ist eine Phrase in Wirklichkeit aus dem Grunde, weil der Unterschied so groß ist zwischen dem, was der Mensch sagt, und was innerlich erfaßte Wahrheit ist. Ist denn der Mensch etwas anderes als das, worin er hineinwächst? Nehmen Sie Menschen, die heute Berufe haben, die einem öffentlichen Leben hingegeben sind. Wodurch sind sie diesem Leben hingegeben? Dadurch sind sie es, daß die früheren Generationen dieses und jenes in die Welt gebracht haben. Das heutige öffentliche Leben ist nur das Ergebnis dessen, was die früheren Generationen gebracht haben. Haben daher die Lehrer der früheren Zeiten materiell erzogen, nicht formalistisch? Gewiß haben sie nicht formalistisch erzogen. Aber es ist ein und dasselbe! Man streitet sich über Dinge, die ein und dasselbe sind. Doch etwas anderes ist wichtig: daß wir in den Menschen, die heute als Kinder geboren werden, die Neigungen haben, welche in der nächsten und in der zweitnächsten Generation heranwachsen sollen, daß wir also prophetisch erziehen. Ob wir die Menschen materiell oder humanistisch erziehen, ist eine Phrase. Aber daß wir prophetisch erziehen müssen, daß wir voraussehen müssen, was die nächste Generation als Aufgaben hat, das ist ernst. Das steht in der Welt drinnen.
Die Menschen nennen so etwas heute noch schwer verständlich. Sie werden sich bequemen müssen, cs zu verstehen, sonst werden sie immer mehr und mehr herausfallen aus der Zeitentwicklung. Das ist wichtig, das ist außerordentlich wichtig. Bewußt müssen wir werden im ernstesten Sinne des Wortes, sowohl weil wir den Anschluß finden müssen an die Tätigkeit der Wesen der höheren Hierarchien, als auch, weil ein neues Verhältnis von Mensch zu Mensch selbst auf dem Gebiete des Erziehungswesens notwendig ist, weil wir in dem Menschen, der vor uns steht, anregen müssen nicht die Seele, die jetzt vor uns steht, sondern die Seele, die aus früheren Erdenverhältnissen herüberkommt. Das werden wir in unserem Bewußtsein tragen müssen. Es ist so wichtig, daß wir zu dem Geist ein konkretes Verhältnis finden. Wenn man nur etwas weiß über Karma, über wiederholte Erdenleben, über die Konstitution des Menschen, und dies als Begriffe im Kopfe trägt, so ist das gewiß eine Weltanschauung, ein Theoretisches. Aber mit diesem Theoretischen kommt man heute nicht besonders weit. Erst wenn diese theoretische Weltanschauung Leben wird, ist sie das, was die Menschheit für die nächste Zukunft braucht.
Das wären Wahrheiten über das Verhältnis des Menschen zu den höheren Hierarchien, Wahrheiten über das Karma. Wir können noch ein drittes hinzufügen. Aus meiner Schilderung in dem Buche «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» wissen Sie, daß der Mensch, wenn er hineinschauen wird in die geistige Welt, in einer gewissen Beziehung das Erlebnis haben muß, welches man das Überschreiten der Schwelle nennt. Ich habe dieses Überschreiten der Schwelle in diesem Buche geschildert, indem ich darauf hingewiesen habe, wie die drei Gemütskräfte des Menschen, die in diesem physischen Leben ziemlich chaotisch durcheinanderwirken, sich gliedern, wie die Denkkraft, die Fühlkraft und die Willenskraft selbständig werden. Indem der Mensch die Schwelle überschreitet, werden diese Kräfte selbständig. In vieler Beziehung ist der ganze Lebensgang der Menschheitsentwicklung ähnlich dem Lebensgange des einzelnen Menschen. Nur verschoben sind die Dinge. Was der Mensch bewußt durchmacht, wenn er in der geistigen Welt zum Schauen kommen will, das Überschreiten der Schwelle, das muß in diesem fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraum die ganze Menschheit unbewußt durchmachen. Sie hat darin keine Wahl, sie macht es unbewußt durch. Nicht der einzelne Mensch, sondern die Menschheit und der einzelne Mensch mit der Menschheit. Was heißt das?
Was im Menschen zusammenwirkt im Denken, Fühlen und Wollen, das nimmt in der Zukunft einen getrennten Charakter an, macht sich auf verschiedenen Feldern geltend. Wir sind eben dabei, daß die Menschheit ein bedeutungsvolles Tor unbewußt durchschreitet, was die Seherkraft sehr gut wahrnehmen kann. Die Menschheit macht dieses Überschreiten der Schwelle so durch, daß die Gebiete des Denkens, Fühlens und Wollens auseinandergehen. Das aber legt uns Verpflichtungen auf, die Verpflichtung, das äußere Leben so zu gestalten, daß der Mensch diesen Umschwung seines Inneren auch im äußeren Leben durchmachen kann. Indem das Denken im Leben der Menschheit selbständiger wird, müssen wir einen Boden begründen, auf dem das Denken zu gesunderer Auswirkung kommen kann, müssen weiter einen Boden schaffen, auf dem das Fühlen selbständig zur Ausbildung kommen kann, und auch einen Boden, auf dem das Wollen zur besonderen Ausbildung kommen kann. Was bisher chaotisch im öffentlichen Leben durcheinanderwirkte, müssen wir jetzt in drei Gebiete gliedern. Diese drei Gebiete im öffentlichen Leben sind: das Wirtschaftsleben, das staatliche oder Rechtsleben und das Kulturleben oder geistige Leben. Diese Forderung der Dreigliederung hängt mit dem Geheimnis der Menschheitswerdung in diesem Zeitalter zusammen.
Glauben Sie nicht, daß das, was als dreigliedriger sozialer Organismus geltend gemacht wird, eine beliebige Erfindung sei. Es ist herausgeboren aus der intimsten Erkenntnis der Menschheitsentwicklung, aus dem, was geschehen muß, wenn nicht das Ziel dieser Menschheitsentwicklung verleugnet werden soll. Deshalb steckten wir in dieser furchtbaren Weltkriegskatastrophe der letzten Jahre darinnen, weil die Schwierigkeit bestand, ein Ziel zu erkennen, welches spiritueller Art ist und weil die Menschen sich so weit entfernten, Ziele dieser Art auch nur anzuerkennen. Aus diesem Chaos müssen wir uns herausarbeiten. Es diktiert uns der Gang der Menschheitsentwicklung selbst, daß wir aus diesem Chaos uns herausarbeiten. Daher glaube ich allerdings, daß die Notwendigkeit einer sozialen Dreigliederung so recht gründlich nur diejenigen werden einsehen können, die von anthroposophischen Empfindungen ausgehen, von der Erkenntnis dessen, was in der Menschheitsentwicklung tatsächlich geschieht. Aber man liebt es in der Gegenwart nicht, solche Dinge anzuerkennen. Die Gegenwart liebt es, sich Aufgaben von dem Allernächstliegenden zuzuwenden, nicht sich auf das einzulassen, was die tieferen Geheimnisse des Daseins sind.
Das ist das, was dem in diese Geheimnisse hineinschauenden Menschen das Herz so schwer macht, weil die Menschheit am allermeisten demjenigen abgeneigt ist, was ihr am allernotwendigsten ist. Aber unmöglich ist es, bei den eben geäußerten Gedanken etwa stehenbleiben zu wollen. Man kann sagen, jeder Pessimismus ist falsch. Richtig ist deshalb natürlich auch nicht jeder Optimismus. Aber richtig ist der Appell an das Wollen. Es kommt gar nicht in Frage, ob etwas so oder so geschieht, sondern daß wir wollen sollen, wie es in der Richtung der Menschheitsentwicklung liegt. Das müssen wir uns immer wieder und wieder klarmachen. Die alte Zeit ist vorüber, mit ihr müssen wir abrechnen. Wir können zu einem richtigen Verständnis in der Gegenwart nur kommen, wenn wir mit der alten Zeit richtig abrechnen. Aber die neue Zeit gestattet uns nicht, anders als spirituell mit ihr zu rechnen. Wir dürfen uns nur nicht täuschen, daß wir das, was uns in der alten Zeit lieb geworden ist, in die neue hinübertragen wollen, sondern wir müssen anfangen, uns im äußeren Leben den wirksamen neuen Gedanken zuzuwenden. Die Menschheit hat heute zwei Wege. Der eine geht durch die Mechanisierung des Geistes. Der Geist ist sehr mechanisch geworden in der neueren Zeit, insbesondere in den abstrakten Naturgesetzen, die man dann auch als herrschende Gesetze in das soziale Leben hineingetragen hat. Mechanisierung des Geistes - Vegetabilisierung der Seele! Die Vegetabilien schlafen, die Menschenseele neigt auch zum Schlafen. Die wichtigsten Ereignisse werden schlafend durchgemacht. Die wichtigsten Ereignisse der letzten Jahre sind buchstäblich verschlafen worden. Auch heute werden wichtigste Ereignisse verschlafen.
Von der Stelle, wo ich heute hier zu reden habe, möchte ich sagen: Die Menschen haben sich in Mitteleuropa über führende Persönlichkeiten von Tag zu Tag das Falsche sagen lassen, und jetzt fahren sie fort in diesem Geschäft, ohne aufmerksam darauf zu sein. Die Menschen sehen heute aus dem Kurszettel: die Mark ist schon heruntergesunken bis zu 2,15 Centimes. Ich habe bis heute keinen Menschen gefunden, der das Sinken des Markkurses im Zusammenhang mit anderen auf der Hand liegenden Ereignissen durchschaut. Man braucht heute eigentlich nur auf drei Silben hinzuweisen - ich werde sie jetzt nicht verraten -, dann kann man die Antwort finden auf die Frage nach den Gründen dieses Sinkens des Markkurses. Aber die Seelen lieben zu schlafen, so sehr zu schlafen, daß uns in der Gegenwart in Mitteleuropa die große Enttäuschung hat kommen können, daß man sich, ich möchte sagen, schon vorher darauf freute — wir haben es erleben können Die Frauen werden teilnehmen an den öffentlichen Parlamentswahlen, verdoppelt wird der Verstand gegenüber den alten Zeiten. Und dann haben wir die Nationalversammlung erlebt. Aber verdoppelt war der Verstand gegenüber dem alten deutschen Reichstag nicht. Die Fortsetzung der alten Parteien haben wir erlebt, in der Zeit, wo die Parteien hätten mit Stumpf und Stiel verschwinden müssen. Man ahnt gar nicht, was damit geschehen ist, denn die Seelen schlafen. Mechanisierung des Geistes - Vegetarisierung der Seelen!
Und blicken wir nach Osten, so sehen wir dort die Animalisierung der Leiber sehr stark im Aufgange. Geradeso wie man in der Amerikanisierung des Geistes eine Mechanisierung des Geisteslebens hat, so hat man in dem, was sich im Osten als Bolschewismus ausbreiten will, eine Animalisierung der Leiber. Aus ihren Emotionen heraus kritisieren diese Menschen dieses und jenes ab, aber sie wollen nicht das wahre Leben begreifen. Und so hat die Menschheit heute die Wahl: dort hinzugeben, wo sie auf der einen Seite die Mechanisierung des Geistes, die Vegetarisierung der Seelen, die Animalisierung der Leiber findet, oder sie kann auf der anderen Seite versuchen, den Weg zu finden zur Auferweckung des Geistes, diese Auferweckung des Geistes zu finden in den Impulsen, die dem Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsscele entsprechen, in der Anknüpfung der Menschenseele an die Tätigkeit der höheren Hierarchien, in dem Anerkennen der aus früheren Erdenverhältnissen kommenden bewußten Menschenseele, in der Dreigliederung des sozialen Lebens. Diese Dinge gehören zusammen. Und die Menschen, welche sich vereinigen in der Bewegung, die wir die Bewegung der anthroposophisch orientierten Geisteswissenschaft nennen, sie sollten sich fühlen als einen Kern, von dem die Kraft zur sozialen Neugestaltung ausstrahlt. Denn was zur sozialen Umgestaltung von anderen Seiten her kommen kann, kann sehr nützlich sein. Aber es muß daran gearbeitet werden: Wahrhaftige soziale Umgestaltung kann nur aus spirituellen Impulsen kommen. Deshalb hätte man schon erwarten können, daß aus diesem Kreise, der dieser Bewegung angehört, das beste Verständnis für diese Bedingungen hätte erstehen können.
Ich habe Ihnen jetzt einige Momente dargestellt, die Ihnen etwas von den Notwendigkeiten unseres gegenwärtigen Lebens zeigen können heute, wo ich hier in diesen neuen Räumen zu sprechen habe. Ich möchte, daß unsere Feier darin bestanden hat, daß wir uns bei jeglichem Verweilen in diesen Räumen das Bewußtsein bewahren an diese für die Menschheitsentwicklung so wichtigen Wahrheiten. Denn je mehr wir in unsere anthroposophische Arbeit ein solches Bewußtsein hereintragen, eine desto stärkere Weihe verleihen wir dieser Arbeit. Und diese Räume werden am besten dadurch geweiht sein, daß wir sie einweihen durch unsere Empfindungen, die aus solchen Quellen herausgeholt sind.
Sixth Lecture
Today, as I stand here in this room for the first time to speak to you about anthroposophy, it is above all a feeling of gratitude that I would like to express to those dear friends who, during the time when I myself was unable to be here in Berlin, devoted themselves selflessly to setting up these rooms, which are intended to serve our anthroposophical contemplation and work. We are living in a time when the human soul must be primarily attuned to great, comprehensive events in world history and in the development of humanity. These great, comprehensive events and upheavals of the present day demand so much of our will, if we want to understand our position as human beings within world events, that we cannot, as was sometimes the case in earlier, calmer, or at least seemingly calmer times, devote the same attention to such beautiful external events as to the establishment of a space that is dedicated to ideal goals spiritual goals, so dedicated that people can work together in them as in their social life. But if one considers the matter correctly, there is a certain connection between the great events that are currently pulsating through the world and such an establishment. For it must be so, due to the significant demands of the historical development of humanity itself, that what people have sought in beauty up to now, in artistic design for their individual private lives, will increasingly have to be drawn toward those spaces which people do not have for themselves in individualistic egoism, but in which they interact socially. It would be difficult to understand what the future goals of human development might be if one were to judge them by what sometimes seems to be emerging today. The social movement of the present day not only has a “more democratic” character in many respects—the temporary nature of which one only needs to understand in the right sense in order not to misjudge what this movement is all about, despite its more democratic character—but this social movement also has something about it that could already strike fear into people: the beautiful, that which pervades our earthly culture as art, would not be understood in the future in the same way as in the past, when materially privileged circles were able to devote themselves to the cultivation of beauty!
A transitional period may lead to a slight decline in receptivity to beauty. But precisely when a more social organization of our lives takes hold in earnest, it will be essential that the external spatial and temporal events also be adapted to taste and beauty; otherwise, humanity would degenerate into philistinism and philistrosity. In a certain sense, we can regard the simple beauty that our friends here in this space have tried to adapt to the serious things that are to be cultivated here as something symbolic of the great events that are pulsating through our time. And out of such feelings, I believe I speak in harmony with all of you when, in these serious times, I express our heartfelt thanks to our friends for the work they have done here, in keeping with the spirit of the times. It would also be a mistake to judge what is currently in the making as if the so-called “objective events” in the world could diminish the value of the individual and of what stems from the personal and the individual. That will not be the case. Only the centuries up to the end of the 19th century, the last three or four centuries, have had such an effect that it seems justified in the overall development of humanity to place human beings as more than a cog in the general world mechanism. The task for the near future will be for human beings to work their way out of this world mechanism. Therefore, it can already be said that the great movement of the present day is, for the most part, thoroughly egoistic in character. Certainly, socialism is being strived for, but out of purely antisocial drives and instincts. We must not fail to recognize that we are actually striving for socialism today because human beings have become so antisocial in their spiritual development, in their spiritual constitution. If social feeling were more natural, there would be no need for so many socialist programs; these are, in a sense, only a reaction to people's antisocial feelings and sensibilities. But precisely at such a time as this, when—because things are so unclear—the social wants to emerge from the egoistic and antisocial, precisely at such a time, the sight of what has been achieved through noble, selfless devotion to an ideal cause, out of genuine, true, unselfish human feelings, has a very special effect. And it will be good if, in these serious times, we do not celebrate in an outward manner, but rather turn our thoughts to what I have just said: how valuable it is, alongside the pervasive selfish striving of our time, to find the possibility of creating something like what has been created here—albeit on a very small scale—for idealistic, spiritual work. And so it seems to me that the most festive thing to do today is to offer reflections that, on the one hand, are connected with the seriousness of the times, so that we may draw from this seriousness those feelings that can perhaps accompany us through the work that is to be done here in these rooms, as long as we are able to continue doing it here under the present circumstances; and if, on the other hand, we allow thoughts to work on us which, because they are intimately connected with the development of humanity, can be valuable and worthy when we enter these rooms, often and often to draw us through our souls out of the tasks that these rooms are intended to serve.
If we look at our times in a critical sense – not maliciously critical, but critically nonetheless – then we would not be true to ourselves if we wanted to deceive ourselves about the numerous currents of decline in all areas of life that are prevalent at this time. When we look at our present time, we must not forget, if we are not to lose our sense of the seriousness of life, how strongly what people usually carry in their consciousness today — carry in such a way that they express it in words — how far removed this is in most cases from what is inwardly true and real. Even the feeling for how far the words we speak are often removed from the truth has actually been lost to large circles of our contemporaries, and in place of the elementary outflow of truth from the human soul has come, we may say, the world phrase. For what is the most characteristic feature of phraseology? It is characterized by the fact that people speak without the words that come out of their mouths being inwardly connected—for they can only be inwardly connected—with the source of truth. We need only look at what has been accomplished in the last four, five, six years in terms of revelations of a general untruth throughout the world, and we cannot doubt that this has greatly increased the world's departure from true reality, has led to worldly phrases, and, if nothing were done to counteract it, would lead to even more and more. And nothing has actually been able to flourish in recent times as much as the growth of phraseology, of untruthfulness, as the indulgence of this untruthfulness, as the tendency toward untruthfulness. Wherever one encounters phraseology today, one also encounters those people who are indulgent toward the assertion of phraseology, of this untruthfulness. For these indulgent people ask everywhere: What did the person concerned mean? Didn't he have the best of intentions in everything he did? Didn't he believe he was acting with the best of intentions in everything he did? And how little, in contrast, is there of the conscientious sense of truth that compels those who open their mouths to seriously examine the reasons for a statement and to refrain from making a statement that they have examined. The time must come when it is not enough to say of a person, “He meant well,” when he has spoken untruthfully. The time must come when people feel the most intense sense of responsibility toward examining the truth, and that even if they discover that they have said something in good faith that does not correspond to the facts, they would not be able to forgive themselves, but would remember that it is irrelevant to objective knowledge of the world whether we subjectively believe we have told the truth or not, but that it is of no consequence for objective knowledge of the world whether, in a single case, we say something that is true in the objective sense, that is, corresponds to the facts, or something that does not correspond to the facts. It is precisely in view of the seriousness of the times that we will have to learn what is really mere phraseology.
Today, many people actually feel—though they are not clearly aware of it—that one should be allowed to say whatever is pleasant. This can be studied particularly well and can be further studied in the position that many people take toward current events. Seriousness has passed us by. People judge serious matters only as it suits them, not according to their significance for the overall development of humanity. We have had contemporaries who stood at the center of what has happened in the last four to five years, people who have been pushed by circumstances into leading positions in relation to world events. These people, their fate has overtaken them! But how few people are inclined to form an objective judgment about what has actually happened. How few people are inclined to ask by what selection, by what choice in the decisive hour, the leading personalities came to occupy their leading positions, to the detriment of humanity. But nothing is more necessary today than to work through all subjective opinions and arrive at a certain objectivity with regard to these matters. Some people believe that it is easy to tell the truth today. It is not easy to tell the truth, because the truth has so many enemies today, and because those who tell the truth naturally wear themselves out very quickly. For the truth is often taken badly today.
In recent months, I have often been told that what I assert in the social sphere is so difficult to understand that it cannot be grasped. In response, I have had to repeatedly point out that understanding this social impulse requires a different state of mind than the one that has prevailed in Central Europe, especially in the last four to five years and even long before that, but which has reached its peak in the last four to five years. People have understood a great deal in these last four to five years; they have understood things that I truly did not understand. One could find all kinds of statements framed in beautiful settings; people understood them. With a straightforward sense of truth, one could not understand such statements, but people understood them. For they were commanded to understand them: the command came from the Great Headquarters. Then they understood everything. But now things are necessary that cannot be understood out of obedience, but out of one's own free soul. Perhaps people must first reacquire this. The last four to five years have seriously shown that people must reacquire this. And in view of what people have become accustomed to in the last four to five years, it is truly no pleasant duty to tell the truth, firstly because the truth is serious, and secondly because people take the truth so badly.
There will come times that will look back on our time in a very special way. But people today have many other obligations than they did in the recent past. Therefore, we must already begin to form a certain idea of how future times will view what is happening in our time.
People will have to learn in our time to turn their gaze, their spiritual gaze, back up to the great upheavals, to the great impulses of human evolution on Earth. Such a great upheaval began in the middle of the 15th century in the Christian era. In our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, we call it the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, and we know that it has a completely different character from the previous, Greek-Latin cultural epoch, which began in the eighth century BC and ended in the 15th century AD. Through what they have accepted as conventional wisdom and call history, people do not see the enormous difference between the moods of the human soul in, say, the 10th century and those of the centuries that began in the middle of the 15th century. New moods and states of mind have broken into humanity, and we can only understand what has actually entered into human development if we turn our spiritual gaze upward to the forces that are at work in human events themselves, to the forces that are at play, for example, in the upheaval of the mid-15th century. In our time – several centuries have passed since the middle of the 15th century – what broke upon civilized humanity in the middle of the 15th century, what has slowly developed until now, is coming to a crisis, so to speak, and is now at a decisive moment, because human consciousness must seize this decisive moment.
Today is the time when human beings must realize—in what way they do this, we will discuss later—that they stand within the events of the earth as human beings, and outside of themselves are the three kingdoms of nature: the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. But when people today utter this sentence, they are only telling half the truth from the standpoint of present consciousness, the consciousness of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. People who lived before this period could still say: Outside of me are the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom, because they understood something different by this than we do today. People of ancient times still understood the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom in such a way that spiritual beings reigned in these kingdoms. People today have lost this awareness. They must first reacquire it by looking at the three kingdoms and knowing that just as we are connected downward to the three kingdoms, the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom, we are connected upward to the three kingdoms of the angeloi, archangeloi, and archai. And only then do we speak a full truth, not a half-truth, when we say that we look down upon the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom, but when we can also look upward to the kingdom of the angeloi, the archangeloi, and the archai. Just as our physical body has a certain relationship to the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom, so too does our spiritual-soul life have a relationship to what constitutes the three hierarchies above us. But in our time in particular, while we are greatly changing our relationship to the three kingdoms of nature, we are also changing our relationship to the three kingdoms of the hierarchies that stand above human beings. I would like to draw your attention to this serious matter of human development today, and in doing so, we will best celebrate the dedication of this branch room.
When we look back on what has happened in human development in earlier periods, which came to an end, so to speak, in the middle of the 15th century, we must say, if we disregard the higher hierarchies: The beings of the Angeloi, the Archangeloi, and the Archai have always been concerned with human beings, concerned with human beings insofar as they pass through existence between death and a new birth, but they have also been concerned with them insofar as they pass through existence here on the earthly plane. But the concern of the beings of these three hierarchies with human beings has, in a certain sense, come to an end in our age. Among the manifold activities that the beings of these three hierarchies have been engaged in is this: to cooperate in the image that underlies the physical human being, the physical organization of the human being on earth. We enter our physical existence through birth and grow up in this physical existence: the image of humanity is imprinted in us. This image was very different in ancient times of human development: it has undergone many changes. You need only remember what emerges when we look back to the ancient Atlantean era or even to the time of Egyptian culture: human beings were still different in their outer structure. The image of humanity has changed, and it was the task of the beings of these three higher hierarchies to work on this image. It can be said that it was one of the tasks of these beings to develop the image of the human being so that it first had the form it had in the ancient Lemurian period, then the form it had in the Atlantean period, and finally the form it had in the post-Atlantean periods. In this way, the beings of these three higher hierarchies gradually came to produce the image that today forms the basis of the human being through the transformation of older image forms.
But now we come to the peculiarity, and a true spiritual observation of human development shows this: with the actual formation of this image of humanity, the beings of these three hierarchies are essentially finished in our age. This image of humanity, insofar as it forms the basis of the physical organization of the human being, is actually complete. Feel the significance of this fact: the beings of the hierarchies of the angeloi, the archangeloi, and the archai have worked for thousands upon thousands of years to develop an image, and this image is the one according to which the physical organization of the human being has been carried out. And we live in the age in which these beings of the three higher hierarchies say to themselves: We have worked on the image of humanity, but we have finished. We have placed human beings in this earthly world as physical human beings, and now we are finished!
Those who contemplate this fact with spiritual vision feel particularly shaken by the fact that the interest of the beings of these three higher hierarchies in this age has not only diminished but has disappeared altogether in the creation of the physical image of humanity. If we look back to the Greek-Latin period, we find that the beings of these higher hierarchies had a lively interest in bringing about the physical image of humanity on earth. Today, these beings of the higher hierarchies actually have no interest in this anymore. They feel that they have done their part for physical human beings on earth. From this point of view, their interest has disappeared. Human beings could regard this as a particularly significant fact that cuts deeply into human nature, if only they would take the time and trouble to observe the external facts of human development today. Let us look back, for example, to earlier times. From some of what has happened and has been handed down to us in such a way that we can judge it, we can say: Certain thoughts arose instinctively in the people of earlier times. We refer to those people as geniuses in whom certain thoughts arise instinctively. Today, we believe at most that such thoughts arise in some people. Today, there is little genius in the people of the earth. For the forces of genius no longer arise from the physical organization, because the beings of the three higher hierarchies no longer work on this physical organization. They have lost their interest in the physical constitution of human beings.
This is what makes people today so arrogant in a certain sense, that they are actually finished in terms of their physical constitution. They will no longer be able to go through the rest of Earth's development by perfecting their physical form. No further perfection of their constitution will come from the body itself. What once arose instinctively and ingeniously in the human soul came from the body and, at the same time, because it was the work of the gods, had an organizing power on the body. When Homer wrote poetry, for example, he did so with a power that was at the same time an organizing power in the Greeks, shaping the Greek body. What appears with such a concrete force has at the same time body-forming forces. What appears to us today as the laws of nature that we have established and of which we are so proud are, on the whole, abstractions that have no body-forming power. We therefore form abstract thoughts that are incapable of governing social life, and abstract laws of nature, because the beings of the three higher hierarchies no longer work upon us, because we no longer have thoughts rising up within us that are organizing. Our soul nature has become abstract. Our soul is indeed so within us that it has been abandoned by the body itself from the activity of the beings of the three higher hierarchies.
And this is now the important thing, that we must now seek again, from ourselves, the connection to the activity of the beings of the three higher hierarchies. Until now, these beings have come to us as human beings; they have worked on us. Now we must work on our own soul and spirit. And what we work on in our soul and spirit, what we reveal from the spiritual world through spiritual scientific research, will become something in our human soul that will once again interest the beings of the three higher hierarchies. They will be in the thoughts and feelings that we bring forth from the spiritual world. In this way we will reestablish our relationships with the beings of these hierarchies. What is happening in our time is so significant that we must describe it as a change in the position of the world of the gods in relation to the human world. The gods have worked until our time to perfect the physical image of the human being. Human beings must begin to work on the content of their souls so that they can find their way back to the three higher hierarchies. That is why our time is so difficult, because human beings are so proud of their completed outer physical form and, independent of this physical form, that is, independent of any higher world, develop abstract thoughts that have no connection with the spiritual world, and because our real task is to seek this connection within ourselves through devotion to spiritual knowledge and feelings about spiritual knowledge, and to will out of spiritual knowledge. Only those who feel and sense this great change, which will take centuries, can find the right position within their time. Today, it is not possible to gain a correct position in relation to the present through external observations; today, one must have the opportunity to attain this position through inner work on what is within. We have just entered the age of the consciousness soul and have emerged from the age of the intellectual or emotional soul, which was the Greek-Latin age. And this consciousness soul must also develop more and more so that the beings of the higher hierarchies no longer work into the human being — that would cloud his consciousness — but rather he must consciously work his way up to them. This is what constitutes his full, bright, clear daytime consciousness, that he works his way up to the beings of the higher hierarchies. Spiritual science is the beginning of such an upward working, for it has not sprung from some arbitrary decision, but from insight into this transformation in our time.
But human beings must also consciously develop many other things. Human beings have always had to live according to karma, according to the great law of destiny, but they have not always acquired knowledge of this great law of destiny. How surprising it was when Lessing's “Education of the Human Race” brought forth from the more recent spiritual development the awareness of repeated lives on earth. Today, the time is beginning when we can no longer live from person to person in the same way as before. We have seen how we can no longer live in the same way with the beings of the three higher hierarchies. But we can no longer live in the same way with human beings themselves as we did in the past. Their lives, as they were cultivated in the past, still extend into our time, but we fail in our obligations to the present if we do not draw attention to the fact that a new relationship between human beings must also come into being. One might say that this has not mattered until now because human consciousness was not obliged to develop in the past. So in earlier times, people approached each other without awareness: “You, human being, there lives within you a soul that has gone through a time before birth and another life on earth before that.” A time will come, and it is already dawning, when it would be a deficiency of the soul's constitution if we did not know that something lives in the soul of another human being that has carried over from a previous earthly life. Until now, it did not matter if one did not know this. Now the time is beginning when one must not ignore this. I will show this with a concrete example.
Among the things we have begun to work out in social life, we have attempted to establish a school based on a truly new human spirit, a school that is initially affiliated with the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory: the Waldorf School. We opened it ceremoniously last Sunday. This was preceded by a seminar course for teachers, which I took the liberty of holding. The main thing there was to establish a pedagogy, an art of education and teaching that takes into account the fact that a soul is growing in the child that comes from another life on earth. Until now, even if a teacher considered himself very advanced in educational terms, he could say to himself: you have a child's soul before you, from which certain abilities emerge that you have a duty to develop. But he could more or less only see what came out of the body. The future educator will not be able to fulfill his task with this. He will have to have a keen sense of what is developing in the child from previous earthly lives, and the great result of future education will be that this will have to be brought out. In this interaction, the social relationship must first develop, built on the spiritual relationship to other people in the consciousness: if you have a person before you, you have the resurrected soul from the previous incarnation before you. To have this as a theory from a comprehended worldview, as a teaching about repeated earthly lives, is not enough; this teaching must become practical, so practical that it could become the foundation for something like an art of education and teaching. That is what makes this teaching viable. It is therefore understandable that there is still little receptivity to such things, that people look askance at the mental state of those who recognize what is needed in today's world. And what is needed is not merely to shout it out in the form of some spiritual worldview, but to place concrete tasks of life in the sunshine of knowledge, not merely to profess this or that formula, but to carry this knowledge into the life of humanity itself. Then, at such a point, one notices how the old and the new collide in mere phrases, as is the case with the establishment of a new pedagogy.
I have endeavored to learn as much as possible about what is being promoted today in the field of education from one side or the other. Often, to take just one example, the question is discussed: Should education be more formal or more material? Should we focus more on educating people for this or that profession so that they can fit properly into state or other forms of life, or should we focus more on the nature of human beings, bringing out what is generally human in the humanistic sense? People in the field of education have argued a lot about this question. It is really just a phrase, because there is such a big difference between what people say and what is truly understood. Is a person anything other than what they grow up to be? Take people who have professions today that are dedicated to public life. What makes them devote themselves to this life? It is because previous generations brought this and that into the world. Today's public life is only the result of what previous generations have brought about. Did the teachers of earlier times therefore provide a material education rather than a formalistic one? Certainly they did not provide a formalistic education. But it is one and the same thing! People argue about things that are one and the same. But something else is important: that we have in the people who are born today as children the inclinations that should grow in the next and the next generation, that we therefore educate prophetically. Whether we educate people materially or humanistically is a phrase. But it is serious that we must educate prophetically, that we must foresee what tasks the next generation will have. That is what is happening in the world.
People today still find this difficult to understand. They will have to make themselves comfortable with it, otherwise they will fall further and further behind the development of the times. This is important, this is extremely important. We must become conscious in the most serious sense of the word, both because we must connect with the activity of the beings of the higher hierarchies, and because a new relationship between human beings is necessary in the field of education, because we must stimulate in the human being who stands before us not the soul that now stands before us, but the soul that comes over from earlier earthly conditions. We will have to carry this in our consciousness. It is so important that we find a concrete relationship to the spirit. If one only knows something about karma, about repeated earthly lives, about the constitution of the human being, and carries this as concepts in one's head, then this is certainly a worldview, a theory. But with this theory one does not get very far today. Only when this theoretical worldview becomes life is it what humanity needs for the near future.
These are truths about the relationship of the human being to the higher hierarchies, truths about karma. We can add a third. From my description in the book How to Know Higher Worlds, you know that when the human being looks into the spiritual world, he must, in a certain sense, experience what is called crossing the threshold. I have described this crossing of the threshold in this book by pointing out how the three powers of the human mind, which interact in a rather chaotic manner in this physical life, become structured, how the power of thinking, the power of feeling, and the power of will become independent. When a person crosses the threshold, these powers become independent. In many respects, the entire course of human development is similar to the course of an individual human being's life. Only the things are shifted. What a person consciously goes through when they want to see into the spiritual world, the crossing of the threshold, must be gone through unconsciously by the whole of humanity in this fifth post-Atlantean period. They have no choice in the matter; they go through it unconsciously. Not the individual human being, but humanity and the individual human being together with humanity. What does that mean?
What works together in the human being in thinking, feeling, and willing will take on a separate character in the future and assert itself in different fields. We are in the process of humanity unconsciously passing through a significant gate, which the seer can perceive very well. Humanity is passing through this threshold in such a way that the realms of thinking, feeling, and willing are diverging. But this imposes obligations on us, the obligation to shape external life in such a way that human beings can also undergo this inner transformation in their external lives. As thinking becomes more independent in human life, we must establish a foundation on which thinking can have a healthy effect, and we must also create a foundation on which feeling can develop independently, and a foundation on which the will can develop in a special way. What has hitherto been chaotic and confused in public life must now be divided into three areas. These three areas of public life are: economic life, state or legal life, and cultural or spiritual life. This demand for threefold social order is connected with the mystery of human evolution in this age.
Do not believe that what is claimed to be a threefold social organism is an arbitrary invention. It has been born out of the most intimate knowledge of human development, out of what must happen if the goal of human development is not to be denied. That is why we found ourselves in the terrible catastrophe of the world war of recent years, because it was difficult to recognize a goal of a spiritual nature and because people had strayed so far from even acknowledging goals of this kind. We must work our way out of this chaos. The course of human development itself dictates that we must work our way out of this chaos. That is why I believe that only those who start from anthroposophical feelings, from the knowledge of what is actually happening in human development, will be able to understand the necessity of a threefold social order. But people today do not like to acknowledge such things. The present loves to turn to the most immediate tasks, not to engage with the deeper mysteries of existence.
This is what weighs so heavily on the heart of those who look into these mysteries, because humanity is most averse to what is most necessary for it. But it is impossible to stop at the thoughts just expressed. One can say that all pessimism is wrong. Of course, not all optimism is right either. But what is right is the appeal to the will. It is not a question of whether something happens one way or another, but that we should want what is in the direction of human development. We must make this clear to ourselves again and again. The old time is over, and we must settle accounts with it. We can only come to a correct understanding of the present if we settle accounts with the old times properly. But the new times do not allow us to settle accounts with them in any other way than spiritually. We must not delude ourselves into thinking that we can carry over into the new times what we have grown fond of in the old times, but we must begin to turn to the effective new ideas in our outer life. Humanity today has two paths. One leads through the mechanization of the spirit. The spirit has become very mechanical in recent times, especially in the abstract laws of nature, which have then been carried over into social life as ruling laws. Mechanization of the spirit—vegetabilization of the soul! Vegetables sleep, and the human soul also tends to sleep. The most important events are experienced in a sleepy state. The most important events of recent years have literally been slept through. Even today, the most important events are being slept through.
From the place where I am speaking today, I would like to say: The people of Central Europe have allowed their leaders to tell them the wrong things day after day, and now they are continuing in this business without paying attention. People today see from the stock market report that the mark has already fallen to 2.15 centimes. To this day, I have not found a single person who understands the connection between the fall in the mark and other obvious events. Today, one need only point to three syllables—which I will not reveal now—to find the answer to the question of why the mark has fallen. But souls love to sleep, to sleep so much that in Central Europe today we have been able to experience the great disappointment that, I would say, was already anticipated—we have been able to experience it. Women will participate in public parliamentary elections, and reason will be doubled compared to the old days. And then we experienced the National Assembly. But reason was not doubled compared to the old German Reichstag. We experienced the continuation of the old parties at a time when the parties should have disappeared completely. One cannot even guess what has happened, because souls are asleep. Mechanization of the spirit—vegetarianization of souls!
And if we look to the East, we see the animalization of bodies very strongly on the rise. Just as the Americanization of the mind has led to a mechanization of spiritual life, so the spread of Bolshevism in the East has led to an animalization of bodies. Out of their emotions, these people criticize this and that, but they do not want to understand true life. And so humanity today has a choice: to give in to the mechanization of the spirit, the vegetarization of the souls, the animalization of the bodies, or it can try to find the way to the awakening of the spirit, to find this revival of the spirit in the impulses that correspond to the age of the consciousness soul, in the connection of the human soul to the activity of the higher hierarchies, in the recognition of the conscious human soul coming from earlier earthly conditions, in the threefold social order. These things belong together. And the people who unite in the movement we call the movement of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science should feel themselves to be a core from which the power for social transformation radiates. For what may come from other quarters for social transformation can be very useful. But work must be done on it: true social transformation can only come from spiritual impulses. Therefore, one might have expected that the best understanding of these conditions would have arisen from this circle belonging to this movement.
I have now presented to you a few moments that can show you something of the necessities of our present life today, as I stand here speaking in these new rooms. I would like our celebration to consist of our remaining conscious of these truths, which are so important for the development of humanity, whenever we linger in these rooms. For the more we bring such awareness into our anthroposophical work, the more we consecrate this work. And these rooms will be best consecrated by our inaugurating them with our feelings drawn from such sources.