The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is reported that in the next volume of Bethmann-Hollweg's posthumous “Reflections on the World War”, the sentence “With a European chaos, the age of freedom and justice begins, which our opponents have promised the world.” It took only one world war to bring personalities who, through their position in European public life, could have had as much influence as Bethmann-Hollweg, into a line of thought as indicated in this sentence. When he wrote this sentence, Bethmann-Hollweg had long since been deprived of power.

The conditions in the life of the nations of Europe did not come into being only as a result of the World War. They were there before it. They caused it. They only gained the opportunity to come to fruition through it.

The leading personalities of public life were not able to prevent the terrible catastrophe because they did not want to see the forces at work in the lives of nations. They based their thinking on the external balance of power; and real life was rooted in the spiritual conditions of the nations.

A ray of hope in this chaos cannot arise until the insight matures that without an understanding of the soul life of nations, public affairs cannot be brought into a healthy course.

The eyes of those who are thinking of the Washington Conference are now turned towards the Far East, towards Japan. But again, these eyes are only attracted by the external means of power. What should be done in relation to Japan in order to be able to represent Western economic interests in China and Siberia in a satisfactory manner, is what is being asked.

That is indeed the question. For these economic interests do exist, and Western life cannot continue if they cannot be satisfied. But suppose they are steered in some direction only by the means we are considering today. What must happen?

Japan is at present in a certain respect the outpost of Asiatic life. It has to the greatest extent externally adopted European forms in this life. Through alliances, treaties and so forth, it can be treated politically in the way that one has become accustomed to in the West. But in terms of the national soul, it remains connected with the life of Asia as a whole.

Asia, however, has inherited an ancient spiritual life. This is more important to it than anything else. This spiritual life will flare up in mighty flames if the West creates conditions that cannot satisfy it. But the West believes it can organize these conditions for purely economic reasons. It will thus create the starting points for even more terrible catastrophes than the European war was.

The public affairs that now span the world cannot be conducted without the input of spiritual impulses. The peoples of Asia will respond sympathetically to the West if the West can bring them ideas that are universally human in character. These ideas speak of what man is in the context of the world, and how life should be socially organized in accordance with this cosmic context. When the East hears that the West has new knowledge about things of which the old traditions tell, but for which a dark feeling strives for renewal, then they will come to an understanding coexistence. If, however, the public work with such an impact continues to be regarded as the fantastic idea of impractical people, then the East will ultimately wage war against the West, despite the fact that people in Washington are talking about how wonderful it would be in the world if disarmament were to take place.

The West wants world peace in order to achieve its economic goals. The East will only embrace economic goals if the West has something of spiritual value to convey to it. The solution of the great world problems today depends on whether one is able to bring spiritual life into the right relationship to economic life.

This will not be possible as long as the spiritual life in our social organisms is not placed on its own free foundation. The West has the possibility of a lively spiritual development. It can extract a spiritual world view from the treasure it has accumulated through its scientific and technical way of thinking. But so far, only that which leads to a mechanistic-materialistic view has been taken from this treasure. Public thinking classified the spiritual with the economic in socio-public life. The free development of the spirit, which is strongly predisposed in the West, was hindered because the administration of spiritual affairs is intertwined with the other factors of social life. Individual people with higher spiritual interests relate to the East in such a way that they take over its ancient spiritual heritage and outwardly graft it onto the spiritual life of the West. Under such conditions, the “light from the East” is not only an indictment of the West. It is a terrible indictment. It means that the West feels so taken in by dark interests that it cannot see its own light.

The elevation of spiritual values in the West will determine whether humanity will master today's chaos or continue to err helplessly in it. As long as the will to do so is regarded as the utopian-mystical ravings of impractical people, chaos will continue. People will speak of peace but be unable to avert the causes of war. They will be forced to tremble for the fate of Europe when, as in these days, a single personality who formerly held power wants to regain such power. But it must be remembered that conditions are unhealthy in which such trepidation is possible at all.

The confusion in the economic conditions of Central and Eastern Europe is beginning to cause a kind of political nightmare for the leading circles of Western countries. There is a fear of being drawn into the general decline. Those who can look this fear in the eye without prejudice can see the perplexity in the conduct of public affairs.

This lack of orientation is rooted in the lack of will to look beneath the surface of public life. People shy away from doing so. Because they sense that such a look would reveal things that cannot be dealt with by the means to which one has become accustomed. So people organize congresses and conferences: for the time being, it is taken for granted that they only think of these familiar means.

But these means will inevitably fail in every case, because they do not address the forces that prevail in the depths of the life of nations. And it is in these depths that the questions that trouble the world are now taking shape. We should act on the realization that something in these depths is crying out for a change in our outlook on life and our way of life.

In its view of world events, humanity has been torn out of real life. Even in the most practical questions of life, it dreams of goals that must falter in the face of reality. Only a keen observation of this reality can lead to recovery.

All political and economic life is ultimately rooted in the spiritual. How people think is how they act. But healthy forces can only flow into action if the spiritual life has healthy nourishment. This nourishment is lost when the spirit denies itself. When it expresses not itself but spiritlessness in its revelations.

Humanity has been thrown into this state in the most recent times. People have become accustomed to expressing not the spirit but only the spiritless, the materiality of life, through the spirit. But those who seek the truth in this way will ultimately lose it altogether. For the truth wants to be shaped out of the spirit even when it draws the material processes of life into its realm.

A search for truth that cannot draw its juices from the spirit itself will, out of inner necessity, end up with the phrase. And the phrase is today the hallmark of public life. The parties coin the phrases. They agitate with the phrases; they find credence with the phrases.

Phrases lack the lifeblood of the spirit. They will therefore never be able to permeate the reality of life. But they numb. They cast a spell over people's souls. They believe that through them they can master public life. However, recovery will not come until a sufficiently large number of people have recognized the infertility of phrases in their lives. Until then, we will not even be able to see the roots of the current widespread diseases. We will see reality sailing in the confusion of foreign currencies; but we will speak of “improving conditions” in party slogans.

And when the slogan becomes the mistress of intellectual life, it also does not allow the truth to prevail in political and legal life. The behavior of men towards one another cannot take on the form of law. For the law must take root in the feelings. But phraseology withers the feelings. Law becomes convention. In the legal and political sphere, convention is the companion of phraseology, which lives out itself on the spiritual plane.

Convention can eke out its existence in dead laws and administrative measures; real life needs the law rooted in the soul in the social sphere, just as the spiritual life needs the spirit, and under the power of phraseology it withers away.

In economic life, routine develops under the influence of phraseology and convention instead of real practice. And this routine actually dominates the economic side of existence today. Economic life does not unfold in harmony with the other needs of the human way of life. It has gradually become an element of existence to which man devotes himself because he simply has to live, but which he does not include in the whole of his life's development. When the spirit and the law shape the mind in their truth, then in the economic field arises the genuine practice of life. But when the management of the purely material-technical in economic life prevails, then the bloodless, heartless routine arises. Like an automatic mechanism, the processes of economic life roll under the power of routine. They draw human life itself into their cycle.

Today's humanity groans under the power of routine in economic life. It deserts the genuine sense of justice; it creates indifference to the spiritual and an inclination to get carried away by empty phrases. For in life, the cause not only produces the effect, but the effect also has an effect on the causal agent. Phrase and convention push towards routine; routine allows phrase to flourish, and the warm-hearted human coexistence in a fertilizing sense of right degenerates into heartless, life-paralyzing convention.

A tripartite division of the social organism has arisen under the force of modern life, which expresses itself in phrase, convention and routine. The “threefold social organism” seeks to overcome this threefold division. It is criticized for wanting to divide what is social unity. It really wants the opposite. It wants it because it believes it has the knowledge that under that striving for unity, which is held against it, the threefold division of social life into phrase, convention and routine is forming. This tripartite division can only be remedied by the healthy interaction of the three elements of the social organism. The unreality of the phrase must be recognized through the impulses of a free spiritual life, the coldness of convention through the recovery of the sense of right, and the barrenness of routine through the mechanization of existence. Existence is only viable through truth in the spirit, justice in the coexistence of people, and genuine practice in economic activity. Just as the whole organism of the individual suffers when a limb is deprived of its very own conditions of life, so the social organism cannot flourish when the spiritual life wastes away in empty phrases, the legal life dies in convention, and the economic life mechanizes in routine. Even if this is expressed in the famous old Roman parable, humanity suffers particularly today from the fact that its leaders sin against it. This parable has also become a cliché.

We can already clearly see that the number of people who do not expect much from the conference in Washington to improve world affairs is increasing. However, we do not see the same extent to which views are forming about the reasons for this disappointment.

The world economy is under discussion at this conference. All other questions are being raised from the point of view that is given by this fact. Even if this is less transparent for some, there can be no doubt about it for the impartial. This has been discussed in articles that have appeared in this weekly magazine.

But in world affairs, different questions are under discussion than at this conference. And these questions must first be understood if one is to talk fruitfully about the ones openly raised today.

The economy can only be put in order if people can come to an understanding about their purely human relationships. And this understanding has faltered, taking the economy down with it. Wilson sensed this. That is why he gave his famous fourteen points an ethical-idealistic guise. But the inner content of these points was abstract and unrealistic. They were shadows of thoughts thrown into the wild surge of real passions and conflicting vital interests.

It is important to see from which underground this surge is driving to the surface. And every attempt to see clearly in this direction must lead to recognizing how, in our time, one cannot ask: how can one manage under the given public conditions; but rather, how should one publicly deal with the fundamental human questions in order to come to a possible understanding?

We must recognize today how the complexities of life have led the three fundamental parts of all human existence – economic activity, political and legal understanding, and the cultivation of spiritual life – to conflict with each other. Wherever an economic plan is devised or implemented, it fails because of the political and legal sensitivities or the spiritual interests of those affected by it. Where political decisions are made, they collide with economic impossibilities and emotional disturbances.

The harmonization of the economic, political, legal and spiritual conditions of the peoples: that has become the burning world question. And no conference decision that sweeps over people's heads can contribute to this harmonization if it does not touch on the fundamental question itself: In what social contexts must people live so that what they strive for in one of these three areas is compatible with the other two?

This cannot happen if the three areas do not maintain their relative independence in social life. It is simply not right in life that a possible unity can be imposed on the members from the outset; this can only develop from the independent unfolding of the members. Cooperation cannot be achieved by an abstract idea of unity or a unified will, but only through the impulse of unified human nature, which can develop freely in each individual member.

How can we ensure that, when economic decisions have to be made, only those involved in economic life are called upon to make them? But in such a way that these personalities bring with them a political, legal and spiritual state of mind from their lives that objectively supports their decisions, without destructively interfering with them? And the same must apply to the other areas of life.

Thinking along these lines is regarded as utopian. But do we not see how the judgments of people who strongly reject the accusation of utopianism prove to be utopian the moment they are to enter real life? Did not the conferences of the present have a thoroughly utopian character?

We will only see how firmly we are rooted in the reality of life when we first raise the issues mentioned above in public life in an appropriate manner. One will notice that one thereby everywhere encounters the reality of what lies in the unspoken longings of peoples and individuals. If this does not yet become visible, it is merely because the reference to it is drowned out today by the voices of those who close their eyes to the necessities of life in the present and the near future.

You cannot fruitfully negotiate the secondary if you refuse to see the primary. But for any conference on public life, the above is the primary.

There is much talk that the recovery of humanity must come from the moral side. There can be no doubt about that. But if someone is to work the field with a plough, it is of no use to tell them to do it morally. I have to teach them the art of ploughing. But the overall context of life requires that moral people stand at the ploughs. Economic life cannot be permeated with abstract ideas; but it will take on a moral shape if it is connected with a spiritual life that is freely active in itself and with a political and legal structure that corresponds to human feelings and develops relatively independently on its own ground.

The concept of the threefold social organism is based on a simple and unadorned view of life. Many people do not see this simplicity because they are numbed by the complexity of modern life and, in their stupor, prefer to content themselves with phrases that ripple on at the superficial level rather than penetrating to the simple level that touches on the primary.

“Only according to the law of cause and effect do the fates of humanity roll along, with thousands of causal relationships. What does an individual count in this elementary work at the ultimate sources of incomprehensible forces!” This sentence is at the beginning of the book in which the Austrian field marshal Conrad von Hötzendorf describes his work before and during the war catastrophe. The first volume of this book is already available. (Field Marshal Conrad: From my period of service 1906-1918. First volume: The time of the annexation crisis 1906-1909. Rikola Verlag Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig, Munich 1921.) — One In this sentence, one reads the confession of the man who was appointed Chief of the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1906 and who, as such, was at the center of Austrian warfare until his dismissal in July 1918.

The reader of the book finds this unspoken confession of the most important personality for Austria-Hungary during the war years on almost every page. And one can even get the impression that this confession expresses an extraordinarily significant fact within the course of the war. Conrad is undoubtedly a genius in his own way. One recognizes this from the book. With a sure eye, he sees through the impending dangers for the existence of his country from his military point of view; with the certainty of will, he wants to fight against them as the administrator of the military apparatus. But the whole description that Conrad gives is actually only proof that his clear-sightedness and determination do him no good in his military post. Conrad believes that in order to counter the looming dangers, Austria needs to expand its armed forces; the Minister of War does not help him to achieve this expansion; Conrad has in mind Austria's position within European politics and the forces that are emerging from the nationalities to dissolve the state ; he considers a very definite foreign policy to be necessary if the army, at the head of which he stands, is to give this position firmness and prevent this disintegration: the foreign minister pursues a very different policy, which Conrad considers harmful.

And so the man who holds in his hands the power that he considers the only secure basis for Austria's continued existence feels absolutely powerless. This feeling runs through the whole book. It throws waves of thought to the surface of the narrative that are characteristic of a man whom the world calls such a man of action. “It is not true to say that history is the teacher of mankind; taken as a whole, people learn nothing from it, otherwise they would not have been making the same mistakes over and over again for thousands of years. Just as children do not make use of the experiences and teachings of their parents, so new generations do not do so in relation to the old..."

What would Conrad have done if he had also had political power as a military leader? He sees himself as someone who foresaw that Austria would have to wage a war of a terrible kind if it wanted to continue to exist. Since he has been in his important position, he has constantly pointed out this conviction to others. He believes that the prospects for such a war will become increasingly dire the longer we wait to start it. He would like to bring about the conditions for war at an earlier stage. He has very definite views on this. On page 4i of the book, he expresses this as follows: “The Austro-Hungarian monarchy has neither the means nor the forces to be equally well prepared for all cases of war. Its preparations must therefore concentrate on specific cases of war; it must therefore be determined which these cases of war are, and in good time, because, in particular due to the slow inflow of financial resources - only in small installments - years for the preparation would have to pass and finally, and this is the most important thing: the monarchy does not have the strength to fight all its enemies at the same time. Its policy must therefore be conducted in such a way that there will never be multiple clashes, but that it will deal with its inevitable aggressive opponents one after the other, one at a time, who are working towards a fight against it.” Conrad has wanted a policy along these lines since he became Chief of General Staff. He has always complained that the Foreign Minister has no understanding for such a policy. He is of the opinion that the policy he considers harmful will ultimately bring about the form of war that he wants to avoid and in which he will necessarily be defeated as the leader of the army. The course of the world war, he says, confirms what he predicted years ago.

From this point of view, Conrad provides descriptions of the general situation in Austria-Hungary that clearly show the moments of the monarchy's disintegration; from this same point of view, he presents the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in an extraordinarily dramatic way. He presents the development of the Austro-Hungarian military system in such a way that one can always see the bleak situation in which he finds himself.

A piece of world history that speaks powerfully, a piece of biography that is humanly touching, passes before the reader. You get a deep insight into the overall administration of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. You get to know the personalities who believe they are serving their country well, and yet they all work against each other and in such a way that they contribute to the greatest possible disintegration.

Anyone who reads the book learns a great deal from Conrad's concise and vivid style, which is necessary to understand the fate of European humanity in the present day. And when you have finished reading the book, you leaf back to the first pages thoughtfully; you feel once again the need to take a look at the inner life of one of the men who could become a leader in the fortunes of Europe in the twentieth century. Conrad presents a man of genius, who reveals much of his most intimate thoughts in these first pages. “The course of what we call historical events is also that process of transformation that dominates all of nature, which expresses itself in the uninterrupted becoming and passing away - in its ultimate cause - according to unfathomable laws.” The Austrian general with the worldview, as often described in this weekly, that excludes genuine human insight! “It is not individual men who make their time, but time that makes its men. And those men who happen to be in leading positions in great epochs work there by obeying the impulses that are conditioned by the great course of time,” writes Conrad. And for the reader, his account can fade away into the words that appear on the first page: “In later years, I had come to a worldview that made me see all earthly events as ultimately meaningless.”

Even those who consider the Genoa conference a 'necessity' do not expect too much of it. For in view of the profound confusion of European public affairs, they feel that what needs to be done for the recovery of the world must come about in a completely different way than at conferences. They feel this, even if they think that conferences to bring about this recovery are a “necessity”.

This is rooted in the profound contradiction that exists today between what has been established in the minds of certain people from the relationships between state structures and the real interests of the people inhabiting these state structures. People think based on the results of political events in the last few decades, and they have interests that have long since outgrown these results. These interests demand an understanding of life that has yet to be found. And people talk about an understanding that they have grown accustomed to. The spiritual, legal and economic problems that are shaking the world today are not being grasped by ideas that have a chance of being discussed at a conference.

An illustration of this truth, which is significant for the present, is the expectation in Europe regarding the Americans' participation in the Genoa conference. This is illustrated by the fact that voices are being heard across the Atlantic that they do not want to interfere in European affairs until the Europeans have first brought some order to their own house. Europe does not know what to do with itself; and America will know what to do for Europe when Europe itself will know.

Everything will depend on the realization that the world has fallen into a one-sidedness by focusing only on economic issues. This is done because they are the most pressing issues. Millions of people in the East are starving. From Russia, civilization is threatened by a disease for which words are too weak to express. Of course, in the face of such human suffering, any discussion seems at first to be a cheap means of gathering information; only direct help is appropriate. But it is simply the case in human life that help for the great evils cannot take place without the recognition of their causes. And the causes of the present world misery lie in the spiritual condition of people. |

(In order to avoid being misunderstood, one must say things that are taken for granted today. Therefore, I hasten to add that I am, of course, not speaking of the spiritual condition of those who are starving in Russia.)

No unbiased person will claim that the cause of the present world crisis can be attributed to nature. It lies in the way people treat what nature gives them. It lies in the relationship between people. And this relationship is the result of the way people think and feel. It rests on the content of the human mind. How people work for each other ultimately depends on how they experience the world in the depths of their souls.

A purely economic orientation in world affairs will always overlook this significant truth. The economic questions of the present are at the same time social in the sense that they are general human. You cannot manage without having a heart for what is truly human. But again and again, we fall back into this “heartlessness.” The economists have become accustomed to a way of thinking that calculates production, circulation of goods, and consumption as if all of this were carried out by a mechanism that can be directed. But living, feeling human beings are involved in all of this. In theory, everyone admits this as a matter of course. In practice, however, which is not true practice but only routine, when he starts or runs a business, he calculates by excluding real human life. He adds up the numbers, which should ultimately show the purely numerical profitability of the business.

But how should it be done differently? This is how the question will always be formulated by those who confuse routine with practice. But they should get the answer from the results that their way of thinking has in human life. They do not want to get it as long as their numbers appear justified by the next successes. They then no longer associate further failures in human life with their way of thinking. That is why the striving for a healthy public life finds no support in the people of the economic world.

This can be seen in small matters; but it has spread to the treatment of the great world affairs. One calculates at conferences; and the calculations are not related to what people feel and experience. That is why the accounting results do not become reality. That is why Europe does not know what to do with itself. That is why America is waiting until Europe comes to terms with itself, because for the time being it does not know how to intervene in Europe either. However, once Europe has done what America is waiting for, the question will take on a different complexion. And this complexion should become reality, because Europe should find the strength to help itself.

Conferences cannot be the birthplace of ideas that will bring happiness to all nations, but at most a means of reaching an understanding on existing ideas that differ somewhat from one another. The quality of a conference depends on what the participants bring with them. Because if they don't bring anything, they can't bring anything home. Today it is first necessary to see what is missing at home. If this is achieved, then progress towards understanding will follow.

Before this is realized, the “necessities” will play a major role; but these “necessities” will be unrealistic. This insight will have to come not only to those who are directly involved in intellectual life, but also to economic circles. At present, the striving for recovery in economic life in particular is also rebounding on them. Such thoughts must occur to anyone who looks at the expectations that many people are now associating with Genoa, just as they have done with the now impressive number of conferences that preceded Genoa. The discussions about whether and when to meet in Genoa do not bode well. They suggest that people either have nothing to bring to the table or do not want to bring anything. —

Of the most recent French philosophers, Bergson is mentioned more often than the recently deceased Emile Boutroux. Contemporary judgment may not be entirely right about this. Bergson speaks in a way that is more understandable to the public; he bases his ideas more on familiar scientific findings than Boutroux does. But Boutroux seems to be the one of the two who moves with greater ease in the sovereign philosophical formation of concepts. Bergson starts from individual scientific findings; Boutroux from an overview of the scope and limits of scientific knowledge as such. Bergson contrasts the scientific way of looking at things with his mysticism, which is based on an indeterminate intuitive feeling; Boutroux does the same with his intellectual interpretation of the world. Both feel the need to move from knowing nature to knowing the spirit; both recoil from a real experience of the spiritual world.

Boutroux asks himself: how does man recognize the inanimate mineral world? He visualizes the mode of cognition that is applied here. He characterizes it. Then he turns to the living nature. He finds that a different mode of cognition must be applied. And yet another in the science of the soul for the individual human being; yet another in sociology. He arrives at a hierarchy of modes of cognition. In this way, knowledge points to a sequence of stages of the known being, from the material realm to the spiritual. But in relation to the spiritual, the living connection with reality eludes him. Here it is necessary to establish a relationship with reality through productive inner soul organs, which are not conscious of the ordinary soul life, similar to that which exists through the senses and through intellectual thinking for material reality. Therefore, for spirit-reality, Boutroux is left with only abstract concepts of the intellect. Hence, his view amounts to an intellectualism that may point to the spirit but cannot grasp it in terms of content.

One has to go back to the time of Leibniz if one wants to assess a thinker like Boutroux historically. In Leibniz one still finds the prospect of a real spiritual world. He sees monads that have ideas and are essential beings. What Leibniz seeks behind the world of the senses has, however, shrunk to monadism, that is, to the spiritual, abstract point-being. But at least it is still essence. Later times have replaced the search for such essentiality with the search for laws. One is no longer concerned with the beings that enter into reciprocal action and thereby reveal laws; one looks only at the laws themselves. One seeks natural law, not the beings that reveal this law in their behavior. At most, one still comes across the atom, the corpse of all being.

Boutroux has to a certain extent recognized this course of modern scientific life. He therefore seeks the laws again between the beings; he sees in them the revelation of the way in which the beings are active. In this way he arrives at the indication of the independence, the inwardness of the beings. He is clear about the fact that with the insight into the laws of the world one has not yet seen through the world beings.

Here begins the necessity to develop such a human way of looking at things, which ascends from the combining science of law to a living view of being. Emile Boutroux did not want to follow this path. He was unable to overcome the obstacles that modern thought habits place in the way of such a path. But he has pointed out such a path in the sharpest, most insistent way, which he perhaps did not even suspect given his own nature. He has pointed it out with such intensity as only a thinker fettered by the modern intellectualistic way of modern research can.

That is his great merit. Perhaps no one else can match him in the accuracy of his concepts in this direction. One must acknowledge this, even though the dark sides of intellectualism are revealed in him to a remarkable extent precisely because of it. He sought to prove the legitimacy of the religious way of thinking alongside the scientific-philosophical way. But in doing so, the inadequacy of his way of looking at things became apparent. He could not find the religious element within the field of knowledge. He believed that knowledge could not come from the whole person, but that one must still have a world view based on the powers of the full personality. For him, this results in science as an emanation of a part of human nature, and religion as an emanation of the whole human being. Thus a spirit of science is created, which, however, only buys its certainty by not creating a relationship to the inwardness of religious life on its own; and religion is assured of its existence by being granted a broader perspective than science, but one of lesser certainty. The severe conflict that plagues the sensibilities of the modern man is not resolved, but rather, by being dogmatized in a philosophical sense, it is significantly intensified.

Through this turn of his thinking, Boutroux also shows himself to be an important representative of the current world-view crisis. One must know him if one wants to judge how this world view, in its more outstanding cultivators, points beyond itself everywhere and yet is so entangled in its web that it cannot get out; how it declares itself incapable of building on its foundations, and yet does not want to let go of these foundations either.

The fact that the “Kommende-Tag-Verlag” in Stuttgart has decided to present the works of the Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev in German translation to the public corresponds to a necessity in the intellectual life of the present day. From the abundance of what Soloviev has written, the following has recently been published: “Twelve Lectures on the God-Man.” Translated from the Russian by Harry Köhler (Stuttgart 1921). Solowjoff's life falls into the second half of the nineteenth century, his works into its end. How Eastern European thinking ponders the deepest questions of human existence, how it deals with the vital questions of its own time, is vividly revealed in Solowjoff's reflections. He is a personality who thoroughly examines the way of thinking of Western and Central European world views. He speaks in the forms of thought in which Mill, Bergson, Boutroux and Wundt also express themselves. But he speaks in a completely different way than all of them. He uses these forms of thought as a language, but he reveals the inner life of the human being from a different spirit. He shows that in Eastern Europe much still lives of that spirit which at the beginning of the Christian evolution was that of other European regions, but which there has been completely transformed. What the rest of the Occident can only grasp from history is of immediate life in the East.

Solowjoff speaks in such a way that one feels a certain revival of how, up to the fourth century, the thinkers of Christianity dealt with the union of the Christ-being in the man Jesus of Nazareth. To speak of these things as Solowjoff speaks, for that the Western and Central European thinkers today lack all conceptual possibilities.

In Solowjoff's soul, two experiences clearly coexist: the experience of the Father-God in nature and human existence, and of the Son-God, Christ, as the power that snatches the human soul from the bonds of natural existence and incorporates it into true spiritual existence.

Contemporary theologians in Central Europe are no longer able to distinguish between these two experiences. Their soul comes only to the Father-experience. And from the Gospels they only gain the conviction that Christ Jesus was the human herald of the divine Father. For Solowjoff, the Son stands in his divinity alongside the Father. Man belongs to nature like all beings. Nature in all its beings is the result of the divine. One can imbue oneself with this thought. Then one looks up to the Father-God. But one can also feel: man must not remain nature. Man must rise out of nature. If he does not rise above nature, nature becomes sinful in him. If one follows the paths of the soul in this direction, one reaches the regions where one finds in the Gospel the revelation of the Son of God. Solowjoff's soul moves on these two paths. He provides a worldview that rises far above the Russian Orthodox religion, but which is thoroughly Christian in religious terms, although it also reveals itself as genuine philosophical thinking.

In Solowjoff's philosophy, religion speaks; in his work, religion is transformed into a philosophical worldview. In European thought, the only other instance of this is found in Scotus Erigena in the ninth century, and not later. This Scot, living in Franconia, gave in his book “On the Organization of Nature” an overall view of the nature of the world and of man in which something similar to what breathes in Solowjoff's thoughts and feelings still lives in the West. But in Erigena we can already see the element of the Western world view that is still full of life in Solowjoff fading away. This emerges from his presentation to the soul of the European reader like a resurrection of the spirit of the first Christian centuries.

Consider how Solowjoff begins to speak about nature, death, sin, and grace in an essay: “In the human soul there are two invisible wings, two desires. These lift the soul above nature. These are the desire for immortality and the desire for truth as the desire for moral perfection. One desire is meaningless without the other. An immortal life without moral perfection would not bring man happiness. Man cannot be content with being immortal; he must also attain the worthiness for this immortality by living according to the truth. But perfection is also no good if it were to expire at death. An immortal life without perfection would be a fraud; perfection without immortality would be an outrageous untruth that would do harm."

Solowjoff speaks from such a way of thinking. It gives his descriptions their eastern character. The present age needs to broaden the mind's horizon. People around the world must come closer together. Solowjoff is a representative of the European East. He can serve to expand the spiritual life of the West. He himself had grown into this intellectual life in the manner of his expression; but he also retained his eastern soul. For a Westerner to encounter him means to find something that reveals significant aspects of humanity, but which the Western and Central European man can no longer find, at least not on the paths that have become the paths of knowledge in recent centuries.

The West and the East must find understanding for each other. Getting to know Soloviev can do a lot to help the West gain such understanding.

The ancient Oriental felt that he was part of a spiritually ordained social order. The commandments of the spiritual power, which his leaders brought to his attention, gave him ideas about how he had to integrate himself into this order. These leaders had these ideas from their vision into the supersensible world. The follower sensed in them the guidelines for his spiritual, legal and economic life, which had been conveyed to him from the spiritual world. The views on man's relationship to the spiritual, on the behavior of man towards man, and also on the management of economic affairs, came to him from the same source of the spirit-willed commandments. In experience, spiritual life, the legal order, and economic management were a unity. The further culture spread to the West, the more the legal relationships between people and the management of economic affairs became separated from the spiritual life in the consciousness of people. The spiritual life became more independent. The other elements of the social order still remained as a unity. As civilization advanced further to the West, these too became separated. Alongside the legal-state order, which for a time also regulated all economic activity, an independent economic way of thinking developed. The Westerner still lives in the process of this latter separation. And at the same time, the task arises for him to shape the three separate elements of social life – intellectual life, legal and state behavior, and economic management – into a higher unity. If he succeeds in doing so, the Easterner will look sympathetically at his creation, for he will rediscover what he once lost, the unity of human experience.

Among the partial currents, whose interaction and mutual struggle constitute human history, is the conquest of labor by human consciousness. In the ancient Orient, man worked in accordance with the spirit-willed order imposed on him. In this sense, he found himself as a master or a worker. With the westward march of cultural life, the relationship between human beings entered human consciousness. Interwoven into this was the work that one person does for another. The value of labor found its way into legal concepts. A large part of ancient Roman history depicts this growing together of the concepts of law and labor. As culture advanced further westward, economic life took on ever more complicated forms. It absorbed labor, but the legal form which it had previously taken did not meet the demands of the new forms. Disharmony between labor and legal conceptions arose. To restore harmony between the two is the great social problem of the West. How labor can find its form in the legal system without being torn out of its essence by the economic administration, that is the content of the problem. If the West, through insight and social calm, sets out on the path of solution, the East will meet it with understanding. If in the West the problem gives rise to a way of thinking that lives out in social upheaval, the East will not be able to gain the trust of the West in the further development of humanity.

Unity of spiritual life, legal system and economic management in the sense of an order willed by the spirit can only exist as long as agriculture predominates in the economy, and trade and industry are integrated as subordinate to land management. Therefore, the spiritually inspired social thinking of the ancient Orient essentially supports the economic management of agriculture. With the spread of civilization to the West, trade first emerges as an independent economic activity. It demands the provisions of the law. It must be possible to trade with every human being. Only the abstract legal norm can meet this need. As civilization progresses further west, trade in industry becomes an independent element in the provision of economic services. One can only produce goods fruitfully if one lives in a way that corresponds to human abilities and needs with the people with whom one has to work in production. The development of the industrial spirit requires associative links shaped by economic life, in which people know that their needs are met, as far as natural conditions allow. Finding the right associative life is the task of the West. If it proves equal to this task, the East will say: our life once flowed in brotherhood; it has faded over time; the progress of humanity has taken it from us. The West will make it flourish again through associative economic life. It will restore the vanished trust in true humanity. In the old East, when man composed poetry, he felt that the powers of the spirit were speaking through him. In Greece, the poet allowed the muse to speak to his fellow men through him. This consciousness was the heritage of the ancient Orient. With the westward course of spiritual life, poetry became more and more the revelation of man. In the ancient Orient, the spiritual powers sang through people to people. The word of the world resounded from the gods down to men. — In the West it has become the word of man. It must find the way up to the spiritual powers. Man must learn to write poetry in such a way that the spirit may listen to him. The West must shape a language that is appropriate to the spirit. Then the East will say: the word of the gods, which once flowed out to us from heaven to earth, finds its way back from human hearts to the spiritual worlds. In the rising human word, we see and understand the world word, whose descent our consciousness once experienced.

The Eastern man has no sense of “proof”. He experiences the content of his truths by looking at them and thus knows them. And what one knows, one does not “prove”. — The Western man demands “proof” everywhere. He struggles to the content of his truths through the outer reflection of thought and thus interprets them. But what one interprets, one must “prove.” If the Westerner frees the life of truth from his proofs, then the Easterner will understand him. If, at the end of the Westerner's concern for proof, the Easterner finds his unproven truth dreams in a true awakening, then the Westerner will have to greet him in the work for human progress as a colleague who can achieve what he himself cannot.

He who in ordinary consciousness sums up the characteristic color of the soul experiences with the word “I” does not yet understand what is expressed by this word. He only comes to this when he gradually learns to place the I-experience in the series of other inner experiences in inner vision. He can observe how the experience of hunger in its first stage relates to the experience of satiety. The sense of self is heightened by the experience of hunger and dulled by the experience of satiety in these first stages. The need for rest after satiation is connected with this. It is only at the further stages, when hunger intervenes destructively in the organization, that it becomes different. In the further pursuit of this observation, the realization arises that the word 'I' does not denote a fulfillment of the soul's life, but rather a longing, a desire-like quality that awaits fulfillment. Thoughts that one cherishes only strengthen the sense of self when they are ideals, when desire lives in them. The “I” is experienced by ordinary consciousness in the sphere of desires. Therefore, at this stage, it is a desire for fulfillment, a source of selfishness.

The “I” can also be called the “night of ordinary consciousness”. The more man fills himself with thoughts about the world, the more the I-experience recedes. But if the 'I' is to be strongly experienced, then the thoughts about the world must come out of the soul. In these thoughts, however, man experiences himself as in his 'inner day'; in the 'I' he experiences himself at first as in the 'inner night'. But the inner day does not solve the riddle of the night for him. Another light must shine in the inner night. The “I” cannot satisfy its longing for light from the sunshine of the outside world. But it longs for sunshine. It lives in the longing for sunshine, intuitively. As self, the “I” longs for fulfillment from selflessness. — It is always on the way to bringing forth the stream of selflessness from the source of selfishness.

The desire for spiritual knowledge is the content of the experience of the self. No matter what one may think about the “I”; every interpretation, every definition of the “I”, however they may be formulated, they are only descriptions of this desire. These descriptions can often express the opposite of reality. Then they are as if a hungry person were to reinterpret his hunger as something else. As long as the sense of self is experienced in ordinary consciousness, it remains a desire for spiritual fulfillment. It only ceases to be this when the light of sense knowledge is penetrated by the light of spirit knowledge. Soul experience from the sense world makes the self into desire; soul experience from the spirit world makes the self into the content of being. The first human experience of the spiritual world lies in the moral impulses. These do not come from the world of the senses. They are willed in a thinking that originates outside the world of the senses. They are willed in the light of “pure thinking”. Living in true moral impulses is the beginning of experiencing the spiritual world. The continuation of the activity in which the soul dwells in the experience of moral impulses leads to the knowledge of the spiritual world. Every human being who wants to do so thus views the methods of spiritual research. It is only necessary that he also recognize them. Then the selfishness of the ego melts away into the selflessness of the knowledge of the spiritual world.

Is the “I” in the human body? — No. — The body, with all its activities, only creates the desire for the I. Ordinary consciousness confuses this desire with the I itself. One must lift oneself out of the body with a mental jolt in order to satisfy the desire that the body creates in the spirit. The body is inconceivable without the spirit, for it is only the manifestation of the desire for the spirit. — Those who understand the body correctly develop the ability to experience the spirit as a matter of course. Scientific materialism arises from a lack of knowledge of the material world. — A lack of knowledge of the human body leads to the assumption that the body summarizes its experiences in the word “I”; it only summarizes its desire in this word. Understanding of the bodily basis of the “I” transforms itself through itself into understanding of the spiritual nature of the “I”. The sense of self that the body develops is the revelation of selfless devotion to the spiritual world, which reveals the true character of the “I”.

The life of the physical is the desire, the hunger for the spiritual. If the hunger is not satisfied, the physical is destroyed. A physical body that wants to be independent fights against its own nature. Therefore, one can only speak of a spiritless nature if one wants to see it as a departure from its own nature. If one reflects on the fact that a physical nature can only be a longing for the spirit, then one goal of knowledge of nature arises: either-or. Either he must ask of nature: has it fallen away from its own nature? And what will become of it through this apostasy? Or he must ask, what is in it that even its apparent lack of spirit ultimately makes appear as a longing for the spirit? But this allows all questions about nature to converge into one: is the lack of spirit in inanimate nature not the revelation of a hidden hunger for the spirit?

In economic life, man is raised above animality by the fact that he transforms the instinct-determined economy of animals into one that is soul-determined. The animal remains within the determination of nature with its organization of labor and its accumulation of capital. Man first elevates the organization of labor to the level of soul-determination. He cannot do this completely with the natural basis of the economy. But because his instincts do not work with the same power as those of animals, a part of economic life disappears from his conscious economic organization, just as the ultra-red parts of the spectrum disappear from the effect of illumination. It can therefore be seen how the knowledge of the natural given in economic life is not fully transparent to the national economy built on consciousness. The organization of labor belongs to the light of consciousness, as does the middle part of the spectrum. The accumulation of capital and its effects, however, elude conscious thought. What arises economically in the world as the effects of capital goes beyond the scope of ordinary economic thinking, as the ultraviolet part of the spectrum goes beyond light. — Economic science strives beyond the ordinary scientific methods like the spectrum beyond its light part. — One will therefore need a striving for knowledge to a complete economic science, which finds the spirit in the instincts of nature and the transition to nature-like facts in the soul-determined capital effects.

Knowledge of the I gives true knowledge of nature. True knowledge of nature culminates in knowledge of the I. Natural science and spiritual science must greet each other as sisters if they understand themselves aright. And human life, of which the economic is only a part, cannot do without the agreement of the two sisters. Humanity has come to specialization in science and work; today, for their own good, the parts demand union into a whole. Spiritual science must see spirit as creative, not abstract; but then it sees created nature in the creative spirit; natural science must see the desire for spirit in nature; then, by investigating nature, spirit comes to meet it. For true knowledge, the path to spirit is through natural science, and spiritual science is the eye-opener to the secrets of nature.

It is about half a century since Friedrich Nietzsche published his “Untimely Reflection”, which deals with the value of history for life. It had become a matter of life or death for him to consider whether the forces that work within the human soul and carry the human being through existence might not be paralyzed if he focuses too much on the past. One can understand how Nietzsche's consideration of this question led to an “unfashionable” contemplation when one considers the development that many views on the position of man in historical development have undergone in Central European thought in recent times.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, people spoke of “natural law”. It was thought that man could turn his attention to his own being, to his “nature”, and then he must find what “rights” were his in life. This “natural right” was also called the “right of reason”. Man believed that he could find his position in life from the legal point of view if he drew the ideas for it from what was laid in him by his own nature.

Gradually, people lost faith in this “rational law”. It was realized how “rights” have been formed habitually, half instinctively, in human coexistence. Attention was turned to the “historical” of legal life. In the face of the rule of this historical, man-made “natural law” was found to be meaningless. It was found that man is born into what instinctive developmental forces have brought into life. Only these could be adhered to, it was thought, when considering human rights. If one wants to arrive at ideas about the law, one must approach history.

Nietzsche felt that the view he encountered as he went through his own youthful development was a rape of the human soul. Man takes, he thought, his vital present if he does not pull himself together and get his will out of his immediate existence; and implants in himself a dead past that paralyzes his will. In this way, the man of the present loses himself.

It is understandable that Nietzsche came to such a view. He saw himself transported into an age in which man had little confidence in knowledge of the spiritual world. The creativity of one's own spiritual life had therefore become somewhat questionable. People doubted their ability to create something themselves, so they stuck to contemplating what had been done. The “historical school of law” took the place of the “school of the law of reason”.

Even today, feelings could still arise, albeit in a slightly different form, as Nietzsche expressed them. For man still turns his gaze backward when he is to say what he should introduce into his life in the present. One asks how it was in primitive conditions with this or that if one wants to understand the essence of “right,” “custom,” and the like. And it can be noticed how this gaze represses the directly creative aspect of the present.

And yet: a healthy sense will not allow that such a backward glance must weaken the human being. This sense suggests that it is not true history in the “historical school” that could have produced the disadvantage Nietzsche speaks of, but an erroneously conceived one.

It was namely parallel to the introduction of the historical into the consideration of the legal, of the moral, the question: what then actually the driving forces in the history of mankind are. Some said, man in his work brings forth the facts of life. The great personalities are the driving forces in history. Others thought, the activities of people are the results of external circumstances. One must consider these conditions in an era if one wants to understand it historically. This then led to a historical view that was increasingly inclined towards the material. And historical materialism arose, which believes that the actual effective forces are those active in human economy, and that what man does must be understood from these forces.

But just how views affect life is discussed by one of the most recent historians with regard to the immediate present. Heinrich Friedjung wrote in his book “The Age of Imperialism 1884-1914” (Verlag von Neufeld und Henius, Berlin, 2nd volume, 1922, page 356): “If any school of thought denies the importance of the great personality for events, then it will be lacking when it is most needed. ... the Marxist doctrine excludes the individual personality from the factors of historical calculation; no wonder that here as well as there the unusual figures disappeared, to make way for the mediocre and inferior.” — So it is admitted that schools of thought can intervene in historical life in a hindering or promoting way. But again, they can only do so through personalities.

And in personalities, ideas are brought to bear through the living spirit that dwells in man. But man loses this also for history if he cannot find it in his own nature. The “right of reason” at the beginning of the nineteenth (and in the eighteenth) century was not drawn from the living human spirit, but from “thought”, which, when it is merely intellectual, un-seen soul, only presents the dead from the spirit. On the other hand, “historical right” gave man nothing for his spiritual experience, because in history it did not penetrate to the spirit, but clung to the outer historical revelations of the spirit.

When man finds the living, creative spirit in himself, he also finds it in history. When he knows that his soul life reaches up into spiritual regions, he will also seek the driving forces of historical development in these spiritual regions. He will go as far as the historical personalities, but he will go beyond them to the ruling spiritual powers, which have worked from the spiritual world into the souls of people in the past as they do into his own. He will regard the personalities as the executors of the intentions of those spiritual powers. He does not reduce human beings to puppets of the spiritual world; he recognizes their free nature in their relationship with this world, just as he knows himself to be free in his connection with spiritual existence. In the light of a spiritually appropriate view of history, the “right of reason” and the present-day “customs that spring from the human soul” are seen to be a development from the past, but also a spiritual creativity in the present. And “historical right” as well as “custom that has become historical” do not undermine the present living and creative, for they prove themselves to come from the same source; they give the present the right to its own will, for they reveal themselves as this own will. A “natural law” that pays no heed to the past shrivels up into abstract thought-forms; an “historical school of legal thought” that refuses to recognize any “natural law” does not draw from the spirit, but only describes the external manifestation of the spirit.