The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Question: The Key Points appear to be logically self-contained, but the criterion of whether something is realistic or not cannot be found in them.

Rudolf Steiner: It would be particularly good if the friends would speak out more clearly on this point. You must bear in mind that political economy as such is actually a very young form of thinking, hardly a few centuries old, and that in the realm of economic life, everything up to the great utopians has actually taken place more or less instinctively. Nevertheless, these instinctive impulses that people had were something that became reality.

To gain a more precise understanding, consider the following. Today, people often say: What we can think about the economy actually arises from economic class antagonisms, but also from the economic mode of operation, and so on. I don't even want to look at the most extreme view, as Marx and his followers advocate. Even economics teachers who lean more towards the middle-class view speak of the fact that everything actually arises from the economic fundamentals as if by automatic necessity. Nevertheless, when people discuss the individual concrete things, it is the case that the concrete institutions that have come into being to produce today's economic life are nothing other than the results of medieval thinking itself, certainly in connection with the various realities. But just consider what form was given to the Roman concept of property, which was a purely legal category, and what was created economically through this concept. It can be seen that these things were not treated scientifically, but that the legal categories, which were already conceived economically as legal, had a formative effect. Now the mercantilists and so on have come, who were not creative people, who were theoretical people. For example, it may be said that the advisers of Emperor Justinian, who created the Code of the Corpus Juris, were much more creative people than the later teachers of political economy. These people actually created not only a Justinian Code in our present sense, but in the further course of medieval development we see the opposing impulses developing precisely on the basis of what was laid down in this Justinian legislation.

And so we have come to the new era, to people whose thinking is no longer creative in an economic sense, but only contemplative. This contemplation really begins with Ricardo. Take, for example, the law of diminishing returns. This is a law that is just right, but absolutely not in line with reality. For practice will continually show that, if all the factors that Ricardo took into account are taken into account, what he called the law of diminishing returns will indeed follow, but the moment more intensive cultivation techniques are introduced, this law is thwarted. It does not hold true in reality.

Take something else, something more trivial. Take Lassalle's “iron wage law”. I must confess that I feel it is a certain scientific carelessness that one still finds stated that this law has been “overcome”, because things do not prove true. The fact of the matter is this: from Lassalle's way of thinking and from the view that labor can be paid for, nothing more correct can follow than this iron wage law. It is so logically strict that one can say: If one thinks as Lassalle had to think, it is absolutely correct that no one has an interest in giving the worker more wages than are just necessary to enable him to make a living. He will not give him more, of course. But if he gives him less, the worker will wither away, and the one who pays the wages must atone for this. It is basically impossible to get by without theoretically admitting the iron wage law. Even within the proletariat itself, people say: the iron wage law is wrong, because it is not right that in recent decades wages have been maintained at a certain minimum, which would also be their maximum. Yes, but why is Lassalle's iron wage law wrong? If the conditions under which he formulated it had continued – I mean the conditions from 1860 to 1870 – if the economy had continued to be run under the purely liberalistic view, the iron wage law would have become reality with absolute correctness. This did not happen. A reversal of the liberalist economy took place and today the iron wage law is constantly being amended by making state laws that effect a correction of reality that would have emerged from the law.

So you see, a law can be right and yet not in line with reality. I don't know of anyone who was a greater thinker than Lassalle. He was just very one-sided. He was a very consistent thinker.

When you are confronted with a law of nature, you can see it. When you are confronted with a social law, you can also see it, but it is only valid as a certain current, and you can correct it. Insofar as our economy is based purely on free competition – and there is still a lot that is based only on free competition – the iron wage law is valid. But because it would be valid under these conditions, there must be corrections with social legislation, with a certain working hours and so on. If you give entrepreneurs a completely free hand, the iron wage law applies. Therefore, there can be no purely deductive method in economics. The inductive method is of no help at all. It has followed Zyjo Brentano. We can only observe the economic facts – she says – and then gradually ascend to the law. – Yes, we don't come to any creative thinking at all. This is the so-called newer political economy, which calls itself scientific. It actually just wants to be inductive. But you won't get anywhere with it.

In economics, you absolutely need a characterizing method that seeks to gain the concepts by starting from different points, holding them together, and allowing them to culminate in concepts. This gives you a specific concept. Since you can never see the full range of facts, but only have a certain amount of experience, it will probably be one-sided in a sense. Now go through the phenomena again with the concept and try to verify it. You will see that this is actually a modification. In this way, by characterizing, you arrive at a concept that you modify by verifying, and you then arrive at an economic view. You must work towards views.

I would now like to work out such a conception in the lectures of the National Economy Course by showing you what always intervenes in the formation of prices. The method in economics is a highly uncomfortable method because in reality it amounts to the fact that one must compose the concepts out of an infinite number of factors. They must work towards economic imaginations! Only with these can you make progress. When you have them and they come into contact with something, they modify themselves, whereas it is not easy to modify a fixed concept.

You know what is known as Gresham's Law: good money is chased away by bad. If bad, under-value money, money minted at below its face value, is in circulation somewhere, it drives out money with good fineness, and that then migrates to other countries. This law is also an inductive law, it is purely an empirical law. But this law is such that one must also say: It is valid only as long as one is unable to secure the significance of money. The moment you are able, through entrepreneurial spirit, to secure the right of money, it would be modified. It would not die out completely. There is no economic law that is not valid up to a certain point; but they are all modified. That is why we need the characterizing method. In natural science, we have the inductive method, which at most comes up to deductions. But in general, deductions are much less important in natural science than one might think. Only induction is of real significance here.

Then you have pure deductions, which are found in jurisprudence, for example. If you want to proceed inductively, you introduce something into jurisprudence that destroys it. If you introduce the psychological method into jurisprudence, you dissolve jurisprudence. In that case, every human being must be declared innocent. Perhaps these methods can be introduced into reality, but then they will lead to the undermining of the legal concept that exists. So it may well be justified, but it is no longer jurisprudence.

In economics, you cannot get by with deduction and induction. You could only get by with deduction if it were possible to give general rules to which reality itself would yield the cases. I will mention only those who want to proceed purely deductively, albeit with a main induction at the beginning. Oppenheimer, for example, puts a main induction of history at the top with his settlement cooperatives and deduces an entire social order from it. Well, many years ago, Oppenheimer was already the settlement man and said: Now that I have got the capital, we will establish the modern cultural colony! – I replied: Doctor, we will talk about it when it has been destroyed. It had to fail because it is impossible, within the general economy, to establish a small area that would enjoy its advantages through something else, so that it would be a parasite within the whole economic body. Such enterprises are always parasites. Until they have eaten enough from the others, they remain - but then they perish.

Thus, in economics, you can only characterize by thinking your way into the phenomena. This also arises from the cause, because in economics, one must continually work into the future on the basis of the past. And as one works into the future, human individualities with their abilities come into play, so that basically, in economics, one can do nothing but stand on the quivive. If one intervenes in practice, then one must be prepared to continually modify one's concepts. One is not dealing with substance that can be plastically formed, but with living human beings. And that is what makes political economy a special kind of science, because it must be imbued with reality.

Theoretically, you will easily be able to see this. You will say: It is then extremely inconvenient to work in economics. But I do not even want to accept that. Under certain circumstances, as long as you still stand on the point of view that you want to write dissertations, for example, you can gain a great deal by following the relevant literature of recent times on some subject and by comparing the individual views. Particularly in economics, there are the most incredible definitions. So just try to compile the definitions of capital from the various economics textbooks or even larger treatises! Try to put them in a row, eight or ten of them! One comes to mind right now: “Capital is the sum of the produced means of production.” I have to say, I don't understand why the adjective is there. The opposite: unproduced means of production – you could also think of something under that, for example, nature, so the soil, and that is what the person in question will mean. But then, of course, he is unable to somehow justify how the soil can be capitalized after all. It is capitalized after all. So there is actually no way out, and that is based on the fact that one has such concepts, one must seek them out and must try to somehow enrich them. The concepts are all too narrow.

If you think that the realistic will be difficult for you in these considerations, I would like to say: the realistic could actually be easy! You say that the “key points” are logically self-contained. They are not, neither the “key points” nor the other things! I must emphasize that I did not want to be purely economic, but social and economic. This, of course, conditions the whole style and attitude of these writings, so that they cannot be judged purely economically. At the most, only individual essays in the three-folding writings can be judged in this way. But I certainly do not find them logically self-contained, because I was careful enough to give only guidelines and examples or, in fact, only illustrations. I wanted to create an awareness of what can be achieved by someone managing a means of production only for as long as they can be present; then it must be handed over to someone who can manage it themselves. I can well imagine that what is to be achieved in this way could be achieved in a different way. I just wanted to give guidelines. I wanted to show that a way out can be found if this threefold structure is properly implemented, if spiritual life as such is actually liberated, if the legal system is placed on a democratic basis, and if economic life is based on the factual and technical, which can be represented in the associations. And I am convinced that in the economic sphere, the right thing will happen.

I say that the people who are in the association will find the right thing. I want to count on people, and that is the realistic thing to do. A treatise on the “concept of work” would have to be written in such a way that you really find the concept of work in the economic sense. This concept must be freed of everything about work that does not create value, and not just economic value. So that must be eliminated first. Of course, this only leads to one characteristic. And it is this characterizing method that is important. Of course, this must be said methodologically.

Question: To what extent is inspiration necessary for economic knowledge?

Rudolf Steiner: What is meant is that this inspiration, if one takes the matter seriously, is actually not that extraordinarily difficult. It is not a matter of finding supersensible facts, but of making inspiration effective in the economic field, so that it cannot be particularly difficult.

The way in which labor is limited would require me to show that a person can perform work without it having economic value. That is a truism. A person can exert himself terribly with talking, and yet no real economic value comes of it. Then I would show how labor, even when it begins to have an economic significance, is modified in its value. Let us assume that someone is a woodchopper and performs a labor that actually creates value, and someone is a cotton agent, has nothing to do with woodchopping, but gets nervous just from his work, so that every summer he spends a fortnight chopping wood in the mountains. Here the matter becomes more complicated, because the agent will certainly be able to utilize the chopped wood, and he will receive something for it. But you must not evaluate what he receives in the same way as you evaluate the woodcutter's work. You must assume that if he does not chop wood for 14 days in summer, he can work far less as an agent in winter. In this case, you have to consider the support he receives from this work. The economic value of the wood chopped by the cotton agent is the same as the value of the wood chopped by the woodchopper; but the economic effect of his work, which falls back on his activity, is now essentially different.

If the value of the agent's chopping wood lies in the fact that it has an effect on his agency, then I have to investigate whether it is also true where someone stands on a treadwheel and climbs from one step to another, thereby making himself thinner. This is an effort for him, but there is no effect on the national economy. It is true, but I have to distinguish here whether the person in question is a rentier or an entrepreneur. The latter becomes more efficient as an economic value creator.

You have to gradually work out the matter in a characterizing way and then, if you go on and on and on, you get a direct value of the work and an indirect, reflective value of the work. In this way you arrive at a characteristic of the concept of labor. With this you can go back again to the ordinary woodchopper and compare what the woodchopping of the cotton agent means in the economic process with that of the professional woodchopper. In this way you can go from one level to another and you have to look everywhere to see how the concept works. That is what I call realistic. They have to show how the work is realized in the most diverse areas of life. Like Goethe with the concept of the primal plant: he of course drew a diagram, but meant a continually changing one. Economic concepts must be subjected to constant metamorphoses in life. That is what I mean.

Of course, you won't have much luck with such concepts. Teachers today do not accept this; they want a definition. But I have not found that the concept of work has been clearly defined in economics. One should characterize it, not constantly speak negatively about it. In economic debates, for example, I have found that work cannot be decisive for the price because it varies among individuals according to their personal strength. Negative instances can be found. But the positive is missing, that one advances to characterizing work in such a way that it actually loses its original substantial character and gets its value from other positions in which it is placed. When one begins to characterize in this way, then the substance is lost; in the end one gets something that plays entirely within the economic structure.

Labor is the economic element that originally arises from real human effort, but which flows into the economic process and thereby acquires the most diverse economic value in the most diverse directions. One should speak of the processes that lead to the evaluation of labor in the most diverse directions.

Inspiration is based on the fact that one comes up with how to progress from one to the other. It depends a little on the spirit that one finds just the right examples.

Question: Isn't a generic term necessary after all? Even with the characterizing method, isn't there a need to place emphasis on the causes by which the observed effects came about?

Rudolf Steiner: As far as the matter of effects is concerned, I agree that one must return to the causes. But just as in certain fields of nature it is the case that one finds the causes only by starting from the effects, so it is even more the case in the field of economics that knowledge of the causes is of no help if it is not gained from the effects. For example, the tremendous effects of a war economy are there. If one did not know them as effects, one would not evaluate the cause at all. It is therefore important to acquire a certain sense of the quality of the effects in order to be able to ascend to the causes. Certainly, in practice one will have to ascend to the causes. But that is what economics is based on for the practical. You learn to evaluate the effects, and by seeing the aberrations of the effects, you come to know the causes and then improve the causes. It is of little use to just get to know the causes. You have to get to the causes in such a way that you can say: I know them by starting from the effects. - An insight of such tremendous significance as the language center in the left hemisphere is, is only recognized from the effects: lost language - left hemisphere paralyzed. You first recognize the effect. Then you are led to examine the matter at all. So this recursive method is necessary.

Question: I cannot look at everything from an economic point of view that has to do with art and religion or even sport. Some of it can be viewed from an economic point of view, but not the whole?

Rudolf Steiner: I drive through an area and find extraordinarily artistic buildings in this area - I am, of course, describing an utopia. This is not just an artistic view. These artistic buildings are only possible on the basis of a very specific economic situation. If I drive through an area where there are a great many art buildings, I will immediately get an idea of how it is managed. If, on the other hand, I drive through an area where even so-called beautiful buildings are tasteless, I will get an idea of the economic situation of the area in question. And if I find only utilitarian buildings, I will get an idea of the economic situation of the area in question. Where I find artistic buildings, I can conclude that higher wages are paid there than where I find no artistic buildings. I cannot imagine that anything could be considered uneconomical. Everything, even the most exalted things, must be considered economically. If an angel were to descend to earth today, he would either have to appear in a dream, in which case he would change nothing; but as soon as he appears to people while they are awake, he would intervene in economic life. He cannot do otherwise.

Objection: I admit that it can be viewed from an economic point of view – but only if you want to! But it can also be viewed from other points of view.

Rudolf Steiner: You are entering a circle. All that can be said is that it is necessary to base the consideration on the economic point of view for the time being. This has only a heuristic value, a value of research and investigation. But if you want to find an exhaustive, realistic political economy, you will not be able to avoid characterizing the economic effects from all sides. You have to characterize what influence it has on the economic life of an area, whether it has a hundred excellent painters or only ten. Otherwise it is hard to imagine that economic life can be encompassed. Otherwise I would not have insisted so strongly on this emphasis. Precisely by emphasizing it, you always end up with definitions that basically do not apply in some area, or that have to be stretched to breaking point. It is actually impossible to define the income that a person should have by pointing out, for example, that he is entitled to “what he produces himself”. There is even this definition: someone is entitled to what he produces himself. It seems quite nice to make such a definition. In a certain field it is correct. But the sewer cleaner could not do much with it. The point is that in economics one should not single out one phenomenon from the sum total of phenomena, but should go through the whole sum. One must be aware: I start thinking economically because I can help those who cannot do so. But one must also be aware that economic thinking must claim to be quite total, to be a very comprehensive kind of thinking. It is much easier to think in legal terms. Most economists think in very legal terms.

Question: Opinions on what is “normal” in economics are so divergent that it is impossible to know what is normal?

Rudolf Steiner: I have no desire to compete with these notions of “normal” and “abnormal”. There is a saying: there is only one health and countless illnesses. - I do not recognize that. Every person is healthy in their own way. People come and say: There is a heart patient who has this and that little defect, which should be cured. - I have often said: Leave the little defect to the person. — A doctor brought me a patient who had injured his nasal bone so badly that he now has a narrowed nasal passage and gets so little air. The doctor said, “That needs an operation, it's a terribly simple operation.” I said, “Don't do the operation!” He has a lung that is so constructed that he is not allowed to get more air; it is fortunate for him that he has a narrowed nasal passage. So he can live another ten years. If he had a normal nose, he would certainly be dead in three years. So I don't attach much importance to 'normal' and 'abnormal'. I only understand the most trivial things by them. I very often say: a normal citizen. Then people will understand what I mean.

The question is asked about the value of statistics.

Rudolf Steiner: It is true that statistics can be of great help. But the statistical method is applied externally today. Someone compiles a statistic about the increase in house values in a certain area and then about those in another area, and puts them side by side. But that is not good. It only becomes reliable when the processes themselves are examined. Then we shall know how to evaluate such a figure. For there may come a time when a series of figures is special simply because an extraordinary event has occurred in the series. ...

Question: Does inspiration also occur when collecting numbers?

Rudolf Steiner: Inspiration also occurs in that when you have a series, a second series, a third, then you find out - now again through the spirit - which facts, if you look at them qualitatively, are modified in the first series by corresponding facts, say in the third series. As a result, certain numerical values may cancel each other out. In the historical method, I call this the symptomatological consideration. One must have the possibility to evaluate the facts and, if necessary, to weigh the contradictory facts correctly against each other.

Economics in particular is sometimes practiced in an extremely unobjective way. One has the feeling that statistics are handled in such a way that, for example, the balance sheets of the finance ministers of the various countries are drawn up from a party-political point of view. Where one wants to prove a certain party line, the numerical data is actually used, which can just as easily prove another. There is no use other than to be impartial in one's soul. Something elementary and original comes into consideration. In all the science that deals with the human being - yes, even if you want to list a science that leads you to learn how to treat animals, to tame them - your concepts must prove to be modifiable. And this is even more true in economics. That is where inspiration comes in. You have to have that. Don't hold it against me if I say it dryly.

I am convinced that many more of today's students would have this inspiration – for it is not something that floats terribly in nebulous mystical heights – if it were not actually expelled from them at school, even at grammar school and secondary school. We have the task today, when we are at university, to remember what was driven out of us at grammar school in order to enter into a living practice of science. Today it is practiced terribly dead. It happened to me in a foreign country that I spoke with a number of economics lecturers. They said: When we want to visit our colleagues in Germany, they say: Yes, come, but not to my lecture, visit me at home! - Today one really needs an unbiased insight into these things. ... This economics has particularly declined recently. It is really all connected with the fact that people have lost this creativity of the spiritual. Today, people really have to be pushed in the face if they are to believe a fact.

Now you can read articles in the newspapers about the spiritual blockade in Germany. Of course, it has been there for a long time. If we want to deliver the magazine 'Das Goetheanum' to Germany today, we have to deliver it at a cost price of eighteen marks per copy! Think of the technical and medical journals! They are impossible to obtain. Think of the consequences for culture! This is also an economic issue. Germany is under an intellectual blockade. ... The withdrawal of these journals is directly what should lead to the dumbing down in Germany. ... In Germany it has an economic character, in Russia it has already taken on a state character, you can no longer read anything that is not sold by the Soviet government itself. People become a pure copy of the Soviet system. At best, you can smuggle a book here or there.

Question: Is it not useful when observing the economic effects not to start primarily from the statistics, but from the observation of the facts that are available?

Rudolf Steiner: This approach is needed even when consulting statistics. Statistics only enable us to prove things in figures. It is clear that if you come to Vienna now, you only need to walk the streets and gain experience. You only need to look at the apartments your acquaintances lived in ten years ago and those they live in now. And so on, piece by piece. You can make such observations of the most terrible kind. You can see for yourself that an entire middle class has been wiped out, which basically only lives – yes, because it has not yet died. It does not live economically, because if you see what it lives on, it is terrible. You will start from there, but the number can still be extremely important to you as proof.

You have to have a certain “nose” for it; because if you can prove things in figures, the numbers will in turn take you a little further. For example, the devaluation of the crown in Austria: it is indeed laughable how little the crown means today, but not any old value can be reduced without something being taken away from others. If you now look at the victims of the currency, they can be found among those whose pensions and similar income have been devalued. Here you can follow the calculation, and the strange thing is that the calculation could no longer be right for Austria today, let alone for Russia. Austria should have the right to devalue the crown even further, since everything has already been exhausted, and yet it does not explain the state bank default. Of course, this can only be achieved by the blockade that has been brought about in some way. The moment you lift this blockade, people will have to take very different measures. ...

Question: Can the state, as long as there is wealth, seize this wealth by increasing the money supply?

Rudolf Steiner: The state can certainly survive by increasing the money supply, but when the point is reached that the rent has been used up, if it is not artificially maintained, it could actually no longer survive economically, even if it continues to produce banknotes, because the further production of banknotes would lead to a doubling of the rent, which would lead to an increase into infinity. The state must increasingly shut itself off.

Question: Does the state not live off the economic capital itself, which is invested in the enterprises?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, but off what is a pension in it.

Question: Yes, I mean, it sucks out the capital. The capital decreases?

Rudolf Steiner: To the extent that capital takes on the character of a pension. Because when the state absorbs it, it takes on that character. The state can certainly live, but it can no longer do economic work. That is no longer economics. It can only live off what has already been earned; it only draws on the old. It lives dead off the pension. In Austria, the point should have been reached long ago where the pension is dead. In Germany, it is still a long way off. It certainly could not go on in Austria if certain laws of compulsion did not exist, for example with regard to rent. They actually pay nothing – I think about twenty-five cents for a three-room apartment. The only way things can be maintained is by having certain things for free. In Germany, it is also the case that you may only pay a tenth for your apartment. It is only because of such things that things can be maintained in a certain social class that can afford to pay up to that point. In Austria, a certain social class has deteriorated to such an extent that it can no longer even pay the twenty-five cents. People who had an income, let's say, of three thousand crowns could live on it under certain circumstances; today that is a little over an English shilling. No, you can't live on that!

Today, economic phenomena are so terrible that people might start to take notice and realize that we should actually study the economic laws in such a way that it would help in a practical way. This attempt failed in 1919; but at that time the amount of foreign currency was not as high as it is today.

We could address the question: What does economic thinking mean? - Then: How do you arrive at a concept of work in an economic sense? - And then it would be good if someone were to continue to discuss the terms that I have already used in their own sense, quite freely. It would also be good if someone tried to work out the concept of entrepreneurial capital: what pure entrepreneurial capital is. If you want to characterize entrepreneurial capital in terms of its concept, you have to contrast it precisely with mere bond capital.

Walter Birkigt: Work in the economic sense would be human activity in terms of its economic efficiency. In the field of physics, we know exactly that physical work is determined by its mechanical effect. Is every economically useful service already work? No – value can only come into being through the consumer in the final analysis. If work is done that acquires real value in an economic context, then it can be spoken of as economic work.

Rudolf Steiner: I would just like to make a small suggestion by asking Mr. Birkigt how he would react if, let us say, these arguments were discussed and the question arose: If I in some way combine the work within the economic organism or process with the physical recording of the work, what would happen if one now looks more closely at the concept of physical work? – Certainly, everything you have said is correct, but when the physicist draws up a formula for his work, he will introduce the concept of mass. This is because physical work, an energy, is a function of mass and velocity. You will easily find an analogy for the latter in the economic process. But the strange thing about the physical formula for physical work is precisely that the concept of mass is introduced, which can be determined physically by weight. So in the physical concept of work we have “weight”, which we can only replace by “mass” and “speed”. Now the question would arise as to whether it is necessary, if we stick to your analogy, to introduce something like the concept of mass or the concept of weight into the economic approach. If we were to do that, we would have to seek out precisely that in the economic process which would correspond to mass. So I think this question could be raised in the discussion.

Objection: The problem of the essence of work involves recognition on the part of the buyer. The entrepreneur presupposes this idea of recognition. The fact that the purchase of any goods comes about is recognition.

Rudolf Steiner: Since your concept of recognition is not entirely in the economic field, but more in the philosophical field, it is necessary - so that you can somehow justify that this concept has an economic value - that you give it an economic significance. Because in the recognition as such - when the housewife, for example, first sees that she can use something well - there is hardly more than a judgment. The economic aspect only begins when she can now buy it. It could very well be that the thing is excellent, but for economic reasons, because it is too expensive, it cannot be bought. So mere recognition may be a philosophical category. But it would only become an economic category if it were able to place itself in economic life. And that is why the concept of economic action would clarify.

Question: What is the relationship between the verification of an economic act and recognition?

Rudolf Steiner: “Recognition” as such can hardly be an economic category. This may be because recognition must be subjective. Of course, something subjective already plays a role in economic categories. But then one must show the way in which it becomes objective. Suppose, for example, that two housewives have completely different recognitions of a thing, and for the sake of argument this can lead to a yes to an economic success and a no to an economic failure. The economic aspect would be found where the reasons lead to success in one case and to failure in the other, because recognition can only be a philosophical concept. Of course, recognition can slip down into the [private] economic sphere, but then it must also slip over into the national economy.

Remark from a participant: By economic action, I understand an anticipation of the physical expression of a verification, presenting itself as an initiative.

Rudolf Steiner: We are perhaps dealing here with something quite different from what might have emerged from the discussion. We want to move here in economic thinking. This formula does not prove to me that you have entered into economic thinking with this matter. The formula is, of course, worthy of all recognition, but it is actually more the formula of an economic philosophy that strives, even in a somewhat scholastic way, to find the concept of economic action in order to metaphysically justify economic action before the entire world order. If that is what you are aiming at, then you may take this path; then it will be very interesting to talk about it. But if you ask yourself whether it is not important today, for example, that a number of people, who are now the people of today, bring something out of thinking into the economic sphere that could help economic life, then it is not easy to see what could actually be gained by such a formulation.

Of course, it could be gained that people learn to think better, but we are faced with the necessity to make the national economy as such really fruitful. In science and medicine, after all, it does not depend very much on whether one has a methodology. There this is actually more of a technique in the treatment of methods, research instruments and so on, but the methodology itself has no extraordinary value. In economics, it certainly has an extremely high value, because what we think about things has to be put into practice in economics. Otherwise it is just what Brentano pursues in his way: purely empirical. It does not become practical. Today we need an economic way of thinking that can be put into practice. And that is why it would be extremely interesting to go through the definition word for word. But it is more in the realm of economic-philosophical thinking than of economic thinking.

Mr. Birkigt's discussions were aimed at extracting the concepts of work in such a way that someone who wanted to clarify in an association how one or the other work is to be evaluated can benefit from it. That was your tendency, and that should be our tendency today, if we were stuck inside an association, be it as any kind of worker, so that we would somehow have a basis for evaluating things in their economic process.

Note: economic work is any human activity that directly or indirectly produces value.

Rudolf Steiner: I think that if we want to develop a practical economic way of thinking, we will have to take something else into account. Let us take a scientific analogy to clarify this: the overall process in the human organism is not at all understandable if we only look at ascending processes, processes that run in one direction. You only get a real understanding of the total process when you also look at the catabolic processes. For example, we have catabolic processes in the bones and nervous system; we have catabolic processes in the blood as well as distinct anabolic processes. We can even say that we have anabolic processes in the human organism, starting with lymph formation, through lymph formation to the generation of venous blood. Then we have the processes associated with breathing. These are processes that represent a kind of unstable equilibrium between anabolic and catabolic processes. And the processes that take place in the nerves and bones are distinctly catabolic. Devolutions as opposed to evolutions! We only gain a real understanding when we organize our concepts in such a way that we understand the liver process, for example, as a combination of anabolic and catabolic processes. Someone may come along and may have a mere theoretical interest, who then also subsumes the catabolic processes under the anabolic processes. He says: Physically, the human being develops to a certain degree through anabolic processes. Then he begins to build up spiritually, that is, differently. Now, then we come from one sphere into the other and retain only the abstract web of concepts and thereby learn to understand nothing. We learn to understand the effectiveness of the spirit in the human organism only when we know that the spirit begins to work when there are no anabolic processes; when we know that there is no anabolism in the brain, but catabolism, and that it is only in the catabolism that the spirit asserts itself. Then I have a kind of comprehension through which I enter into reality. If I hold on to a conceptual direction in the abstract, step by step, purely dialectically and logically, then I do not arrive at any practical understanding.

Thus it is necessary in economics to take into account not only the formation of value, but also its devaluation; that one also speaks, to a certain extent, of real destruction. I have done that. Consumption is where it begins, but there is still a mental process in which devaluation also takes place.

They said that when I tear down a house, it also has value. Because at this point, the demolition of the house means that something productive is being created for someone. Certainly, you can see it that way if you stick to the abstract development of concepts. But in practice, it has a meaning where I compose the economic process out of the creation and devaluation of value. And then it must be clear, of course, that work is important not only for the production of values, but also for the destruction of values. Without going into this, I cannot get an adequate concept of work. If work were not also there for destruction, it would not be possible to do any economic activity at all. You have to bring this into your concept.

I believe that it will be of great importance, even in the near future, to recognize what is to happen economically in the direction of value creation and value destruction. Because if values arise that are not destroyed in the appropriate way, even though they are there to be destroyed, this also disturbs the economic process. The process is disturbed by overproduction. The process is disturbed simply by the fact that, figuratively speaking, there is too much in the stomach of the economic system.

Question: Must we not understand the concept of work in such a way that work is an activity that comes into consideration for a closed economic organism?

Rudolf Steiner: What comes into consideration here is that things are taken up as realities. Undoubtedly, the process of creating too much shielding can be a destructive one; but in terms of work performance, it is a constructive process under all circumstances, as long as we remain at work. On the other hand, the destructive process of destroying screens is not opposed to this. Under certain circumstances, destruction is not achieved by what you would define as work. But in any case, one cannot call the process of creating too many screens a destructive process if one wants to think about the matter in terms of work.

We must be aware that in the economic view we are to characterize, that is, we should try to get a concept by defining it from different sides in order to gain a truly descriptive judgment. We have no use for an abstract definition. A concept of work has been established: work is human activity in terms of its economic efficiency, in short, economic activity of man. But how does such a definition of work in the economic sense differ from the definition of work in the physical sense? In such an economic definition, we have nothing real in it. When the physicist defines physical work by means of a formula, by means of a function, and in it has the mass and the speed, then you have something real in it; because the mass can be weighed. If the physicist wants to define the speed, he draws up a definition. The definition serves only as a means of communication. The physicist is fully aware that he is only pointing to what is to be considered. For only he has a concept of speed who knows it from observation. What he defines is the measure of speed. And so the physicist will never believe that he is giving any real explanation when he gives this explanation. But he is of the opinion - whether rightly or wrongly, I will not investigate - that he is giving a real explanation when he explains labor as a function of mass and speed. In doing so, he is getting at a real explanation.

When I do this in economic life, it is because I am approaching the story at the right point. So, for example, if I give my explanation of value at a certain point in such a way that value is produced, value arises, value is a function of labor and a natural object, a natural being, or of mind and nature, then you have labor in the change that is taking place there. This is, of course, a qualitative change, whereas the moving body undergoes a change of location. What the physicist has as a measure is the real substance of nature. However, I am basing a definition that does indeed meet the requirements of such a real definition in physics. I am not doing anything special for economics when I try to define labor in itself. Above all, I must realize that labor as such only becomes an economic category when I bring it into function with the natural product. When you make such definitions, you get into a way of looking at things that is actually quite striking later on. For example, you know that during the reign of classical physics, the physicist always defined labor as a function of mass and speed. In contrast to modern conceptions of ions and electron processes, this working definition completely loses its meaning, because the concept of mass is dropped. We are only dealing with acceleration. In this way, the physical process emancipates itself from what is ponderably present as mass in it, just as capital emancipates itself from the nature it works on in my book and enters into a function of its own.

So you enter a realm that actually justifies itself from all sides. That is the peculiarity of realistic thinking: you think more than you have in definitions. I would like to point out that nowhere, when I speak of economics, do I try to grasp a concept where it cannot be grasped. I cannot grasp “mass” in physics either, but only its function. “Mass is the quantity of matter”, that is also only a word definition! Nor do I want to see the terms nature, labor and capital defined one after the other as economically significant, but rather to be grasped where the realities are: not nature, but nature that has been worked; not labor, but organized labor; not capital, but capital directed by the human spirit, set in motion, set in motion in the economy. I believe that touching things where they are is necessary in economics today!

Question not noted.

Rudolf Steiner: I would just like to point out that the distinction between mental and manual work is not really justified. If one wanted to try to define the thing mental work and the thing manual work, one could not really find anything other than a slow transition from one pole to the other, but no real contrast. Physiologically, there is no real contradiction either. That things have been viewed incorrectly can be seen from the fact that people have always been mistaken about the recuperative effect of gymnastics. Today we know that gymnastics does not represent the recuperation that was attributed to it in the past. The student does not work more through so-called mental work than through gymnastics, which lasts the same amount of time. Of course, it is always a matter of thinking about things in a fruitful economic way.

Question about the relationship between economic and biological thinking.

Rudolf Steiner: The economic entities are, in their reality, as they once were, already very much analogous to the biological entities. You can verify this very well if you try to determine the economic value of a job, for example, a printer's job. Let us assume that a poet fancies himself to be an extraordinarily great poet and manages to get his poetry printed, whether through patronage or financial support or something similar. And now the paper workers, the typesetters, a whole range of people are working on the realization of this volume of poetry, who, according to the Marxist concept, are doing decidedly productive work. But let's assume that not a single copy is sold, but that they are all pulped. Then you would have the same real effect as if they had not been made at all. Basically, you have expended labor completely uselessly in this case. Now, however, you would first have to examine whether this is seven-eighths stupid, as the Marxists say, or whether it does not have a meaning after all. And then you will notice that the biological point of view offers a certain analogy. You can say: In biology I can observe the whole being from beginning to end and have it before me, whereas in economics I only have to do with tendencies and the like. But now I ask you whether you have more than tendencies in the whole of nature, when you consider that not all herring eggs become herrings, but that countless herring eggs, compared to those that become herrings, are simply destroyed? However, the question arises as to whether these destroyed eggs mean nothing at all for the whole process of nature, or whether they only take a different direction in the whole biological process. That is the case. There could be no herrings and many other sea creatures if so many herring eggs did not simply perish. Now, you are still not on the basis of a real observation when you say: Well, eggs are perishing there - and so on. You are still obliged to say: I have an evolution in front of me. The egg has come into being and perishes through something. The whole herring also came into being and perishes through something. The processes only take on different directions, and the herring merely continues the tendency of the egg. Nowhere can you somehow say that the herring has a greater right to cease to exist than the egg. And now you have an analogy with perishing labor, with perishing economic entities.

You can come up with countless analogies between economic and biological thinking. This is only not noticed because we have neither a proper biological nor a proper economic thinking. If biology were to begin to develop a real thinking, it would become very similar to economic thinking. You need the same abilities to do real biology as you need to do real economics.

Question: What is the justification for printed poetry that is then trampled on again, compared to herring eggs?

Rudolf Steiner: The matter may be as follows. If the people who are employed were not kept busy, these people would naturally have to find something to do elsewhere. And if they had to find something to do elsewhere, then under certain circumstances not enough would be derived from human activity. Human activity, like herring eggs, must also be diverted under certain circumstances, and this diversion also has an economic effect. It is easy to say that sleeping is rest, and living is activity. From a certain point of view, however, sleep is much more necessary for life than waking. It is the same with this activity. Of course, you can say: I want to use it in a more useful way; but it is questionable whether it is more useful when it comes to umbrellas that are produced too much. First of all, these are stopgaps, albeit in an inappropriate economic process, to eliminate work that would have a disruptive effect. The matter would turn out differently if one were to think in a healthy economic way. If one were to think in a healthy economic way, one would have to expend a colossal amount of cleverness - but here we go beyond the usual economic consideration - in order to utilize the surplus working hours that arise for those people who cannot work for themselves. So, it is actually the case that if one were to think in a healthy economic way, something would immediately arise that you would probably welcome with joy. But people cannot imagine that it would be necessary to teach those who are unable to work for themselves, who are unable to occupy their time, what it means to save time. For it would hardly be necessary for a person who works eight or nine hours today to work more than three or four hours longer. If people thought in terms of economics in a sensible way, they would need to work much less than they do now. And then the time saved would simply correspond to the time it takes for the herring eggs to hatch. Now people waste so much on work that has to be done again anyway.

Note: When one speaks of biological thinking, one has a certain limited object of perception about which one thinks. When thinking economically, one has to designate through thinking what one is thinking about economically.

Rudolf Steiner: You only have a limited object of perception in biology to a certain extent. You do not have this with world structures that are observed under a microscope, for example, or where you observe individual phenomena as emerging from a larger context. You can say that you have a manageable object in a drop of blood. But the moment you look at it under the microscope, you see more – five to six hundred red blood cells in one cubic millimeter, and they are all active. This is certainly visible to the eye through the microscope, but it looks damn similar to what you see when you look at a limited economic process somewhere. Imagine you are standing in front of a stall at the fair and see how the stall-keeper is standing there, how his wares are lying; there are the customers, he hands over the goods, they put down the money, ... if you now imagine, you manage to be such a giant - how you can think of all this as something very dense and cohesive, then there is no real difference. I can understand the economics of a limited area just as relatively. If I look at the booth owner with everything that goes with it, it is only relatively different from, say, when the British sell opium in China and I look at everything that goes with it. I can't find why you don't have an object.

Question: I just don't know where political economy begins and ends.

Rudolf Steiner: We also don't know where biology begins. It is another thing to ride the comparison to death. I just mean: What makes it possible to understand the nature of living things, the same in the conception makes it possible to understand economics. Only one thing is necessary. What you say may apply: when you look at a natural object, the object comes to you, whereas in economics the subject must come to the object to some extent. In economics, you have to have what I called spiritus yesterday. So biologists can really have very little spiritus and only work with the methods. But to think economically, you will need some spiritus.

Question: It seems to me that the economic process has come about without thinking in economic terms; that thinking must first become economic. Whether the economy is healthy or unhealthy is irrelevant. In this respect, I will be able to speak of an object in economics in the same way as in natural science.

Rudolf Steiner: Mr. G. is right: the difference is that in economics it is necessary to start from a certain subjective grasp of what is happening in the world. But in economics this subjectivity is in turn easier than in biology. In biology, you are always on the outside, of course, as a human being – since you are not a cockchafer when you study it – and you have to stand on the outside, whereas you are only on the outside to a much lesser degree when you look at something economically. You can still muster enough humanity to understand the worker well, to understand the entrepreneur as well. That is the general human element, and it replaces what is external observation in biology. In this respect, Mr. G. is right. But on the other hand, I believe that Goethe, for example, gave such a good definition of the dark side of the concept of trade because he did indeed go very far in his biological approach. Thus, Goethe sometimes expresses remarkably apt economic views. This has something to do with his morphological-biological approach. In biology, nature plays the role of someone who pushes you when you don't have the spirit yourself. In economics, you have to apply the spirit yourself.

Objection: There are theorists who say that there is no such thing as a national economy because there is no economy. Spann expresses this.

Rudolf Steiner: He is much admired and is considered a special luminary in Vienna by very clever people. I have not studied him enough to have too much of an opinion about him, but what very clever people say about him has not particularly convinced me. But it would only be a clever dialectic to say that there is no economy. There are also people who say that there is no life, only mechanism.

We should now look at specific aspects. Someone should try to show more specifically where economic processes of exploitation and devaluation are necessary.

Note: The concept of recognition is again put forward for discussion and again characterized by Rudolf Steiner as unsuitable for economics.

Rudolf Steiner: The concept of recognition leads into economic philosophy, not actually into economics as such. Furthermore, our aim must be to find such views in economics that can be carried through, if possible, by always changing themselves, through the whole of economic life. With the concept of recognition, you will hardly be able to cover all economic elements without greatly expanding this concept. You can always do that with concepts. Let me give an example: How would the concept that was formed yesterday be shaped if we were dealing with the fact that a completely unknown Rembrandt was found somewhere in a floor drain, if it were a matter of estimating the economic value of this Rembrandt, of which one can speak with certainty. I do not mean how it would be done at all, but how it would be with the concept of recognition.

Note: The representative of the concept of recognition blames the “political” for bringing about recognition of anti-social processes - for example, undeserved economic gains.

Rudolf Steiner: If we have the opportunity to implement the threefold social order properly in reality, then the concept of the “political” as you have developed it no longer applies. For the political is essentially given in the legal, so that the political would then be completely absent from the economic, and one could not bring about a “recognition” through some kind of political behavior.

But the question remains: what then is the “political”? The political is actually an extremely secondary, highly derived concept. From a purely economic point of view, there is no reason to be political. In the example you gave, with the entrepreneur who expects 200,000 marks and then, if he gives 80,000 to the workers, takes in 500,000 due to brisk business, there is no need to drift into the political. Let's assume the following: With the extra money that has been generated, the entrepreneur can openly stand before the entire workforce and say: I expected to generate two hundred thousand marks. But three hundred thousand marks more have been generated. We have founded the business under these conditions, that two hundred thousand are worked out. These three hundred thousand have been worked out more. I find it more correct for these and those reasons for the totality of the economic organism in which we stand, to found a school, for example, with these three hundred thousand marks, than to distribute it to you. Do you agree? - There you have a form in which the economic process remains the same, but you do not need to take any political factor into account.

In world history, the political is a secondary product. This is based solely on the fact that the primitive, perhaps highly unsympathetic but completely honest power relations have gradually taken the form of war among people. It cannot be said that war is the continuation of politics only by other means, but politics is modern war transferred into the spiritual. For this war is based on deceiving the opponent, on creating situations that deceive him. Every stratagem in war, everything that is not a direct open attack, is based on deceiving the opponent. And the general will ascribe to himself all the greater credit the better he succeeds in deceiving the enemy. This, transferred to the spiritual, is politics. You will find exactly the same categories in politics.

When talking about politics, one would like to say: We should strive to overcome politics in everything, even in politics. For we only have real politics when everything that takes place in the political sphere takes place in legal forms. But then we have the constitutional state.

Question regarding the tailor example.

Rudolf Steiner: The only reason for this deception is that the quota that is formed by a single suit is an extraordinarily small one and it would therefore take a very long time before this small quota is visible in the tailor's balance sheet in such a way that he would actually perceive it as a loss. The point is that the division of labor makes products de facto cheaper. If you work for a community under the influence of the division of labor, your own products also cost you less than if you worked for yourself. That is precisely what makes the division of labor so cheapening. If you break it at a certain point, you make the item in question more expensive, which you have prepared yourself. Of course, a single quota for a single suit that a tailor makes for himself would not make much of a difference. On the other hand, it would be noticeable if all tailors did it.

With a more extensive division of labor, no one will prepare anything for themselves anymore, except in agriculture. If a tailor actually makes his own suit and he wants to draw up a completely correct balance sheet for himself, then he would simply have to include his own suit in this balance sheet at a higher price than the market price. So he has to set his expenses higher than the market price. It does not matter so much whether he actually buys the suit or not.

It is, of course, a self-evident prerequisite that it is not other tailors from whom one buys the clothes, but that they are traders. The price of a suit from a trader is cheaper – otherwise the division into production and trade would make no sense – than the price could be if the tailors in question worked without traders. So the tailor has to set the price a little higher when he works without a dealer, because the dealer simply brings it to market cheaper than the tailors themselves could sell it. At most, you can still make the objection – which might be justified under certain circumstances – that you say: the significantly cheaper price of the goods sold without the dealer would be that the tailor, if he had to get the goods from the dealer, would then have to factor in his travel costs. You would find that by including the trade, these ways actually come cheaper. By simply comparing the producer and dealer prices, you can never find out whether the suit is more expensive or cheaper.

Question: The price of one suit should put pressure on the other suits. Why would the other suits become more expensive?

Rudolf Steiner: It exerts a downward pressure on prices in that it removes one suit from the sum of all suits that traders deal in, and that it deprives traders of the opportunity to make a profit on this suit, so that they have to demand a higher profit on the other suits. What the traders demand as a higher profit causes prices to rise among the traders, but among tailors it exerts a downward pressure on prices.

Question: The question now is whether this price pressure makes up less than the trade route brings him in price increases.

Rudolf Steiner: You will not find that anywhere. Try to solve the problem. This is a task that can be posed directly: to what extent does trade reduce the price compared to the seller's own sale? This posed directly as a dissertation task would be important. You would see: if fifty tailors make their way and have to calculate these ways, it actually costs more than if the traders make the ways.

Objection: You say of the suit that the tailor keeps for himself: When it goes through the shop, it becomes cheaper. Now, in the case of the suit that he keeps for himself, the entire expense of the shop, of arranging the transaction, is saved.

Rudolf Steiner: That would make a difference if trade did not reduce prices. But since trade reduces prices, it does not matter that the suit stays at home.

Note: Let us say the cost price is one hundred marks. When trade is added, the suit costs one hundred and twenty marks. The dealer reduces the price to one hundred and ten. If the tailor does not bring his own suit into circulation, he saves the ten marks.

Rudolf Steiner: But in this case, you have to look at the overall balance sheet that arises from traders and tailors as something very real economically. You would have to examine how this individual item appears in the overall balance sheet. You can't find it by just comparing the individual balance sheet items. You have to see it in the overall picture. Then you would see: because economic division of labor means a fructification of labor, if I go back to an earlier state in a perfectly economically divided labor, I harm myself with the others. One is so interwoven with them that by going back to an earlier stage one also harms oneself. The deception arises from the fact that it is difficult to grasp the terribly small quota. But I only need to set up the progression: if you think that all tailors make their own suits and that they would now form an association, then what would have to be entered differently in the balance sheet as a joint item would mean something.

Note: in the ready-to-wear industry, this is already more apparent.

Rudolf Steiner: That is absolutely certain. Of course, we then have to examine the underlying causes. It will be a terribly small item if it is only a matter of the division of labor between the producer and the dealer. On the other hand, the item becomes very, very considerable if there is a further division of labor, if the tailor otherwise no longer makes whole suits at all, but only parts of them. Then, if he wants to make a suit for himself, it will cost him much more than if he buys it somewhere. I said that it is a radical example that is only significant in terms of principle. But what later emerges with a further division of labor also applies at the very beginning of the division of labor.

Question: Why can't this be applied to agriculture?

Rudolf Steiner: I did not say that. I said: It is becoming less and less the case that people produce for themselves, with the exception of agriculture, where it is obvious that the farmer provides for himself. In agriculture, where so many corrections are made to the general economic process anyway, it really does not matter that much whether the farmer takes his cabbage from his own land or buys it. If, however, in the sense of the threefold order, there were a real economic relationship between agriculture and non-agriculture, then it would also be relevant for agriculture. The fact of the matter is, however, that basically all kinds of underground transfers take place and as a result the relationship between industry and agriculture in terms of prices is completely undermined. This will be discussed in the next few days. But if we were to examine the overall balance of an economic area by balancing agriculture and industry against each other, it would emerge that, under current conditions, substantial amounts flow from agriculture into industry, simply through underground channels. But if, under the associative system, there were just as many or at least approximately as many workers in one sector as prices would allow, then we would have a very different distribution of urban and rural areas. We underestimate what it would mean if the associative being were to be realized. That is why it is not very easy to answer the question: why is the “Coming Day” not an association? Simply because it is not powerful enough to have a certain influence on the economic process. For that, the association must first reach a certain size. What does the “Kommende Tag” want to do today between employers and workers that is much different from what usually happens? That would only be possible in one case - I once said this at a company meeting - namely if all the workers of the “Kommende Tag” decided to leave the trade unions. Then you would have the beginning of a movement that, as such, would gradually get the ball rolling from the other side, the workers. But as long as the workers simply take part in the strikes in exactly the same way as the other workers, it is quite impossible to talk to the workers in the ideal way.

Above all, the associative nature of the human being would cause a whole series of factories to migrate from the city to the countryside, and similar things would arise as a necessary consequence of the associative nature of the human being. It is not for nothing that we have villages and village economies. In the primitive economy, the village economy is the only economic form. Then it moves on to the markets. These terms are much more correct in economic terms than one might think. As long as the market is there and villages around it, the market, even if it is based on the principle of supply and demand, means something that is much less economically harmful – if there are no scoundrels, which is a personal matter – than when the city economy is added. This radically changes the entire relationship between producers and consumers. Then we no longer have villages that regulate their market by themselves, but we have opened the floodgates to all the possibilities that arise when the relationship between consumers and producers is no longer clear, when it becomes mixed. And that is the case when people live together in cities.

The relationship between producers and consumers cannot be overseen other than by forming associations. But then the conditions that arose under the hive change. For the associative being is something that not only organizes, but also economizes. It would arise under the associative being that from each individual link - on which the interaction of the three links of the social organism is based - the health of the other arises at the same time.

Over longer periods of time, but still not too long ago, it would become apparent that in cities, administrative officials and centralized schools, and so on, would essentially be together, that is, essentially spiritual life and legal life, while economic life and legal life would be decentralized together. So the coexistence would also be spatially divided, but not in such a way that one would now have three completely different links, but so that the cities would essentially represent a confusion of spiritual life with a more centralized, a larger horizontal administration. And smaller administrations in the circle of economic enterprises would be more decentralized. This would require that the traffic conditions would be much more effective than before. These are not so far advanced only because one does not need traffic for production when the producers are scattered around the cities.

It is not at all easy, my dear audience, to talk about threefolding because there is so much intuition involved. If you describe to someone today what is happening, they will say: Prove it to me! No one can prove to me, even theoretically, that he will be hungry tomorrow. Nevertheless, from experience we know that he will be hungry tomorrow. And so, with correct economic thinking, correct economic foresight also arises. You must see that as something real, what is meant here by actual economic thinking, that one begins to develop such thinking that is really productive itself. Otherwise, I could ask you: what economic value does economics have? - A merely contemplative one has a very different economic value - it is essentially a consumer - than a real one; it is essentially a producer.

Question: Tailors lower the price of their product when they supply themselves by dividing the work. Does this also apply to a button or another sub-product?

Rudolf Steiner: As a boy, I lived in a village where there was a shoemaker – Binder was his name. He rejected any exchange between himself and his customers that he did not take care of himself. He brought every single pair of boots he made to me, my father, my mother, himself. What does the whole pair of boots consist of? In this case, it consists of the tubes — the tubes were so long —, of what is at the top, of the instep, of the sole and of the cobbler's work, which he had to do for us. All of this belongs to the pair of boots. It makes no difference whether you speak of the tube or the sole or the cobbler's process. The division of labor first occurred when the part that made up the process was removed. This is most radical in the case of the tailor, because it is not so easy to see what is involved. When I put on the boots, I knew that I was walking on the path the cobbler had made!

Question: If I make the button myself, will I also be expressing the price?

Rudolf Steiner: In that case you will also, under certain circumstances, lose the most; because you cannot use it at all!

Interjection: I would like to assume that I need it.

Rudolf Steiner: Then the question arises as to why you need the product. If you change it in such a way – it can be a small or a large change – that it acquires a reality value, then perhaps you will lose nothing.

Remark: I need it for consumption, that is, for destruction.

Rudolf Steiner: In agriculture, other adjustments occur. If the division of labor were carried out, it would also apply there. But you will hardly have the opportunity to utilize what has been produced under the division of labor if you retain it, in such a way that it produces a reduction in costs.

A loaf of bread is still very close to agriculture. Nevertheless, we have had a rather disastrous experience with this loaf of bread. We induced a member of our society, with quite good intentions – it was before the war – to produce hygienic and otherwise good bread. And this bread was then only given to our members; others did not take it. The bread became so expensive that it simply could not be sold.

Note: That was high-quality bread.

Rudolf Steiner: If the price difference had only been justified by the quality, then it could have been justified. But the price difference was much greater, only partly due to the fact that the general production was subject to the principle of a more extensive division of labor than that of our member. And he produced in such a way that he did not distribute his production among as many people as the others; so he produced much more expensively.

Question: What about fashion pieces?

Rudolf Steiner: But here we are now in the aesthetic field, no longer in the economic field. I did not want to touch on the question of whether it might not be extraordinarily good if the division of labor were avoided in certain fields. I am even opposed to the division of labor being carried out in all areas, but not for economic reasons, but for reasons of taste. I find it even horrible when the division of labor is carried out down to the last detail, for example, in human clothing. But here we have to say: we must of course assert the free spiritual life, which would naturally cost us something at first. It would make some things more expensive, but there would be a balance, even though some products that are not included in the division of labor become more expensive. Please do not misunderstand me as wanting to be a fanatic. ...

Question: What if there are significantly more traders than are economically justified?

Rudolf Steiner: What I have said is based on the premise that there are just as many traders as are economically justified. We are not dealing with a straightforward progression, but with a maximum-minimum direction. At a certain point in the number of traders, we have the most favorable influence of the merchant class. Below and above that, it is unfavorable.

Question: Is the number determinable?

Rudolf Steiner: If there is any rational economic activity at all, then the number of traders can be determined, as can the number of producers. Today, you have the principle of rational economic activity nowhere. People do not consider how an enormous amount of unnecessary work is done. Just think of the printing press. If you were to spare all this unnecessary work, then you would get an approximation to the natural numbers everywhere. Sparing unnecessary work already provides a reduction of the natural numbers of the people employed in a sector. Today, the fact is that the merchant class actually consumes more than the producers themselves. At least for Germany.

There must be a certain number of traders for each article. But you will also have to bear in mind that sometimes even the merchant class is masked. It is replaced by something else, by the most diverse things. Just think how much of the merchant class, for example, can be replaced by setting up large bazaars. This creates a completely different economic category.

Question: Can we still speak of value when a thing has fulfilled its purpose? What about when the thing first enters the economic process? Does the demolition of a house mean devaluation through human labor? Does this devaluation have any meaning or not? Can we only speak of devaluation through human labor when new values are not created?

Rudolf Steiner: Please express your views on this! Topics will arise, for example, coal and lignite. Someone might come up with the idea that coal, as a substance, is simply a more valuable object than lignite. But then he would have to defend his “thesis.” The other thesis would be the somewhat daring one that mechanical work generally does not have the effect of increasing costs. The esteemed audience will have this or that objection. Then the question of valuation and devaluation is not exhausted by citing exceptional phenomena, such as submarines, but it would be a matter of having to bring about economically necessary devaluations through work in the continuous process of the national economy.

Various interposed questions.

Rudolf Steiner: The question is whether or not one can speak of appreciation and depreciation through work, even in a purely economic sense. If machines are devalued, then in economic terms this would be consumption. The question is not whether the goal of a work is depreciation, but whether depreciations are necessary in the economic process, and these can only be achieved through work.

X: The devaluation of values through work occurs for the purpose of subsequently placing higher values in the place (intermediate values).

Rudolf Steiner: This example can be given. However, it is not absolutely flawless. A much simpler example is an everyday one: if you wind thread onto a spool through work, you have created a product. It comes about through the work that is done, namely the twisting. If I continue the work, I have to unwind again. Work is actually necessary here. In the case of intermediate operations, it is necessary that the work created in the process is dissolved again.

Question: Would the same apply to the transfer of products?

Rudolf Steiner: It would at least take place if you move one orbit to another position. You have to devalue the first value in order to give the second the correct value. If you have an orbit here and you want to put it here, then you have carried out such a devaluation by rearranging it. And such things can be found everywhere. These would be devaluations that become necessary and that require work to be carried out. You just don't usually notice them. But they are everywhere. You just have to take the coal shoveler who shovels the coal for the locomotive. The stoker has to shovel it out again. If you just want to grasp the concepts, you can say: it's a continuous process. But that wouldn't be enough. You would have to calculate, since the continuous process cannot be directly achieved here, what the continuous process would cost if I had prepared the coal everywhere, in contrast to what it costs if I always carry out a sub-process and then have to destroy it again.

Question: Would the packaging industry also be an example?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, certainly. A very striking example where you really cannot use the concept of utilization and also not that of mere consumption through wear and tear, as in the sharpening of razors. A valuable product is destroyed, and that is a necessary economic task. Consumption consists only in blunting. But to devalue it completely, work is necessary.

Question: Collecting, selling, melting down and reusing scrap iron – can the melting down also be called a revaluation?

Rudolf Steiner: This is the same as recycling waste. You would not call that a devaluation.

Note: But one process is complete!

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, and then I discover that I can re-use what is present as a natural product. The criterion must be that human labor is necessary to bring about a devaluation process.

Melting down iron is not really a process of degradation. Of course, things can be ambiguous. They can be understood in different ways. They could also be understood as a product of devaluation.

Question: Devaluation through war – shells turned into powder?

Rudolf Steiner: For those who are not the victors, this is a devaluation.

Question: Can what happens to war equipment even be addressed as value creation in the economic sense?

Rudolf Steiner: This can only become economic in its consequences. The war industry is not value-creating as long as it is only for stock. In that sense, it is actually a form of labor, but one cannot say that it is a necessary form of destructive labor.

Note: What is consumed beyond normal needs, implements of war and so on, results in a shortfall, for example, after the war is over.

Rudolf Steiner: It must be borne in mind that the abnormal consumption that occurs here has a certain similarity to the consumption of rentiers in an economic community. This consumption is a given. If one wants to justify it - today one fights against it - then of course there is a certain justification for all things. The consumption of the rentiers can be justified if the land production yields a greater yield than can normally be consumed by the rest of the population. In order to establish economic equilibrium, the consumption of the rentiers is good under certain circumstances. And from this point of view, there is an economic justification for the armed forces. This justification lies in the fact that people say: the things are there and they can be produced. There would be no economic equilibrium, so many would remain unemployed if the military were not there to consume without actually producing. For it does not actually produce anything.

Question: Shouldn't the military be viewed in a similar way to the winnowing of wheat or something similar?

Rudolf Steiner: This view is to be found in the school of Rodbertus. Defense is counted among the productive factors. The question is whether we are thinking of an economy under certain conditions or without these conditions or with other conditions. If we were to imagine that defense by a military force were not necessary, it would be dropped. But the fire engine cannot be dispensed with because it corresponds to a necessary consumption, like breakfast. Those who consider the military to be absolutely necessary must regard it as a necessary consumption. But this is where the possibility of a discussion about the consumption question begins. We know people who consider the strangest things to be absolutely indispensable. The concepts of use play a role in the evaluation. And they are unstable.

Question: Mechanical work, for example, water power through turbines, saves human labor. Is the assessment made as if the mechanical work were done by human labor?

Rudolf Steiner: Imagine a scale with unequal arms. If I have a large load on one lever arm, I then have to shift the weight on the other. In this way, I can keep a very large weight in balance with a very small weight here purely through the position. This is how it is with the economic distribution of such things as you have called 'mechanical work'. The work that has to be done only decreases in the same proportion as here with the scales. But you will always find a certain amount of work that has actually been done, even with mechanical work. You cannot simply get something from nature without further ado. If you just want to put a stone on something to make it do work, you have to at least fetch it. You always have to put in a little human labor. But these things do not belong in the national economy at all, where the ratio of labor expended to the output is functionally determined by the circumstances.

Question: But mechanical work in itself does not make the products more expensive?

Rudolf Steiner: If you look at the work in its entirety, then you have to calculate a quota everywhere.

Question: How does devaluing work fit into the economic process?

Rudolf Steiner: If you have a continuous economic process in which you have to devalue – let us assume you have such a large shaving shop that you have to employ a special worker to sharpen the razors – then of course you have to account for this worker's work in a different way than you account for the work of the people who are sharpening the razors. Of course, on the surface it also looks like work, but in the economic process it is different, namely negative.

Question: What happens in the case of devaluation work? It is a gift because it has no equivalent value.

Rudolf Steiner: Only the signs of the value change. It is the same everywhere. If you have a value creation that you describe as positive (+) in the ongoing economic process, then you have to describe the devaluation as negative (-), while if nothing happens you have to insert zero. Note: When a new machine replaces a process, the product becomes cheaper simply because labor is saved. Whether it is value-forming or devaluing work, it makes no difference.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, the thing is that you can always bring out the same result. But it still remains a division into value formation and devaluation. It is self-evident that if you draw a sum from it, a positive sum results if a machine is to be used at all. ... The only question is whether it is necessary to expend labor on dissolutions, that is, on devaluations of values that have already come about in the economic process.

Question not noted.

Rudolf Steiner: It will be necessary, so that no unclear concepts remain, to discuss the cup of tea, the drinking of which is said to be economic work.

Objection: I cannot accept that as work. The criterion of labor is missing.

Further remark: When one takes in food, one first creates the values within oneself that are capable of producing further work, just as when one creates machines that are intended to produce values.

Rudolf Steiner: But it is not possible to include what happens in a person in the national economy. That would lead to the Marxist theory.

The Lord must have thought of something else. You do realize that drinking a cup of tea could provide economic value, that is, economic work.

Note: If a spiritual worker is supported with economic values, the immediate success will be that he can eat and become spiritually active or refreshed. The consequence will initially remain within his personality; but it does not stop there. The consequences radiate out into the economic process. These would be the consequences emanating from the subject.

Rudolf Steiner: But these cannot be readily incorporated into the economic process unless something is added. Because you cannot regard drinking a cup of tea as productive. The cup of tea would only be economically relevant if you wanted to produce something, you would drink a cup of tea in addition to your usual food and thus be able to work more than you would have worked without the cup of tea. The question would then be whether this could be seen as an economic service.

Note: The fact that I consume tea means that tea can be picked in the colonies. I actually devalue by creating the possibility for new economic values to be generated.

Rudolf Steiner: If you want to determine economic values in a positive sense, you come to a different level when you discuss the question of the extent to which consumption is necessary to continue the economic process. That is a question that actually has nothing to do with the economy as such.

Note: I would like to put the devaluation that occurs when the cup of tea is drunk so that one can work again on the same level as the example of the doctor and shoemaker. The tea picker applies labor. I drink the tea. The tea picker serves to enable me to work again.

Rudolf Steiner: If we put the question this way, then tea picking turns the natural product tea into an economic value. That is the creation of an economic value. But will an economic value arise or disappear in the same sense when the tea is drunk?

X: It will disappear, will be devalued.

Y: I would like to say that it is revalued.

Rudolf Steiner: This translation cannot actually be carried out; because then you would have to describe every consumption, every use, merely as a conversion.

Remark: conversion into energy.

Rudolf Steiner: Then we go from the economic realm into the realm of natural science. There you are engaging a natural process that no longer belongs to the economic realm.

Take the process of drinking tea! You drink the tea up. Now you have this value, which has been produced, made to disappear from the economic process. There is no question about that. Now, for my sake, you will even be strengthened by the tea – I will make this assumption – and do an economic job. This in itself is not yet value, but it is value when you apply it to a natural product. And only now does the economic formation of value begin again at the moment when you approach the natural product. The question of whether you have become stronger or not does not arise in the formation of value, but the formation of value only begins after you have become stronger. So, what happens in you when you drink tea, even if you become an athlete by drinking tea, is not what you contribute to the economic process.

This natural process must be excluded in the same way as the value of land. Of course, you can include it, and then it is analogous to including earthworms in the economic process without human labor being used for it. When the earthworms go through the field, they make the field fertile. You cannot include this in the economic process. Just try to follow this in the further results. You will also see: if you were to be strengthened by consumption, it would be seen as value-forming. Then you would enter into an economic order in which work alone would be value-forming. It is only in connection with nature or the human spirit.

It is not possible to arrive at a political economy if one includes processes that lie in human beings or in nature in the political economy.

Question: How do you want to look at the gift?

Rudolf Steiner: I may speak of a devaluation in the gift, because as long as I only have human abilities in mind for which I can use the gift, I am not yet speaking of economics. First, when I give a scholarship, I let this value disappear into the economic process until it comes up again.

Note: One can almost see how the gift continues to work.

Rudolf Steiner: What continues to have an effect depends very much on such factors, which absolutely elude any accounting approach. Otherwise, for example, you would have to use diligence in economic terms. But diligence would be a fictitious value in economic terms, not only a fictitious value, but even an impossible value.

In the moral sense, if I had, say, a workshop, I would reprimand my workers if they were lazy; in the economic sense, I would only reprimand them if they did not produce anything for me. In the economic sense, I am only concerned with what they produce. Morally, I am concerned with whether they are hardworking or lazy.

Question: Can we only speak of work in an economy based on the division of labor?

Rudolf Steiner: We can only speak of economic work when reciprocity begins for one another in the work.

Question: Can we speak of work in the primitive economy?

Rudolf Steiner: We can only speak of work in primitive societies if we consider that the father does a certain job, that he consumes and his wife, sons and daughters also consume, the daughters do different work and so on, in other words, work for each other.

Question: So how do we even arrive at a concept of work?

Rudolf Steiner: It is very easy to form a concept of work in the economic sense. It exists when we have a natural product that has been transformed by human activity for the purpose of being consumed.

Question: Does it matter whether it is consumed or not?

Rudolf Steiner: It must at least be made consumable, because then it has value.

Question: Do you always have to look at the natural product or the object when a value is created through spiritual organization of work, or do you have to see if there is an object on which the organized work has been applied?

Rudolf Steiner: You cannot look at an object, because in the context in which you are dealing with it, a lasting object is not there. The mind can only be used for the organization and structuring of the work. Then, under certain circumstances, you are not dealing with an object.

Question: Then it does not fall within the concept of work?

Rudolf Steiner: That is a secondary concept. Work is the human activity that is expended to make a natural product consumable. That is work in the economic sense. You must now understand this as a final concept. Now the spirit can take over and organize this work. But in the process, what you now want to grasp as a coherent economic process can simply move away from the natural product. It can consist in mere structuring, in mere division of labor.

Question: But what if devaluation is added through labor?

Rudolf Steiner: Devaluation is only negative for the value. In terms of making it fit for consumption, you are not going back. You are only going back in terms of assigning value.

Remark: In terms of making consumption possible, there is indeed a decline from a higher process to a lower one.

Rudolf Steiner: First you wind the spool. This requires work. You have created value here. And now you unwind the spool. You destroy the value. But if you look at the matter, you will find that a consumable product has been created up to the point of destruction, and afterwards the end goal of the work is once again a consumable product. The work consists of making a natural thing consumable. They have just switched on a sub-consumption. They need so and so many such processes to have them consumed by other processes. In this consumption, where the devaluation must take place, a necessary work is done.

Note: Useless labor must be designated as labor because its product has been brought to the point where it can be consumed.

Rudolf Steiner: If you want to have the concept of economic work, then you have to define it that way, but the concept of economic work is not yet a value. Only work is defined. The point in economics is not to apply economic work, but to produce values.

X: The teacher also does work.

Rudolf Steiner: That is the question. It is not so easy to answer.

X: I am talking about free spiritual activity.

Rudolf Steiner: This belongs to the realm of devaluation, but not devaluation through work.

A: But in the future he is the producer. For this purpose he does 'work.

Rudolf Steiner: This gives us the opportunity to pursue the concept of work ever further. Of course, teaching must be described as an economic value to the highest degree, but the question is whether, if we begin to imagine the concept of work in the economic process, we can still hold on to anything if we call teaching work. Of course, work is already being done as the teacher speaks, walks around, wears himself out. A kind of work is being done. But that is not what flows into the economic process. What flows into it is his organizing activity, which is not even related to what he does as work. That is why work as teaching is so different. A fidget can do a lot of work by fidgeting. Another can do a lot of work by cutting. But the one who teaches with a certain calm pace will also do a job. But that is not what goes into the economic process, but rather his free spiritual activity.

Note: In the performance of work, too, there are those who work hard and achieve little, and those who work little and achieve much.

Rudolf Steiner: Here we already have work that liberates itself relatively. On the one hand, we have work that is actually bound to the object. This work becomes increasingly free of the object. In the case of free spirituality, it is completely detached from the object. And what the person in question “works” is irrelevant. For the economic process, the work of the teacher is not what comes into consideration in the economic process. His capacity, his education, everything else is taken into account economically, except for the work he does.

Question: Why is free spiritual activity devaluing?

Rudolf Steiner: It is devaluing in the sense that it cancels out the values that are formed on the one hand. The Romans had a very fine, instinctive sense of economics - it was just right for a different national character - in that they did not just talk about bread, but about bread and games. And from their point of view, they included both bread and games in what should be included in the social organism. They said to themselves: Just as, when I produce a loaf of bread, it in turn must disappear – it must really disappear – so the labor that is there for the production of bread must actually disappear again in the social process through the labor that is used to perform the play. It is a mutual consumption, as everywhere where there is an organism, there is a mutual building and breaking down. So it is here too. So you can actually see how the mental activity that is carried out on the other side does not continue the process, but takes it backwards. That is why I have always drawn it as a cycle. Nature, labor, capital. Nature, labor, capital returns to itself and the whole process is suspended when it has come back to nature.

Question: Can private economic activity also be included in the concept of the national economy?

Rudolf Steiner: You have to! Within the private economy, certainly.

Objection: I think I cannot include private work in the concept of the national economy.

Rudolf Steiner: That comes from the fact that there is a lack of clarity in the word. The lack of clarity lies in the fact that one already calls a national economy a summary of private economies. One should have a superordinate concept.

Question: Is work only the activity that is to be directed at a very specific object in order to make it consumable?

Rudolf Steiner: That is the case. In economics, one does not have the task of simply, I would like to say, forming abstract philosophical definitions. Under certain circumstances, this is something that one can well impose on oneself as a philosophical pastime or as a form of training. But in economics, the aim is not to create correct terms, but terms that can be applied. People like the economist Lorenz von Stein have created wonderfully astute terms; but a whole host of terms are only of interest to economic philosophers, so to speak. They have no economic application.

X raises the problem of exchange rates and their fluctuations for discussion. He suspects that certain personalities are behind this.

Rudolf Steiner: This does exist and is one of the partial causes. It is very difficult to say that something is the main cause, because this has changed a lot at different times. But the most diverse causes converge in the foreign exchange conditions. The main cause of the more recent foreign exchange losses is the discrepancy that has arisen between the gold and paper currencies in one's own country.

It is essentially the case that the gold currencies no longer play a decisive role in countries with weak currencies. On the other hand, in countries with a sound currency, the cover is still there, which naturally means that those countries that have gold currencies are in a significantly different credit situation than the others. First of all, the foreign exchange question is a credit question. Then, of course, when something like the credit damage of an economic area occurs, one can also use such a cause to go further. You can drive down credit again on the stock market. In addition, there are the rather senseless ventures in one's own country. There is no question that at present there is no reason for the fall of the German mark to the extent that it actually occurred, but that speculation in one's own country, which sells abroad and thereby adds to the situation, plays a significant role. All this then causes the foreign exchange to start rolling downhill. Then it is the same as in Austria. It is difficult to say what else contributed in Russia. In Austria and Germany the thing started from the decrease of the gold stock, from the decrease of the credit conditions, from speculation in one's own country. In Germany there is speculation on exports, in Austria there is speculation right now in such a way that the foreign stock is held back, making it even more expensive, so that in Austria the crown is being pushed down by francs, dollars and so on that are in the country. This could not have happened if the currencies of high value had not already risen. Then it could even continue in its own country, and as a result this matter could reach immeasurable proportions. But it was the beginning of the evil that German gold was collected to such an extraordinarily strong extent during the war and transferred to the state, which ensured that the gold came out of the country. There is no gold among the people at all. That is the essential thing. Today, the Reichsbank's gold holdings can only be compared with the population's total gold holdings before the war.

Of course, other factors have been added, but they cannot be grasped at all. It only takes a certain currency to be retained in a country for the exchange rate to be affected. Depending on the value of the foreign currency, an acceleration or deceleration can be initiated; after that, the currency of the country with little foreign currency sinks and falls. From this point of view, it is easy for certain individuals to damage the other state. It is difficult to determine how much of the country's debt stems from its own actions. It will be a considerable sum that has been gambled away by the speculation of certain people.

Question: Some say that the blame for the foreign exchange crisis lies in the change in the balance of payments of the poorer countries in relation to the other countries. In the case of Germany, this deterioration was mainly due to expenditure abroad, without any equivalent value coming in. This creates a balance in favor of the Entente. That is the decisive factor.

Rudolf Steiner: This could never have led to such a devaluation of the currency as occurred in Germany and Austria. The opinion that the discrepancy between gold currency and paper money is only on the surface is not correct because the fact simply exists that before the war paper currency was covered by gold currency. That is a real economic fact. And now this comes into consideration, that as long as there is essentially gold coverage for the paper currency, essentially no inflation takes place. That is how it is connected. When the gold is gone, inflation sets in. And then you can, with that senseless inflation, which was only possible because people did not feel the need to still count on the gold standard, make money as cheap as possible, of course. So because we have the gold standard because of England's power, one of the causes that first comes into play and then undermines credit is essentially the soaring price of gold when it is not there. And then, when the matter comes to credit money, the balance of payments begins to play its role. The matter must first get off the ground.

The cause of the devaluation of the currency lies before the war. You will remember that during the war it was always said that Germany would perish because of her lack of money. That could not happen during the war. But when the war was over and when the borders opened up a little economically, what was developed during the war came into consideration. That was what started the avalanche. Then all possible causes worked together. The balance of payments should only be invoked after the balance sheet figures have been made into named figures. As long as they are mere balance sheet figures, the balance of payments cannot be invoked. It must first mean something, not just a difference.

X: Gold just migrates abroad and has a devaluing effect as long as the gold standard exists.

Rudolf Steiner: Given our current economic circumstances – with the gold standard being the underlying factor – there is no doubt that countries that do not have any gold are essentially dependent on countries that have a gold reserve for the valuation of their products, and the value of money then depends on this. The matter can be understood quite well from the tremendous upheavals in the world; but the effects are so tremendous that one would still like to find “very secret causes”. But precisely this devaluation of the currency is not as hidden as one would always like to say; rather, it is based on the fact that, curiously enough, people today are such that they cannot evaluate events at all.

I often said after the war was over: Those who look at things in the right way will find that we have lived through as many centuries since 1914 in terms of changes that have occurred as we have lived through years in time. And actually, it seems like an anachronism that certain things have remained the same. You get the feeling that after five or six hundred years, the language would have changed; it's like an anachronism that people still speak essentially the same way as they did in 1914. But this has not made a very strong impression on people.

When you look back in history, you usually overlook larger periods of time. Just try to study the fluctuations in grain prices in 15th/16th century England, for example, and you will see that even with changes that did not occur so tumultuously, there are fluctuations in grain prices of up to twenty times the usual price. From this you can see how things that have happened in life since 1914 must actually be valued. People do not believe this because they have no sense of the qualitative side of life. People only noticed when what later happened became apparent – because money is an dishonest companion – when money was exposed. People only have an instinct for appreciating their wallet. It is only when things show up there – after all, people only think in terms of money – that they notice it in the exchange rate plunge. But if we now look at life qualitatively – please take Russia, take a whole complex of Russian life, permeated with the attitude from “Father Czar” to Lenin – what do you have to interpose in terms of metamorphosing forms? Basically, even the Russian devaluation of currency is only a kind of barometer for what has otherwise happened in life. So it is not so inexplicable. It is just the effect of a terrible and will become even more terrible. But the matter is simply understandable from the course of the other events.

Question: Do we already have a world economy today?

Rudolf Steiner: You can't formulate the thought that way. You have to take the state before the world war first. This was to a high degree a yielding of events to a world economic process. You only need to take international check transactions to have a yardstick for the high degree to which the world economy had already been achieved. People's thinking did not keep pace with the emergence of the world economy. They still stuck to the formulations of the national economy. It would not have been possible to keep up with the facts if people had kept up with the thinking, that all the torment of humanity through all possible customs barriers would have emerged even before the war. This was already in line with the Versailles world upheaval. People did not want to catch up with the thinking. They wanted to correct the facts. They opened a customs barrier somewhere at the border when something was wrong. But the situation is such that we had already achieved a high degree of world economy, despite all the tariff barriers. When there is already a high degree of world economy, the price you pay when you take the tram from Dornach to Basel depends on the conditions in America. Everything has gradually been incorporated to a high degree into world economy prices. So that was already there. In terms of its real value, much of it had simply been priced into the world economy to a high degree. Now, suddenly, the barriers caused by the war, which necessitated economic intercourse that was not in line with what had already emerged.

And since people still have not begun to think in more modern terms, an attempt was made at Versailles to correct things in the old style. The dismemberment of Austria was a mistake at any price, for example, the loss of the Austrian steamship industry, the price of coal, nothing. This only led to chaos, this desperate attempt to use old ideas to control the facts, while the world economy was already in place to a high degree. With limited thinking, one could say that national economies would arise again. But that is not the case. The fact that foreign exchange rates fluctuate so much proves that there is a world economy: because all kinds of goods from all over the world are in Austria, and so you can influence the world economy with them. These are things that prove that it is no longer possible to simply ignore the world economy.

Question: If America gives Russia loans to help Russia rise — by building railroads and so on — the result will be that the money will be put into Russia and that the Americans will simply have the title to the property without any way of getting it back.

Rudolf Steiner: If America were to decide to make this monetary contribution, in whatever form, it would be a gift. The great loan that has taken place must give rise to a gift. But America will not make up its mind to help Europe until Europe offers guarantees that it will not get involved in further military or economic entanglements. The only reason why America is not helping - for America would benefit from doing so because its own economy would become healthier - is that Europe presents a picture that says: what I put into it is lost. People in America are afraid of every loan. It will not come about unless Europe gradually comes to the point where, I might say, more personal credit would be given again. You can see from this how easy it would be, in principle, to help Europe, if only it were thought that the prospects had opened up at that moment, even if only seemingly, because Rarhenau was not an able man and Wirth was not either. But if, especially in the Entente and the defeated countries, new people came into the leading positions who had nothing to do with the pre-war situation, and if all people disappeared from public life who still represented the names of the past, then Europe would be helped at that moment: Europe would have personal credit. Things are so that the real credit no longer exists, that the personal credit must raise the real credit again. Then it could come to a slow ascent. If once Krone and Mark would rise a little, then there would be a completely different mood again, then there would be all kinds of causes that would only then emerge to further rise. But the moral level has sunk so far.

Objection: A survey of the causes of the suffering caused by the lack of foreign currency yielded the most contradictory answers.

Rudolf Steiner: The solution to this question lies not in the fact that everyone was wrong, but that everyone was right; namely, everyone hit on certain partial causes from their own circle of experience. This is borne out by the necessity of associative life. In economic life, there is no possibility for anyone to make a comprehensive judgment. So most people were right. But the one who seems to me to have been most right, in pointing to the deepest cause, albeit in matters akin to morality, was Edison, who was able to think entirely in economic terms and who said: The main thing lies in the principles according to which you select the people you take into the business. The shrewd businessman asks people to be hired questions that have nothing to do with the management. They will find their way into the management if they are only otherwise capable: That's why, as a businessman, I ask them questions that prove to me whether they still know what they learned at school, for example, or have forgotten it. If the person I ask tells me absolute nonsense, then the answer to my question is that I consider him to be not open-minded enough. Edison asked a whole series of such questions when he wanted to hire someone. If you approach the matter so practically, it makes a difference whether I hire someone who cannot tell the difference between wheat and rye and have him at the office desk, or someone who can distinguish between the two. And this is what people do not believe today. People believe that you can be a very capable accountant without knowing what a sunflower is. That is cum grano salis speaking. But what Edison gave as a suggestion seemed to me to be an extraordinarily apt one. It is economical, it shows how far the mind is taking hold of labor.

Question: What do current economic necessities demand of those who believe they have to found a new economy?

Rudolf Steiner: To a large extent, I try to give you partial answers to this question every day. For what is most important is to really grasp this transition of the national economies into the world economy, which has been taking place for about fifty years, and to stop working with the old economic categories. Instead, we need to understand how certain things have to be created today that were not there before and that can only be created out of thinking.

Take earlier economies, and you have them simply existing side by side. The even earlier state of affairs was where the economies were completely divergent. This economic state of affairs existed in the time when some areas were still simply to be conquered. It does not depend on the distances. You can imagine uncultivated France and the migrating Franks who found the empty areas. This gives rise to completely different economic conditions than if one came into a relatively closed area with more culture. The Visigoths had a different fate from the Franks because they moved into an area that could not be economically improved. And the greatest example is precisely for these disparate national economies, which then interact, the relationship between England and India, and its colonies in general. Here, dissimilar national economies have been incorporated into a common territory, either by conquest or by peaceful conquest. That is the first condition. The second is when the territories border on each other and are independent national economies. And the third is when a closed territory is created in such a way that nothing can coexist in the economic sense – for we are not talking about completely deserted lands. Now we must be aware that we are in the midst of a tremendous upheaval, and that the most important thing is the global challenge of the world economy, to which we must adapt. This understanding of all things in the national economy is what matters.

You have a very interesting example of how little people know about this in the book by Spengler, “The Decline of the West”, which also has an economic chapter. Spengler really speaks in excellent aperçus, but has no idea what things are really like. His concepts do not correspond to reality anywhere. In the economic field, it is particularly bad now, in the second volume, because Spengler has a relatively good insight into how certain ancient economic areas operated. He thus understands the peasant natural economy extraordinarily well on the one hand, and on the other hand, he also understands modern economic life quite well. He differentiates there – and this is Spengler's coquetry! — the Faustian from the Homeric. Now, the tremendously significant thing is that even a man as brilliant as Spengler cannot possibly realize that what has once been overcome apparently still enters into what comes later, so that all that he describes as ancient economics is, after all, right among us as a field.

Where we are dealing with what I have called purchase money, what Spengler attributes only to antiquity intrudes everywhere, except that the form has changed somewhat. He believes that whereas in his opinion money was once material money, today it is only functional money, while our money today must be based on the fact that the relationship between material money and functional money is being seen through: He throws around terms that have been so coquettishly tailored that they do not adequately describe reality. That is why there is something brilliant about Spengler's concepts. The dazzling effect and, on the other hand, the confusion caused by the way he mixes up the terms – it is indeed a danger for those who are not immune to this confusion. Our task is to think about the conditions as they are required.

We have this threefold coexistence: the very ordinary conquest and the coexistence of economies and the original natural economy, which is hidden by the fact that we use money for everything. There is this dispute between nominalists and materialists. The former are of the opinion that money is only a sign, that is, that the material it is made of has no value at all, but only the number on it; while the materialists are of the opinion that it is the material value that essentially constitutes the money. People argue about such things, whereas the fact of the matter is that in the one area, where we are still more concerned with agriculture and related matters, the materialists are right with regard to the function of money in the economy, whereas in industry and in the free life of the mind the nominalists are right; for there money plays the role that the nominalists ascribe to it. And then we have the interplay of the two. We have to grasp such things! People fight for things that are far too simple, while we have a complicated life.

Objection: But now we would have to rename our economics course to a “course in world economic theory”!

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the names remain. You see, there was even a time when morality was considered an economic matter. In the first and second Christian centuries, morality was considered an economic matter.

Question: I cannot understand the reciprocal movement of natural product – labor – capital and so on. The means of production has already undergone a transformation.

Rudolf Steiner: But the reversal does not refer to the fact that the means of production is produced, but that it produces. The transformation only takes on significance at the moment when the means of production ceases to be a commodity. It remains a commodity until the moment when it can be transferred to production. Where it begins to produce, the flow of national economic activity changes for the means of production. From that moment on, it is removed from the context in which it was, where it was a commodity. In the “key points” I have stated that it begins to be very much like nature because it can no longer have a price. It is just as much a part of the economic process as mere nature. So it moves back to nature again.

Question: Is this reflected in the balance sheet?

Rudolf Steiner: You mean this disappearance of value? It only appears in the balance sheet in abnormal cases. It only appears when someone, let's say, sets up a business, so to speak, brings about a sum of means of production, then goes under, and another takes it over, who is more skillful and succeeds. Then, when you put these two balances together, the one of going under and the one of continuing, you will find that a partial phenomenon of devaluation has been brought about. Through going under, the second - simply through the process of going under - has bought the sum of the means of production more cheaply than he could ever have had them otherwise. As a result, he has received a part as a gift. So that this could then be expressed in the balance sheet. If you were now to follow the consequences of such a process in the further course of the new balance sheet, you would have in it a much cheaper work, that is, one that has partly passed over without cost. In this way it could already be proved arithmetically.

Note: These are of course exceptions. Today, the abnormal is normal.

Rudolf Steiner: But this must gradually lead to monstrosity, because the means of production are directly transferred into pensions, while the land rent only arises when I invest the capital in it.

Question not noted.

Rudolf Steiner: You must not forget: if you put capital into a business, it means something essentially different economically than if you do not have the capital in the business. A completely different agent is at work when you have it in it than when you do not have it in it, although not having it in it is basically also only an illusion. Things lead to such illusions. You may ask: where, then, is the capital, say, the loan capital, that is not invested in enterprises? It is only present as production and land rent. And if someone wanted to have some money for themselves, they would have to withdraw it completely from the economic process for a while, thereby creating tension, and give it away again at a different value. They would come off badly because the money is progressively devalued – otherwise it is inconceivable that the process would occur radically, and that shifts the circumstances.

If we took a healthy approach to the economy, the right conditions would arise. Today, it is often comical to see how the wage issue, for example, is handled: people demand higher wages, which in turn lead to more expensive production conditions. Then the wages are not enough again. People demand higher wages again, and so it goes, and no one knows where it will end. These things make people see sand in their own eyes. Whereas in an associative economy, if we keep to the term 'wages', which is not correct, wages arise that can arise. Wrong wages do not arise.

Question: Why do wages have to 'arise'?

Rudolf Steiner: Try to examine the following: a worker receives an average of, say, two francs a day. Now you can say: that is a very low wage. - How can this wage become a very high wage without it being more than two francs?

Comment: By making the products cheaper.

Rudolf Steiner: Then you will get the final values first. Then you will see that everything I have said comes out. You do not have to keep putting the cart before the horse. You have to ask the question like this: We will leave him two francs. But under what circumstances will two francs be a wage twice as high as today, or three times as high? You have to start from the dynamic conditions. You always start from the static. Then you want the stationary things to cause movement. It is indeed: if I put five cents in my pocket, nothing in itself, but only something in relation to the whole economy.

Question regarding the depreciation of money: Will it gradually lose its value? Also as purchasing power?

Rudolf Steiner: As purchasing power, it has the same value until the end. This question is more a technical one of commerce, a question of how. The gradual erosion of money is not easy to imagine. It would require an extraordinarily bureaucratic apparatus.

I emphasize that I do not want to proceed programmatically, but only to say what is. For my insight is that we cannot create a paradise on earth by economic means. That would not work; instead, we can only create the best possible state of affairs. Now, one has to ask oneself why we have sunk below the best possible state. It is because the individual factors of the national economy cannot assert their true value at one point or another. It is possible today for a person who works in a spiritual way to be paid in a way that is not at all necessary for the national economy as a whole. He is either paid too high or too low. Both occur. But if he is paid too little, he immediately gives rise to an unhealthy change in prices as a result of his low pay. The same applies if he is paid too much. Corrections must be made to this, and it is only a matter of – without taking Foerster's things into consideration – which factors in economic life make this rearrangement, this circulation possible. So a circulation in which the tolerable mutual prices emerge, not only for goods, but also for the intellectual organization, and also for the necessary free intellectual life.

It follows directly from this that money must become old. The only question is how this can be done technically. And you would not be able to gradually wear out the money in any other way than by attaching coupons to the notes that have to be torn off at certain times, and by an official authority. This would result in a very complicated bureaucratic apparatus. But it is really never a matter of bringing about the erosion through such external signs, but rather that the real course of things brings about this value by itself. This happens when you simply give money, all kinds of money, more or less the character of a bill of exchange, that is, I mean the character of a bill of exchange in that there is an expiry date. Of course, this cannot be calculated in abstracto, but only approximately at the outset, assuming a specific moment. Then one must correct until the matter comes to a possible deadline.

Then it would be a matter of finding out what was needed for the global economy, which, after all, was already there for what was basically a very extensive local economy. This is the practice of the jubilee year in the Old Testament. It is something very similar to the aging of money: the remission of all debts. With a radical reduction of all debts, all economically harmful assets or capital also disappear. After all, you probably remember how long it was until a jubilee year – every seventy years. Now this jubilee year, compared to what would be necessary today in terms of the global economy, was determined a priori by simply defining the age of the patriarchs. I can't remember right now whether it is in the Bible, but in any case, the custom was originally to determine the human age because it was correctly calculated: if you take the course of an entire human life, it contains everything that is there in the form of gift capital in youth, then in loan capital and in trading capital, i.e. circulating capital. It was assumed that a person has the right to consume in his youth what he will later earn as a mature person, and then earn a little less when he approaches the end. In those days, this was seen as a kind of borrowing.

Now, you see, that was a priori; it would not look the same in the world economy. The time periods would be considerably longer. But it is also clear that when this gradual depreciation of money occurs, it occurs in mutual transactions themselves, because the initial year would be on the banknote. In real economic circulation, the money will then have a lower purchasing power, but a lower utilization power for all organization: the further it advances, the lower its utilization power. So that it can gradually change into gift money due to the decrease in its utilization power, and that it then changes back into young money, which can simply be reissued on the transition path. This must be brought about only through the associations. Thus labor has its highest value for products that are as close as possible to natural products, even though the worker does not get more than anyone else according to the price formula; but labor then has the highest value there in the national economic process. Only part of it goes to the one who works; the other part goes into the economic process without remainder. They have deprived the individual of the opportunity to enrich himself.

Question: How can money be used differently if it has the same purchasing power as young and old money?

Rudolf Steiner: If you start a business with young money, you are now in a position to invest in that business for a long period of time by putting young money into it; whereas with old money you could not invest in the business for a long period in the same way.

Question not noted.

Rudolf Steiner: You mean: once I have bought my means of production, then instead of money I have the means of production, and the money that I now give away is then in the hands of someone else. The money that has gone into production must of course remain there. But under certain circumstances this money can be transformed – it would not be transformed if the person concerned can consume it – but what is in it in production is a question of commerce. This will not be very bureaucratic, because the associations can ensure that within the enterprises, which are based on the same principles, nothing but money of a certain age is used. So the money is absorbed into the means of production. The other measure, that the means of production lose their value when they have become means of production, comes to help with this. These two things combine into one. Today you have it the same way, only disguised. The money that is lent for production does not go back, gets stuck in production. It is only held by the fact that the means of production can be sold again. Thus it is continually rejuvenated. But if the means of production cannot be sold, the money remains in its old age. You have to think in real terms, then the question will never arise: how do you make the money keep its age in there? Rather, you will say: that must happen - so the measure must simply be taken! This is an outwardly technical question. Of course, you could say this: there would be a certain possibility that such things would be circumvented by speculation; but speculation would certainly have much less ground in such a community than in one that gives money an indefinitely long value. In reality, money does wear out after all. Otherwise, that Pomeranian countryman could be right who says to himself: How big are the Prussian national debts? I want to invest a small capital in interest and compound interest, and that would be able to cover the Prussian national debt after so and so many years. This could never come about because all those who would be obliged to pay for this sum, which after all needed the appropriate cover, would perish. In some way or other, the guarantors would disappear, and the Prussian state would not get a penny of it for centuries.

So you see that pure money does indeed wear out. It is only a matter of taking these things into reason, which take place in reality and cause damage by not being in reason. That is why I can say: I only look at the real, not at an agitative being-shoulding. Because the things are there! It is a matter of asking: How can we rehabilitate the world economy?

Question: What is the relationship between state and money?

Rudolf Steiner: Through what I described yesterday, a Reichsbank, a state bank, would be impossible. The result would be a banking institution between those who have received gift funds and those who, through work, namely soil work, create new goods in their beginning. This rejuvenation would pass from the state to the economy. And that is what constitutes the further necessity. By passing over to the economy, this measure to make money young again would be linked to other economic measures, not to state measures. And as a result, quite different value relationships would emerge than now under the fiscal element. We would have something that already exists. After all, things are only hidden by the fact that they do not take place in the right place. We would have transferred a fiscal measure into an economic one. The tax authorities would have less opportunity to proceed economically than an economic association.

Question: What would be the nature of a different monetary basis?

Rudolf Steiner: It would be created by the fact that everything that is paper money, a money surrogate, would become very similar. The great differences of today are only caused by arbitrary measures. So the state banknotes and all other types of money surrogates would become much more similar to each other. One would have a unified currency, and it would be fairly unimportant what it was made of, because it takes on a purely nominal character at the end of the process; and by being reduced to its basic elements, it takes on a metallic character, which is what it should have to begin with. Currency would be something that is in a constant state of flux, but it would be fully adapted to the peculiarities of the economic process.

Question: Didn't you once praise the useful means of production as a monetary basis?

Rudolf Steiner: Let us ask ourselves: What determines the value of a particular currency over such a period of time during which this change takes place? It is determined by the available usable means of production. Suppose there is very little usable means of production available; then the thing will have to be converted very quickly. Money will accumulate everywhere, purchasing power will decrease everywhere due to the limited means of production, and so on. But if there are many usable means of production, the circulation will be different, and thus this money will have an increased value. In this way, we get the currency out through the usable means of production.

Question: Would something stable have to be taken as the substance, like gold?

Rudolf Steiner: As far as I can see, the real substance of money would be basically unimportant, so that you could put the year, which would then become the value, on paper as well. I cannot see that it would then be necessary to introduce such a currency as gold. It would only be possible to the extent that specialized economies were formed. But to the extent that a world economy actually exists - it is realized to the extent that the economy emancipates itself - it is possible to make money out of any material. What does money become as a result of what I am saying? Money becomes nothing more than the bookkeeping that runs through the entire economic area. If you wanted to introduce a giant accounting system that is not necessary, you could book all of this back and forth of money quite well in a corresponding place. Then the items would always be in the corresponding places. What actually happens is nothing more than tearing the item out of the relevant place and giving the person the appearance, so that the accounting system migrates. In a fluctuating sense, money is accounting. I cannot see that it should have any other than a decorative value, whether you make it out of this or that.

Objection: Gold would provide a certain standard.

Rudolf Steiner: That cannot be the case, and if it is the case, it is evident in this bookkeeping itself. The essential thing is that all monetary transactions are transferred to bookkeeping. Instead of transferring an item from the assets side to the liabilities side, you transfer the money.

Objection: It should not be gold because the devaluation could be avoided by withholding the gold at the end.

Rudolf Steiner: If there is a buyer for the gold. That would have to be the case, that is, the purchase would have to be advantageous. Then you would have to do the unnecessary calculation on top of everything else. Yes, that wouldn't help you at all. If, for example, you made a piece of jewelry out of it, you would be able to cheat with it.

These things must be considered for the purpose of economics itself. If you consider these things together, you will be able to evaluate what is currently only done on the basis of partial observation and inadequate speculation in the treatment of economics. There are always inadequate methods and insufficient observations.

Question: Which capital arose first in economic terms, commercial capital or industrial capital?

Rudolf Steiner: First, of course, commercial capital, historically, and in fact, trade itself is the very first work of exchange that has to be done. If you go back to primitive village conditions today, you have relatively little industrial capital. The village craftsmen do not earn proportionately more than the farmer. On the other hand, the people who trade earn something. This enables them to borrow. And then it goes further. Because capital does not arise if it is not usable. In fact, industrial capital arises only in third place. This is so much connected with habits that rational reasons cannot be found.

Question: Should Switzerland go to the national economy or the world economy? - Is there not a tendency in many countries to go back to the national economy?

Rudolf Steiner: You said that Switzerland had moved too early into the world economy because it had been shown that it had not done well? You cannot say that because Switzerland was unable to test the world economy in a natural way. What you now call the “goodwill” of neighboring countries has been brought about in an unnatural way by the war. If it had been able to continue to develop as it had until 1914, it would not have suffered to that extent, but would have continued to develop. Of course, the same damage would have occurred, which gradually became apparent at the time and which meant that one would have had to sail peacefully into the associative. As things stand now, it must be said, very little depends on Switzerland. For now we are dealing in the world with the tendency towards a world economy, but with its continuous disruption by the political intentions of the national economies, which have coincided with national aspirations. What is disrupting the world economy today is political intentions. Politics has begun to want to reduce everything back to the national economy. We cannot use Switzerland as an illustration here, because it is politically too powerless. Every now and then Switzerland is allowed to have a say when it is known that it will say what is wanted – Switzerland also says what is wanted.

So Switzerland cannot be held up as an example, but America, which is decidedly leading to an economic design and to an inhibition of the world economic design - it could also be that it would be very difficult to overcome this tendency of America towards an economic design. On the other hand, in a country organized like England today, which basically has only a pseudo-national economy and in reality a world economy, the tendency towards a world economy could develop. Because here you have England, over there India, South Africa, Australia, and so on. What is economically connected is basically spread all over the world. Thus England does not have the economy of the whole world at the same time, but it has the economic needs that are necessary throughout the world, which it must synthesize into something that must qualitatively take on the spirit of the world economy. That is what must necessarily lead to the world economy in the course of economic development. And in time, North American politics will have to submit to it as well; for the economy will simply make its very powerful demands on the hard heads of the people, and they will have to submit to the world economy. England could not make any progress if it continued to work in the merely economic sense. So you have to look for the real antagonism between England and America. Switzerland is not at all decisive.

Question: I cannot imagine how the stone in the crown of England could be explained in terms of its value only by human labor, not by its rarity.

Rudolf Steiner: The point is that economic values arise only when human labor or the human spirit is expended. This is the only way that economic values arise in the context of the division of labor. If you are now required to declare the value of this stone in the Crown of England, you must say to yourself: If it is possible to extract values from the ongoing economic process that the individual appropriates, then the value that has been generated can indeed be retained by the person in question. So if anyone wants to keep a million under our current circumstances, they can. He can accumulate the million. Then, for all I care, he can put this million in his stocking. He can now replace this putting-in-the-stocking with the other action of artificially attaching to some product, which is rare, the same value as to his money – and letting it pass into circulation. Then, by attaching this value to the thing purely conventionally and merely by his fiat, by his spiritual organization, he has attached this value to this object that he particularly likes. It is what has happened, merely under the influence; one cannot perhaps call it spiritual deeds, but spiritual measures are taken. The concept of rarity dissolves economically into the economic concept of spirit.

Objections are raised against the threefold order: It is said to be impossible to carry out the separation of the three limbs. The task of the threefold order could be not so much to build up as to separate negatively where harmful influences of the three areas on each other exist, and to leave the work at that. Especially with regard to the limitations of the three areas, one could not imagine anything. Economic life would be limited to what is called technology.

Rudolf Steiner: The thinking of the people who make this objection is not sufficiently developed. This is the main problem: our present-day educational institutions do not develop thinking enough. People can only form concepts that they store neatly next to each other. But the same thing happens in the human threefolded organism. If you take the optic nerve, it belongs to the nervous-sensory system; but it could not exist, of course, if it were not nourished, especially during sleep, by the nutritional system, by the metabolic system, if, that is, nutritional processes did not take place in it and if the inhaled air did not continually pass through the spinal canal into the optic nerve and a circulatory process did not also take place there. So that in the human organism something belongs mainly to the sensory nervous system or to the nutritional or rhythmic system.

The same applies to the social organism. It is necessary that the other two systems play a part in the economic organism. But in spite of all this, it remains true that essentially the sensory-nervous system is located in the head, and that head nutrition and head breathing are effected by another instance. It is precisely by creating these three instances that this interaction will exist in the right sense. I have always objected to the use of the word 'trinity'. The question is: how should the three elements, which are present in any case, relate to each other in a natural way so that they can work on each other accordingly? The spiritual organism will essentially be based on freedom. But of course the economic life will also have to have an effect on the spiritual organism, otherwise the professors would have nothing to eat. But this will have just the right effect if it comes from a different source, so that it becomes necessary to develop an economic organism in one direction and a spiritual organism in another direction, and then the state-judicial “organism”. Objections are raised only by those who imagine this threefold division as a division. It is well known that this has happened quite a bit. I found one commentator saying that he had given lectures on the three parliaments in the social organism. Anyone who imagines it this way imagines an impossibility, because there can only be a parliament in the state, not in the free spiritual life. There can only be the individual individuality, which creates a network of self-evident authority. In the economic sphere, there can only be associations. In parliament, all the functions will converge, and the right measures will be taken between the individual links of the social organism.

Question: In the tenth lecture, the pursuit of profit was compared to mass in the physical sense. Can the analogy be extended to allow work to be a function between commerce and the pursuit of profit?

Rudolf Steiner: According to the physical energy formula, \(e = \frac{m \cdot v^2}{2}\). In a similar way, economic energy would be formulated: the possible profits, which would be multiplied by a function of the speed of circulation: \(e = g \cdot f\) (circulation). The pursuit of profit must be multiplied by the speed of circulation, and then you get the figure for the work. This applies to the individual product. If you have a certain profit on it and you multiply it by the speed of turnover, you will have the amount of work. This amount of work is zero if you need to multiply the profit by zero, that is, if you sell immediately: \(0 = g \cdot 0\).

Question: Does the value of the stone in the Crown of England correspond to the tension between it and the need for luxury?

Rudolf Steiner: You explain the matter just like this, only through a different course of events: For the tension that arises through consumption is always the tension between the processing of natural products and the value that labor acquires through the spiritual organization. With something like the stone in the Crown of England, one cannot really speak of its value in a one-sided way. I beg you: what is it actually worth? It is only of value in a very specific economic order, and one that is permeated by a certain spirituality, through opinion, that is, through the spirit. It cannot be said that it has “this value” in itself, but only that it is worth something through the opinion attached to it. If, by buying it for what the seller asks for it, one were to put the seller in a position to have worked as much as he can get through what he receives, then something like an avalanche would have created an entire organization of labor. Just as in physics you need not take into account anything other than the mutual relationships when you allow a small snowball to form an avalanche – then you do not need to change the formula – so in the same way you do not need to change the formula in the economic consideration by the mere fact that such special circumstances arise under which, purely externally viewed, facts are created like this, that a rare product is equivalent to a huge amount of work. This is only possible in the context of the national economy.

My dear friends! You have requested that we meet here to discuss matters that are closely related to your profession, and I may assume that this request of yours has arisen from the realization of the seriousness of our situation, a seriousness that becomes particularly apparent when one tries to work from a religious point of view in the civilizing life of our time. And I may further assume that you are primarily not concerned with what could be called a theological matter, but with a religious matter. It is indeed true that the burning question of our time is not only a theological one. One might think that even with a good deal of goodwill, some people could come to terms with the theological question in a relatively short time. But what must be clear to anyone looking impartially at our time is precisely not the question of dogma, not the question of theology, but the question of preaching and everything connected with it, the question of religion and especially of religious work as such. But with this we are pointing to a much broader and more comprehensive question than the theological one could ever be.

If one takes the religious standpoint from the outset, then the aim is to find a way of making the spiritual worlds with their various forces of activity accessible to people, initially – if we limit ourselves to the religious – through the word. And here we must be clear about the fact that the whole of our more recent development in this respect presents us with a question of the very deepest seriousness. He does not overlook the question who thinks that from the starting point on which the older people among us still place themselves today, something else could arise than actually the complete disintegration of religious life within our modern civilization. Anyone who believes that religious life can still be saved from the old assumptions is actually taking an impossible point of view. I say this in the introduction not because I want to start from some kind of spiritual-scientific dogma from the outset – that should not be the case – but because what I say simply shows up the unbiased observation of life in our time.

We must be clear about whether we can find an echo in the hearts of our contemporaries today when we preach, when we speak of those things that must one day be spoken of within true Christianity. And I assume that these days here will be such that we will discuss the matters that are actually on your minds in question and answer and disputation, but today I would like to touch on some of the issues that are actually at hand.

We must be clear about the fact that what has emerged in the last three to four hundred years as scientific education in humanity has already drawn a wide circle around itself. Those who are older can still notice the difference that exists in this respect between what was available in the 70s or 80s of the last century and what surrounds us today. In the 70s and 80s of the last century, you could still talk to a large part of the population about questions of spiritual life that arose from the traditions of various denominations and sects, and you could still find hearts and souls in which such talk resonated. Today, we are basically facing a different time. Of course, there are still many people who have not taken in much of the newer education that has found its way into our civilization; and we could still speak to these people about such concepts as Christ, the effect of grace, redemption, and so on, without something like resistance immediately asserting itself in these hearts. But even this will not last much longer. For a certain popular view of education is spreading with lightning speed, penetrating into the broadest masses of people through the literature of newspapers and popular magazines, and basically also through our school education. And even if this educational outlook does not directly develop ideas, feelings that rebel against such concepts as Christ, redemption, grace, and so on, do flourish, we must not forget that these ideas, which are absorbed, are cast in forms that simply give rise to an inner resistance to actual religious life in the broadest circles, unless a new starting point is sought for it. We should not deceive ourselves on this point.

You see, if the view of education continues to spread, which, based on seemingly established scientific premises, describes the universe in such a way that it began in a certain mechanical way, that organic life developed from mechanical tangles, and then, for my sake, the external-physical , then, if the facts are traced that have led to such hypotheses, so that one forms ideas about a corresponding end of the earth or our planetary system from them, then, for all those who seriously and honestly accept these ideas, the religious ideas, especially of Christianity, no longer have the possibility to flourish.

That this is not already very much in evidence today is only because there is so little inner honesty in people. They simply allow the mechanical-physical order of nature and Christianity to coexist and even try to prove theoretically that the two things can go side by side. But this only serves to obscure what is felt in every unbiased soul. And even if the intellect seeks all possible harmonies between Christianity and modern science, the heart will extinguish all these attempts at mediation, and the consequence can only be that there will be less and less room for religion in the hearts and minds of our fellow human beings.

If we do not consider the question from these deeper perspectives, we fail to appreciate the seriousness of the situation in which we currently find ourselves. For the difficulties indicated are encountered not only in theology, but most of all where they are not clearly expressed, where they remain hidden in the subconscious of our fellow human beings; one encounters them precisely when one does not want to practice theology but religion. And that is the important thing that must be understood above all else.

You see, the Ritschl school with all its offshoots is particularly characteristic of what has happened in this field in more recent times. This Ritschl school is still regarded today by many people working in the field of religion as something extraordinary. But what exactly is the Ritschl school? The Ritschl school takes the view that the last few centuries, especially the 19th century, have brought us a large amount of scientific knowledge. This scientific knowledge is dangerous for religious life. The Ritschl school is clear on this: if we let scientific knowledge into religious life, whether it be for criticism or for the formation of dogmas, then religious life will be undermined by it. So we have to look for a different starting point for religious life, the starting point of faith.

Yes, now, in a sense, we would have split the soul in two. On the one hand, we would have the soul's theoretical powers of knowledge, which deal with science, and on the other hand, we would have the establishment of a soul realm that develops very different abilities from the realm of knowledge: the realm of faith. And now there is a struggle, a struggle by no means for harmony between science and religion, but a struggle to exclude science from religion, a struggle for an area in which the soul can move without letting scientific thinking in at all. To allow as little as possible – if possible, nothing at all – of any scientific knowledge to enter religious life: that is the ideal of the Ritschlians.

But now, regardless of whether something like this can be established theoretically, regardless of whether one can persuade oneself that something like this dichotomy of the soul could exist, it is nevertheless true that for the actual life of the soul, so much rebellious power comes from the subconscious against this dichotomy of the soul that precisely religious life is undermined by it. But one could disregard it oneself. One need only go to the positive side of Ritschlianism itself, then one will see how this view must ultimately lose all content for religious feeling itself.

Let us take the most important forces that play a role in religious life. First, there is the realm of faith – whether or not this leads into knowledge is a question we will discuss later – secondly, there is the realm of actual religious experience – we will also take a closer look at this realm of religious experience later – and thirdly, there is the realm of religious authority. Now, one might say that since Luther, Protestantism has done an enormous amount to clarify, explain and so on the concept of authority. And in the struggle against the Catholic Church, one might say that Protestant life has extracted a pure perception with regard to the concept of authority. Within Protestant life, it is clear that one should not speak of an external authority in religion, that only Christ Jesus Himself should be regarded as the authority for individual souls. But as soon as one comes to the content of religious life, that is, to the second point, from the point of view of the Ritschlian school, an enormous difficulty immediately arises, which, as you know, has very, very significantly confronted all the newer Ritschlians. Ritschl himself does not want to have a nebulous, dark, mystical religious experience, but rather he wants to make the content of the Gospels the soul content of religious life. It should be possible for the religious person to experience the content of the Gospel, which means, in other words, that one should also be able to use the content of the Gospel for the sermon. But now the newer Ritschlians found themselves in a difficult position. Take, for example, the Pauline Epistles: in them, of course, there is contained a whole sum of Paul's religious experience, of a religious experience that is, from a certain point of view, entirely subjective, that is not simply a universally human religious experience to which one can relate only by saying to oneself: Paul had this experience, he put it into his letters, and one can only relate to it by saying: I look to Paul, I try to find my way into what his religious experience is, and I enter into a relationship with it. But that is precisely what the newer Ritschlians want to exclude. They say: what is subjective religious experience in this way cannot actually be the content of general Protestant belief, because it leads to simply recognizing an external authority, albeit a historical authority, but one should appeal to that which can be experienced in every single human soul. Thus the Pauline letters would already be excluded from the content of the gospel. For example, the Pauline letters would not be readily accepted into the content of general preaching.

Now, if you look at the matter impartially, you will hardly doubt that what the Ritschl School now presents as the rest that is to remain as objective experiences can, for an impartial consideration, only be considered a subjective experience. For example, it is said that the account of the life of Christ Jesus, as related in the Gospels, can basically be relived by everyone, but not, for example, the doctrine of vicarious atonement. So one must include in general preaching that which relates to the experiences of Christ Jesus, but not something like the doctrine of vicarious atonement and other related things. But on unbiased examination, you will hardly be able to admit that there is such a core of general experience in relation to Christ Jesus that could be appealed to in a very general sermon. The Ritschlianers will just end up, if they are unbiased enough, feeling compelled to drop piece after piece, so that in the end there is hardly much left of the content of the gospel.

But if the content of the gospel is no longer part of the sermon, if it is no longer part of religious instruction at all, then we are left with nothing of a concrete content that can be developed; then we are left only with what could be described as the general – and as such it always becomes nebulous – as the general nebulous mystical experience of God. And this is what we are encountering more and more in the case of individual people in modern times, who nevertheless believe that they can be good Christians with this kind of experience. We are encountering more and more that any content that leads to a form — although it is taken from the depths of the whole person, it must still lead to a certain formulation — any such content is rejected and actually only looked at from a certain emotional direction, an emotional direction towards a general divine, so that in fact in many cases it is precisely the honest religious-Christian endeavor that is on the way to such a vague emotional content.

Now, you see, this is precisely where the Protestant church has arrived at an extraordinarily significant turning point, and even at the turning point where the greatest danger threatens that the Protestant church could end up in an extraordinarily bad position compared to the Catholic church. You see, the Catholic principle has never placed much emphasis on the content of the Gospels; the Catholic principle has always worked with symbolism, even in preaching. And with those Catholic preachers who have really risen to the occasion, you will notice to this day – yes, one might say, today, when Catholicism is really striving for regeneration, even more so – how strongly symbolism is coming to life again, how, so to speak, dogmatic content, certain content about facts and entities of the supersensible life, is clothed in symbols. And there is a full awareness, even among the relatively lower clergy, that the symbolum, when pronounced, penetrates extraordinarily deeply into the soul, much deeper than the dogmatic content, than the doctrinal content and that one can contribute much more to the spread of religious life by expressing the truths of salvation in symbolic form, by giving the symbols a thoroughly pictorial character and not getting involved with the actual teaching content. You know, of course, that the content of the Gospel itself is only the subject of a lecture within the context of the Mass in the Catholic Church, and that the Catholic Church avoids presenting the content of the Gospel as a teaching to the faithful, especially in its preaching.

Anyone who can appreciate the power that lies in a renewal of the symbolic content of the sermon will understand that we are indeed at this important turning point today, that the main results of Protestant life in recent centuries have been very, very much put in a difficult and extremely difficult position in relation to the spreading forces of Catholicism.

Now, when you see how the Protestant life itself loses its connection with the content of the Gospels, and on the other hand you see how a nebulous mysticism remains as content, then you can indeed say: the power of faith itself is actually on very shaky ground. And we must also be clear about the fact that the power of faith today stands on very shaky ground. Besides, one really cannot avoid saying to oneself: No matter how many barriers are erected around the field of faith, no matter how much effort is put into them, no matter how much barriers are erected against the penetration of scientific knowledge, these scientific findings will eventually break down the barriers, but they can only lead to irreligious life, not religious life. What the newer way of thinking in science can achieve, insofar as it is officially represented today, is this – you may not accept it at first, but if you study the matter historically, you will have to recognize it – that ultimately there would be such arguments as in David Friedrich Strauß's 'Alter und neuer Glaube' (Old and New Belief). Of course the book is banal and superficial; but only such banalities and superficialities come of taking the scientific life as it is lived today and trying to mold some content of belief out of it.

Now, as I already indicated earlier, we absolutely need such concepts as Christ, the effect of grace, redemption, and so on, in the realm of religious life. But how should the unique effect of the mystery of Golgotha be possible in a world that has developed as it must be viewed by today's natural science in its development? How can you put a unique Christ in such a world?

You can put forward an outstanding man; but then you will always see, when you try to describe the life of this outstanding man, that you can no longer be honest if you do not want to avoid the question: How does the life of this most outstanding man differ from that of Plato, Socrates or any other outstanding man? One can no longer get around this question. If one is incapable of seeing any other impulses in the evolution of mankind on earth than those which science, if it is honest, can accept today, then one is also incapable of somehow integrating the Mystery of Golgotha into history. We have, of course, experienced the significant Ignorabimus of Ranke in relation to the Christ question, and it seems to me that here the Ignorabimus of Ranke should play a much more significant role for us than all attempts, emanating from Ritschlians or others, to conquer a particular field as a religious field, in which Christ can then be valid because barriers are erected against 'scientific life'.

You see, I would like to get straight to the heart of the matter in these introductory words; I would like to get you to think about it: how can one speak of ethical impulses being realized in some way in a world that operates according to the laws that the scientist must assume today? Where should ethical impulses intervene if we have universal natural causality? — At most, we can assume that in a world of mechanical natural causality, something ethical may have intervened at the starting point and, as it were, given the basic mechanical direction, which now continues automatically. But if we are honest, we cannot think of this natural mechanism as being permeated by any ethical impulses.

And so, if we accept the universal mechanism of nature and the universal natural causality, we cannot think that our own ethical impulses trigger anything in the world of natural causality. People today are just not honest enough, otherwise they would say: If we accept the general natural causality, then our ethical impulses are just beautiful human impulses, but beautiful human impulses remain illusions. We can say that ethical ideals live in us, we can even say that the radiance of a divinity that we worship and adore shines on these ethical ideals, but to ascribe a positive reality to this divine and even to state any kind of connection between our prayer and the divine and its volitional impulses remains an illusion.

Certainly, the diligence and good will that have been applied from various sides in order to be able to exist on the one hand, on the side of natural causality, and on the other hand to conquer a special area in religious life, is to be recognized. That is to be recognized. But there is still an inner dishonesty in it; it is not possible with inner honesty to accept this dichotomy.

Now, in the further course of our negotiations, we will probably not have to concern ourselves too much with the very results of spiritual scientific research; we will find content for the religious questions, so to speak, from the purely human. But I would like to draw your attention to the fact that spiritual science, which does indeed produce positive, real results that are just as much results as those of natural science, is not in a position to stand on the ground of general natural causality. Let us be clear about this point, my dear friends.

You see, the most that our study of nature has brought us is the law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy in the universe. You know that in the newer science of the soul, in psychology, this law of the conservation of energy has had a devastating effect. One cannot come to terms with the soul life and its freedom if one takes this law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy seriously. And the foundations that today's science gives us to understand the human being are such that we cannot help but think that this law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy seems to apply to the whole human being.

Now you know that spiritual science – not as a dogma of prejudice, but as a result of [spiritual research] – has the knowledge of repeated earthly lives. In the sense of this knowledge, we live in this life, for example, between birth and death, in such a way that, on the one hand, we have within us the impulses of physical inheritance (we will come back to these impulses of physical inheritance in more detail). The world in which we live between death and a new birth includes facts that are not subject to the laws of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy. If we seek the spiritual connection between our present life and our next life on earth and further into the lives that no longer proceed physically, but that, after the end of our earthly existence, proceed spiritually, if we draw this connecting line, we encounter world contents that do not fall under our natural laws and therefore cannot be conceived under the law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy. What, then, is the connection between that which plays out from an earlier life into a later one, and that which a person then lives out in his deeds under the influence of earlier lives on earth? This connection is such that it cannot be grasped by natural laws, even if they extend into the innermost structure of the human body.

Every effect of that which was already present in me in earlier lives, in the present life, is such that its lawfulness has nothing to do with the universal laws of nature. This means that if we have ethical impulses in our present life on earth, we can say with certainty that these ethical impulses cannot be fully realized in the physical world, but they have the possibility of being realized from one life on earth to the next, because we pass through a sphere that is released from the laws of nature.

We thus arrive at a concept of miracle that is indeed transformed, but can certainly be retained in terms of knowledge. The concept of miracle in turn takes on meaning. The concept of miracle can only make sense if ethical impulses, and not just natural laws, are at work. But when we are completely immersed in the natural world, our ethical impulses do not flow into the natural order. But if we are lifted out of this natural context, if we place time between cause and effect, then the concept of miracle takes on a completely new meaning; indeed, it takes on a meaning in an even deeper sense.

If we look at the origin of the earth from a spiritual scientific point of view, we do not see the same forces at work as in the universal context of nature today. Rather, we see the laws of nature being suspended during the transition from the pre-earthly metamorphosis to the present-day earthly metamorphosis of the earth. And when we go to the end of the earth, when, so to speak, the Clausiussche formula is fulfilled and the entropy has increased so much that it has arrived at its maximum, when, therefore, the heat death has occurred for the earth, then the same thing happens: we see how, at the beginning of the earth as well as at the end of the earth, natural causality is eliminated and a different mode of action is present. We therefore have the possibility of intervening precisely in such times of suspension, as they lie for us humans between death and a new birth, as they lie for the earth itself before and after its present metamorphosis, the possibility of intervention by that which is today simply rejected by natural causality, the possibility of intervention by ethical impulses.

You see, I would say that humanity has already taken one of the two necessary steps. The first step is that all reasonable people, including religious people, have abandoned the old superstitious concept of magic, the concept of magic that presupposes the possibility of intervening in the workings of nature through this or that machination. In place of such a concept of magic, we now have the view that we must simply let natural processes run their course, that we cannot master natural causality with spiritual forces. Natural causality takes its course, we have no influence on it, so it is said, therefore magic in the old superstitious sense is to be excluded from our fields of knowledge.

But, as correct as this may be for certain periods of time, it is incorrect when we look at larger periods of time. If we look at the period of time that lies between death and a new birth for us humans, we simply pass through an area that, before spiritual scientific knowledge, appears in the following way: Imagine we die at the end of our present life; we first step out of the world in which we perceive the universal natural causality through our senses and our intellect. This universal natural causality continues to rule on earth, which we have then left through death, and we can initially, after death, when we look down from the life in the beyond to this one, see nothing but that effects grow out of the causes that were active during our life; these effects, which then become causes again, become effects again. After our death, we see that this natural causality continues.

If we have led a reasonably normal life, then this life continues after death until all the impulses that were active during our earthly life have experienced their end in earthly activity itself and a new spiritual impact takes place, until, that is, the last causalities cease and a new impact is there. Only then do we embody ourselves again when the spiritual gives a new impact, so that the stream of earlier causalities ceases. We descend to a new life, not by finding the effects of the old causes of our former life again – we do not find them then – but we find a new phase of rhythm, a new impact. Here we have, so to speak, lived spiritually across a junction of rhythmic development. In the next life we cannot say that the causes that were already present in the previous life are taking effect, but that in our human life they have all been exhausted at a crossroads – not yet the effects of the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, which will only be exhausted at the end of the earth's time. But all that concerns us humans in terms of ethical life has been exhausted, and a new approach is needed. And we take the impulses for this new approach from the spiritual life that we go through between death and a new birth, so that we can connect with those impulses that shape the earth out of the ethical-divine. We can connect with them when we are in the world ourselves, from which the new impulse then flows. So that we have to say: If we now look at our life between birth and death, there is certainly no room for the superstitious-magical, but in the next life the connection is such that one can really speak of magic, but not of an immediate influence of the spiritual into the physical. That is the important thing that one gets to know through spiritual science, that there is not simply a continuous stream of causalities from beginning to end, but that there are rhythms of causality that pass through certain periods of time, which are not even terribly long in relation to the entire development of the earth; they arrive at the zero point, then a new causality rhythm comes. When we enter into the next rhythm of causality, we do not find the effects of the earlier rhythm of causality. On the contrary, we must first carry them over into our own soul in the form of after-effects, which we have to carry over through karma.

You see, I just wanted to suggest to you that spiritual science really has no need to accept anything from those who want to regenerate religion today – for many, this would mean the acceptance of a new dogmatism –; I just wanted to suggest that it is possible for spiritual science, for the science of the outer world, without prejudice to the seemingly necessary validity of the laws of nature, to give such a configuration that man in turn fits into it, and fits into it in such a way that he can truly call his ethical impulses world impulses again, that he is not repelled with his ethical impulses towards a merely powerless faith. At least this possibility must be borne in consciousness, for without it one is not understood by those to whom one is to preach.

I would also like to make a point for you here that I have often made for the teachers at the Waldorf School, which forms an important pedagogical principle. You see, if you want to teach children something, you must not believe that this something will be accepted by the child if you yourself do not believe in it, if you yourself are not convinced of it. I usually take the example that one can teach small children about the immortality of the soul by resorting to a symbol. One speaks to the child of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis and draws the comparison by saying: Just as the butterfly lives in the chrysalis, our soul lives in us, only we do not see it; it flies away when death occurs. Now, there are two possible approaches to such teaching. One is to imagine: I am a terribly clever guy who doesn't think that using this comparison says anything about immortality, but I need it for the child, who is stupid, you teach them that. If you are unbiased, you will soon recognize that this sublimity of the child's perception cannot lead to fruitful teaching. What you do not have as a conviction within yourself will not convince the child in the end. Such are the effects of imponderables. Only when I myself can believe that my symbol corresponds to reality in every single word, then my teaching will be fruitful for the child. And spiritual science, of course, provides sufficient occasion for this, because in spiritual science the butterfly that crawls out of the chrysalis is not just a fictitious symbol, but it is actually the case that what appears at a higher level as immortality appears at a lower level. It is ordained by the Powers That Be that what is the transition of the soul into the immortal appears in the image of the butterfly crawling out.

So, if you look at the picture as if it were a reality, then the teaching is fruitful, but not if you imagine that you are a clever fellow who forms the image, but if you know that the world itself gives you the image. Thus the imponderable forces work between the soul of the teacher and the soul of the child; and so it is also in religious instruction, in preaching. One must have in one's soul the full content of the foundations for that which one presumes will be understood by those to whom one speaks. Indeed, one must not even have concepts that contradict this matter. I would like to express myself as follows: Suppose you are a person in the sense of today's Ritschlianer or something like that, who is thoroughly religious in terms of soul immortality, the existence of God and so on, but at the same time you are weak enough to accept the Kant-Laplace theory, and in fact as it is taught by today's natural science. The mere fact that this Kant-Laplacean theory is in your mind and is an objective contradiction of what you have to represent as the content of your Christian confession, already that impairs the convincing power that you must have as a preacher. Even if you are not aware of the contradictions, they are there; that is to say, anyone who wants to preach must have within himself all the elements that make up a consistent worldview. Of course, theology will not be of much use to us in preaching; but we must have it within ourselves as a consistent whole, not as one that exists alongside external science, but one that can embrace external science, that is, relate to it sympathetically.

We can look at the matter from another side. You see, in philosophy, in science, they talk today about all possible relationships between man and the world around him; but the things they talk about are hardly found in the people who, as simple, primitive people, even among the urban population, are listening to us today, uneducated. The relationships that our psychologists, for example, posit between the person who observes nature and the person himself are not real at all; they are actually only artificially contrived. But what lives in the simplest farmer, in the most primitive person in our world, is that deep within himself he seeks — I say seeks — something deep within himself that is not out there in nature. He searches for a different world view from the one that comes from nature, and one must speak to him of this world view if the feeling that he has as a religious feeling is to arise at all. Primitive man simply says, as it lives in his subconscious: “I am not made of this material that the world is made of, which I can see with my senses; tell me something about what I cannot see with my senses!” This is the direct appeal that is made to us if man is to make us his religious guides: we should tell him something about the positive content of the supersensible world.

All our epistemology, which says that sensory perceptions and sensations are subjective or more or less objective and so on, is of little concern to the vast majority of people. But the fact that something must live in the world that does not belong to the sensory world by its very nature is something that people want to learn about from us. And here the question is: How can we meet this need of the human being? We can only do so by finding the right path from the subject-matter of teaching to the cultus; and I will say a few introductory words about this question tomorrow. Today, I would be very grateful if you would express yourselves so that I can get to know your needs.

Perhaps we will arrive more at formulating questions than at answers, but it would be quite good if we could formulate the main questions. During my time here, I would like to give you what can lead to such a handling of the religious, which, I would say, lies in the profession of the religious leader, not in theology. So it should be aimed at religious practice, at the establishment of religious institutions, not so much at theological questions. But if such questions are on your mind, we can also talk about them. I would ask you, if we are talking about what is particularly on your mind today, to at least formulate the questions first.

A participant suggests that Mr. Bock from Berlin formulate the questions.

Emil Bock: Last night I reported on what we in Berlin have tried to make clear to ourselves in our inner preparation, and we have tried to distinguish between different sets of questions. And in connection with what we have heard, we can now formulate the one question that combines three of the areas we had distinguished: the questions of worship and preaching and the question of the justification of the community element in the community. Yesterday evening I tried to make this clear by referring to the church-historical trend of the community movement. And there we actually found that for us it is about a clarity of the relationship between anthroposophical educational work on religious questions and purely religious practice, so either in worship, the relationship between ritual and sermon, or, with a transformation of what must take place outside of the cult, the relationship of the service as a whole to the religious lecture work or the religious ritual to teaching children, because what is ultimately gained through symbolism has not yet been realized by the human being. Now the question for us is: to what extent does it have to become conscious at all, and if it has to become conscious, how does it have to be done and balanced between the symbolic work on the part of the person and the part of the person that simultaneously tries to develop an awareness of it, which in turn will be divided into several problems when we consider the diversity of those we will face later? For many people may not have the need to raise the impulses into consciousness, while many people may first have the problem of consciousness at all.

And so the question arose for us: How do we actually harmonize the striving for a communal religious life with the striving for a vitalization of the I-impulse? For we have to reckon with the fact that, as far as we can see, in the case of many people who belong to bourgeois life, what would first come into question would be a proper independence for the individual through religious practice, a connection to the forces of the I, while in the case of many other people we would have to bring about a regulation of a lost sense of self. This is what we sensed in the question of communal forces, in a way that we could understand in relation to the Moravian Church in church history.

This is how I have now described the one complex of questions that was important to us last night. But we also had three other areas that raised a number of questions for us, and the first of these was the purely organizational. If we prepare ourselves, make ourselves capable and draw the consequences for our personal field of work, which then arise when we realize that, after all, it is a matter of founding communities according to a new principle, then the question is before us, and this is in every case, of course, differentiated in practice, depending on the situation in which the individual stands: What preparatory work do we have to do? Can we do preparatory work through lecturing? How can we practically distribute ourselves to the points where something needs to be worked on, and how can we work out something together about these things? It was clear to us that, of course, we do not expect things to be made easy for us now and that we will get a place. We are prepared to create such fields of work. But perhaps there is something to be learned about how this can be made easier for us in a certain sense. Then there is a great deal that is perhaps purely organizational that we would like to ask about during our discussion.

The second point, in addition to purely organizational matters, was our relationship to theological science. Above all, there were two questions: firstly, the theological training of those who later have to work in such communities, insofar as such training can come into contact with university activities and we can learn from it. Then there is the question of the new understanding of the Bible, which, after all, presupposes a theological education that goes beyond a knowledge of the anthroposophical worldview to a certain extent, as a technical education. Perhaps there are some practical questions in one heart or another; perhaps one or the other has more of an inclination for scientific work, and it would be interesting for all of us to see how this theological-scientific work can perhaps be made fruitful for the religious life of the present.

And then, last of the six areas we see – and this is probably the one that can least be formulated directly in questions – is the question of the quality of the priesthood that we must expect of ourselves if we set out to work on something like this. But then something practical comes together again very closely, about which one should already ask, that would be the question of the selection of the personalities who should then finally enter into this work, because somehow we must also orient ourselves as to how we should select ourselves, quite apart from where the decision about this will initially lie for the direction of self-evaluation. I think I have roughly said what it was about last night.

Rudolf Steiner: These are the questions that must be asked at this turning point, to which I have alluded, and this will actually be the content of our being together. We must, in particular, be clear about these questions and also about some things that, I would say, form the prerequisite for them. I would just like to point out a few things after the questions have been formulated, before we discuss them: It is the case that we are living in a time in which such questions must be judged from a highest point of view, also from a highest historical point of view. It is not at all in the direction of the spiritual scientist to always use the phrase; “We live in a transitional period.” Of course, every period is a transition from the earlier to the later, but the point is to look beyond what is considered a transition to what is actually passing away. And in our time, there is something that is very much understood in the process of transition: human consciousness itself. We are very easily mistaken if we believe that consciousness, as it still manifests itself in many ways today, is, so to speak, unchangeable.

We say to ourselves today very easily: Yes, there are people who, through their higher education, will want to become aware of the content of the cult; other people will have no need for it, they will not strive to bring it into conscious life at all. You see, we are living at a point in the historical development of humanity when it is characteristic that the number of people who want to be enlightened in a suitable way about that which is also a cult for them is increasing very rapidly. And we have to take that into account. We must not form the dogmatic prejudice today that you can enlighten him, but not her. For if we assume today that people who have attained a certain level of education do not want to be enlightened, then we will usually be mistaken in the long run. The number of people who want to achieve a certain degree of awareness of the symbolic and of what is alive in the cultus is actually growing every day, and the main question is quite different, namely this: How can we arrive at a cult and symbolic content when we at the same time demand that, as soon as one consciously enlightens oneself about this symbolic content, it does not become abstract and alien to the mind, but rather acquires its full value, its full validity? — This is the question that is of particular interest to us today.

If it is not too religious, you can refer to Goethe's fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily, which emerged from a person who, if you want, if you want to squeeze the concepts, can be spoken of as a person who always dreamed about such things. One also speaks of the fact that Schiller interpreted Goethe's dreams. In a certain respect, however, Goethe was much more aware of what lived in his fairy tale than what Schiller became. But his consciousness is one that can live in the image itself; it is not that abstract consciousness that one experiences today solely as consciousness. Today one confuses understanding with consciousness in general. The one who visualizes is believed to be not as conscious as the one who conceptualizes. Conceptualization is confused today with consciousness.

We will have to talk about the question of the consciousness and unconsciousness and superconsciousness of a cult and a symbolism, which must indeed occupy our present time in the very deepest sense. For on the one hand we have the Catholic Church with its very powerful cult and its tremendously powerful and purposeful symbolism. What tremendous power lies in the sacrifice of the Mass alone, when it is performed as it is performed in the Catholic Church, that is, when it is performed with the consciousness of the faithful, which is present. And the sermon by the Catholic priest also has a content that relates to symbolism, and in particular it is very much imbued with will. [On the other hand,] the Protestant development of the last few centuries has led to the development of the cultus being transferred to the actual teaching content, to the teaching content. The teaching content is now that which tends to have an effect only when it is attuned to the understanding of the listener or reader. That is why Protestant churches face the danger of atomization, the danger that everyone forms their own church in their hearts, and precisely because of this no community can be formed. And this danger is one that must be countered.

We must have the possibility of forming a community, and one that is built not only on external institutions but on the soul and inner life. This means that we must be able to build a bridge between such a cult, such a ritual, that can exist in the face of modern consciousness and yet, like the Protestant confession, leads to a deeper understanding of the teaching.

The teaching content individualizes and analyzes the community until one finally arrives at the individual human being, and even analyzes the individual human being through his or her tendencies. A psychologist can see the conflicted natures of the present day; they are individualized right down to the individual. We can actually see today people who not only strive to have their individual beliefs, but who have two or more beliefs that fight each other in their own souls. The numerous conflicted natures of the present day are only a continuation of the tendency that individualizes and analyzes the community. Cult, symbol, and ritual are synthetic and reuniting; this can be perceived everywhere where these things are practically addressed. Therefore, this question is at the same time the one that must be really underlying the question of the community movement.

The question of anthroposophical enlightenment and purely religious practice must in turn be detached from our present-day point in time. Today, however, we are experiencing something tragic; and it would be particularly significant if a force could emanate from your community here, so to speak, that could initially lead us beyond this tragedy. If one has such an explanation, as it arises, I would like to say, as a religious explanation in consequence of the entire anthroposophical explanation, which, after all, has not only religious but also historical explanations, scientific explanations, and so on, if one considers these religious explanations of Anthroposophy , the ideas one encounters and, as a consequence, the feelings that arise from them, cannot but lead to a longing for external symbols, for images, in order to take shape. This is so often misunderstood that Anthroposophical ideas are already different from those ideas that one encounters today. When one is exposed to other ideas today, whether from science or from social life, they work in the sense that they are called enlightened in the absolute sense, and in the sense that they criticize everything and undermine everything. When one is exposed to anthroposophical ideas, they lead to a certain devotion in people, they are transformed into a certain love. Just as red blood cannot help but build up the human being, so the anthroposophical ideas cannot help but stimulate the human being emotionally, sensually, even volitionally, so that he receives the deepest longing for an expression of what he has to say, in the symbolic, in the pictorial at all. It is not something artificially introduced when you find so much pictorial language in my “Geheimwissenschaft”, for example; it just comes about through expressing oneself pictorially.

In Dornach — those who have been there have seen it, later on it will be seen in its perfection — we have at the center of the building a group of Christ figures: Christ with Lucifer and Ahriman, both of whom are defeated by him. There, in the Christ, a synthesis of all that is sensual and supersensual is presented to the human eye. Yes, you see, to develop such a figure plastically, that does not come from the fact that one has once decided to place a figure there, so that the place should be adorned. It is not at all like that, but when one develops the anthroposophical concepts, one finally comes to an end with the concepts. It is like coming to a pond; now you cannot go any further, but if you want to get ahead, you have to swim. So, if you want to go further with anthroposophy, at a certain point you cannot go on forming abstract concepts, you cannot go on forming ideas, but you have to enter into images. The ideas themselves demand that you begin to express yourself in images.

I have often said to my listeners: There are certain theories of knowledge. Particularly among Protestant theologians there are those who say: Yes, what one recognizes must be clothed in purely logical forms, one must look at things with pure logic, otherwise one has a myth. Isn't that how people like Bruhn speak? He works very much against anthroposophy by saying that it forms myths, a new mythology. Yes, but what if someone were to ask the counter-question: just try to fathom the universe with your logic, without passing over into the pictorial. If the universe itself works not only logically but also artistically, then you must also look at it artistically; but if the universe eludes your logical observation, then what? In the same way, the outer human form eludes mere logical speculation. If you take the true anthroposophical concepts, you get into the picture, because nature does not create according to mere natural laws, but according to forms.

And so it can be said that as anthroposophy comes to fruition today, it takes into account what is at play in the hearts of our contemporaries, [the need] to get beyond intellectualism. This is actually admitted by every discerning contemporary who is following developments. They realize that we have to move beyond intellectualism, in theology too, of course. But most do not yet realize that this flowing into the pictorial, which then becomes ritual cultus in the sphere of religious practice, has just as much justification and just as much originality as the logical.

Most people imagine that pictures are made by having concepts and then clothing them in symbolism. This is always a straw-like symbolism. This is not the case [in Dornach]. In Dornach, there is no symbol based on a concept, but rather, at a certain stage, the idea is abandoned and the picture comes to life as something original. It is there as an image. And one cannot say that one has transferred a concept into the image. That would be a symbolism of straw.

This striving to overcome intellectualism is there today, this striving for a spiritual life that, because of objectivity, passes into the pictorial. On the other hand, there is no belief in the image at all today. This makes it tragic. One believes that one must overcome the image if one is really clever; one believes that one only becomes conscious when one has overcome the image. — Such images as in Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily are always divested of their reality when one tries to explain or interpret them by mental maziness. One can only lead to the fact that the person concerned can take up these images, that they can become concrete for him, but not mentally comment on them. This is what distinguishes what I have contributed to the interpretation of Goethe's fairy tale from what the other commentators do. They make comments and explain the images mentally.

For what the real imagination is based on, the mental explanation is just as foreign as what I say about the Chinese language in German, for example. If I want to teach someone Chinese, I have to lead him to the point where he can grasp the Chinese language in its entirety to such an extent that he can enter into it. And so one must also prepare for real pictorial thinking; one must proceed in such a way that the person concerned can then make the images present within himself and not have to attach an explanation to them.

That is the tragedy, that on the one hand there is the deepest need for the image, and on the other hand all belief in the image has actually been extinguished. We do not believe that we have something in images that cannot be given in the mind, in intellectual concepts. We must first understand this when we talk about the question of symbolum and consciousness in the near future. In particular, we will only be able to fruitfully answer the question of how to balance the subconscious and the conscious, which plagues so many people today, when we are clear about this matter.

So I would like to ask you to consider what I have now suggested about the relationship between the concepts of the intellect and the real images until tomorrow. From this point of view, we will also find that we can enter into community building, because community building depends very much on the possibility of a cult. The practical successes of community building also depend on the possibility of a cult.

You see, when people get to know India and the Indian religions, one thing is always emphasized with great justification: Of course there are many sects in India; these have a very strong sense of community that extends to the soul and can manifest itself in practical community life. In some respects, of course, the version that has to take place in the East can compete with many of the principles on which the brotherhood is based. This is often based on the fact that the Oriental in his individual life does not really know what we call subjective, personal conviction in relation to the community around him. The Oriental, if he participates at all in spiritual life, does not understand at all that one cannot have one's own opinion about everything, for example about a community and a body of teaching; that is something he does not understand at all. Conceptually, everyone can have their own opinion; the only thing that is common there is only the image, and one is only aware that the image is common. It is peculiar that in the West there is a tendency to place the emphasis on conviction, and that this leads to atomization. If one seeks conviction and places the main emphasis on it, then one comes to atomization. This does not occur if one seeks commonality in something other than conviction. Conviction must be able to be completely individual.

We must ask ourselves the question: On the one hand, the self stands as the pinnacle of the individual life, while on the other hand, Christ stands as the power and essence that is not only common to all Christians, but of which the claim must be made that it can become common to all human beings. And we must find the way to bridge the gap between the very individual self, which to a certain extent wants to believe what it is capable of, and the commonality of Christ.

We shall then have to devote special attention to the question of forming communities, and, as the Lord very rightly said, to the preliminary work for this. For these are, of course, matters that will meet with quite different difficulties. On the one hand, we are today almost dependent on conducting preliminary work through instruction in such a way that we find a sufficiently large number of people in whose souls there is initially an understanding of what can actually be wanted. On the other hand, we are faced with humanity that is completely fragmented. The simple fact that we appear with the pretension of knowing something that another person might have to think about for a day to judge is almost enough to get us dismissed right now. The effect from person to person is extremely difficult today. And of course this also makes the formation of communities more difficult.

Nevertheless, if you want to achieve something in what you have only been able to strive for by appearing here, then we will have to talk at length about the question of forming a community and, above all, about the preparatory work for it, which should essentially consist of us feeling, already spiritually, as community builders. And we can hardly do this other than by – perhaps it will not be immediately understandable at first hearing what I want to say, because it touches on one of the deepest questions of the present – first of all trying to refrain from lecturing other people as much as possible. People just don't take lectures today; this should not be our main task.

You see, however small the success of anthroposophical work may be, which I have had to set myself as my task, in a sense this success is there, albeit in a small circle; it is there. And what is there is based on the fact that I actually — in the sense in which it is understood at our educational institutions — never wanted to teach anyone in a primarily forceful way. I have actually always proceeded according to a law of nature, I always said to myself: the herrings lay an infinite number of eggs in the sea, very few of them become herrings, but a certain selection must take place. And anyone who knows that that which goes beyond the materialistic continues to have an effect, knows that even the unfertilized herring eggs already have their task in the world as a whole – they have their great effect in the etheric world, the selections only take place for the physical world – then comes to terms with this question: Why do such herring eggs remain unfertilized? That which remains unfertilized has its great task in another world. These unfertilized herring eggs are not entirely without significance. And that is basically how it is with teaching people. I have never believed, whether I have spoken to an audience of fifty or to one of five hundred (I have also spoken to larger audiences), that one-half or one-quarter of them can be taught. Rather, I have assumed that among five hundred there will perhaps be five who, at the first stroke, will have their hearts touched by what I have to say, who are, so to speak, predestined for it. Among fifty people, one, and among five people, one in ten. It is no different, and one must adjust to that. Then what happens through instruction in the present time cannot happen through selection. People come together with whom one has found an echo. Selection is what we must seek first today; then we will make progress.

It takes a certain resignation not to live in this sense of power: you want to teach, you want to convince others. But you absolutely must have this resignation. And why people so often lack it depends precisely – I am only talking here about people who practise religion – depends precisely on their theological training. This theological training is basically based entirely on the fact that one can teach everyone, that one should not actually make selections. Therefore, ways and means must be found to include in the theological training, above all, the emotional relationship to the content of the spiritual.

You see, unfortunately even theology has arrived at the point of view that knowledge of God is always more important than life in God, the experience of the divine in the soul. The experience of the divine in the soul is what gives one the strength to work with the simplest, most unspoiled people, and that is what should actually be developed. Recent times have worked against this completely. The more we strive to seek abstract concepts of some kind of supersensible being, and the less we absorb this supersensible being into our souls, the more we will work against it. We really need a life-filled preparation and education for theological science. And of course something esoteric comes into play here, you see, where we have to point to a law that already exists. First of all, you have to have within you what I mentioned earlier: not only as a clever person, how are you supposed to teach a picture or something to someone else – you have to have that to the full – but you must also have the other, that you must always know more than what you say. I don't mean that in a bad way at all. But if you take the standpoint that is actually held today in the professorial world, that one should only appropriate that which one then wants to communicate to others, then you will certainly not be able to achieve much with religious communication. For example, when you speak about the Bible, you must have your own content, in which you live, in addition to the exoteric content, which is nothing other than an esoteric content expressed. There is no absolute boundary between the esoteric and the exoteric; one flows into the other and the esoteric becomes exoteric when it is spoken out.

This is basically what makes Catholic priests effective. That is what praying the breviary consists of. He seeks to approach the divine in a way that goes beyond the layman by praying the breviary. And the special content of the breviary, which goes beyond what is taught, also gives him strength to work in preaching and otherwise. It has always been interesting to me – and this has happened not just once, but very frequently – that Protestant pastors who had been in office for a long time came to me and said that there should be something similar for them [to the Catholic breviary]. Please do not misunderstand me; I am not speaking in favor of Catholicism, least of all the Roman one. There are pastors who have been in office for a long time who have said to me: Why is it that we cannot come into contact with souls in the same way as a Catholic priest, who of course abuses it? — That is essentially because the [Catholic priest] seeks an esoteric relationship with the spiritual world.

This is really what we are striving for in the threefold social organism. The spiritual life we have today as a general rule — we are not talking about the other one — the spiritual life we have is not really a spiritual life, it is a mere intellectual life. We talk about the spirit, we have concepts, but concepts are not a living spirit. We must not only have the spirit in some form or other in the form of concepts that sit in our heads, but we must bring the spirit down to earth, it must be in the institutions, it must prevail between people. But we can only do that if we have an independent spiritual life, where we not only work out of concepts about the spirit, but work out of the spirit itself.

Now, of course, the Church has long endeavored to preserve this living spirit. It has long since disappeared from the schools; but we must bring it back there and also into the other institutions. The state cannot bring it in. That can only be brought in by what is at the same time individual priestly work and community work. But it must be priestly work in such a way that the priest, above all, has within himself the consciousness of an esoteric connection with the spiritual world itself, not merely with concepts about the spiritual world. And here, of course, we come to the great question of selection, to the judgment of the quality of the priests. Now, this judgment of the quality of the priests is such that it can very easily be misunderstood, because, firstly, many more people have this quality than one might think, it is just not developed in the right way, not cultivated in the right way; and secondly, this question is often a question of fate. When we come to have a living spiritual life at all and the questions of fate come to life for us again, then the priests will be pushed out of the community of people more into their place than out of self-examination, which always has a strongly selfish character. It is true that one must acquire a certain eye for what objectively calls upon one to do this or that.

Perhaps I may also tell you what I have said in various places as an example. I could also tell other examples. I gave a lecture in Colmar on the Bible and wisdom. Two Catholic priests came to me after the lecture. You can imagine that Catholic priests have not read anything by me, because it is actually forbidden for them, and it is basically the case that it is considered an abnormality for a Catholic priest to go to an anthroposophical lecture. But they were probably harmless at the time; they approached me quite innocently, since I did not say anything in this lecture that would have opposed them. They even came to me after the lecture and said: Yes, actually we cannot say anything [against what you have presented, because] we also have purgatory, we also have the reference to supersensible life after purgatory. Now in this case I thought it best to give two lectures. 'Bible and Wisdom' I and II, and in the first lecture nothing was said about repeated lives on earth, so they did not notice that there was a contradiction to the Roman Catholic view. Now they came and said that they had nothing against the content, but the “how” I said it was very different, and so they believed that they could not agree with this “how”. Because the “how” would be right for them, because they spoke for all people and I only spoke for certain prepared people, for people who therefore have a certain preparation for it. After some back and forth, I said the following: You see, it doesn't matter whether I or you—you or I, I said—are convinced that we speak for all people. This conviction is very understandable. We might not speak at all if we didn't have the conviction that we formulate our things in such a way and imbue them with such content that we speak for all people. But what matters is not whether we are convinced that we speak for all people, but whether all people come to you in church. And I ask you: do all people still come to church when you speak? Of course they could not say that everyone still comes, but they had to admit that some do not come. That is objectivity. For those who do not go to you and who also have the right to seek a path to Christ, I have spoken for them. — That is how one's task is derived from the facts.

I just wanted to show a way to get used to having one's personal task set by the question of destiny and also by the great question of objectivity. I wanted to show how one should not brood so much, as is the case today, over one's own personality – which, after all, is basically only there so that we can fill the place that the divine world government assigns us – but rather we should try to observe signs from which we can recognize the place we are to be placed. And we can do that.

Today, when people speak from their souls, they repeatedly ask: What corresponds to my particular abilities, how can I bring my abilities to bear? This question is much, much less important than the objective question, which is answered by looking around to see what needs to be done. And if we then really get seriously involved in what we notice, we will see that we have much more ability than we realize. These abilities are not so much specific; we as human beings can do an enormous amount, we have very universal soul qualities, not so much specific ones. This brooding over one's own self, and the over-strong belief that we each have our own specific abilities that are to be particularly cultivated, is basically an inward, very sophisticated egoism, which must be overcome by precisely the person who wants to achieve such qualities as are meant here.

Now I think I have told you how I understand the questions. We can think about the matter until tomorrow; and if it is all right with you, I would like to suggest that we meet again tomorrow at around 11 o'clock. And I would ask you not to hold back on any matter, but we want to deal with the things that are on your mind as exhaustively as possible.

My dear friends! Of the two areas that you yourselves also spoke about yesterday, it seems to me necessary that we deal first with the one that will have to provide the foundation for all our work. Of course, we must first prepare the real ground, and in our time that can be nothing other than community building. We will be able to deal with what is to develop on this real ground all the better in our discussions if we first talk about this community building.

On the one hand, it is undoubtedly the most difficult of your tasks, although it is easy to underestimate, but on the other hand, it is also the most urgent. You can see this from the form that the youth movement has taken. This youth movement, as it lives today in its most diverse forms, has a clear religious background, and this religious background is also always emphasized by the understanding members of the youth movement. And if you look at this youth movement with an open mind, what you notice about it is what is intimately connected with the building of community.

Consider the following phenomenon of this youth movement: it emerged some time ago, years ago. How did it emerge? Initially with the express aim of joining one group with another. It emerged explicitly under the motto of union, of group formation; and the significant thing is that in recent years this youth movement has undergone a metamorphosis into its opposite in many circles. Even those who may have taken it most seriously in those days now advocate isolation and a hermit-like existence. They emphasize the impossibility of joining forces with others. And why is that so?

Perhaps it is, when viewed symptomatically, something that is one of the most significant social phenomena of our time, particularly in central, southern and eastern Europe, that the striving to be a spiritual hermit has emerged so rapidly from the striving for community building in the youth movement, and that there is actually a certain fear of union. If you are familiar with the youth movement, you may find something different here and there, but if you look at it impartially, you will see that the decisive impulses of this youth movement will have to be characterized as I have done.

Now, what is the underlying reason for all this? The underlying reason for all this is that the religious communities have not been able to hold this youth within themselves. It is quite obvious that this youth movement does contain a clear religious impulse. Originally, if we may say so, it was a rebellion against the principle of authoritative life, of paternal life, of looking up to the experience of older people, that gave rise to this youth movement; it was a shaking of the human, paternal principle of authority. The times developed in such a way that people simply no longer believed in their fathers, that they simply no longer had any inner, subconscious trust in their fathers. But man needs man, especially when it comes to action and work. People sought unification, but they could only seek this unification with spiritual life, which is anchored in the hearts of people today when they live and are raised in our ordinary schools, under our religious impulses and so on. Of course, religious longing stirs in young people precisely when something is not right in the external religious life, but it stirs as an indefinite, abstract feeling; as something nebulous, it stirs. On the other hand, it is precisely in connection with this religious urge that the longing for community life arises. But from all that young people could receive, from all that is available, the possibility of real community building does not arise, but rather – if I may express myself somewhat radically – only the possibility of clique formation. That is, after all, the characteristic of our time: that wherever the desire for community arises, what actually arises everywhere is not a real inner sense of community, but the sense of forming cliques, that is, of joining together through the accidental community and feelings of community for what is nearest at hand. What leads one person to another by the accident of place, the accident of circumstances, and so on, leads to the formation of cliques. But these cliques, because they are not based on a solid spiritual foundation, all have the seed of dissolution within them. Cliques dissolve. Cliques are not lasting communities.

Lasting communities do not exist under any other condition than that they are based on a genuine shared commitment in communal life. And for anyone who is familiar with the history of social life, there was nothing surprising in the fact that what only contained the beginnings of cliquish behavior could not develop into community life, and that therefore these young souls became reclusive, received the urge within themselves not to join, and even developed a certain fear of joining. Everyone goes more or less their own way, I would say, who has fully participated in the youth movement. But since this youth movement emerged from a shock to the paternal authority principle, it must be said that this historical life of more recent times does not contain the seeds for real community building.

What you must seek first and foremost is the formation of a community. And if you want to arrive at a goal that is true and rooted in reality, you will have no other choice than to practice threefolding, to be truly aware of how to practice threefolding. In your profession, you absolutely do not need to agitate for threefolding in the abstract. In your profession, it is particularly possible to work very practically for threefolding. But there is no other way than to seek out the way to those to whom you want to speak. A real way must be found to found communities.

Now one need not believe that by doing something like this, one must become a revolutionary in a certain radical sense. There is no need for that at all. It may happen in one case that you get into some kind of regular ministry, into a preaching job, in the completely regular way. It may also happen that you succeed in directing the external material conditions here or there in such a way that you found a completely free community. But such free communities and those in which one strives to bring freedom into religious life must belong together; and that can only be the case if, in a certain way, what you strive for – please do not misunderstand me here to misunderstand me, it is not to preach the pure power principle, but the justified power principle —, if what you strive for becomes a power, that is, if you have a certain number of like-minded people. Nothing else will make an impression on the world. You must actually have the possibility of having people as preachers over a large territory who are from your very own circles. To do this, it will be necessary to make the circle you have now at least ten times larger. That will be your first task, so to speak: to seek out such a large circle of like-minded people, initially in the way that the smaller circle came about. Only when people in the most distant places – relatively distant places, of course – see the same aspiration emerging, when there is cohesion with you over a larger territory, will you be able to proceed to such a community formation, regardless of whether you have come to the ministry of preaching by a path recognized today or otherwise.

You will be able to work in such a way that you can truly bind your parishioners to you inwardly, emotionally. When I say “bind,” it does not mean to put on slave chains. To do that, however, the parishioners must gain the awareness through you that they live in a certain brotherhood. The communities must have concrete fraternal feelings within them and they must recognize their preacher-leader as a self-evident authority to whom they can also turn in specific questions. That means that you must first of all establish a self-evident authority in these communities, which you do not need to call fraternal communities or the like in an agitative way, especially with regard to economic life, however strange it may seem at first. It must be possible for advice to be sought from you in economic matters and in all matters related to economic affairs, based on the personal insight of the community members. It must be possible for people to feel that they are receiving a kind of directive from the spiritual world when they ask the preacher.

You see, when you can look at life, then what should actually be giving direction to it comes to you in seemingly small symptoms. I was once walking down a street in Berlin and met a preacher I had known for a long time. He was carrying a travel bag. I wanted to be polite and asked him some question. The next thing, of course, was that I asked him the question that arose from the situation: “Are you going on a trip?” — “No,” he answered me, “I'm just going on an official act.” — Now you may see something extraordinarily insignificant in it; but from the whole context, the matter seemed extraordinarily significant to me. The pastor in question was more of a theologian than a preacher, but he was a very earnest man. He had the things he needed for a baptism in his traveling bag and yet he spoke and felt in such a way that he could say to someone whom he could reasonably expect to understand a different turn of phrase: “I'm going to an official function.” — That is something like a policeman, when a thief is to be sought, he also goes to an official act.

It should disappear completely from the preacher's work that the connection with the external state or other life should somehow emerge in his consciousness. The whole emotional tenor of the words must express the fact that what is being done is being done by a personality who acts out of the consciousness of her God, out of the free impulse of her human personality. The consciousness must be present: I am not doing this as an official act, I am doing it naturally out of my innermost being, because the divine power leads me to do so.

You may consider this a minor matter. But it is precisely this tendency to regard such facts as unimportant that is perhaps the most important factor in the decline of religious activity today. When, on the other hand, such things are regarded as the main thing, when a person is imbued with the direct presence of the Divine in the physical, right down to the most minute sensation, and when the preacher feels such authority that he knows he am bringing divine life into it, I am not performing an official act in the modern sense, but am carrying out a commission from God – only then will he transmit to his parishioners that which must be transmitted as imponderables.

This seems to be quite far removed from economic life. And yet, as things stand today, we must not consider the things we are striving for here in Stuttgart in the field of threefolding to be decisive for other areas of life. We are working out threefolding from the totality of the social organism. But for your profession, it is a different matter. For your profession, it is a matter of permeating each of the three limbs — which, even if they are not properly organized, are in fact still there — with religious life; so that, although complete freedom of action prevails within the communities, within which, of course, economic life also takes place - it must, so to speak, be a self-evident prerequisite that in economic matters, where it is a matter of spiritual life flowing into the community, the decision is made by the preacher, by the pastor. There must be such harmony, and above all, the pastor must live in intimate connection with the entire charitable life of his community. To some extent, he must be aware of the balance of social inequalities. This must be striven for in the community. One must actually be the advisor of the men, and one must also be, to some extent, the helping advisor of the women; one must help the women's charity, and so on.

Both men and women must, when it comes to organizing their economic affairs, economic aid, and economic cooperation in a higher sense, unquestionably have the natural feeling that the preacher has something to say. Without an interest in economic life, a participatory interest, religious communities cannot be established, especially not in today's difficult economic times.

Is that not right? We can initially present such things as an ideal, but in one area or another we will have the opportunity to approach the ideal to a greater or lesser extent. Of course, you will face endless resistance if you strive for something like this. You will be rejected, but you must make your parishioners aware of this, and through their desire, the necessity to achieve this guiding influence of the preacher in economic life will become apparent.

At this point, I must say that much must remain an ideal. Above all, what must be the part of the one who lives as a preacher in a community in terms of legal and state life must still remain an ideal in many cases today. I will give a specific example. The fact that religious life has increasingly lost its real foundation has led to things that seem extraordinarily enlightened to today's people, but that have thoroughly undermined religious life from within social life. One example is the view that is held today about marriage legislation. There is no doubt that marriage legislation — whether conceived in strict or less strict terms, depending on other circumstances — is necessary. But it is necessary, under all circumstances, that this marriage legislation be integrated into the threefold social organism. For this, however, it is of course necessary to have a clear sense of marriage as a distinct institution that represents the threefold social organism. It is, first of all, an economic community and must be integrated into the social organism in so far as it has an economic part. Thus, a connection must be sought between the economic community that marriage represents and the associations. Today, little more can be thought of this, but this awareness must arise from within the communities, that above all the economic side of marriage must be supported by the measures of the associations, by the measures of economic life.

The second thing is that the legal relationship is clearly perceived as a relationship in itself, and that the state has only to intervene in the legal relationship of marriage, so that marriage between a man and a woman is only of concern to the state insofar as it is a matter of law, which originates from the state.

On the other hand, you will have to claim the spiritual blessing of marriage as your very own within the religious community in a completely free way based on your decision. So you will have to strive for the ideal that the religious blessing of marriage is placed within the freedom of religious decision and that this decision is fully respected, so that it is seen as a basis for the other, so that the trust that exists in the community is actually sought first for the marriage decision of the pastor or the preacher. Of course I know that such a thing is perhaps even regarded by many Protestant people today as something quite out of date, but again I can only say: that such things are regarded as out of date shows the damage of civilization, which inevitably undermines religious life.

So you will have to make your parishioners aware that the actual inner spiritual core of marriage has to do with religious life and that threefolding must certainly be practised in this area, that is, all three parts of marriage must gradually find their expression in social life, that is, all three things must be included. One should not imagine threefolding in such a way that one draws up a utopian program and says that one should threefold things. One threefolds them in the best way when one grasps that threefolding is implicitly contained in every institution of life and how one can shape the individual things in such a way that threefolding underlies them. Perhaps in your profession, in particular, it is not necessary to place too much emphasis on representing the threefold social order in the abstract; but one must understand how life demands that this threefold order comes about, that is, that each of the individual limbs of the social organism is a truly concrete, existing reality.

Of course you will meet with great resistance to this today, but it is precisely in such matters that you can, if you start by educating your community, best develop the relationship between the free spiritual life – in which, above all, the religious element must be included – which is to be, not in, I might say, benevolent mutual addresses, that one tolerates each other, but by actually presenting what is demanded by the matter as one's ideal. Of course, you must be prepared for the greatest resistance.

And thirdly, you must have the opportunity to develop what the free spiritual life should mean in the threefold social organism. Today, in the general social organism, we no longer have a spiritual life at all; we have an intellectual life, but we have no spiritual life. I would say that we have no dealings between gods and humans. We do not have the awareness that in everything that happens externally in the physical world, the divine work should be there through ourselves, and that the real, true spirit should be carried into the world, that therefore both the actions that take place within economic life, as well as the legal determinations that take place within state life, and in particular that the education of youth and also the instruction of old age must be the free deed of the people participating in this spiritual life. — That is what must be understood.

Therefore, you will have no choice but to fight for your complete individual authority for the free will. Of course, this is something that our time demands: that the individual who preaches preaches under his own authority. You see, in this area, one simply has to look at the tremendous clash of contradictions that prevails in our time.

When I go to a Catholic church today and come to the sermon, I know that the preacher is wearing the stole. I know that when he is wearing the stole, the person standing in the pulpit and preaching is not at all relevant to me as a human being. This is also really in the consciousness [of the Catholic priest]. As a human being, he does not feel responsible for any of his words, because the moment he crosses his chest with the stole, the Church speaks. And since the declaration of infallibility, the Roman Pope speaks ex cathedra for all things to be proclaimed by the Catholic Church. So, in [the Catholic preacher], I have a person in front of me who, at the moment [of the sermon], completely empties himself and doesn't even think about somehow representing his opinion, who is absolutely of the opinion that he can have a personal opinion that he keeps to himself, that doesn't even have to agree with what he speaks from the pulpit, because a personal opinion is out of the question there. The moment he crosses his stole over his chest, he is the representative of the church.

You see, that is one extreme. But it is there, and it will play a major role in the cultural movement that is just around the corner. Because as corrupting as we have to regard this power, it is a power, an immense power; and you cannot approach it otherwise than by becoming fully aware of it. They will have no other way of fighting. You will encounter this power at every turn in your life. It is spreading in an immeasurable way today, while humanity sleeps and does not notice.

On the other hand, the task of the time is to trust in – if I may call it that – divine harmony. And that, my dear friends, has absolutely not been understood in my “Philosophy of Freedom”. But it is something that should be understood in the most urgent sense in the present. In my “Philosophy of Freedom”, the legal system is also based on the individual human being acting entirely out of himself. One of the first and most brilliant critics to write about my Philosophy of Freedom in the English Athenaeum simply said that this whole view leads to a theoretical anarchism. This is, of course, the belief of today's people. Why? Because modern man actually lacks any truly divine social trust, because people cannot grasp the following, which is most important for our time: When you really get people to speak from their innermost being, then harmony comes about among people, not through their will, but through the divine order of the world. Disharmony comes from the fact that people do not speak from their innermost being. Harmony cannot be created directly, but only indirectly, by truly reaching people at their core. Then each person will automatically do what is beneficial for the other, and also speak what is beneficial for the other. People only talk and act at cross purposes as long as they have not found themselves.

If you understand this as a mystery of life, then you say to yourself: I seek the source of my actions within myself and have the confidence that the path that leads me inwardly will also connect me to the divine world order outwardly and that I will thus work in harmony with others. This brings, firstly, trust in the human heart and, secondly, trust in external social harmony. There is no other way than this to bring people together. Therefore, what you must achieve if you really want to have a social effect through your profession, a divine social effect, a spiritual social effect, is the possibility to really work from within, that is, everyone for himself, because he has found himself, has the possibility to be an authority.

The Catholic preacher acts without individuality, crosses the stole and is no longer himself, he is the Church. The Catholic Church has the magical means to powerfully influence social life without trust [in individual strength], through external symbolic soul activity. This was necessary to establish social communities towards the end of the 2nd millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha and was most ideally developed in ancient Egypt. In a roundabout way, which can be traced exactly historically, this has become the inner essence of the Catholic Church. The essence of the Catholic Church is that it still stands today at the point of view of the Egyptian priests and their social life in about the second millennium BC. The Catholic is an influence of the old into our time.

In contrast to this, there is a need today to really stand on the standpoint of our time, not to feel that we are anything other than the bearers of divine life within ourselves, which has become intellect. You have to fight for the freedom of speech so that no one can tell you what to preach, and that there is no norm for the content of the sermon. That is what you have to fight for. Otherwise you will not be able to found communities unless you make it a principle to fight for the freedom of preaching.

With this, I have first outlined in some detail what must, so to speak, lead to the formation of a community from within. If you are able to realize these things, then you will also, in turn, encourage young people to form a real community, whereas young people have only been able to form cliques out of themselves. I am convinced and have full confidence that if such communities can be brought into existence, then the young people will gather in such communities and something useful can come out of it, whereas perhaps 15 to 20 years ago the young people sought union in the so-called youth movement, but were leaderless because they no longer believed in their fathers and thus strove towards community building without any real inner impulse. All that came of it was the formation of cliques. Today, people's souls are hermits. But if there were a possibility of coming together, they would join immediately, and where truly free communities arise, that is, communities with inner freedom, young people in particular would flock to them.

You see, in such matters we naturally have a difficult time with our anthroposophical movement. Because of its inner nature, this anthroposophical movement today can be nothing other than a completely universal movement. It must, so to speak, extend itself to all areas of life, and we are in an extraordinarily difficult situation with regard to the anthroposophical movement. We are in the difficult situation that on the one hand a certain anthroposophical good must be communicated to the world today - it must go out into the world, because the world lacks the opportunity to receive spiritual content - on the other hand, the desire to form communities, to form anthroposophical communities, is arising everywhere. Call them branches, call them what you will, the endeavour is there to found anthroposophical branches. And because the anthroposophical movement today still has to be something universal, these anthroposophical branches cannot really come to a real life, because they oscillate back and forth between the religious element and the spiritual element, which is more directed towards all branches of life. Naturally, they do not develop a true sense of brotherhood; they do not even grasp their social task, which consists in founding small communities as models of what is to spread throughout humanity. But either they degenerate into a mere transmission of the teachings, or they feel the human resistance to unification and split into opinions, quarrel and the like. But if we ask ourselves where the fault lies, we find it not in these communities but in the fact that today one cannot really find a true connection to religious life by penetrating the spiritual world with insight. Among all the denominations that exist today, anthroposophists cannot find a religious life. These communities must first come into existence. They cannot come into being in any other way than by people seriously considering all the things that can lead to the founding of such communities. I believe that the external possibilities, the possibilities for establishing institutions, will not be so difficult to find if the attitude that I have tried to characterize for you today really takes hold, provided there are enough of you. If you have ten times as many people who are preparing to fulfill the preaching profession throughout Germany, over a larger territory, then you will also have the opportunity to come to community building out of this attitude. But community building is the foundation. Only when we have become clear about this can we talk further about worship and preaching.

Now I would like to ask you to speak up and ask questions about your own specific thoughts, desires, and so on. Perhaps you have had concerns about some of the things I have mentioned, or you feel that one or the other question has not been fully addressed, that you need more practical information.

A participant: Even if the practical side comes about easily, it may be that this or that practical matter is of the greatest importance to us now, especially since some of us are already in certain practical situations. Therefore, I would ask you to perhaps tell us something about the possibilities for connecting. Initially, there are two possibilities for connecting, either perhaps from the church or from the existing anthroposophical communities. Is it at all possible to connect from church work afterwards? This fear that it cannot be found still holds back many of us, although they could already enter into church service. What should happen then? The question of practical matters is perhaps already included, but the fundamental question of the possibility of making contact is already contained in it, because there is simply no clarity in our own movement about where we can make a practical connection right now. Would we be wasting an opportunity if we entered the church service now in the hope of being able to make a connection later? Should we not rather do something else, because we have to make a connection somewhere.

Rudolf Steiner: The situation is such that the answer to this must be a manifold one. It cannot be given in the same way because, despite the difficulties that the church presents today, there are still possibilities to work from within the church that should perhaps not be left untapped. If you take into account the particular circumstances here or there, you will be able to say that, given the nature of the community as a whole, you can found your community yourself, if you seek out the existing forms of the ministry, but then gradually lead the community out of the current church circumstances, while you would not be able to get the community members together if you placed yourself outside the church and simply tried to gather them. On the other hand, in certain fields it will no longer be possible to work outside the Church at all. In such cases it is of course absolutely necessary to try to found free communities. But I would recommend under all circumstances not to approach the matter with the aim of forming a union with the anthroposophical branches and so on, and not to aim at working out of anthroposophy itself, because in that case you would be pulled down before you got anywhere. Anthroposophy as such will simply be attacked in the most outrageous way from all possible sides in the near future; and in order to arrive at the formation of a quiet community within this battle, you see, the strength that you have today, even if you were ten times as numerous, is not yet sufficient. We do not yet live in social conditions that would make it possible to develop religious communities from anthroposophy itself. They have to form religious communities for themselves and then seek union with the anthroposophical movement. The anthroposophical movement – I can say this quite openly – will never fail to support this union, of course; but it would not be good to form ecclesiastical communities out of the anthroposophical 'communities', so to speak.

You see, when we founded the Waldorf School - it is not an example, but there is at least a similarity - we did not set out to found a school of world view, a school of anthroposophy, but merely to bring into pedagogy and didactics what can be brought in through anthroposophy. I was quite insistent that Catholic children should be taught by Catholic priests and Protestant children by Protestant priests. Now, however, it has become clear that, because the first core of the Waldorf School was working-class children, a great many children would have had no religious instruction at all. And so it became necessary to provide an independent anthroposophical religious education. But I am very particular, especially in my own behavior in this matter, that this anthroposophical religious education does not fall into the constitution of this school, but that it comes from outside in the same way as Catholic and Protestant religious education, so that the school as such gives this religious instruction out of itself, but simply allows the Anthroposophical community to give this Anthroposophical religious instruction to those children for whom the parents want it, just as Protestant religious instruction is given to Protestant children and Catholic religious instruction to Catholic children. In this area, we must be serious about the fact that the spiritual works only through the spiritual. As soon as we would make a school constitution to incorporate religious education into the school curriculum, we would probably achieve more at first than we are achieving now, but slowly dismantling it. We must have faith in the spirit to work through itself. And that is why we in the anthroposophical movement face the great difficulty that as soon as we establish a branch, we do so in the physical world; and there, of course, people always strive to work through external means. But anthroposophy cannot work through external means today; it can only work through that which is in it as spiritual content that works on people. These two things are always in conflict with each other: external branching out – internal effectiveness. This fights terribly with each other. And that would even change into a healthy one at the moment when a community could really be formed out of the religious spirit. Now, of course, it is a matter of overcoming, I would say, higher inconveniences, so to speak.

You see, when I speak to Swiss teachers about the liberation of intellectual life, the liberation of the teaching profession, even the best of them usually reply: Yes, in Switzerland we are actually quite free, we can do what we want at school. — But no one does anything other than what the state wants. In terms of freedom, they are basically as unfree as possible; they just don't feel their unfreedom, they feel their unfreedom as freedom because they have grown so inwardly together with it. We, in turn, must first learn to feel the unfreedom. I was once able to feel it in a very strange way at a threefolding meeting I had held in Switzerland; I would say it was more in a humorous way. During the discussion, someone had become extremely heated in a certain fanatical way about the fact that in Germany, laws and police measures were used to command everyone to behave loyally, to worship the monarchy loyally, and so on, that all this was a commandment. He became so terribly heated about it. I said to him: It may well be that Republicans get worked up in such a way against the monarchy, but I remember that when the German Kaiser was in Switzerland a few years ago, the people behaved in an extremely devotional manner, so that at that time in Zurich the image of devotion far surpassed what people were used to in Germany. — To which he replied: Yes, that is precisely the difference between Germany and Switzerland: in Germany, it is all compulsory, the people have to do it, but we do it voluntarily. —- That is the difference between free people and those who are unfree.

Well, it is not true that we have to, and that all people have to – it is completely international in our time – we actually have to learn what it means to be a free person. And that is why I believe that it must actually be possible to tie in with where some freedom is still possible within the church, to found these free communities from within the church itself.

I am not unaware of the difficulties, but it is true that you only have to consider the real cultural conditions, especially in Central Europe. A certain kind of community was formed at the time – and we really must learn from history – when Old Catholicism emerged after the proclamation of the dogma of infallibility. Now, if you take Old Catholicism in terms of its content, it can be said to have the same in terms of doctrine and priestly behavior as the Protestant pastorate. It is already inherent in Old Catholicism, which has only preserved in a popular way a cultus that we will talk about later. One can say that Old Catholicism, precisely because it arose as a reaction, already contained within it that which, by itself, could have led to the free formation of congregations outside the Church. Now you will know, of course, that Old Catholicism in Germany was received with great enthusiasm. Parishes were formed here and there, but they could not live, could not die. Of course, at that time, because one could not form such parishes within the Catholic Church, they had to form themselves. There was no other way. In Switzerland, where much more of the Old Catholicism has been preserved – because there are many Old Catholic communities there – it has recently become quite blatantly clear that these communities are continuing a conservative life, but are no longer growing, but rather remaining small, even shrinking, so that they are already on the ground of a descending development. This is the difficulty of forming free communities today.

Therefore, it will be necessary to save as many people as you can – not from the church, but from those people who have not yet been able to decide to leave the church in order to found free communities with you – to really grasp them in the church and bring them out. If things develop in this way, you can be quite sure that the connection with the anthroposophical movement will be achieved. For the anthroposophical movement, although it will have to fight terrible battles, will nevertheless establish its validity, even if it is only possible with many sacrifices on the part of those working in it, with great sacrifices. It will establish its validity , but it will hardly be in a position today to found a branch of religious life out of itself — that is why I always spoke today of the special nature of your profession — it will hardly be in a position to shape communities in a particular religious sense. It will be necessary for what I always emphasize to become truth: The Anthroposophical Society as such cannot found new religious communities and so on, but one must somehow form the religious community out of oneself, or - as far as one can - form it with the human material that today, purely out of prejudice, still stands within the old church. But perhaps you can formulate the question further so that we can talk about it in more detail.

Dr. Rittelmeyer – he just got sick – would have had the opportunity, given the way he had behaved towards his parishioners, to found a completely free parish in the middle of Berlin. And once it has a certain power, a certain standing, is it large, then you don't dare approach the pastor in any way. Is it actually your opinion that one should not have this last remnant of consideration for the church?

A participant: I think it will be especially difficult to work in the church, and I don't yet see clearly to what extent we could do that even now. We will have to wait until we can go out together to do the actual work. Would it perhaps be possible to look for points of contact in the church now? But then we would already be scattered until we are ready to go out together.

Rudolf Steiner: As long as you do not have a preaching ministry, you cannot seek such connections now. You must seek what is the preparation for religious work, of course independently of the church, at least inwardly independently. As long as you are, so to speak, students, you cannot seek union with the church. You can only look around to see where it would be possible to pull such congregations out of the church. And if you should find that this is impossible in Central Europe, then you should still proceed to the free formation of congregations, and you should seek the means and ways to proceed to this free formation of congregations.

Now, of course, I would only have two objections to an absolutely free establishment of a congregation, that is, one of you goes to place X and the other to place Y and simply, by preaching first for five and then for ten or twenty people for my sake, gradually creates a free congregation. The only difficulty I can see is that this path is, first of all, a slow one – you will see that it is a slow one – it is the safest, but a slow one. And the second is the material question. Because, isn't it true that if things were to be done this way, it would be necessary for this matter to be financed in the broadest sense, to be properly financed, so that a community would simply be established by you yourselves, and that the financing of this community would be sought.

Now I must say that this would, of course, be the best way; even if it has to be fought for with external material means, it would naturally be the best way. But I must tell you quite frankly that all these paths require great courage on your part. It takes great courage for you to join in the struggle that naturally arises, to join in the difficulties, in the struggle, for the financial foundation as well. It would, of course, be best if we could raise sufficient funds to make you completely independent, so that you could simply choose whether to collect here or there, even if it is only from the smallest circle, my community. It will come about. It takes courage to believe that it will come about. It will come about, but of course you need the financial basis, and there are extraordinary difficulties standing in the way of this today. The community of all today's positive confessions will soon be there, which most strenuously opposes the fact that something like this is done. And you cannot do it in detail, you have to organize it as a large movement. You actually have to establish a community out of all of you who set themselves this goal in life and for whom a financial foundation is then sought.

Now, you can do the math. It would be enough, if, let us say, there were two hundred of you, because this way is, so to speak, a very safe one and does not depend on such speed. Now you can calculate for yourselves what is needed annually. As soon as you have the means to do it, you can do it. Then it is the safest way. But then it is also the most visible way, and that would actually be the more natural one. But in today's social and economic conditions, raising these funds in Central Europe – and that is what it could be about – is extremely difficult. Because you won't find any possibility to do something like this in another empire, in another country. So in both Eastern and Western Europe it is absolutely out of the question; in Central Europe it could be done for internal reasons, and a great thing would be done with it.

Werner Klein: I must say in this regard that I have so far only seen this path, the latter, and actually still consider it the only viable one. We have major difficulties with financing, of course, but we could work to eliminate them. I also believe that you can keep your head above water with your own resources if you create your own field of activity in a city, perhaps try to get money from lectures. You will be able to make friends who will help you. But you can also get into a profession – after all, we live in the age of reduced working hours – so you will be able to fill a less significant position at the town hall or somewhere where you can make a living if necessary, in order to gain the time to pursue what is on your mind. I believe that you will be able to survive. But alongside that, a generous organization would have to be set up and an attempt would have to be made to at least obtain funds. And according to what lives in all of us in Germany, this general yearning for something new and strong, I believe that many things will be found. That will depend on us. — But now, for the first time today, I see the second way in connection with the church and I believe that one can go hand in hand there. The path of the free community requires a completely different tactic, a joint approach to the goal, and a joint approach at a joint point in time, but still each for himself when one emerges as a larger movement; while the other tactic is that everyone starts working on their own and tries to create a new community from the church. The one will not interfere with the other. At the moment when we are perhaps so far along on this safe but also more difficult path that we can, to put it bluntly, get started, then those who have so far taken the other path will join us in our work and then, with can support us with fruits that have already shown themselves to be real and positive, while, if we succeed in one area or another in following up the successes in one or the other area, that would only be to be welcomed and regarded as a factor in itself. If we really want to achieve something socially in view of the social and religious hardship today, then only this first, sure way seems to be available. We must try it in any case. If we fail, we will still take the other path, and if it is taken simultaneously by those who already want to work in order to fill the interim period, it is to be welcomed. If we want great things, we must also strive for the great and try.

Rudolf Steiner: It is indeed the case that here in Stuttgart we have had some experiences with the difficulties that confront something like the surest way that has been characterized here. Of course, I am entirely of the opinion that this path can be taken if sufficient effort is put into it. But please also be aware of the difficulties that are encountered in all areas today. There is an extraordinary amount of goodwill in saying that one can also take on some position and work alongside it in the way that is desirable. But it is an open secret that students at German universities will face terrible financial difficulties in the coming years. People have thought of all kinds of impractical things; even a professor came to me and said that we should think about setting up printing presses because students will no longer be able to afford to print their dissertations, and they should print them themselves there. Of course, I do not have the slightest sympathy for such material inbreeding; because I do not know how the students should earn anything by printing their own dissertations. I thought it would be more rational to abolish the forced printing of dissertations altogether – for the time of need. – So, one thinks of all kinds of impractical things, but the matter is a very serious one. For example, it would be an extremely appealing idea to me if the “Kommende Tag” were able to provide a certain material basis for at least a number of students, that is, it would have to, let's say, take on a group of students in its enterprises for three months on a rotating basis, while employing others for the next three months. Then the latter could go back to university and study. So that would be a nice idea to implement, if it were possible. But in our own company, the moment we tried to implement something like that, i.e. hire a number of students, we would immediately have a revolution by the trade union workers, who would tell us: that's not on. They would throw us out. And, wouldn't you agree, something similar would happen, even if it wasn't exactly in the form of being thrown out, but probably in the form of not being let in. Besides, I don't see any real possibility of being able to pursue such a profession alongside a job, even with today's shorter working hours, where you can give yourself completely, because it requires complete devotion to really fulfill such a profession, which you want to pursue. I don't see any real possibility.

You see, we are simply faced with the fact that today, due to the difficult living conditions, people are actually not as strong as they should be. So I fear that such a path, where the person in question would have to rely on himself in financial terms, would at least lead to a slight neurasthenia. It also seems rather unlikely to me that under present-day conditions it is possible to earn a living by lecturing and working independently in this way. You see, intellectual services are paid for in the old currency, and one has to eat in the new currency. If you take the payment for intellectual performance, then in the old currency you get 30 marks, and in the new currency you would have to spend 300 marks. So this matter would of course be difficult. On the other hand, it would be really worth working for a financing in the broadest sense.

I also think that working together with the church, which seems to be more appealing to Mr. Klein than to some of you, is not a lost cause. Because combining this work with the church would, I believe, have advantages.

You can do both. I still think that experience today suggests that if you first succeed in creating free congregations from within the church, you will find followers simply by your approach. You will find followers. Because it is no exaggeration to say that there are many pastors and priests in the Protestant religious communities today who would like to get out of their jobs and just need a nudge. If you succeed in drawing these people out of their communities, then you will find that some of the pastors currently in office will follow you. That would be a good addition. It would enable the movement to grow rapidly. You would find support from those who, on their own, simply cannot muster the initiative. If the impetus were provided from outside, you would find support.

That would, of course, be extremely desirable if we could somehow at least tackle the question of financing. I deliberately say “tackle it somehow”, because if this financing question is properly tackled, then it is likely to succeed. Tackling it is much more difficult than succeeding once it has been properly tackled. For what is lacking today in the broadest sense is the active cooperation of people in the great tasks of life. People everywhere have become so accustomed to routines that one does not really gain sufficiently active collaborators for the most important tasks.

I believe that we should perhaps make use of our time, and because we have now come directly to the practical issues, which should be discussed preliminarily, I would ask you to come at half past six this evening for the continuation.

Rudolf Steiner: I think it would be best if the honored attendees could express their views on the matters we have begun to discuss today, so that we can get to know each other's wishes and intentions. You certainly have questions about one or two things based on what I have presented.

Emil Bock: ¹ This afternoon, the participants instructed me to report the results. We initially discussed the various options and finally agreed that all of the options would be considered and then we made it clear: In any case, it is about the collection of people and the collection of money and in which direction we want to organize ourselves and whether we only want to strive for a loose association. We agreed that everyone should take the initiative where it seemed advisable to them and then chose a place to which letters would be sent regularly as soon as the need arose, so that we would move into a circular letter organization. What we can do publicly in a religious way can only happen in church. What we do afterwards, we have to wait and see once we have people. Regarding the question of joining, we have been able to make it clear that joining can only be possible if one of those who are now participating in the course is a guarantor. The central office for these letters would have to be transferred to Berlin, so that the initiative for everything possible must be collected and given from Berlin. The gathering of people could be tackled immediately. Then the preparation of an administrative office: the only question is who should be considered. However, we do not want to collect the money in such a way that it goes under the name of our association, because that would also bring us into the public eye. The idea was considered of whether we could attach our administrative office to the “Kommenden Tag”, or what other possibility might present itself.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, so you thought that it would be best to have a loose union of those who might want to join this committee, a central office in Berlin for collecting letters, and the collection of money in a way that the “Kommende Tag” would initially handle. The latter matter is, of course, something that we would also have to make more tangible. Now, isn't it true that the looser union should also be discussed from the point of view of how quickly those present imagine the matter should proceed? After all, they are mostly older people who will soon be coming out into the world, aren't they?

A participant: Different.

Rudolf Steiner: Of course they are different. But in addition, the situation today is such that it is indeed necessary not to lose time when doing something like this. There is no doubt that, for example, much more would have been achieved by the threefolding movement if time had not been lost all the time. And so I would also think that here it is advisable to try not to lose any time, but of course it cannot be rushed either. Have you formed an idea about how you might be able to go public with the matter at the point in time when you want to start collecting money on a large scale? You want to avoid the public in a certain sense. Do you have any particular reasons for this? Let's try to discuss this question.

A participant: I would just like to say that, from what I have experienced in the various cities so far, I have the feeling that there is actually no reason to avoid the public. The lectures are always only of a spiritual scientific nature. I am convinced that more people would join immediately if it were not just spiritual scientific lectures, but if it were to shape culture.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to hear specifically what your objections to publicity are. The reasons may be very important.

A participant: We have considered that it must come down to a cultural struggle, and that we have to wait with the founding of communities, and also with the proclamation of the idea in general. As soon as a request for money appears in public, it is reason enough for us to be met with the greatest difficulties. These were our reasons for waiting with the church planting itself; because it is about the same thing.

Another participant: We believe that we cannot appear as active participants in the founding of the community...

Rudolf Steiner: Well, yes, wait with the founding of the community... A participant:... with the public appearance.

Rudolf Steiner: But what do we do while we are waiting? The task at hand is to find ten times as many people as there are here. That is what you are aiming for with the letter. I believe that if you do it skillfully, it is not that difficult to get ten times as many people. In particular, among the theological student body, there will probably be ten times as many people. You yourself came together relatively quickly. There will undoubtedly be no shortage of people among the theological students. It all depends on the form in which you try to finance the matter. Of course, it's not an easy thing, because it will only succeed if it is done relatively quickly. And the idea is, of course, quite good to first form a loose union and to seek out, through correspondence, all those students who are inclined towards such a cause. How many are you now?

A participant: Eighteen.

Rudolf Steiner: Eighteen students, ten times as many is 180. As soon as you have 180 to 200, then it would indeed be a matter of getting down to work; and then the question arises as to what could be done to be able to act as quickly as possible. Of course, working through an exemplary cult – as good as it is in itself – is not designed to work quickly. So the question arises as to whether one should not prepare a calm but very clear presentation of the main points, which could be printed, during the collection through correspondence. This does not need to be published , but which would have to be used to collect money, which would be presented by those personalities who are trying to collect the money, to people who are believed to have money for such a thing. How this could be done by the “Coming Day” is, of course, somewhat difficult to imagine. The “Coming Day” could, of course, be involved in the administration, but how the “Coming Day” could advocate for such a cause with its name is a little questionable. Did you mean that the “Coming Day” as the “Coming Day” takes the matter in hand?

A participant: We only saw the advantage in the fact that they already have many addresses and administrative experience. It does not have to be “Tomorrow”. We have to appoint someone to do this who will then work with “Tomorrow” for practical reasons.

Rudolf Steiner: I do understand the matter. It is perhaps not even an impractical idea to think of someone who might be very interested in this matter. One could think of Heisler for this task. One could think of something so that he or someone in the same situation would be the best person for this position. But how do you feel about a kind of calm, objective, purposeful presentation that you would have to disseminate so that people could educate themselves about what they would spend money on.

A participant: I believe – for my part – that at the moment when the decision is made to undertake major financing, the hidden aspect will have to be abandoned in any case.

Rudolf Steiner: But it is possible that someone like Heisler would be entrusted with the financial work, so to speak, and that one would not shy away from letting the matter as such come to the public's attention. On the other hand, I would say that you could avoid having your name and the names of others who join you become known, so that no one needs to know that you belong to this movement if it is somehow a matter of a pastor or preacher within the church. There is no need to be questioned about it. The participants in this loose association need not be brought to the public, but only the idea and the thing as such.

In Heisler's case, it doesn't do any harm, because he won't get a pastorate anyway.

A participant: I am not reflecting on a position within the church.

Rudolf Steiner: You are not reflecting on a position within the church?

A participant: No, I would not do that.

Rudolf Steiner: There are certainly such candidate preachers who are already so compromised that they can quietly let their names be known. Otherwise, the names of this loose association need not be known. Of course, no one denies their affiliation; but it is only necessary to say so when asked. That seems to me, after all, to be the best that can be done. And you don't think that among the younger people already in pastor positions there will be a number of those who would join your circle, who have thus already entered [into a church office]?

A participant: It is questionable to what extent people already have a relationship with anthroposophy.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, it would be necessary, though, to have a certain core of personalities who are anthroposophists. But it doesn't really seem necessary to me that everyone should be an anthroposophist. Isn't it true that if there is a certain core of energetic personalities, then the whole thing can take on an anthroposophical character simply through the importance of these personalities, without excluding those who are not anthroposophists. You see, the best anthroposophists are usually those who were opponents at first; or at least the best include those who were opponents and have slowly come to anthroposophy. We must not imagine that many of those who have sought their way to a religious world view in the modern sense can be brought to anthroposophy in the twinkling of an eye by a short reading. There will be a certain reluctance in many. Above all, one will not easily get away from the belief that certain research results of anthroposophy are excluded by dogmatics. Many will still believe that repeated lives on earth are irreligious and un-Christian. And it is not really desirable today to exclude all those who cannot yet see this, because the actual religious relationship must be maintained. Just as one could, I might say, be a good Christian at the time of the founding of Christianity without knowing that the earth was round or that America existed, and on the other hand, Christianity was not shaken by the discovery of America, so someone can be a good Christian without having access to the truth of repeated earth lives. Because basically, an essential thing about being a Christian is one's relationship to Christ Jesus himself, to this very concrete being; that is the essential thing. The essential thing about Christianity is a personal relationship with Christ Jesus. And a doctrine as such, which is certainly secured as a doctrine, which is precisely a doctrine about the world context, cannot actually be the hallmark of Christianity in a person. One is a Christian naturally through one's relationship to Christ, as one is a Buddhist through one's relationship to Buddha, not really through the content of the teaching. One needs the content of the teaching, as we will present it in the sermon, but one is not really a Christian through the content of the teaching. No one today can be a Christian in the sense that one must understand it, who does not have a positive relationship to the supersensible Christ-being.

Therefore Adolf Harnack is no Christian to me. A man who is capable of saying that Christ can be taken out of the Gospels and that only the Father has a place in them is not a Christian. In his view, Christ is no different from Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. If you take Harnack's book The Essence of Christianity and cross out the name of Christ and put the name of Yahweh everywhere, you will see that the meaning is not changed. It simply replaces the faith of Jesus in the Father with the knowledge of the essence of Jesus himself. It actually recognizes only one great teacher about the religion of the Father in the Christ. But that is actually the negation of Christianity, not the essence of Christianity. And that is why I think it is not necessary for us to swear people in, so to speak, to the doctrine of reincarnation or karma, because that is something that people find difficult to come to terms with; they will come to terms with it in time; I just think that since you are anthroposophists yourselves and will be able to win over a large number of anthroposophists, the matter will already have the necessary anthroposophical character. The content of anthroposophy itself ensures that the matter has an anthroposophical character, if it succeeds at all. And it must succeed because it has many conditions for success within itself.

A participant: At the University of Münster, the theologians wanted to free themselves. There you would find theologians who meet our needs. The question is whether there will be many anthroposophists there.

Rudolf Steiner: I believe that the ground was prepared in Münster by Gideon Spicker; he was a professor of philosophy in Münster, after all. You know nothing about him?

A participant: Only that the exams were then designed differently. Another participant: In Leipzig it is exactly the same.

Rudolf Steiner: You are bound to find a prepared soil among the younger theologians.

A participant: The theologians who want to free themselves from the church are mostly people who can no longer accept the Trinity doctrine and do not want to recognize Christ as a supersensible being, or they are people from the community movement.

Rudolf Steiner: If there is a core of anthroposophists, it is not a hindrance if we also have these personalities in the loose association. It seems to be a proof that, for example, Mr. Rittelmeyer came to anthroposophy immediately after he wrote this little work about the personality of Jesus. From this point of view, which you have just characterized, it is actually written. It was written with the intention of presenting Jesus Christ as a strong religious personality, but leaving the whole question of the supersensible, of the symbol and so on, completely out of the discussion. So it was entirely what one might call enlightened Protestantism. And then he joined us and relatively quickly recognized the necessity to understand the Mystery of Golgotha and to come to terms with a supersensible conception of this Mystery of Golgotha. So I believe that if they are just people who are seriously studying — they don't have to be swots, but they have to be serious students — then it doesn't hurt if they come from an enlightened Protestantism. You see, the best candidates you could wish for would actually be those young people – there aren't many of them, there are only a few at most – who have just finished their Catholic theology studies and have broken with the Catholic Church completely; they would be the best candidates you could wish for. There is no denying that Catholic theology, as theology, has an extraordinary amount of substance. People are well trained, and that remains. And then, when they are out – as a Catholic theologian, you are of course kept in iron shackles – when they are out, anything can be done with them. I only mention this – there are not many such people, but just a few – to emphasize the possibility. And then, the enlightened Protestants should not be underestimated.

A participant:... people who strive to have something certain, get so far in science that they can no longer recognize the supersensible being of Christ and yet somehow have a longing for it...

Rudolf Steiner: That was the case with Rittelmeyer. He could not possibly have arrived at anything other than a somewhat stronger and also very spirited Weinel view of the simple man from Nazareth. That was the personality of Christ in Rittelmeyer. And very quickly he had arrived at the supersensible view of Christ. So I believe that you need not fear to bring people up.

A participant: The most difficult question remains that of financing.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, the question of finance remains difficult, but it remains difficult until we have the money; it is indeed the case that every new 10,000 marks must present new difficulties. These are difficulties that simply have to be overcome. I do believe, however, that many bitter experiences have to be overcome; many bitter experiences will be made. But I believe that someone like Heisler might not be the wrong person for the job, because, of course, he is embittered by his own fate, but on the other hand he is convinced of the necessity of such things. And he is of a respectable age – excuse me, you are all younger than he is – which one acquires when one has to take on everything that comes along when one collects money. It is not a pleasant thing.

Emil Bock: Now there is still the question of whether anthroposophists who are not theologians could be brought in for our purposes.

Rudolf Steiner: [Do you mean] with this question whether Anthroposophists should be included in this looser association who are not actually in a position to enter the priesthood?

Emil Bock:... who can enter into the situation, who are currently in a different profession.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, of course the question then is what such people should do. At most, they would be considered for fundraising. But it is not easy to muster the necessary enthusiasm for this if you are not involved in the matter. There may of course be individuals, but I believe that these individuals are already so overwhelmed with all kinds of work that they could hardly devote themselves to such a thing in any other way than as a secondary occupation. But I do not actually know of anyone who, without aspiring to a preaching office, even in the freest form, could be useful as an anthroposophist. For anthroposophists are generally so attached to anthroposophy itself, which is something of a religion — yes, how shall I put it? — a kind of religious satisfaction, they are not so much out to regenerate the religious community itself. They would have to be theological anthroposophists, and one would have to look for them among them first. They are certainly not so rare since Rittelmeyer's activity has existed. I think you will find many among theologians; and especially since the book that Rittelmeyer published as a collection, you will find many among theologians. Whether they are all useful is another question. But otherwise, I think it would greatly improve the movement.

Emil Bock: Of course they would have to change tack when they get to know the idea.

Rudolf Steiner: Would many of the students want to change direction? Do you mean students from the Federation for Anthroposophical Higher Education?

A participant: Students who do not study theology because, although they have a strong religious interest, they do not want to study what is currently taught in the church.

Rudolf Steiner: You mean that they would also muster active enthusiasm?

A participant: Yes, if there is an opportunity to work in this sense.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, it is definitely possible, if you have looked at the personalities, to join these personalities, to approach them. I have seen that the Federation for Anthroposophical Higher Education Work, especially when it endeavors to spread anthroposophy itself in the individual branches of anthroposophical higher education work, places more emphasis on an interest in natural science than on theology itself. The theologians themselves should be interested in this.

A participant: Will we be able to wait until one of them has completed the specialized theological examination?

Rudolf Steiner: You think it would take too long? A participant: I don't know how necessary it is.

Another participant: There are some of us who have not yet expected to finish with the theological exams, but want to use the preliminary studies to strive towards this goal, which is to be addressed here.

Rudolf Steiner: Now the question is whether those you are referring to, having realized how necessary the matter is, will not turn to the preaching ministry after all, even if they have so far thought that they would not complete the exam but do something else. Of course not. This is connected with a very general cultural idea. You see, the ideas that Spengler described in his 'Decline of the West' are really more well-founded than one might think. They are so well-founded that one can say that if only cultural tendencies were at work, without a new impact, then what Spengler calculates would come about would come about. We are in the midst of a full decline, in a full current of decline. On the other hand, you must not forget the corruption of culture. The corruption of the general intellectual life is not limited to the more educated classes, but is very widespread. It is actually the case that the majority of the population is affected by it, and the religious impulses that may still have existed in the 70s and 80s have already disappeared among the less educated people today. So we are in the midst of a complete current of decline, and it is hardly possible to get out of it unless religious life as such creates new impulses. And so I certainly believe that those who, having undergone theological studies and having the opportunity to do so, should act as priests. It is necessary that precisely those who have studied theology should act as priests, because we need it so badly.

A participant:... but then also within the church?

Rudolf Steiner: Within the church? I would like to stick to what I have said. You can stay within the church if you can gradually lead the members out of the current church communities; you can therefore turn to the establishment of free congregations. I do not believe that the church as such can be reformed or regenerated in any way, that is not the case. The church community is so corrupted that we can only count on the fact that one leads them out [...] and founds something new with them [...] [further gaps in the transcript]. On the other hand, to think of a reform of the church itself, I may say – this is not just my opinion, but this is an objective realization of the facts – that these church communities are doomed. Except for the Catholic Church, of course, which must be understood in such a way that it is not at all doomed, because it works with extensive means and must therefore be regarded as something completely different.

A participant: We are partly philosophers and partly natural scientists, having dropped out of an unsatisfactory course of study in theology. Should we do a doctorate and then turn to studying theology again after the doctorate? Or should it be said that, given our background, we can start religious work right away?

Rudolf Steiner: You see, that is merely a question of the success that we will have. In this respect, we must not underestimate the transitional character of our work. When the Waldorf School was founded, I had nothing in mind but the purely personal suitability of the teachers, and the pedagogy and didactics were developed in a relatively few weeks. Such a thing must simply be possible in the transitional state. I do not believe that any of you who, let us say, failed in their studies of theology, turned to some other field of study, became philosophers or natural scientists, that any of you need to strive for anything other than formally completing the academic program. This is something that is desirable, but not absolutely necessary. It is desirable that the academic side should be concluded in some way, let us say with a dissertation. On the other hand, we do not need to consider in the least that someone would need to return to their theological studies. We must regard it as absolutely right, even for the transitional period, not to adhere to the old system of examinations and the like; of that there is no doubt. If, for example, Mr. Husemann has even finished his studies in chemistry and is preparing his rigorosum in chemistry, then nothing prevents him – if he would otherwise like to become a preacher – from becoming a preacher as a chemist.

You know, the nested study of theology – you don't have to take this as something that might be offensive – it is even a hindrance to the work of the preacher and the pastor in the community. It is a fact that the theological student does not learn enough about the world; he is actually too unfamiliar with what his task is. He is placed in it and is supposed to carry out such agendas as I have described in economic life. So a special course of study like today's 'theology course, where you become an entirely impractical person - I don't want to offend you with that - is not suitable for that. It is actually the case, as I have experienced, that, for example, excellent theological graduates really hardly knew what the Pythagorean theorem says. These are exceptional cases, but they do occur. But quite apart from the fact that they are not up to date in real practical life, which is above all needed, with the discussions about the validity of dogmatics, with the discussions about what is done in theological faculties, with that we certainly do not solve the world's problems. One could even well imagine that non-students with a certain religious genius could also be among us; one could well imagine that.

What we do need, of course, is for you to find the person within you before you leave here, to whom you could, as it were, transfer the secretariat of your loose association. It would be good if we could then stay in contact with this person, precisely from the “Coming Day”. But now you have the Central Office for Letters in Berlin.

A participant: We had thought of another place in Tübingen, which is still close to Stuttgart.

Rudolf Steiner: And what would the tasks of this center be?

A participant: So that these things that could be solved in relation to Stuttgart could be solved through personal contact.

Rudolf Steiner: What other tasks would the central office have? Searching for such personalities and then, don't you think, you are thinking of such a position separately from how Mr. Bock imagines it as a follow-up to the “Kommenden Tag” (The Coming Day).

Emil Bock: First of all, the financing would have to be tackled, work would have to be done in various places. A great deal has to be collected at a central office, so the central office would have to have full authority. We have taken Berlin because that is where most of us are.

Rudolf Steiner: So you would then think of having central offices in Berlin and Tübingen for finding suitable personalities and here in Stuttgart a personality who would prepare the financing?

Well, I can't make any kind of binding statement for the “Kommende Tag” at this moment, but it is my opinion that such a thing, if it is considered, could be done. Could it not be – of course I do not want to give any binding advice regarding the choice of personality, I am only giving Heisler as an example –: If Heisler were commissioned to start with the financing question and this were done in connection with the “Coming Day” , one would have to think about creating the position for Heisler right away, and of course I would have to bring that up for discussion in the “Kommen Tag” so that you would know what could be done on the part of the “Kommen Tag” when you leave here. I think that a lot of transitions from one to the other naturally lead a bit into the unknown. It seems to me that it would not be a bad idea if we were to create such a central office right away, which would start work, so to speak. Of course, it can't be too early, because I appreciate all the reasons against proceeding too quickly. But really, what can be done by such a center after two years or after a year can also be done today. I cannot make a binding statement today on behalf of “Kommendes Tag”, but it seems to me that if it is thought of at all, not under the name of “Kommendes Tag”, but in connection with it, then it would actually have to be done immediately.

A participant: Do we have the material basis? If you employ someone, you have to have the salary for him.

Rudolf Steiner: Well now, the question is of course whether a way out could not be found after all in this direction, whether in a sense the concern would now already be for the salary of this particular person. Will you still be here the day after tomorrow? We can talk tomorrow or the day after tomorrow about how to solve the problem of finding such a person immediately. Of course, it is not possible for you to arrange financing for the person so quickly, as they should take charge of the financing themselves. We can talk about it tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. But in principle, would you be opposed to starting the matter immediately, if possible?

A participant: I would also like to ask whether we could now agree on the person in charge of the position.

Rudolf Steiner: I will only say this: I always start from real, practical points of view, and there are reasons that could probably make the realization very quick if Dr. Heisler could be considered. With him, the matter could probably be dealt with more quickly than if it were a matter of choosing any other person.

• 1. Note from the editor: Only a few of the participants were known to the stenographer. Therefore, the names of some of the individual participants are missing from his documents. So where it says “a participant” below, this means that the name of the person concerned was not recorded by the stenographer.

My dear friends! Today, we will first continue our reflections from yesterday and then see how we can further develop the matters touched on yesterday. Yesterday, I wanted to talk to you about the inner side of community building in the religious field. I would now like to move on to the second area, which you yourselves have identified as particularly important to you: to the cult.

It is absolutely true that without the inauguration of a certain cult with its so-called symbolism, the religious deepening of humanity cannot be brought about, and I would like to explain this to you with a few words, because one can only work within a field if one understands the conditions and forces involved.

You see, in more recent times, the whole process of human development in the civilized part of humanity has basically taken on an intellectual form, a form that makes mere concepts in their abstractness the content of consciousness. And such a thorough feeling has arisen from it that one can only gain real insights in this abstractness, that this feeling has passed over to actually only appreciate the abstract content of consciousness in a certain way. Now one can understand that this abstract content of consciousness had to be appreciated at a time when the assertion of the individual emerging from the whole human being was increasingly emerging as a human demand. After all, abstract content of consciousness presents us with something completely universal. One has the feeling that through abstract world comprehension one can bring all understanding of the world into the individual human being.

Where should our concepts reach? They should initially suffice to comment on that which presents itself to us in the sense world as perception, in the most diverse ways, and to find laws there, the so-called laws of nature or historical laws. But then this intellectual content also sets about forming hypotheses about that which is not perceived, partly such hypotheses that extend to that which is not perceptible in time and space, partly to that which is not perceptible for reasons of principle. The beginning and end of the earth, for example, is not perceptible in time and space. From the intellectualism of modern times we have received hypotheses about the origin of the earth and about the end of the earth arising out of physical and geological connections. We have hypotheses regarding the spatial, let us say, about the inner nature of the sun or other world bodies, such as the world nebula, as they are called, and so on. One usually does not consider that when one says that the sun is so or so constituted, that this is nothing more than a hypothesis, and one even believes that one has a physical result in this hypothesis. The physicists would be very astonished if they could perceive, could see, what really is at that point in space, where they put a kind of very thin gas out into space as a solar ball. In reality, there is not something comparable to our gases, not even to our ether, at that point; it is not just empty space at that point, but something that we describe as negative in comparison to the intensity of our empty space; it is a recess in space at the point where we speak of the sun. There is not only space emptied of matter, there is not even the intensity of the void that we usually call space in the abstract. There is less present at the point than space, and in this way we move from the physical to the spiritual. One can only speak of the sun in a spiritual sense.

I only mention this today to draw your attention to the way in which intellectualism, which is perfectly justified in the field of natural science, has taken hold of all fields in recent times. It then extends to the imperceptible, to the world of molecules and atoms, which, in principle, cannot be perceived for the simple reason that heat, light and sound are said to arise from the movements of these molecular and atomic structures, so that nothing perceptible is introduced into the atomic world. Something is hypothetically introduced that is supposed to be present.

Thus, intellectualism has spread over the temporal and spatial of the external world of space and time and over the unperceivable in principle; but it has also spread over everything that is historical and over everything that is religiously historical. If you follow the entire literature and scholarship of the Gospels, and indeed all of 19th-century biblical scholarship, it will become clear how this entire biblical scholarship gradually moved from a completely different kind of soul content to an intellectualistic grasp of the Bible and the Gospels. It can be said that by the end of the 19th century, so much intellectualism had been applied to the Gospel that there was actually nothing left of the Gospel even for theologians. It must be characteristic that this intellectualism has taken on those forms that it shows, for example, in the theologian Schmiedel, where we see that the personality of Christ is no longer inferred from what is in the Gospels, but a number of passages in the Gospel are sought where something detrimental is said about Christ Jesus, where, for example, it is said that he did not care about his mother and siblings. And from this small number of defamations, which are compiled about the personality of Christ Jesus in the Gospels, it is concluded that they must refer to something true, because one would not, if one wanted to invent something, have added such a defamation, but one would have invented hymns of praise.

Now you can see the depths to which the intellectual approach has sunk in its attempts to get at the Gospels at all. I mention this because it has emerged from the theological side, for what has been achieved by the non-theological side in terms of extravagance has, after all, reached the point of the monstrous. You only need to remember that there is extensive psychiatric research on the Gospels today, that we have literary works today that clearly express the view that one cannot understand what the Gospels actually contain and that describe the messages [in the Gospels] as abnormal things, as one would view things from a psychiatric point of view. It is even the case that the origin of Christianity is assumed to be a mental illness of Christ Jesus, which has had an infectious effect on all Christians. Thus, the origin of Christianity is derived from the mental illness of Christ Jesus, which he fell prey to.

It would be an understatement to say that any description is too strong when one wants to point out that the entire so-called intellectual life of the present, which moves in intellectualisms, must actually lead to the undermining of precisely the Christian-religious element, and with the greatest speed. The fact that this fact is not sufficiently examined is one of the great damages of our time. If one were to look at it, one would come to the conclusion that, above all, those who take religious life seriously must ensure that this religious life is wrested from intellectualism.

I do not want to dwell critically on the fact that in the last four centuries, through Protestantism itself, a great deal has been done to achieve this intellectualism in the religious sphere as well. More and more, perhaps unconsciously, one finds a pagan element in the cult and the symbolism. Now, what has prevented us from adhering more to the cult and to the symbolism does not lie in the feeling that we have something pagan in it, but rather it lies in the fact that we no longer have any sense for those forms of expression that lie in the cult and in the symbolism. Consider this: through intellectual comprehension of the world, man is led to believe that he can make sense of the whole world with the content of his soul, that he can bring everything into intellectual concepts. Therefore, the intellectual man feels in possession of the whole world when he has his intellectual concepts. It is precisely because man deceives himself into believing that he has grasped the entire content of the world, it is precisely through this universal element that man feels intellectually satisfied and believes that he no longer needs any other element to comprehend the world, to feel the world. It is understandable that intellectualism has been able to gain the upper hand in our time, because man believes that he can understand the world in intellectual terms. But because man is satisfied in this way, in that he seemingly gets the whole world into his ego, he loses the social connection with the rest of the world, and that which should live as a social being is atomized, atomized right down to the individual. We have already seen this in the youth movement in modern times, that simply by the prevalence of the intellectualist, people fall apart into individual atoms, so that everyone wants only their own religious belief. They are absorbed in saying that religion is a thing that cannot go beyond the human skin. That is what indicates the reasons why the universalistic intellectual life in particular fragments and atomizes religious life, so that the particular form of modern science must undermine religious life. And the strongest force for the destruction of religious life is actually present in those university and other educational theologians who have adopted the scientific thinking of our time in order to understand the religious, the facts of religion as such.

Not as much is being done to undermine religious life through the laity of today as through modern theology; and it is a pity that such efforts have not made more progress than those of Overbeck, which were set out in the extraordinarily significant book “On the Christianity of Our Present-Day Theology,” in which the case is made that the modern theologian is unchristian. Overbeck, the Basel church historian, who was a friend of Nietzsche and on whom he had a very deep influence, wanted to prove that modern theology is the most un-Christian, has completely thrown off Christianity and contributes most to the undermining of Christianity because it has become purely intellectualistic through the universal suggestion that intellectualism has exerted on the modern educated world. Until you realize that modern theology, as it is taught at the modern faculties, leads to the undermining of Christianity, you will not get the right impulse into your endeavors.

Now, what is at stake is that we learn again to progress to a form of experiencing the world other than the purely intellectual one, and the other form consists precisely in the pictorial, in that which can pass over into cult and into symbolism.

You see, when we set up the Waldorf School here – I would like to show you things from the perspective of the here and now – when we set up the Waldorf School here, the first thing that had to be done was to act more in line with the spirit of the times and to make it clear to the world that our aim in setting up this Waldorf School was not to found a school of world view. It is the worst slander against the Waldorf School when people outside say, and this is already being repeated as far away as America, that it exists to teach anthroposophy to children. That is not its purpose! It is not a school of world-view. What can be gained through anthroposophy can be incorporated into pedagogy and didactics. Only that which can be fathomed by anthroposophy should lie in the pedagogical treatment itself. Therefore, from the very beginning — because it cannot be any different as long as you have not yet worked — we have had a Catholic priest teach religious education to Catholic children and a Protestant priest teach religious education to Protestant children. Now, the Waldorf School was initially created for the children of the Waldorf-Astoria workers; they were the foundation. Many children of Social Democrats and dissidents came along. The question arose: should these children grow up without any religion? There was a certain kind of concern. But there were also parents who did not want their children to grow up without religion. So we were obliged to give some kind of anthroposophical religious education, just as we had Catholic instruction given to Catholic children and Protestant instruction given to Protestant children. And most children found it useful, at least I think so, isn't that right?

Ernst Uehli: By far the majority.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, by far the most children. On the other hand, there are a relatively large number of children who are taught Catholic religion, and the children taught Protestant religion are in the minority. Well, we couldn't help it, we certainly didn't want to take business away from the Protestant religion teacher, and at first we even thought it was unfortunate for our school when the Protestant religion teacher once said that he couldn't really make any progress because the children were gradually moving over to the Anthroposophical religion lessons. It was up to him to keep them. We couldn't help it if they ran over. We don't have anthroposophy as just any subject in the school curriculum, but just as the Catholic and Protestant religious education is brought in from outside. We have tried to get a methodology for it and so on. All this is, of course, in its infancy, because things that work with reality cannot be created overnight; it is something that can only come from practical, extensive experience, but it must be started with that. From an unbiased observation, the need arose – and this is important for our consideration yesterday – to add a cult to religious instruction, namely our Sunday activity, which two of your colleagues observed last Sunday. Of course, this is also something that is just beginning. So far, we have a ritual for such a Sunday activity — every Sunday — and a ritual for children who have reached the age of fourteen, the completion of elementary school, and who in this ritual first experience what is thought to be experienced through confirmation. But you have to look at it all as being at the beginning, but the necessity to move on to a kind of cult, to a kind of working through ritual, that has arisen entirely from the matter. And if you follow your matter with real inner participation, you will have no choice but to say to yourself: cult, ritual, symbolism must be added.

Because, you see, it is the case that all religious life must disappear if it cannot represent reality, if religious life is only supposed to be something that can be spoken of in such a way that everything can be expressed in intellectualized thought. Then this religious life cannot be cultivated at all. Something must be able to happen through religious experience; there must be processes that, as such, as processes, have not only an eternal significance [for man], but are something in world events.

And here we must admit that everything we intellectually grasp in our soul, everything that modern science recognizes as a scientific achievement – not what we form in our soul as living concepts , we gradually acquire during our childhood, and this then transforms itself in the course of our lifetime – but the intellectualized content, even if it extends to the most complex natural laws, is mortal with us.

Do not take this sentence lightly. That which is the intellectual content of the soul is, at best, only an image of the spiritual; it is mortal like the human body. For it is precisely the intellectual that is completely mediated by the body. All soul experiences that are mediated intellectually arise after birth and perish at death. That which is eternal in the soul comes only after the intellectual. So, no abstract concept goes through the gate of death with us, but only what we have experienced in life beyond abstract concepts. That is why many souls from the present population have to lead a long 'sleeping life' after death, because they were only involved in intellectuality and because intellectuality fades away after death and it takes a long time for a person to acquire a super-intellectual content, which he can then process for the next life on earth. It is a fact that much of the present life is lost to man in his overall development through intellectual life.

This is regarded as foolishness by our contemporaries today, at least by our theologians; but it is a proven spiritual-scientific result. The fact that our entire education today is based only on intellectualism, the fact that we are so proud of this intellectualism, means that we deprive the human being of immortal content to the same extent that we instill this mortal intellectualism into him from the most diverse points of view. You must take this to heart.

My dear friends, it is absolutely right to statistically count how many of a population are non-literate, how many can read and write in relatively early childhood. But if education is built only on intellectualism, as it is in today's schools, then this means killing the soul-spiritual and not awakening the soul-spiritual. This is how it must be for the earth. But on the other hand, a counterweight must also be provided. That is why we do not have an intellectual approach to teaching reading and writing in our pedagogy and didactics at the Waldorf School. Here, too, the child learns from the pictorial, from the artistic, precisely in order not to kill everything immortal. It learns by being given the letter out of the pictorial, the abstract out of the concrete pictorial, which is our letter today, in order at least not to take from the child what is still a real soul life. This pedagogy and didactics of the Waldorf school always emerges from the anthroposophical understanding of the whole of human life. And the strong hatred that is shown towards it shows how much people feel that here, once again, something is being addressed that has been extinguished in the outside world over the last three to four centuries – albeit to the detriment of the life of modern humanity. We should hardly be surprised that religious life has been dampened, because we have a science that simply can no longer talk about the immortal. And the further culture that has emerged shows even more clearly that science has become nothing but a bauble; a froth of thinking has shown itself in the general culture of humanity.

We have a word for “immortal” in the newer languages; but man has only done so out of his egoism, out of his desire to be eternal. We have a word for “immortal,” but we have no word for “to be unborn.” We do not have a word for “to be unborn” that can be used in everyday speech. But we would have to have that, as well as the word “immortal.” We see only one end of life when we speak of the eternal in the soul. And with this goes hand in hand the atomization, the fragmentation, the weaving of the intellectual into the individual life, where today it is even sought in the subconscious, as in the James School in America and so on. If we are serious about cultivating the religious, we must confront this with the power of the image, of action, of ritual in the best sense of the word. Just consider – I will show it with an example – what this ritual as such means.

I certainly do not want to do the opposite of the iconoclasts who wanted to eradicate images and the cultic stormers who wanted to eradicate cult, and I do not want to express the opposite of that here today. But I would like to use an example to show what the cult means.

Take the Mass offering. The Mass offering cannot, strictly speaking, be considered a Roman Catholic institution. It must not be, because the Mass offering goes back to ancient, pre-Christian times. It can be said, however, that the Mass offering was shrouded in the mysteries of the ancient cultic rites in the mysteries, that it has been greatly transformed over time; but as we see the Mass offering today in Roman Catholicism, it is just something that has been partially transformed from the Egyptian and Near Eastern mysteries.

And what was it then? What was that ritual that eventually developed into the Mass Sacrifice, the meaning of which only the most initiated Catholics really know, while the broad masses of Catholics have some idea of it? What was it that underlies the Mass Sacrifice?

It was an outward image of what is called initiation or ordination. It is absolutely so. If one follows the Mass sacrifice and disregards what has been added to the basic components – partly quite rightly, partly through misunderstanding – if one looks only at these basic components, then the Mass sacrifice is an outward pictorial expression of initiation or ordination.

The four parts are: the reading of the Gospel, the offertory, the consecration – transubstantiation – and communion. The essence of the Mass lies in these four parts.

What does the reading of the Gospels mean? It means the resounding, the revelation of the word into the community. This is clearly based on the awareness that the word only has real content when it is not discovered by man through intellectual work, but when man experiences the inspired word that comes from the spiritual world. Without this consciousness, without the awareness that the supersensible world is embodied in the word, the reading of the Gospel would not be a real reading. Thus, in the first part of the Mass Sacrifice we have the divinely glorified proclamation of the teaching. What the supersensible world gives to man in the sensual world, we have in the Gospel reading.

What the human being can give of himself to the supersensible world, what is attempted of him in the offering of the sacrifice, so to speak as a counter-gift, the real prayer, that comes before us figuratively in the offertory. The offertory, the sacrifice, symbolically expresses what a person can feel in his soul as a sense of consecration to the supersensible. This is said through the symbolic action of the offertory, in a sense in response to the gospel reading. This is the second part.

The third part, transubstantiation, the change, consists in the fact that it is symbolically represented that consciousness which develops in man when he feels the divine substance within him, when he feels the divine substance in his own soul. For the Christian, this transformation is nothing other than the expression of the Pauline saying: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. He does not just sacrifice himself, he becomes aware that the supersensible lives in himself. This is what is meant by the image of transubstantiation. And it is always a beautiful and significant side effect of transubstantiation that, while the Holy Sacrament is being raised up over the chalice, the faithful are actually supposed to close their eyes and turn inward, so that they experience transubstantiation not through outward looking but through their innermost consciousness. It is also significant that the Holy Sacrament actually consists of the bread and the bread holder, which has a moon-shaped form, so that in the Sacrament Symbol, which envelops the Holy Sacrament (see drawing $.100), sun and moon are present in the picture, which clearly indicates that in the times when the sacrifice of the Mass was being developed in its original form, there was an awareness of the connection between Christ and the sun and between Yahweh and the moon. What the world has received in Christianity and what has been built on the lunar religion of Yahweh is fully expressed in this placement of the host on the lunar form, and it is truly a symbol of the confluence of the mortal in man with the immortal.

image

And the fourth part of the Mass is Communion, which is meant to express nothing other than this: after the human being has grown together with the supersensible, he allows his entire earthly being to be poured into union with the supersensible. This fourth part pictorially represents what the person to be initiated, the one to be initiated, also had to experience in the older and newer mysteries.

The first main section consists of learning to transform what one receives as knowledge and feeling for the world into an abstract form, so that one can say with inner honesty: In the beginning was the Word, and through the Word everything came into being. — I ask you, my dear friends, to consider how far modern Christianity has strayed from an understanding of the Gospel of John. Consider that today, in general, there is only the awareness that the Creator of the world is found in the Father God. God the Father, who is also confused with the Jewish god Yahweh, is regarded as the Creator God, whereas the Gospel says: “In the beginning was the Word, and all things came into being through Him; and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. — That which we have within us as something created is the creative, the word in the truest sense of the word, and one should actually have the idea of the Father God that he subsists in everything, and in the Son of God he has given the world that which signifies the creative of the world.

I only want to say this because the understanding of the person to be initiated has to advance to the fact that the word that is proclaimed sounds entirely from the supersensible, while our word that is currently in vogue sounds from the intellectual, from the transitory. That is the first act of initiation: that the content of the soul is formed into a word as a supersensible revelation, as a real event, an event that emerges from the Angelion All, from the sum of the spiritual world. What is raised up out of the spiritual world and takes on the form of a word in us is the first act of the sacrifice of the Mass. In the conscious speaking through itself one should become aware that this is a proclamation of the supersensible, and that it does not represent a proclamation of the sense world.

The second thing is that through sacrifice man enters into a real relationship with the supersensible. If we can find a way to hint at the sacrifice, that is, to hint at the counter-gift to the divine, then we actually have before us in all its many-sidedness what must surely be there. You see, in modern times Catholicism has allowed itself to become obscured. Modern Catholicism actually wants to receive everything from the Godhead and give nothing back to the Godhead.

Now, we did not want to go against the prejudice of today's world too much in our ritual [the Sunday service at the Waldorf School]. But we were obliged, simply in the question of the one who performs the sacrificial act, to address the child, asking whether it wants to strive for the Spirit of God, and in response: “Yes, I will seek Him, I will seek for the Spirit of God,” to give at least a hint in words of the real relationship. Something should happen, something should be said, when each child is asked whether he wants to seek the Spirit of God. We had to at least hint at the Lord's Supper [in our Sunday service], and the rest just has to come later.

Now, you see, in the third act, it becomes clear that the supernatural is not merely present, but that the human soul can connect with it. And in the fourth act of the Mass, during Communion, the fourth act of initiation is then depicted, which consists of man completely permeating himself with the supersensible, so that he feels himself to be only an external sign, an external world symbol, that he makes the word true: Man is the image of the Godhead.

The awareness of these connections has been so lost that today one can only point them out with certain difficulties. One can therefore say that in the sacrifice of the Mass – which of course cannot simply be taken over from Catholicism, but must be developed in the sense of our present time – one has before one's eyes that which so often presents the profoundly significant spiritual path of the human being in the image. And so it should be that we accompany important stages in life with such ritualistic acts, such as the transition from school to life, but that we also work with adults through ritual, that is, through the image, because the image works not only on the intellectual, but on the whole human being. If I am to grasp something intellectually, then I grasp it entirely within myself. When I stand before a picture, it goes much deeper into the layers of my humanity than the intellectual aspect does. And when what happens through the ritual enters into the members of a community, they experience something supersensible together, and what is atomized by the teaching material is synthesized in the act of worship. What is reproduced in the teaching material, if you put it in abstract terms, from intellectual forms of ideas, which leads to fragmentation, to analysis in the individual, is reunited, synthesized, when one tries to speak in images.

You see, in modern times only one community has actually learned to speak in images, but that is a community that abuses this symbolic, imaginatively inspired speech, namely Jesuitism. And you see, I must keep pointing out how, in Jesuit educational institutions, but precisely to the detriment of humanity, it is taught quite methodically to always summarize something when you have taught something.

I will give you a very vivid example, because I myself once experienced the tremendous significance, theoretically I might say, since I wanted to see for myself how the thing works. It was about a famous Jesuit pulpit speaker – it was ten years ago – he preached about the institution of Easter confession. He wanted to reduce to absurdity what the opponents of Catholicism say: that Easter confession, the demand for Easter confession, is a papal and not a supernatural institution. He wanted to reduce this to absurdity before his faithful. I also looked at it. If Klinckowström, that was the name of the Jesuit preacher, had wanted to teach his former audience in the abstract form in which one otherwise preaches, in this way, as one is accustomed to preaching in the Protestant area, he would not have achieved anything; he would not have achieved the slightest thing. He did it in the following way, by saying in summary: “Yes, my dear Christians, you see, when we say that the Pope has instituted the Easter confession, it is really as if we were saying the following: Imagine a cannon, and at the cannon stands the gunner; the gunner holds the fuse in his hand, and then the officer stands a little further away. What happens? The gunner holds the fuse, the officer gives the command; and at the moment when the officer gives the command, when the word of command sounds, the gunner pulls the fuse, the gun goes off, and through the powder in the gun, everything that happens when the gun is fired is produced.” “This whole congregation was like one soul when this image was vividly presented to them.” ‘Now,’ he continued, ”imagine that someone came and said that the gunner did everything, that everything actually happened through him. But he only pulled the fuse at the officer's command, and the officer could not have ordered the shot without the powder. Those who say that the Pope introduced the Easter confession go much further, because that would be the same as if someone claimed that the gunner, if he only pulls the fuse at the officer's command, invented the powder! It is just as wrong when people say that the Pope introduced the Easter confession. He was only present, he, as the representative of the transcendental world, pulled the fuse."

Everything was imbued with the truth of what Father Klinckowström proclaimed. It is not that this was due to the particularly happy disposition of this priest. You can see for yourselves that it is part of the Jesuit method of teaching to express everything in such images. There is even a work of literature today – why it has been published? I have not checked it; the Catholic Church will also have some kind of intention there, because it always has intentions -, in which it is described in detail how to move the index finger when speaking this or that word, how to move the hand when saying this or that. There are even drawings for this; there is a methodical work down to the smallest detail, a work that is incorporated into the picture. And one must just say: Why is no attempt made to develop that which is developed for the harm of people on the one hand, also for the good of people? Because it can also be developed for the good, it can and must also be developed for the good, the strength must come from the earnest spiritual intentions to transform the abstract into the pictorial, and this pictorial must be experienced with the community. In this way the soul of the community is uplifted, and only in this way is the sense of community truly established. The cultic service is what holds the community together; without it the community can only disintegrate. To oppose this on theoretical grounds is to start from prejudice.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that a friend of our cause, an Old Catholic pastor – as such, he reads the mass in German, in the national language, and performs other rituals in the national language – did not want to perform the rituals in the strange translation that one reads in many cases today. He prompted me to bring some of the practicable Catholic rituals into the form that was actually originally in them. Only through this does one see how the spiritual world in these things comes to life in many ways, and one sees what has been distorted since the time of Jerome.

Now, you need not think, as has often been said, that I am somehow tainted by Catholicism when I talk about the Catholic Church's worship. I just want to see things objectively and draw your attention to the fact that it is quite impossible to truly cultivate religious life without making the transition to worship, to speaking in the symbolum. No matter how well you know how to convince, how to work through intellectual presentation, in the religious field you will only achieve something if you can let the theoretically presented in your speech fade away into the symbolum in the appropriate places. You must experience the symbolum yourself as a truth, so you should only think of such symbolic representations that are really connected with what is real in the world.

But there are still many difficulties to be faced, and I want to draw your attention to them. Take for instance the following case: someone is supposed to imagine the physical becoming of a human being on earth. Yes, if you turn to science today with all the things it gives you about the female ovum, the male fertilizing cell, the growing out, the growing in of the fertilized ovum and so on, then despite the scientific achievements, despite the fact that one must admire what has been achieved through purely scientific thinking about such things, you do not get ideas that help you to grasp the being, but you get ideas that directly cover the truth piece by piece. You see, the most important component of the human, the animal, the organic in general, is protein. Compare the constitution of albumen with the constitution of any mineral substance in the world. It is so different that today, of course, the scientist says – and he is right to say so – the constitution of albumen is an extraordinarily complicated one, we cannot get at it, and we cannot find a bridge between any crystallized, inorganically constituted matter and what is present in albumen as a constitution. But, you see, today's science does not know that if we have any — I will draw it symbolically — inorganic form, which we can simply follow in this way (a), and we compare it with the protein constitution (b), then we initially have something that appears to be tremendously complicated; in all the substances of our food, everywhere in the organic, this seemingly complicated constitution fits in. We then say: the inorganic is more intricately constituted in the organic, and only then is the human body, for example, built up from this intricately constituted organic substance; this happens through cell division, through a certain configuration of the tissue, and so on. But the whole thing is, isn't it, nothing but nonsense. Because what really happens is the complete annihilation of all inorganic forms. The complexity of the protein consists in the fact that everything inorganic comes into chaos. The protein is always on the way to chaos, in order to dissolve the form corresponding to the inorganic and to transfer matter into chaos; and the matter that is most strongly transferred into chaos is that which is present in the fertilized egg cell. This is simply matter driven into chaos. The entire earthly natural law can no longer do anything with this chaos; it is eliminated. To have become albumen at any level means to be eliminated from the earthly natural law. And what is the consequence? That the extra-earthly natural law, the constellation of the planets, the whole extra-earthly world begins to act on this chaos in order to give this chaos a constitution again. Through the transmutation into protein, the matter enters into chaos, and thus becomes ready to receive again; not only to receive from the earthly, but to receive its constitution from the whole universe, from the cosmic. And in this consists the reproduction of the human head, which after all reproduces the vault of heaven.

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Of course, we will only have a true natural science when we go beyond these earthly things. The whole of natural science has become accustomed to deriving everything purely from the inorganic. Today, natural science is something that leads to everything dying, because natural science only accepts as valid for the intellect what can be researched in abstracto. At the moment when you have to think about the transition from that which can only be investigated in intellectual form to chaos, you have to stop thinking and start looking, and move on to a different kind of knowledge. And that is where the difficulty lies. For you see, intellectualism not only makes us into people who reject the pictorial, it even prevents us from getting out of the intellect and forming pictures ourselves. Once you have become completely intellectualized and abstract, you simply cannot do it!

The fact is that this intellectualistic culture of modern times has such great power over people that they all seem like someone who, as a little girl or even as a little boy, wants to learn to embroider in a Waldorf school and only manages to let the different threads run from top to bottom and from bottom to top; he can embroider, but he cannot create real pictures. He cannot do that. The soul activity of our modern culture, in which we have harnessed ourselves, presses so hard that no one has the spirit to be flexible enough to realize that in the egg white, everything is simply erased by these scientific results, and that matter is opened up to conception from the cosmos. This is what then points to the necessity of seeking religious renewal through anthroposophy. That is why I emphasized yesterday: Of course it is the case that we must also draw on those from today's preaching stand who come with an honest heart as so-called Protestants and who therefore reject what I have just discussed today. But the effective core on which everything should be built must actually be anthroposophists. For anthroposophy seeks to achieve what is sought in vain everywhere else: it seeks to lead to a true grasp of reality. Without having gone through this process ourselves, this coming out of the natural scientific comprehension of the world, which has already taken hold of theologians today, we will not be able to find symbolic images with which we can truly express ourselves before the believing community. And if one can approach this anthroposophical grasp of the world — you can follow it everywhere in my cycles —, at certain points one simply has to let it run out into the picture. And if you read my “Geheimwissenschaft” (Occult Science), in which I described the preliminary stages of the earth as the sun and moon, I was speaking only in images. When I say that something looks like a taste sensation, then a whole dozen of scientists like Dessoir, Oesterreich and so on cannot understand it, cannot do anything with it.

In the practical exercise of the ministry, anthroposophy is what is meant by inspiration, so that one can actually enter into the handling of the symbolic, the ritual and the cultic, and thereby have the possibility of forming a community. Otherwise one will only have the opportunity to speak to individuals. The formation of communities will never be achieved through the abstract in life.

I would like to present the matter so far and then continue it tomorrow and move on to the actual content of the sermon. We will be back tomorrow at 11 a.m., and I suggest that we also continue our discussion today about the other areas today at 7 p.m.

Now I would just like to say: Yesterday I suggested to the gentlemen from “Der Kommende Tag” that a kind of bridge should be created through “Der Kommende Tag” to what is to take place in your circle here. I have emphasized the most important thing, namely that this matter be financed, so to speak. However we think of our matter, it must be financed. It must lead immediately to the free formation of communities, even if this must be won primarily from the present church. I must say that I believe that if we work in a truly appropriate way, it could be possible to get so far in three months that the financing work will pay for itself. In other words, I think that there will at least be enough to pay for the financing work and to fill a position with someone who will start this work. “Der Kommende Tag” will agree to take care of these three months; and I believe that you have agreed to ask Dr. Heisler to take on this financing work. Initially, the matter will be on firm ground if Dr. Heisler takes it on. I am thoroughly convinced that when one has come as far as we have with such a matter, one cannot afford to wait long, because circumstances are pressing, and one often does not notice how strong the forces of decline are today, and how easy it can be to miss the boat altogether if one waits too long.

We would be much further along with the threefold order today if the matter had been properly grasped back in the spring of 1919. At that time, a cultural council was established on the basis of my cultural appeal. It was rightly imagined that people in office and dignity would also make the matter their own. They even took people in office and authority into consideration, and they worded the matter in such a way that they did not get too many goose bumps, because they wanted to appear realistic. But of course the people could not be kept in line. It is true that they could not be kept in line and that nothing helped. They will therefore be forced to turn to young people, to the younger generation, who have realized that the older generation has simply grown old and can no longer keep up. We must try not to lose any time. That is why I would like to say to you that we should try to build a bridge across, because I believe it is a legitimate feeling that, for this in particular, the financing, if it is done properly, cannot be too difficult. You will find people who are sympathetic to this, and I believe that Dr. Heisler's eloquence will find open doors if he limits himself in the next few months to persuading individuals to open the stock exchange or write the bills. Of course, you can't win people over with lectures. People won't give anything away there. You have to go to the individuals. He will have to see his task as spending all his time going to the individuals. The only unpleasant thing is that you are dismissed with words – but only with words, other cases have not yet occurred. There is no other way, you just have to accept it, and in the majority of cases you are not dismissed with words. For example, in the collection of the Swiss “Futurum AG,” I heard from all the gentlemen who were commissioned with the collection that a single instance of being thrown out with words had taken place; otherwise, people limited themselves to being extremely friendly and amiable and finding the matter extremely interesting, but just not opening the stock market. Some people then write a letter afterwards; of course, there is no need to answer that. Of course you have to realize that you will only achieve something in a small percentage of cases, but you just have to try. It's no different than having to work only towards selections, having to try a lot to have success in a few cases.

Would it perhaps be possible to discuss something else, or to pursue this further? Perhaps some of you have something to say about this. We will then extend the discussion this evening to include all three main topics that you mentioned yesterday.

Gottfried Husemann: I think we would like to talk about the extent to which we now have to prepare ourselves for the preaching profession, for speaking in a pictorial way. We cannot expect the university to prepare us for this.

Rudolf Steiner: Are you saying that something can be done in this direction? Positives, right? In these lessons I can only give the guidelines; of course I cannot go into individual points. To go into details requires at least a fortnightly course. So, one could certainly think along these lines, that if our circle has grown in the next few months, we will organize such a course, which will then give in a fortnight what is taught in the teaching institutions under the title 'symbolism', but which is actually nothing. Only in the Catholic Church faculty does symbolism still mean something. You may not yet see its inner structure quite clearly.

You can see this inner structure best from the facts. I have experienced that a large number of Catholic priests who held a position as a high school teacher - which was still quite common in Austria at the time - or who had read as a university lecturer not only at the theological faculty, but also at the philosophical and other faculties, that such Catholic priests - they were mostly religious who were later called modernists - have been reprimanded by Rome. Now I once spoke with a man who was tremendously significant in exegesis, and I asked how it was that he had been reprimanded by Rome for the content of his speech, which actually did not deserve a reprimand at all, while – if if one starts from the point of view from which the reprimand was issued, one had to say that Professor Bickell, who belonged to the Jesuits, went much further than just being an extreme liberal, but was persona grata in Rome. I told him that, and he replied: I am a Cistercian, and [in Rome] one expects of the Cistercians that the moment they no longer say what the content established by Rome is, they might then follow their convictions and gradually depart from Catholicism. — This is assumed with Cistercians. With the Jesuits, as with Professor Bickell, one knows that, however liberally they speak, they are loyal sons of Rome; they do not stray [from Rome]; one is quite certain about them, they are allowed liberalism, they may base their teachings on completely different things than on the doctrinal material.

The Catholic Church does not have this lack [of flexibility], so it is much more viable in its approach. For example, about forty years ago I once got into a conversation with a Catholic theologian who was a professor at the Vienna Theological Faculty and so learned that people said of him that he knew the whole world and three more villages into the bargain. He was a profoundly learned Cistercian. Even a Cistercian was able to discuss the subject matter in the following way. During the conversation, we came to speak about the [dogma of the] conceptio immaculata, and I said to him: Yes, you see, if you remain within Catholic logic, you can admit the immaculate conception, the conceptio immaculata Mariae. That is not the dogma of the immaculate conception of Jesus, which has always been there in the Church. But the immaculate conception, as it is claimed by Catholics on the part of St. Anne, that is, the ascent from the immaculate conception of Mary to the immaculate conception of St. Anne? If you use the same logic, you have to go further up through all the following generations. – Yes, he said, that doesn't exist, we can't do that, logic doesn't demand that. We have to stop at St. Anna; if we went further, we would end up with “Davidl,” and with Davidl we would have a bad time with the conceptio immaculata. –

Such words do not express a pure sense of truth. When the man speaks outside the Church, a completely different formulation of the truth impulse speaks, and that is present everywhere [in the Catholic Church]. The concepts are formed in such a way that they can be assimilated by the broad masses – they are not formed according to any kind of logic – that is what makes Catholicism so great. This cannot be approved of in any way, but it must be recognized. You have to know who you are dealing with.

It is the case, for example, that a real engagement with the world – in the sense of thinking, not only in an intellectualist sense, but in the sense of pure thinking, is engaged with the world – is sometimes present in Catholic priests to a certain extent. I have met many Catholic priests through the circumstances of my life. Among them was the church historian at the University of Vienna. The man was an extraordinarily interesting person, but very traditionally Catholic, so Catholic that he even admitted that he no longer goes out on the street when it is dark in the evening and the lanterns are not yet fully lit. When I asked him why he no longer walked on the streets, he said: “There you only see people in vague outlines, and in Vienna you also encounter Freemasons, and you can only see a Freemason in sharp outline because you can only pass him if you can clearly distinguish yourself from him.” You can be absolutely learned and steeped in all of theology and still have the opinion that it means something in the real world when you walk past a Freemason without rejecting him through the sharp outline. The auras merge, and it is not possible to have such a mishmash of Catholic priest and Freemason.

Ernst Uehli: The Catholic Church has worked very much with legends; and I think it is true that the Catholic movement has been very much supported by the legend. It is easy to imagine that a future church community could lead to a new formation of legends.

Rudolf Steiner: That is how it is. And if you read some of my lectures that I gave in Dornach, you will even find the attempt to express certain things that can now be expressed in legend form. I gave whole lectures in legend form; and I draw your attention to one thing. I once tried to characterize the essence of the arts. You cannot get into the essence of the arts with concepts; everything that is built up in the abstract remains external. If you want to depict such a thing, you have to resort to images. The booklet 'The Essence of the Arts' is presented entirely in images. And here again one is misunderstood. When I had spoken these words entirely out of my imagination, an old theosophist stepped forward and said, “Yes, so you have transformed the nine muses.” – Wasn't it? It was as far from my mind as anything could be to think of the nine muses; it all resulted from the necessity of the case. It was far from my mind to reheat old stories, but one could think of nothing else but that it was an abstract procedure.

So it must be said that the need to resort to images is definitely there again. For example, we still don't have an image for a very important thing. Consider the abundance of bull legends, bull narratives at the beginning of the 3rd millennium at the transition of the vernal point into the constellation of Taurus. Consider the legends of the Argonauts' journey when, in the pre-Christian 8th century, the sun entered the constellation of Aries. Now it is in the constellation of Pisces. This legend still has to be made up. We need a pictorial legend. Although the matter is already alive, we still have no legend for it. This imaginative element still needs to be developed. And so there are numerous other things that today only live in the abstract, that should be transformed into images from world events. This needs to be worked on. It is through this that we must find our way back to the world. Today, the world is actually only that which can be grasped intellectually. What is the world for today's human being? One could almost say: for the intellectual man of today the whole cosmos is nothing but rigid mathematics and mechanics. And we must again come to go beyond mere mathematics and mechanics, we must come to the imaginative, to the pictorial and also to the legendary.

We just have to realize that research such as that presented by my late friend Ludwig Laistner in his book 'The Riddle of the Sphinx', which is about sagas, myths and the formation of legends, can be of great help. I would like to emphasize that Ludwig Laistner knew nothing about spiritual science. I would just like to say that the book can help with research, although Laistner traces all myths and legends back to dreams. But it is interesting to follow how he does not seek the formation of legends in the insane way in which today's Protestant and Catholic researchers seek them, by saying to themselves: the ancient peoples made things up, they imagined the gods in a thunderstorm, and in the struggle of winter with summer. As if people had never known a peasant mind; the peasant mind never writes poetry. These people, to whom the poetry is attributed, are as far from poetry as the peasants are. It was all imaginative. Ludwig Laistner traces everything back to dreams; nevertheless, it is interesting [to read how he sees a connection between a person's inner experiences in the Slavic legend of the Lady of Noon and the legend of the] Sphinx in Greece. That is why the book is called “The Riddle of the Sphinx”. Legends must flow out of life, now in full consciousness. This is extremely important.