| 70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: The Rejuvenating Power of the German National Soul
18 Feb 1915, Hanover Rudolf Steiner |
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| And now he feels compelled – we had to read this around Christmas, how he spoke in the so-called [Academy of Moral and Political Sciences], we had to read it, how he tries to characterize the German character. |
| 70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: The Rejuvenating Power of the German National Soul
18 Feb 1915, Hanover Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
Dear attendees! Every year I have had the privilege of speaking here in this city about topics in spiritual science. Our friends in the spiritual science movement here were of the opinion that this should also be done in these fateful days. Now it will seem understandable that these days of ours require a very special kind of consideration, even for those striving in spiritual science. After all, all our feelings and emotions are intimately connected with what is happening in the East and the West in these fateful days. We must look with heartfelt sympathy at those who are faithfully obeying the demands of duty, who are giving their all, body and soul, for what has become so deeply embedded in the course of European and indeed human development. In all our thoughts, in all our reflections, there must be a connection to the great arena in which decisions are not made and judgments are not passed in words, in concepts and ideas, but where decisions are made and judgments are passed through deeds, through life, through blood, through death. What I would like to consider before you this evening, dear attendees, is said to be so connected with the great events of the times that the question is asked, as it were, from these events themselves: What impulses, what forces, what powers in the course of human development have led, could lead to the fact that the bearers of Central European culture, that the bearers of Central European spiritual life are now enclosed as in a mighty, enlarged fortress on all sides, have to defend themselves on all sides; not only have to defend themselves, but are burdened from all sides with all possible insults, yes, defamations. Perhaps spiritual scientific conceptions, perhaps perceptions that arise from spiritual scientific feeling, are suitable for characterizing, at least in some strokes, the larger connections that have led to our fate-shaking events in the world's development up to our time. Among the things that the materialistic age has particularly laughed at can be mentioned the idea, the concept of the folk soul, which I tried to present in my book “Theosophy”. For the spiritual scientist, this folk soul is not just an abstract, empty concept, not just an abstract summary of the characteristics of some people. This folk soul is a living, real thing. For spiritual science – as has often been emphasized here – the concept of reality, and also the concept of personal and individual reality, does not end with the visible. Behind the visible, everywhere, the invisible reigns. If we approach nature spiritually, then, behind what nature reveals to us externally, we find spiritual entities that are effective not only for a superstitious, traditional worldview, but for real spiritual scientific research. Behind all that we ourselves are, behind all that develops in us between birth and death, there reigns that eternal, immortal self, which, however, presents itself to man in forms and entities that he ignores in everyday life. The supersensible self rules in us, passing from birth to birth and from death to death on earth. And in all historical development, invisible, supersensible, but as real as the external beings of the animal and plant world, there are real, personal, individual beings. The spiritual researcher speaks of such real, ruling spiritual beings when he speaks of the soul of a nation. And he tries to grasp the nature of these folk souls on the basis of his knowledge; he tries to penetrate into what these folk souls are, in order to gain an understanding from this penetration of how the folk souls prevail in the folk souls, in the feelings and impulses of the folk souls, and how the folk souls relate to each other through this rule. First of all, I would like to hint at how the spiritual researcher arrives at speaking of such higher spiritual beings, including in the sense of folk souls, which would be far too involved to explain in detail. In our material life, we relate to the things of the external world, to the things of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms; we look at what is around us within the horizon of these kingdoms; we form ideas and thoughts about them and absorb them. We know that our soul lives within us, and when we form thoughts, images and ideas, then these thoughts, images and ideas relate to beings outside of us. What we can draw from the beings, we acquire, so to speak; we then carry this further into ourselves from the mineral, animal and plant world that extends around our senses. We form images, thoughts and ideas about the world that is below us as human beings. Spiritual research shows us – I can only hint at this today with a comparison; listeners who have heard me here often know that this is not just a comparison but a result of spiritual research – spiritual research shows us how we as human souls relate to external reality. Thus, in the invisible, there is a spiritual world above us; and what the things of the mineral, animal and plant worlds are for us, we ourselves are as souls for a spiritual world. We can say comparatively: just as the things of the sensory world become thoughts for us, so we become thoughts, so we become perceptions and ideas for the spiritual world. And the folk soul is one of the beings in the spiritual world that are closest to us. And just as we humans can relate to the external world by simply surrendering ourselves to it with our senses, giving it little thought and rarely rising to the realm of the ideal, so the folk soul can relate to the individual people of a nation by living itself out completely in the individuals, entirely [with its will impulses] – and with the folk soul it depends on will impulses – that it expresses itself entirely in the individuals, that this folk soul rises little into a spiritual realm, but rather submerges more and leads a life in the folk individuals themselves. From a spiritual-scientific point of view, we find such folk souls more among the western peoples of Europe. We find that folk souls there rise little into a spiritual realm; on the other hand, we find that they intervene decisively, tyrannically and dogmatically in the individual soul life of the members of the Western European peoples. Another thing is conceivable and is actually in the character of the folk souls. This can be compared to when a person is more of a dreamer, when he has little eyes and little sense for the outer world; when things pass by him unnoticed, as it were, and he lives more in his own ideas. The behavior of the individual human soul towards external things can be compared to the Russian folk soul. It hovers, as it were, nebulously over the individual members of the people, does not enter into the individualities of the people; cares little about them; is only loosely connected with them. Then there are people, and we have a representative person of this kind in the history of the development of Central Europe, who on the one hand lovingly contemplates the outside world with all his senses, but then again does not get stuck in this outside world, but develops a full ideal, spiritual-soul life, and with this spiritual-soul life plunges into what the senses around him offer and reveal. In the most eminent sense, Goethe is a representative of this kind of mind. Goethe, whose way of thinking has been called “a concrete thinking” by an important psychologist of his time, because this remarkable Goethe soul connects lovingly with everything outside through the senses, and at the same time rises so strongly to ideas. Schiller could not quite understand this in a conversation he had with Goethe, so that Goethe had to claim that he saw his ideas with his eyes. His intellectual and spiritual life was so highly developed, as was his life of the senses and outer life. The German national soul is a type of national soul that can be compared with this disposition of the individual human soul. The German national soul has proven itself as such over the centuries and millennia of German development in Central Europe. This German national soul appears to us, on the one hand, as intimately and intimately concerned with the individual human being. On the other hand, we see how it was able to withdraw into the spiritual realms in order to open up new sources of spiritual life there, and then to go down again to the individual human beings in the German nation. A folk soul that lives in the spiritual and in the individual at the same time, that appears to us in the succession of time as if it were coming down among the people; [it appears as if it were coming down rhythmically], we see it in the decisions in which our ancestors assert themselves as opponents of the Roman development. We see how this folk soul, even then, was permeating the individual human personalities in Central Europe, how it imbued them with strength so that they could oppose in a very specific way what was intruding on them as Romanism. We then find how this folk soul withdraws, then breaks out again, submerging itself in the individual personalities, even producing a supreme one at the time of Walther von der Vogelweide [Wolfram von Eschenbach]. We find, as later when Germany was crushed from left and right, from north and south, during the Thirty Years War, this national soul gathers strength in the unseen, and then in a heyday of German spiritual development at the turn of the eighteenth, nineteenth century, it in turn submerges into the individuals. If we observe history in its rhythmic course, we see it as alternating between the submergence of the national soul in the individualities and a return to the spiritual. And it is from this return to the spiritual that the rejuvenating forces of German development come. If we consider the fundamental feature of this familiarity on the one hand and the soaring flight on the other of the German national soul, we understand how, within the development of German culture, what is produced as the highest , what reaches to the heights of art and intellectual life, is rooted in the simplest impulses, in the primitive of the national soul; how it was unthinkable in Germany from time immemorial that Germany's high culture was not at the same time popular culture. And so, in these fateful times, I would like to invoke two personalities in their last moments, their dying moments, so to speak, and characterize something. How did that which Schiller was able to be for his people settle into German hearts and minds? What worked in Schiller's mind itself? The rejuvenating powers of the German national soul! He knew himself connected to these deeper powers of the German national soul. Through one of his friends, Heinrich Voß, the son of the translator of Homer, Voß, we are led into Schiller's death chamber, as it were, and get to know Schiller's last days and last moments. There we get to know him, this Schiller, as he, so to speak, already died physically in his last days, but as he, gathering all the powers of his soul, nevertheless took part in what surrounded him. There you can see how the spirit prevailed over the worn-out body, which showed a dried-up heart at the autopsy, but in which there was a warm glow. We see that this worn-out body was maintained solely by the strong soul forces that dwelled in it. We are told how difficult Schiller's last moments were. It is touching to see how, in these last moments, he still made an effort to say this or that, which he believed he still had to communicate to those around him so that it could be passed on to posterity. We are told how Schiller had his last, his youngest child brought to his bedside, how he looked the child in the eye for a long, long time. How he then turned to the wall. And young Voß recounts that he believed – and rightly so – that Schiller looked at his child as if to say: Yes, it would be necessary for me to be your father for much longer, because I still have so much to tell you. And it may be said that the entire German nation can imagine that the feelings that turned to the child in these last moments were turned to the entire German nation itself; as if the German nation must feel what Schiller still had to say to it. For in Schiller, the German nation can feel how he was carried in everything by the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul. Let us recall the words that have been quoted frequently in recent times, which Schiller, so to speak, left as a legacy, and which show how he felt connected to the German people. These words only came to light long after his death. But they show us how Schiller himself felt carried by the forces of the German national spirit.
– the German –
Thus Schiller knew himself connected with the power of the German national soul. Now we turn our gaze to another German, to a German who has risen high, one might say, into the often seemingly cold philosophical regions; we turn to Johann Gottlieb Fichte. But Fichte, who in Germany's most difficult times, when Germany was depressed from the west, tried - as he himself put it - to hold his “Discourses to the German Nation” from the innermost “root of the stirrings of life” of his people. He, the philosopher, who perhaps put forward the most vigorously willed thoughts to humanity, he who shaped the sharpest thoughts, he knew himself as being connected to all the primitive sources of the German people, and it was out of this consciousness that he delivered his “Speeches to the German Nation” at that time. But he also felt connected to everything that came from the German people and determined Germany's fate. And again this shows itself to us – we can look at it without sentimentality – it shows itself symbolically in his last moments. He often deliberated with himself, Fichte, whether he should personally go to war. Then he told himself that he had to work through the power of his mind. His wife worked as a nurse in a military hospital in Berlin. She brought the military hospital fever home with her. She recovered, but Fichte was infected by this fever. And in his last moments – and this was strangely characteristic of this seemingly abstract and at the same time most popular philosopher – in his last days, when his crystal-clear, life-energetic thoughts feverish fantasies, he was outside with the German armies, at Blücher's crossing of the Rhine, he took a faithful part in the fighting, and felt himself in the midst of the battle. Thus, even in the feverish fantasies of the dying philosopher, the strongest German philosophy led to intimate communion with the deeds of his people. His son offered him a medicine. He pushed it away with his hand and said, letting his thoughts wander from the most human philosophy to the way he felt on the battlefields, he said: “I do not need medicine because I feel I will recover.” He recovered to death. Such examples, esteemed attendees, show us how the forces of the German national soul were at work, where the individual souls that belong to this nation are making the way that they must describe as the most humane, as the one leading to the highest goods of humanity. And everywhere it is shown how this German national soul does not rule over the individual in a tyrannical way, how it does not pour some kind of collective, dogmatic world view into souls; how it is experienced in the individual souls, how the individual soul feels it as its own power. And how, nevertheless, the highest developments of the supersensible spiritual life are brought into these individual souls. And again and again we see the individual soul seized afresh in all that it has to accomplish on earth, carried down from the spiritual heights by the soul of the nation. How did this Central European people once receive Christianity! So that it was felt like the most personal impulse. We read the retelling of the Gospel stories [in Heliand, the work of the Saxon monk], we read them as something that arose directly from the most personal spiritual life, but was nevertheless the revelation of a supreme being. And we move on. We see how later on the individual German soul is seized; so seized is it by that which encompasses the whole soul of the people, that this German soul in German mysticism in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth century feels God so that this God lives directly in all that the individual can will, feel and love, what the individual soul feels directly within itself as the eternal-living. How the words of Master Eckhart resound in us: “If you love God, then you can do whatever you want, [for then you will only want the eternal and the one, which God also wills. I will not ask God to give himself, I will ask him to make me pure, then he will flow into me of his own accord. God is a pure good in Himself and therefore does not want to dwell anywhere, for He may pour Himself entirely into a pure soul. When it is so pure that it sees through itself, then it need not seek God in the form, but it sees Him in itself and enjoys all creatures in God and God in all creatures, and whatever it does, it does in God and] God does in you.” That is to say, they maintain a familiar dialogue not only with what they are as individuals, but also with what, as the soul of the people, whispers and rests through all the minds of the people. And think of Angelus Silesius, who lived in the seventeenth century. How he empathizes with the individual soul of the human being with the whole soul of the people. How we read there - I will quote only one saying - how Silesius, the “Cherubic Wayfarer,” has made countless such sayings.
This means feeling at one with the spirit that lives and breathes in the world. At the same time, it means carrying within oneself a supreme consciousness of immortality. When a person feels connected in their soul to the divine source of existence, they say: “I neither die nor live. God himself dies in me.” There is the certainty that God does not die; but that it is God who goes with me through death. There I feel so connected with God that through this my immortality is granted. There you see the peculiarity, how intimately the soul of the people lives with the individual mind of the people. When we look at the human soul from a spiritual scientific point of view, then we see – not by dividing it up in the abstract, but by looking at this soul in a truly scientific way, and this is not what science does today, but it is something that the science of the future will certainly do – we see that we can distinguish three soul elements, three soul expressions in the human soul. Just as one can distinguish the different color shades in the spectrum, so one can and must distinguish quite scientifically in the human soul: the sentient soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul. And within each of these there is that which is called the human being's ego, the actual self of the human being. Just as light reigns in the reddish-yellow, greenish, and blue-violet parts of the rainbow, so the power of the self, of the ego of man, reigns through the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul. Now the peculiar thing about trying to understand the peoples of Europe from a spiritual scientific point of view is that it shows that the soul of a nation, for example the Italian soul, relates primarily to the individual human being in such a way that the soul of the nation stimulates the sentient soul and works through the sentient soul. In the case of the French nation, the soul of the nation works through the intellectual or mind soul. In the British nation, the folk soul works through the consciousness soul. In the Russian nation, the folk soul hovers over the soul forces, leaving the soul forces in a kind of [anarchic] state. The German folk soul directly stimulates the I. It does not express itself in a particular part of the soul, but by taking hold of the whole soul; hence its rejuvenating power. Hence the possibility for the German, when seized by the power of his folk soul. [At a certain time, it lovingly seized what was offered in Italy, France, and England, but always rejuvenated it, elevating it within itself to an independent existence.] How lovingly did the German spirit of his time take hold of what was offered to humanity by Eckhart and Tauler! But how did it rejuvenate it by stimulating the whole self through the whole spectrum! How did it raise it to the most independent, personal and inward existence! How was he, with his ever-rejuvenating power of the I-seizing folk soul, how was the German in the present able to present that which encompasses the whole human being as the highest representative of humanity. No other nation could have produced a work of literature like Faust, because no other nation is so deeply moved in its immediate self by the national soul, through all the elements of the soul's spectrum. But that is also why this German essence is so little understood and so misunderstood in all directions. If we look to the West, we see how everything that arises most deeply from the German soul, what is present there in a completely undogmatic way, always stimulating striving, is expressed in a crude way through language; how it is often not understood and is either rejected emotionally or critically. One is tempted to say: the best that the Central European folk soul instills in the people of Central Europe is “understood” in the West, even when it is tried to be understood, in such a way that precisely the immediate invigoration is lost. And this extends even to the contemplation of the figures. We can learn a lot about the peculiarities of European cultures by considering how much is understood in the West when it is understood through the Western European strength of the national soul. Herman Grimm, the art historian, once said quite rightly [about a book about Goethe by the Englishman Lewes]: “A certain Mr. Lewes in England has written a book about a person who was born in August 1749 in Frankfurt, who died in March 1832 in Weimar, to whom Mr. Lewes attributes [“The Sorrows of Young Werther”, “Clavigo” and so on], such fates, which we know Goethe experienced. To whom he also attributes the writing of Goethe's works. But everything he describes about this man is only coincidentally connected to the man who was born in 1749 and died in 1832. For that which connects Goethe's work with the life of the Central European folk soul has not been transferred, not even in the slightest, into the book that Mr. Lewes has written about a certain Goethe, who is not, however, the creator of Faust for the Central European in reality. One can grasp the external, the coarse, that through which the other appears. But that which lives in the folk soul, animating the individual soul, is lost, one does not see it. This is perhaps a little too radically expressed in Herman Grimm. But it shows what it is about. And so we must also find that in the way German essence is understood by French essence, there is something that proves to us that the French soul of the people is such that it enters into the soul of the mind, determining the mind's soul, directly tyrannizing the soul of the mind, so that the soul of the people thinks in the individual and radiates through the impulses of the will of the individual. While the German folk soul becomes the confidante of the individual human being. And if we now look over to the East, to the Russian people. In Russia, much attention has been paid to Kant, to Hegel, Belinsky. But all this shows a very particular peculiarity: the thoughts of Central Europe become strangely ghostly in the East. They are felt and experienced not in the soul-elevating sensation, but like thought ghosts, conceptual ghosts; like what lives in the secular of the national groupings that lives above the individuals. In saying this, I am expressing something that is just as much a part of the strict body of knowledge as the physical, chemical and biological truths are. Even though it is more difficult to talk about these things because people are indifferent to physical, chemical and biological truths, whereas the truths presented here are related to the fate and nature of man. But we live in a time in which the human soul must rise above that which impairs the human [...] and we live in a time in which such things must be spoken, in which we must gain understanding for the impulses that are going through the world and that have brought about what is now there. It is rightly said that the two Central European peoples have been surrounded and enclosed in the last decades, as if with iron clamps, the Central European states. But for the spiritual researcher, this encirclement begins much earlier. And the outer, one might say materialistic encirclement, which had its main organizer in Edward VII, this materialistic encirclement is the last [representative] of an ancient encirclement that began in the year 860 of our era. These connections must be borne in mind. In 860, on the one hand, the Normans were standing outside Paris and, on the other hand, the Varangians came down [outside Novgorod and Kiev] and threatened Constantinople, and then, when they pushed into the Slavic area across Russia to Kiev, to Constantinople, on the other hand, parts of the Normans pushed in [into the Romance element], and we have a coiled snake in Central Europe. Those who remained Central Europeans were to be surrounded and encircled. And in the West, we have the nations pushing in and becoming permeated by a folk soul, pushing into the Romance element, which then, from south to northwest, becomes the substance of the folk soul's nature, so that thinking becomes dogmatic, so that on this side everything must be taken dogmatically, so that we see how what is directly human, what arises from the intimate contact of the human soul with the folk soul, is taken dogmatically in the West by the intellect soul, which is permeated by the traditional Romanism. [Thus Central Europe is isolated. This must be taken dogmatically. If the world is not taken in this way, the folk soul, which is permeated with the old Romanism, will not be individualized.] On the other hand, in the East we see how a folk soul comes into being when the Varangians, who are related to the Normans, merge with the Slavs, are permeated by the Slavs, and are permeated racially by the Byzantines in religious terms. And we see that what arises there remains at the level of the racial personality, as something aloof and unapproachable, which never comes down. Thus in the East one is dealing with that which directly asserts the racial element. Towards the West, with that which is an ancient and renewed feeling, which dogmatizes the individual. They see that one can only understand what human souls produce by doing so. In the center we see that which is encircled and enclosed from all sides, which always wants to bring forth something new and wants to offer on the altar of human development that which can arise from the intimate connections of the individual souls with the folk soul. Thus we experience the remarkable phenomenon that to this day, even in our most painful days, what emerges in Central Europe is observed by the West, but in observing it, it must necessarily be misunderstood because it is measured not by human experience but by one's own dogma; by what the soul of the people tyrannically commands from the soul of reason. We are experiencing some very characteristic phenomena in this regard. On the surface, people want to acknowledge that the Germans have achieved a great deal, that they have attained a high level of culture in thought, in philosophy, in poetry, and in other branches of art; but then, when a man has sipped a little and even translates it quite ingeniously into the realm of Western popular culture, as Henri Bergson did, when a man surveys something ingeniously, it is still German conceived in the French manner, German translated into the way of the West. And now he feels compelled – we had to read this around Christmas, how he spoke in the so-called [Academy of Moral and Political Sciences], we had to read it, how he tries to characterize the German character. And this German essence appears to him as if it only wanted to be embodied in cannons and rifles, in what the silly chatter calls “German militarism”; that militarism to which Germany has been forced, not by itself, but by those who surrounded it. One would like to ask such a man what he actually expected Germany to put up against its enemies other than rifles and cannons. Did he perhaps imagine that Novalis or Schiller or Goethe would be recited to the armies of Germany? The question is: What does the Central European have to defend? What he has to defend can be seen from a consideration of what the German national soul is to the individual German. But such considerations will only become important when they can take hold of and find an echo in the reasonable people of the world within a somewhat broader horizon. Today logic is not exactly what is being whispered throughout the world. We have even had to hear that when there was a manifestation from the German side, the response from the left and right in Europe was: We did not want this war. They did not want it. Yes, from a logical point of view; that is quite correct, from a logical point of view. You can believe it. It is just as right as when a number of people surround the house of another person. He sees that he is locked in his house. He goes out and beats those who surround him. And then they say: We did not want the beating. The logic is exactly the same in both cases. Logic does not whisper today through what is called the “intercourse of nations”, especially through the newspapers. It can be seen everywhere through facts: what the German national soul says to the individual German can be grasped in the West, it can be heard, but it cannot be effective for the reasons just given. We are experiencing strange phenomena. This power of the German national soul - in enlightened minds, in minds that want to deal with it, something of it has come to light after all. It is not exactly pleasant to speak characteristically about the Central European people in the midst of them. And so I will choose a different approach. I would like to raise the question: Has this German character really always been misunderstood, as it is now, even outside the German-speaking areas? There is a man who certainly belongs to the most important minds of the nineteenth century. And I would like to read to you a passage from a book about Goethe, who appears to him as the representative of the German character, [Emerson]. He says, a man who lives far away from Central Europe, he says about Goethe:
- [A trait] is mentioned that Goethe shares with his entire nation:
[We see that the rejuvenating effect of the German national soul has not always been recognized.
Thus, one felt what the German could achieve in contact with the truth, that is, in contact with his national soul, where one wanted to feel it. Now one could say: That was a long time ago. And it has been said. The Germans have changed since then. Instead of poetry, they have made cannons. Now, so that this too can be countered, the saying of another man should be mentioned here, who in his way must have touched - we will soon see why - to the west that which is the German national character.
— Germany's —
And elsewhere the same man says:
Who said that? Well, Lord Haldane said it. You may remember how he said some other things a few months ago! Not so long ago, just a few months before this war broke out, a lecture was given in Manchester by a few Englishmen who were supposed to educate English journalists about the German character. From the newspapers that are now appearing, one can see what fruit this has borne, what use it has been. But we will soon see what was said in Manchester, in England, about the German character.
- the Englishman –
Now come some remarkable words:
Spoken in Manchester to enlighten English journalists; that's why they are so enlightened now!
And now a very curious thing. The following was also said in the same lecture cycle in Manchester shortly before the outbreak of the war:
So says an Englishman!
- in this he was, however, mistaken -
- that has been said, not in Berlin and not in Hanover, but in Manchester. -
This was said in Manchester, a year before the war. The matter speaks for itself, we hardly need to add anything. We see, then, that people have sometimes known what the Central European nation has to contribute to the overall culture of humanity. Yes, sometimes they have even known it quite thoroughly. Here is another example of how thoroughly they have known it. There was a certain man, also over there in the West, who was closer to us than the others we have just spoken of; a certain man whom the world calls a mystic. The man has undoubtedly written very brilliant works. Once he expressed himself about where the deepest thoughts of his soul came from, and he cited three world-historical phenomena. The third is the German poet Novalis. When we hear his poetry, we have the immediate feeling that the rejuvenating power of the folk soul speaks intimately to his soul, so that it can express what the folk soul is telling him. Now, what does this man feel about Novalis? He says: What people describe on earth, what poets say, a Sophocles, a Shakespeare, what these Desdemona, Ophelia, what Hamlet and so on experience, it all happens between people. But if a spirit from a different plane were to descend to earth, could this spirit of a different plane find something on earth that also interests him, the spirit who is not of the earth? And the man now finds that what the German poet Novalis expressed could also interest a spirit who descends from another plane as a genius. He finds that Novalis touched on secrets of the human soul, which the soul must often keep silent about, because it can only find the right words in the solemn moments of life to express these secrets, these supersensible secrets of life. So says the man. And we want to write these words very deeply into our souls, for they are beautiful, these words that he says in reference to his experience of Novalis. He says:
- and of those lights, says the man, Novalis has lit many. And he continues –
- including Novalis -
Thus one speaks of one of the most German of Germans, Novalis. A man speaks thus, and we could assume that this man, who obviously loves the spiritual, would instruct all those who now speak of the German “barbarians” with the words: For these words, which I have now read, are also from the man of whom I will read something else:
Yes, it can be said that in the midst of the useless shouting that is now speaking of Germany's “barbarism,” such words as those of the man can hardly be heard. But who said all this? Maurice Maeterlinck. Well, you know how Maeterlinck himself has gone among the useless shouters in recent months. We don't need to add anything to that either. But then, when we hear such voices, we say to ourselves: They are proof that what wells up from the German national soul into the individual German souls is already penetrating across the borders, but it cannot come into effect. And it cannot come into effect properly even where it seems ghostly. I have shown that it has a ghostly effect in the East. Yes, if one asks: What is it that people feel from this participation of the German national soul in German culture, even those who speak of Western European culture in the East? One can often hear something like the words I would like to read to you now. When Herman Grimm speaks of the alleged Goethe of Mr. Lewes in the way I have mentioned, we notice a coarsening in this Mr. Lewes; but how what one wants to absorb but cannot absorb becomes ghostly towards the East is shown to us by words that Mereschkowski spoke about Goethe. He says:
Thus Mereschkowski speaks of the poet of Faust. Nor should one be deceived by the words which Mereschkowski says about Goethe in the final sentence of his essay. If one reads the foregoing, which is inspired throughout by the same spirit, one sees that Mereschkowski cannot rise up to Goethe, that he sees him only as a ghost. And much of this kind could be cited. But of course, when one of the leading spirits of the East, about Chekhov, Mereschkowski himself has to say:
One can find it understandable, must find it understandable, that Central Europe is currently only a specter for the East, which is transferred up into the national soul hovering over the individual. There is not enough time to prove this in detail, but it could be proven. On the other hand, it can truly be said that what can be called “the rejuvenating power of the German national soul” not only gives us insight into the nature of the German national soul in the past, but also gives us strength, faith and hope for the German national soul in the future. Indeed, the German knows how to take Goethe somewhat differently than the others. And for this I may cite a saying that Herman Grimm in turn has done about Goethe. This saying has been done in lectures on Goethe, in lectures that speak differently than the one whom Herman Grimm himself has dismissed in the manner indicated, Lewes. Herman Grimm perceives Goethe as a confidant of the German people themselves; but also as an impulse, as a force that works and will continue to work within German culture, just as cosmic changes in the earth must work in relation to physical conditions. Herman Grimm says of Goethe:
This is how Herman Grimm feels Goethe within German intellectual life. Gradually, a different intellectual vegetation, a different intellectual climate, will occur through Goethe, says Herman Grimm. This same Herman Grimm, in a manner that brought out the whole character of the German spirit, spoke of how the German folk soul has worked in German culture to arrive at views that seek the universal in the particular national spirit. Thus Herman Grimm demonstrated the rejuvenating powers of the German national soul by showing how he himself was attuned to the course of the world spirit at the end of the nineteenth century. For in 1895 the beautiful words were spoken that express the mood of a German who knew himself to be one with the living and breathing German national soul. Herman Grimm said:
Herman Grimm continues:
he says, and then the significant words follow:
But the fact that Herman Grimm saw through his time, that he was not a dreamer, that he was able to grasp reality under the guidance of the German soul, is attested by what he now says:
You see, in 1895 Herman Grimm had a clear view of how things stand. Those who are accustomed to seeing things this way do not let themselves be called out: Who wanted the war! Among the hundreds and hundreds of testimonies I could present, here is one more. A person who is not particularly fond of Germanic nature writes the following words:
Yes, my dear attendees, these words were not spoken just a few months before the war. They were written in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War. Even those who saw things clearly never realized that the nations pushed into the middle of Europe would be locked up like in a fortress by those who misunderstood and do not understand them on all sides. It is curious when, in the face of such words, one tries to express the opinion that the Germans wanted this war. I would like to use the few moments remaining to me for this lecture to present something about this “the Germans wanted this war” that may speak volumes to anyone who wants to see clearly. Let us assume that someone had observed what was going on in the weeks before the outbreak of war - in the spring of 1914, when the press was perhorresziert the political horizon - and he wanted to express that; what would he have had to say in 1914, after the events that took place? He would have had to say something like the following: [One could see how a press campaign was gradually beginning in St. Petersburg, how strong pressure was being exerted on Austria that, if accepted, would have resulted in Austria and Germany becoming dependent on Russia. And yet one could not have contradicted the Russian friends when they said that there was no reason for a war between Russia and Germany. Not true, in 1914, in July, it could have been expressed quite well, and it could have been applied to the immediate events of the present. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have not read you anything that was said in July 1914, but, with some modification, the words that [Bismarck spoke on February 6, 1888 in the Reichstag] to justify the military bill. And now I read his own words, so you can see that I have not only the words, but only the time somewhat rectihziert: [...] how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, [through which German politics was attacked], I personally was suspected in my intentions. These attacks increased during the following year until 1879 to strong demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we could not readily attack Austrian law. I could not lend my hand to this, because if we estranged ourselves from Austria, then we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such a dependency have been tolerable? I had believed earlier that it could be, telling myself: We have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. At least I had not directly contradicted my Russian colleagues who explained such things to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even the complete subordination of our politics (for a certain time) to the Russian politics would not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations. However, if things are as they have been presented, if the national soul in the West and in the East must behave in relation to what the strength of the German national soul is, then it will be a mistake to believe that this war was wanted by Central Europe in 1914. For it has been clear for decades how everything has been done to bring about the current events. Not only the subtle Herman Grimm spoke of the will for peace in Central Europe. It may also be recalled that not only where, like Herman Grimm, as a man ethically on the heights of his time, was in touch with the German national soul, but also where one was politically inspired by the German national soul, one spoke in a similar way. In 1888, in Berlin, again Bismarck spoke in such a way that no desire for war was expressed. Bismarck said:
One day, my dear audience, we will come to feel, not only from reason but also from our instincts, something of the real causes of this war and the driving forces that led to it. One will sense something of the will that concentrated against Central Europe in order to stop the eternally rejuvenating German national soul in its element. The images that can be gained by surveying the workings and weavings of European national souls in recent decades show how the storm is looming. Can we not say the following: If one wanted to delve into the goings-on and workings of the German national soul as they were in the times before this war broke out, could one not come to the following thoughts? Allow me to read this to you as well. You will see in a moment that I also have a certain idea:
[This is how Mrs. Wylie wrote in her book “Eight Years in Germany,” which was published about two years before the war. It is quite good when such people try to delve into the German national soul. So, these are the things that are awakened as an echo when one tries to understand what the German seeks in intimate dialogue with his national soul. And what was it that the German always tried to find in his dialogue with his national soul? It was always that which should enable the individual human being, the individual human soul, the individual human spirit to find its way to the spiritual heights of the world, where all things have their source and origin, where the eternal part of the human soul itself also has its source and origin. Spiritual science, precisely because of its sources, must believe in the rejuvenating powers of the German national soul; believe because it is aware that in the course of world history this German national soul has always ascended to spiritual heights , descended to the human selves in order to convey to them the truth of their eternity. Spiritual science has its roots and its source in German idealism, and we can prove that spiritual science is closely related to this German idealism. What does spiritual science say, not in the abstract but in concrete terms, about the future of the human soul? That in this body lives an immortal self that goes through births and deaths again and again; that when spiritual initiation is attained, when spiritual knowledge and spiritual reality are attained through research, the soul is grasped outside of the body; that it looks back at this body as if at an external object, so pre-sensing that which the human soul experiences when it has passed through the gate of death. Spiritual science does not speak in general terms that the human soul is eternal, but in such a way that it clearly points to what, after death, looks back on what lived in the body. Spiritual science describes this very specifically. And only today can it do so. And true spiritual science, as we in Central Europe consider it to be, is aware that it owes the powers of research only to the connection of the German national soul with the German philosophers. If someone who professes spiritual science today wants to use a comparison in the truest sense of the word for something that has passed and must find its future, if someone who is a true believer in spiritual science wanted to say: I think something completely new must be introduced into humanity, something that is still met with many prejudices today; but to me, these prejudices seem like what the soul of the corpse feels when it looks back at the corpse after death. One might think that only a spiritual researcher could make such a comparison, because only recently has spiritual research been able to confirm that the soul really does this after going through death. I will present such a comparison to you:
Today, one really believes that only a spiritual researcher could speak in this way. It is Fichte who spoke in this way in his “Speeches to the German Nation”; addressing the corpse as he would a corpse in what he wants to replace the old German education with a new education. Thus, whatever can be desired today is rooted in the germs that German idealism sought from the union with the German national soul, from these rejuvenating powers of the German national soul. And if we want to have confidence that spiritual science can really unfold as a new fruit on the tree of German development, we need only look at what can be seen as the true essence of the German national soul, as the rejuvenating power of the German national soul. The true essence of the German national soul is precisely this ever-rejuvenating power. And when we look at the fateful events of today, we feel them like a twilight. But we look into the future and want to understand that a horizon warmed and illuminated by the sun must arise from this twilight; that the German national soul will have the strength to rejuvenate German character and German striving. And whatever is undertaken against this German essence, against this German striving, will not be able to rob it of its breath of life, because that which is present as the highest life in the German essence is the ever-rejuvenating powers of the German national soul. If it has produced so many rungs in German culture, it must also produce new fruits. That is our hope, and that is not something vague, that is something well-founded! We look hopefully towards the horizon, which will show us precisely one of the fruits of German development: a spiritual-scientific worldview that will flow through all hearts and souls and will connect spirit and body. When people see the spiritual as a reality, when they know how the spiritual passes through the gate of death, when they look at the spiritual as science today looks at the external physical forces, when they know that nothing is lost, then they will know that the countless spiritual parts that now pass through the gate of death from young bodies cannot be lost. They, these soul-like human faculties, which could have continued to serve the body for decades to come, will not only be felt in the abstract sense as something eternal in the future, as was possible according to ancient knowledge, but they will be felt as something that lives on, that those who have followed the duties of the time through the gate of death or suffering have incorporated into the spiritual stream of existence. And they will feel a concrete connection when times of peace come again out of this twilight of war. Those who have borne the best fruits of the German character will feel a special connection with all those who have gone through the gates of death. So it can be said, summarizing what I have tried to express before you today: Yes, this German spirit has not yet fully accomplished what its mission in the world was. It is connected with the rejuvenating power of the German national soul. And if you look at the true nature of the German national soul, then you know: the driving forces are there, the invisible forces of German life are unchanged among us. And to all those who today speak of Germany's weakness or of a weakening or destruction of the German character, to them the one who objectively recognizes what the rejuvenating power of the German national soul whispers to individual Germans, to them he calls out into the world the meaning that he perceives from the work of the German national soul:
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| 70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: Why do you Call the People of Schiller and Fichte “Barbarians”?
11 Mar 1915, Nuremberg Rudolf Steiner |
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| But he, who should know the German character, pointed out in a chauvinistic speech he gave last Christmas how the Germans had forgotten everything they had achieved in the way of spirituality. How the Germans once had something like spirituality, but now they only show themselves to be purely mechanistic. |
| 70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: Why do you Call the People of Schiller and Fichte “Barbarians”?
11 Mar 1915, Nuremberg Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear attendees! For a number of years now, I have been privileged to give lectures here in this city in the field of spiritual science. Since the friends of our spiritual science movement have also requested such lectures here for these fateful times, I would like to present you with a reflection that takes more of an attitude of spiritual science as its starting point today; and tomorrow we will then delve deeper into questions of spiritual knowledge that move the heart and soul. It will be understandable that this introductory lecture is being held today, since everything that can move us today, especially when it is close to the heart and soul, must really be carried out after the fateful events in the midst of which we stand. One could say that the nations of Central Europe are locked in a fortress, a large, mighty fortress. And in the east and west, the existence of this Central Europe is, so to speak, being called into question. And what a sum of courage, sacrifice and devotion have we seen in the months since the beginning of the war; and how much suffering and pain have we had to witness! How the days of suffering and pain, with their events, affect families, how fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters are connected with them! Therefore, it must be important to us to introduce our reflections on the spiritual development and spiritual hopes of humanity with a few thoughts and feelings that are directed towards the difficult situation of our time. We hear this Central European culture vilified from all sides, reviled. We hear all sorts of things today from the east and west and from all sides about this Central European culture. We may undoubtedly, my dear attendees, see the significant deeds of our people and see them as related to the whole essence of our people's organism. I would like to say: what is happening today is happening through the arms of this organism. But it befits the very essence of the German people to consider the arms, the essence of the spirit, the essence of the soul of this organism. And what better way to do that than by remembering, at such a fateful and fateful moment, the significant and important deeds of the soul and spirit of the German people, and by drawing strength from them for our hopes and goals for the future. And I would like to take the starting point of what we, as the essence of the German people, can envision from two outstanding geniuses of this people: Schiller and Fichte. Within the German essence, has it always been the custom, in difficult times, to draw strength from those who, as great ancestors, can provide this strength? And I would like to make this connection today, truly not to stir up emotional feelings in you, but because I believe that such a connection can be meaningful in our days, the connection to the days of the death of these two mentioned geniuses. It is possible for us – as I said, not to stir our emotions, but because I believe that this point of view is particularly close to our hearts and souls in these days – it is possible for us to look at the last days, yes, the hours of Schiller's and Fichte's death very intimately, very confidentially. Schiller's death was described to us by his then young friend, the son of Johann Heinrich Voß, Heinrich Voß, the so-called younger Voß. And we can follow him, our Schiller in the last days of his life, as he is already dying, sustained solely by the powers of the spirit that prevail in him. Yes, with Schiller we can say that basically the body was long since doomed to die, while the strong, energetic spirit still prevailed and just dragged the body along. For, as this body was so completely decrepit, Heinrich Voß shows us, so to speak. He leads us into Schiller's death chamber, and we take part in the last hours of the great spiritual hero. We are told how Schiller, in these last hours, with his body already completely subject to death, with a yellowed face, with extinct eyes, still strong in spirit in these moments, how he had his last, his youngest child come to him in these last hours, how he looked the child long in the eye and then sent thoughts out of these eyes, one would like to say into the eyes. The younger Voss wanted to divine these thoughts, and we can say that, as he tells us, they will be correctly divined. It was as if Schiller wanted to say to the child – what he could only express in these rasping words: I should have been your father for much longer, I still have much to do for you. Then he handed the child back, turned away and looked at the wall again. Do we not feel, my dear audience, as if the whole German nation, the soul of the whole German nation, could recognize itself in this child? Schiller, who died young, could also have said to our nation: I could have been much more to you, I have left much unsaid and undone for you. But he dies fully imbued with the inner energy of that which he felt to be the German spirit, that spirit which carried him through life, inspired him to his creations, sustained him as his body wasted away, that spirit whose world-historical mission he himself described in such moving words that we may well bring these words before our souls in these times. These words only became known long after Schiller's death, but they bear witness to how Schiller thought about the spirit of his people:
– the German –
And today, in these fateful days, we may well remember the spirit that Schiller believed must be the harvest of all time, the harvest of the cultural development of mankind. And if we turn our attention from Schiller, the great poet, to his friend, the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, we see no less of the German spirit in the soul of a human being when we look at Fichte's last hours on earth. Schiller was often able to tie in what he had to say to his people in a work, which will be discussed shortly, with Fichte's strong, forceful philosophy. Yes, Fichte's philosophy is energetic and powerful. It is as if, from the whole scope, the universality of the genius of the philosopher Fichte, he wanted to extract everything that this German mind has of load-bearing capacity, to draw out everything that can affirm the strongest will in the strongest thought. And so, as Fichte spoke the beautiful word: “What kind of philosophy you have depends on what kind of person you are,” it can be said that we see this word proven in truth in Fichte in particular; because he felt connected to the German spirit, which was so dear to him, Fichte felt at the same time connected with the rule and weaving of the whole world spirit, felt in every word he spoke, carried by the spirit that permeates and flows through the world. But this philosopher did not live only in the abstract spirit. When Germany was going through the difficult times at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Fichte, the philosopher, often considered whether he should not take part as a warrior in the fateful events of the time. But then he found that he could do more for his nation through his intellectual work. So it happened that at first only his wife took part in the military hospital service in Berlin. But she brought illness into his house by contagion. She recovered, but he himself, the philosopher, was carried off by the military hospital fever. And now we see how Fichte, who presented the diamond-bright, crystal-clear thoughts of the most German philosophy to humanity, lay on his sickbed in the last days of his life, waiting for news of Blücher's crossing of the Rhine and everything that the people in the west had to undertake. We see how he, who had decided not to be physically among the fighting because he wanted to serve his people and humanity with his mind, we see how he took part in the warlike events of his time in his feverish dreams in his last hours. And we experience the wonderful interplay of a worldview with life even in illness and even in the death rattle when we see how Fichte allowed everything that he wanted to give to the German people through his powerful philosophy to flow into his feverish dreams. We see how he feels in his dreams in the midst of the struggling, and how he feels at the same time as resting securely with his soul in the spiritual world. The dying philosopher Fichte, without fear and full of hope for his people, said when they wanted to give him medicine: “I do not need medicine, because I know I will recover.” Shortly before, he had been given the news of Blücher's crossing of the Rhine. Thus, in the life of the man who is fully immersed in German intellectual life, this intellectual life and the immediate life of the surroundings interact. For this German intellectual life is not an idealistic, dreamy one, but one that always enters into all the individual achievements of its German people. And today, we can justifiably claim that everything achieved in the face of blood and death, pain and suffering, is sustained by the power that permeates our intellectual experience. And so we see this Fichte, imbued with the best power of the German spirit! Today, we can only sketch out some of the characteristics of what lived in Fichte's mind. In one of Germany's darkest hours, when Germany had been brought to its knees by the western conqueror, Fichte spoke his “Speeches to the German Nation”. Certainly not everything that Fichte spoke at the time can be agreed with today, word for word. But the spirit that inspired him must also be ours. Just as Fichte assumed at the time that the German language is a primal language that developed like an organism from the starting point of German history in Europe, while the Romance languages of the West and South suffered a break in their development, while they originally started from something Germanic, but adopted something foreign that they put over the folk essence in the Romance essence. If Fichte infers something from the character of this original language, which developed out of the essence of the German and grew like an organic force, then today this may be contestable from a linguistic point of view. But what inspired Fichte, what constitutes the fundamental character of his philosophy of will and thought, is that Fichte reflected on what is most original in man, what is connected in man with all the sources of life in the soul. Fichte sees flourishing and truly authentic destiny hopes only where the soul is able to bring forth from itself what lies in its depths. Fichte saw an emblem of the fact that the German spirit aspires to this in the German language. But even if we can no longer go into the details of Fichte's point of view today, we must still look at how what he then expressed in accordance with his time was formed in Fichte. What did Fichte strive for in his philosophy? We need only recall what spiritual science actually wants to be. It wants to be a knowledge that does not passively surrender itself merely to the phenomena of the external world, that does not merely allow itself to be passively stimulated with reference to the mind that is bound to the brain, but spiritual science wants to be, if we want to use the expression in all humility, a brave science. It wants to be a science that comes about through the development of the higher human being in man, as Schiller said, the actual spiritual human being, through the development of that which is connected in man's own being with the great spiritual being of the world, which lives in man in such a way that when man recognizes it, he at the same time knows himself to be living and weaving in the divine-spiritual world being itself. But this is what Fichte was constantly seeking. And so he feels connected to the most spiritual part of the world through the knowledge that he sought to acquire from the human soul. Or how could one express the spiritual certainty that man can attain more forcefully than when Fichte uses the words:
Thus Fichte's most German philosophy brought about the realization that it was the most certain thing for Fichte to know that he was a single soul in the entire spiritual world, that there is such a world order into which the individual is woven. Fichte merely renewed in a manner appropriate to modern times that which has always prevailed in the German spirit: the striving for knowledge that arises from the powers of the human soul, which cannot end with death. And when we hear such words as those just quoted from Fichte, we are reminded of the words of the great German mystic Angelus Silesius: “It is not I who live and die in me, but God Himself who lives and dies in me.” This striving for knowledge not only gives the soul a sense of security in the world spirit, but at the same time certainty with regard to its immortality. For how could one, in the soul experiencing and knowing God in the soul, not be aware of this immortality? For if the God in the human soul dies, then death is precisely a new resurrection. The German spirit constantly strove for such knowledge, which conquers death, for knowledge of the soul, so that this soul recognizes itself not only through the instruments of its body, but through purely spiritual instruments, so that it faces its bodily experience, its own body, in a body-free state, in brave science, as it were, just as one faces external objects in the body. But from such knowledge there arose such a wonderful saying as that of Jakob Boehme, in which is summarized, as it were, all that the German spirit has to say about the great riddles of life in their connection with the destiny of the human soul: “He who does not die before he dies, will perish when he dies.” But that means nothing other than Jakob Böhme wants to suggest that a knowledge of the nature of the soul can be gained in life, of the soul as it will be once it has passed through the gate of death and looks back at its body. Because the one who does not acquire such knowledge before he dies will, in Jakob Böhme's view, perish when he dies. And so spiritual science today not only seeks knowledge of the spiritual, which is, so to speak, an increase of ordinary knowledge in the body, but spiritual science seeks knowledge in the soul, insofar as this soul, between birth and death, ing can forces that it will also have after death, when it will look back on the body and the bodily life, where the body and bodily life will again be not subject but object, as in everyday life. And if today a spiritual scientist wants to use, so to speak, what German spirit can bring us today to make a comparison for something that Fichte wanted to say in his time, then he could take this comparison for a particular case from this spiritual science. I will develop this particular case before you. Fichte, when he was thinking about what he wanted to say to his people, about how they could realize their hopes and find their goals in these fateful times, pointed to a completely new education that goes to the source of the stirrings of life in the soul, to the higher human being in the human being. Fichte knew at the time that what he wanted to present to his nation with this education – we can no longer think in this way today, but we can look to Fichte's intentions, perceptions and feelings – was probably clear to Fichte's soul as the salutary for the future, but when he compared it with what had been regarded as the essence of education up to his time, it could appear to him as something completely new that must wriggle out of the old, so that this new has no longer any similarity with the old. Then the more recent spiritual researcher could say, precisely on the basis of spiritual science, which Fichte did not yet have: “Now, I compare this new, this completely new education with the soul that has wrestled itself free from the body at death and now looks back on it. And the spiritual researcher today could describe how the soul looks back on the body and the life of the body after death. There is a passage in Fichte's “Addresses to the German Nation” that is particularly significant in this regard. It is a passage that one might easily overlook, but it is good to bring it to mind today. Fichte himself sought a symbol for the relationship between his new education and the old one. And he says: “What I am putting forward as a new educational plan appears different from everything that has been thought to be right, so that it will not be easy for anyone to understand me.” And when Fichte seeks a symbol for the relationship between this new education and the old one, he uses the following image:
We see from this, my dear attendees, that Fichte himself uses the image that we use today from a spiritual scientific consciousness. Fichte uses it from what he feels as the depth of the German spirit weaving within him and what he wanted to present to his people at the time. How deeply this awareness of the interweaving of the soul with the All-Spirit is linked to German spiritual life, when we see that what is being sought today and achieved in spiritual science is working its way out of the great philosopher of the German people like an energetic presentiment. And if we go back from him to Schiller, we can see how the search for the most spiritual part of the soul runs through one of his most intimate, most beautiful, most magnificent prose works, one of those prose works in which man perceives what he sees with his eyes and hears with his ears, not only in terms of external sensuality, but experiences the spiritual in it through the deepening of the soul within himself, and this is so full of life in him that he experiences it pictorially artistically or, as one would say today, spiritually scientifically as reality. There the human being is free, there the human being gives birth to his higher self. Schiller's highest aspiration is to seek the higher human being within himself. And here, ladies and gentlemen, we can see how basically everything that the German mind has achieved at its highest levels is connected with its universal striving towards spirituality, towards the intimate coexistence of the soul with the spirit. With Schiller, with Fichte, with Goethe, the same striving is everywhere to be found. And for these minds, the most characteristic thing is that being German coincides with being human in the right sense, in the striving for the highest human ideal. And with a mind like Goethe's, in particular, we see this once again, and the most beautiful expression of this is his “Faust”. It is precisely in these minds that we see how being German is something different from being Italian, French, British or Russian. Here we have to use the word: you can be Italian, you can be French, British or Russian, but you become German. You are constantly becoming German. Then one is best of all Germans, when Germanness floats before one like a higher ideal, or one could say like a living spiritual goal in the distance, which one has to approach more and more. Therefore, the word that Lagarde spoke in more recent times: “Being German lies not in the blood, but in the mind.” — is extremely true precisely for these minds. Therefore, it is difficult to make those who live around this Germanness understand it, and on whom this Germanness of Central Europe has to send its rays of influence. And from Fichte's mouth we hear an important and significant word about being German, and again in the “Speeches to the German Nation”:
This is the universal position of the greatest Germans with regard to what they felt as Germanness, as Germanity. This is how Germany's great philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte spoke in his “Speeches to the German Nation”, which he, as he said in one of the first speeches, wanted to hold by Germans per se to the German per se. I said: Everything that asserted itself as the striving for spirituality, as the essence of Germanness, is concentrated, as it were, in what Goethe was to his people. And now we might ask ourselves: Has anyone in the world tried to form a correct idea of this essence and this striving of the German people? There were times when one could hear one or another European nation praising the German essence and emphasizing it in one way or another. But in many cases one has to say: the experiences of today in particular show us how little reason, how little inner truth there was in what was felt about the German character in the world. Indeed, there are people like the French philosopher Bergson – one does not know whether he will still call himself Bergson now that St. Petersburg is no longer called St. Petersburg but Petrograd – this French philosopher Bergson, he found that the he had to give to philosophy in our time, basically borrowed it entirely from the philosophy of German idealism. In German idealism, it appears comprehensive and universal, but in Bergson's work, it appears meager and threadbare. But he, who should know the German character, pointed out in a chauvinistic speech he gave last Christmas how the Germans had forgotten everything they had achieved in the way of spirituality. How the Germans once had something like spirituality, but now they only show themselves to be purely mechanistic. One need only point to what the Germans are now producing: mechanistic cannons, rifles, machines, everything has been transformed into mechanism. One must be truly amazed at the logic that is going around the world today. After all, is it logical to speak as Bergson does? Even if one admits that the Germans once had Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, what, one might ask, did Bergson expect with his French logic? Did he expect that when the Central European peoples were threatened from all sides, threatened by a superior force two and a half times as strong, that they would then confront their enemies reciting Goethe and Schiller or declaiming Fichte's philosophy? Because they do not do this, the philosopher Bergson finds that the Germans have become a mechanistic people because they face their enemies with guns and cannons. Well, and from this French philosopher to that Monsieur Richepin, it is a straight line between what all the ranting and raving about the German people, the German essence can be heard. All the nuances of the ranting can be found. Richepin could not avoid saying that the Germans are wild, crazy, dirty beasts that must be strangled like wild pigs, all of them. There is a scale from the philosopher Bergson to such vilifications of the German people, which today vibrates throughout Europe. But then we may well ask ourselves: Has one always thought so about the German essence? About that German essence, which under today's conditions can naturally show nothing but its armies, but that German essence, which certainly only has to defend itself with its armies, but which has its foundation only in spirit and soul. It is interesting to contrast what is pulsating through the world today with this German essence in terms of its world position and its mission in the world. And here it is certainly no pleasant task to praise oneself, as it were, for that to which one is attached. So let us choose a different path, the path of looking around to see whether this German essence has always appeared “barbaric” to those who call it “barbaric” today, to those who have tried to understand it. There is a thinker, a great thinker of the nineteenth century, an American thinker who spoke and wrote in English, Emerson. Since we do not want to judge German character ourselves, let us hear what a non-German, speaking English, Emerson in America, has to say about the nature of the German and his mission. Emerson ties in with Goethe, who is for him the representative of the German character, Goethe, in whom is summarized that which must also appear to us as the essential in Fichte and Schiller.
It is true that one would be cautious if one had to coin such words oneself, but they were first uttered by an English American in English. Then he continues, looking at what the German mind has to give to world development:
Now, one could say that these are old stories. Emerson has been dead for a long time, and the Germans have changed according to those who judge them now in their lack of reflection caused by the passage of time. Perhaps we may look at something else that was said not decades ago, not a few months before the outbreak of the war, not by a German, not in Germany, but by an Englishman in Manchester. These words have also been translated into German and published under the title “Germany in the Nineteenth Century”. In the preface, we are told that the lectures were given to provide journalists and other people with a little insight into the German character. You can judge for yourselves how well this has been received from what you now read in English newspapers about the German character and how it is viewed in England. But at that time the following was said, and not in German, but in English and in Manchester, in the British Isles themselves:
- that is, the English [and French] —
It is strange what these Englishmen in Manchester know about the German character.
- please note that an Englishman is saying this –
Yes, my dear attendees, one can only say: Yes, why do your fellow countrymen now call the people of Schiller and Goethe a “barbarian people”? This question will be asked by history about the development of these peoples for a long, long time, since they could know better. For I did not begin this consideration in order to answer the question: Why do they call the people of Fichte and Schiller a “barbarian people”?, but rather to show that this question will be asked for a long, long time [in the histories of Germany's enemies], and they, these other peoples, will have to answer it. In these lectures, which these Englishmen gave to Englishmen, there is something that a German would truly not say in Germany; but it is not meant to be said here, only quoted: “No German words are more deeply imbued with the juice of national ethics than those that describe these things: true, thorough, faithful.” Now, why then call the German people a “barbarian people”? And about the German Reich, the following was said in the same lectures:
- he is, of course, referring to his English ancestors -
Now, ladies and gentlemen, if that is the case, why do they call the people of Central Europe a “barbarian people”? There is a strange preamble to the lectures from which I have quoted. You will have heard the name of Lord Haldane mentioned in an unpleasant way in the early weeks of the war. But it was this same Lord Haldane – who also spoke of the fact that the English, out of an overabundance of morality, could do nothing but join the other enemies of Germany to attack the Germans – well, this same Lord Haldane wrote a preface to the lectures, from which I would like to share a sample with you. In this preface, the Lord, who now claims that England could not help but punish Germany, says:
- that is, Germany's -
Yes, it is almost shameful to hear such a thing said. But I am not saying it, I am merely quoting it. Then Lord Haldane says:
And a woman who spent eight years in Germany, an Englishwoman who visited hospitals and lecture halls and studied schools and everything she could get her hands on in Germany for eight years, she differs from the other Englishwomen in terms of her knowledge in that she really got to know the Germans and their institutions. She published a book called “Eight Years in Germany” by Miss Wylie. This book appeared very recently, just a few weeks before the outbreak of war. Miss Wylie has described some of the things she has learned about the German character here in Germany. I will share just a few words from her book with you, and you will see how the question that is the subject of our discussion today must be put.
- that is, over the Channel –
We see that the German character was not entirely unknown to other nations. Therefore, we must consider the question of today's consideration as the question that will be asked of these nations by later history. But at the same time, there is a complete lack of understanding of what is most deeply rooted in the German character, of what is most spiritual about it! Herman Grimm, the great art historian, was the one who uttered a wonderful word. He, this Herman Grimm – one can almost feel him as Goethe's governor in the second half of the nineteenth century – he, who was completely immersed in the German essence and was spiritually and emotionally connected to it, he spoke a very significant word about Goethe's biography, which the Englishman Lewes wrote. Lewes tried to weaken the old prejudices of the English with regard to Goethe. Because up until Lewes, every Englishman believed that the Germans revered a man, Goethe, who was actually a completely immoral fellow, despite having produced some beautiful things. With regard to Goethe's ethical nature, Mr. Lewes has achieved something. But Herman Grimm is right: when you read Lewes' biography, which is entitled “Goethe: His Life and Work”, you get the feeling that Lewes is writing about a person who was born in Frankfurt in 1749, a person to whom Goethe's life story is attributed, to whom Goethe's works are ascribed, and who died in March 1832. But what the German has in his Goethe is not even hinted at in Mr. Lewes' biography. That is precisely what is so deeply ingrained in the German soul: universality, the desire to merge into that flowing spirituality and to transform the stream of spirituality into one's own being. That is what the peoples around Germany lack, and what they have basically still taken in very little to this day. And so one can say: What Herman Grimm once said with reference to the people of the East is true and right. There, he said, there was a Russian who had also written a biography, the biography of Beethoven. Nothing of what Beethoven really is lives in the biography. Just compare the selfless, devoted way in which the German mind, always wanting to become, wants to delve into what is spread throughout the world, how it, disregarding its own character traits, knows how to find its way into those of others. How the German spirit has united Shakespeare's spirit with its own. When something like this is experienced in a nation, then a Herman Grimm is justified in saying this with reference to Mr. Lewes' alleged biography of Goethe. And when one sees how little heart and mind were actually present in those who have often called themselves the leaders of other nations, one understands a lot. One understands a lot when one really delves into what one can experience together with the German spirit. One can say: There really is something in this German spirit of that Faustian mood, which on the one hand has hidden life's great riddle in: “All that is transitory is only a parable,” but on the other hand says: “Whoever strives can be redeemed.” And in the German spirit lives something that must lead beyond all pessimism, something that establishes a true foundation for future security and future hope. But how little this has basically entered into the hearts and souls of those who, with some sincerity, seek in other nations what can liberate the spirit and bring harmony to the liberated human soul. I would like to characterize for you how one of the most important Russians, Alexander Herzen, established a kind of spiritual entente with the Englishman Stuart Mill; how one of the best Russian minds, Herzen, immersed himself in the philosophy of the Englishman Stuart Mill, in that basically entirely materialistic world view, that he found, looking across Europe, that basically this culture of Europe can give no consolation, no hope for the future of humanity. It is the characteristic words of this Russian that really illuminate in a flash what has been confronting each other in Europe for a long time, and what now had to be expressed in these terrible flames of war. Herzen says of Stuart Mill:
And we add: Not only England! For Stuart Mill believes that with England, the whole of Europe must become China. We only get the answer to the question: How could such an opinion arise even in the heart of an aspiring person? We get the answer when we see how he passes by that striving of which Goethe says in his Faust: “Whosoever strives, we can redeem him.” He also passes by what Fichte, Goethe and Schiller can mean for the whole of modern development. Those who speak thus do not know the German spirit, that German spirit of which we shall say in our fateful days: in it lives the power which, though not, as the Russian thinks, to the scaffold and the stake, yet to pressure and death, to infinite pain and suffering, goes to defend what the German soul and its mission in the world is. However, if Emerson sees in Goethe the very representative of the German spirit, and one of the present-day intellectuals of Russia finds the following words about Goethe, Mereschkowski, who even claims to revere Goethe - one should not be deceived, one should not be deceived in his “Leading Spirits,” which have now been translated into German, for anyone who truly recognizes Goethe cannot utter such words about Goethe, the representative of modern intellectual life, as the Russian Mereschkowski has done. He says:
Let us assume that Goethe would appear to Mereschkowski in certain situations in his life; but anyone who recognizes Goethe and what he is to humanity would not say such a thing. For it does not merely depend on whether one considers something to be right, but whether one has enough spirituality to say it or not. There is something in these words that the world has yet to learn from the German spirit. But when we now see how what is German spiritual life is to be trampled underfoot from the east, how this German spiritual life, in alliance with the western peoples, is to be trampled underfoot from the east, then we may ask: What about the understanding and the possibility of understanding on the part of what is there in the east, with regard to the German essence? Now, esteemed attendees, once again it is not a German speaking, once again I do not want to speak myself, but I let a member of the Russian people speak for himself, the philosopher Solowjow, who is basically not just a philosopher, but a seer, who is regarded by the most excellent Russians themselves as a representative of Russia. Let us ask him. How does he, who has been vilified for decades by Russian intellectuals and other seducers of the Russian people, how does he judge this deification of the race principle to the exclusion of the education principle, how does he judge this brute force in relation to Europe? Let us hear him, not ourselves; let us hear the Russians about the Russians, not about the intimate forces of the Russian people, but about the forces that have come about through the conspiracies of mendacious Pan-Slavism and mendacious grand duchies. Let us hear the Russians talk about all that has been in preparation for a long time. He says: “Why does Europe not love us?” And he answers:
Because the subject that the Russians themselves must discuss has been introduced by the powers that I have just mentioned, for decades preparations have been made for what is now devastating Europe with such terrible storms, coming from the east. For if the question is raised from so many sides: “Who wanted the war?”, then the question needs only to be transformed into another: “Who could have prevented the war?” And there is a clear answer to this question, which history must also provide: only Russia could have prevented the war. Of course, the Western powers will also have to bear the consequences, because without them Russia would have avoided the war, at least for now. But only hints can be given about this. For the German who allows what I have been able to sketch with charcoal to take effect in his soul, what is now to be fought for in the East and West, at such unspeakable cost, must be something that opens our eyes, that shows us how much we need to reflect on ourselves, to reflect on that which allows us to find the strong forces of the German character. By the number of his enemies, the German can gauge the necessity of this search for his own strength, which depends on himself. In this respect, many things can be instructive for us. We believed that an understanding would dawn, especially among the French, for the German way of being. Strangely enough, even shortly before the war, there were people who believed that an understanding could be found for the German way of being in youthful France. I must, in conclusion, shed some light on this matter. Some of our best Germans were amazed that a Frenchman, Romain Rolland, who was one of the first to join with Verhaeren and others in directing the bitterest invective against German “barbarism,” found in Romain Rolland a mind that understood the German essence, that understood Germany. Why did they find this? Yes, the question is difficult to answer, very difficult. This Romain Rolland has written a novel. In this novel, a German, Jean-Christophe, plays a role. I am well aware that I am passing judgment, and that my judgment can stand up to any aesthetic, and I am prepared for those who find the judgment I am passing “barbaric”. So Romain Rolland wrote his novel “Jean-Christophe”. The hero is German, but he is concocted in such a way that a wild chaos results. This character is concocted from Beethoven's youth, the fates of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. All this is concocted in a jumble in this character. A character is shaped out of this, which in an artistic-aesthetic sense is basically repulsive to anyone who really has an appreciation for characterizations. And this Jean-Christophe – in German, this Johann Christof Kraft – is presented to us as he is placed in the terrible German circumstances. He spends his youth as a German among Germans, but he cannot stand these German circumstances. He has to get out of these German circumstances; he is not recognized in Germany. He does find some admirers, but he just can't stand the German way of doing things. He then goes to France. It is only in Paris that he finds what makes him a complete human being. This is described, along with other things, which are basically quite chaotic, just like Jean-Christophe himself. And we have even been told by critics that this novel is one of the most significant achievements in the reconciliation of the German and French minds after 1870. And someone said the following about this novel:
Someone printed this review as a letter to Romain Rolland. In this book – forgive me for emphasizing this passage, but I can emphasize it without violating any artistic principle, simply because in Romain Rolland's work, which is a poor novel, you can hear Romain Rolland himself through his characters. When he gives his characters traits that are pleasing to him because he wants to talk about this German essence that he “knows so well”. It depends on what nuances are apparent to this young Frenchman, since he is supposed to understand the German essence so well. So we read the following, which comes about during a conversation with a visitor:
— In 1806, under the thunder of the guns at the Battle of Jena, Hegel wrote his fundamental work, which contains the basic outlines of all his later works. The Frenchman, who has not read Hegel either, or if he has, then without understanding, says that Hegel “waited for Leipzig and Waterloo”. And further.
That's how well the Frenchman understood the Germans!
- that is why he has to leave Germany -
— so says this good German-understander of France at another point,
Well, my dear audience, you may not find it wonderful when you have heard this that this Frenchman was among the first to weep with the others in the “Matin” over German “barbarism”. But you will find it wonderful that this book, this novel by Romain Rolland, was believed to be one of the most significant acts since 1870 in bringing about peace. It was quickly translated into German. The first three volumes were published shortly before the war. But this Frenchman wants to know the Germans, he also wants to describe them, where he finds characteristic moments in these Germans. As I said, he practices the technique of bad novelists, who are always audible when they let their characters speak. So this Frenchman, who is particularly surprising when he blows into the horn of the “Matin” et cetera, describes something that he really likes about the Germans. He describes how an admirer found Jean-Christophe a professor in Ulm. He visits him. Then the Frenchman describes what he calls a “German meal.” It was so good, the German meal, that even the cook Salomé peeks through the door to see how the gentlemen sitting with Jean-Christophe like it. That's when the Frenchman finds the “greatness” of Germany.
He describes something that he wants to depict as good about the Germans. But now, among those who came to see the German professor back then, there is one man who can sing well and who is truly not described in an outstandingly beautiful way by the Frenchman who understands Germans so well. And Romain Rolland loves music. His critics said that his novel was “the novel of modern music”. And he himself had grown to love Germany precisely because of music. So he describes someone who can sing. And he describes him in such a way that you can see that he, Jean-Christophe, wonders why a German can sing. That is because the Germans do not know how to sing. They are seized by the power of song and the song works through them as if through an instrument. The spirit of the songs takes hold of them and they obey it. Because the soul of the German must do that. This soul obeys the song as the soldier obeys the general. This is roughly how the Frenchman, who understands the Germans so well, describes the [German] art of singing. And then he also gives us some insights into what the person who sings like this looked like. And so that you also have something good from the Frenchman's book in this area, I will also tell you that he describes this singer, who he admits sings excellently, for the reasons I have given, as a fat person who always sweats when he takes steps, but especially when he makes sounds. He describes his nature, his whole figure. Then he says: He looked like a Bavarian, a particular variety of German. He thinks that there are quite a few of these Bavarians, because they have the secret of preserving this human race, which “has come about through a system of noodles similar to that used to fatten poultry”. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I could tell you many more things about the characteristics of what is behind what is now physically expressed. Particularly when one considers the contrast between Frenchness and Germanness, as expressed so clearly in the fact that, driven out of their minds by the eternal desire for revenge, the French have done something that they will only realize in the future: they have allowed themselves to be dragged eastwards, about which we have even heard a Russian speak. When one considers this antagonism between Central Europe and the immediate West, then words such as these might come to mind – truly, when one looks at everything that has been produced on the other side of the Rhine, when one summarizes it all – words like this might come to mind:
And so on. And further:
These words were not coined by Germans! Rather, the words that I have just read were translated by the Würzburg professor of psychiatry, Rieger, from a letter that was indeed published in the Times on November 18, 1870 and that was written by Thomas Carlyle about France and the French way of life, French greed, and the claims to Alsace-Lorraine. It is a rather nice symptom that a psychiatrist found this letter and translated it, because there will be many a psychiatric chapter in world history when everything that is now being brought into the world from the east and the west about the German character has to be judged. But if, on the other hand, we allow ourselves to be influenced by this German essence in the way that not pride but humble self-awareness has done, if we see what Germany's best minds have achieved in the German spirit, if we see how intuitions of spiritual science, spiritual insights have emerged in Schiller and Fichte, so that we have to say to ourselves: In this German essence lie seeds that oblige us to develop them further into blossoms and fruits, then we must fill our soul with the right future securities and future possibilities. And we will know that when our fateful and destiny-laden days are again replaced by such days in which history again speaks objectively, that then the question will hang over the enemy nations like one of the most terrible questions: Why do they call the people of Schiller and Fichte a “barbarian people”? And in answering this question, one will feel how the German spirit has not completed its tasks in the world as a whole, in the development of humanity. One will feel how right Goethe was when he said to Luden, even in a fateful time:
When one feels the German essence, one will feel how it has to defend itself today as if locked in a great fortress – even the enemies who do not understand it and want to trample it underfoot – and one will find that this German essence has not yet reached completion, that this German spirit must fight for its existence not only for its own good but also for the good of the development of the earth. And today we may summarize what this reflection could only contain in hints, we may summarize it in words that point out how, even if the German spirit has already achieved great things, what it has achieved must appear in the present as the germ of future blossoms and fruits. And one would like to call out to those over whom the question will hover as historical fate: Why do they call the people of Fichte and Schiller a “barbarian people”? In answer, one must call out to them what we want to conclude today's reflection with:
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| 251. The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922: General Meeting (1921)
04 Sep 1921, Rudolf Steiner |
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| A movement with such great tasks would need a daily newspaper, and if the well over 5,000 members in Germany were each to recruit two to three subscribers to the three-part newspaper by Christmas, that would be a great success. Of course, differences of opinion will always arise, but they can be resolved in the way I have described. |
| 251. The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922: General Meeting (1921)
04 Sep 1921, Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
Report in the “Mitteilungen des Zentralvorstandes der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft” No. 1/1921. At four o'clock, Dr. Unger opens the discussion on the prerequisites, tasks and goals of an Anthroposophical Society and welcomes the numerous members of the Anthroposophical Society (about 1200) present. After a few procedural remarks that this is not a general assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, nor a founding assembly, but a gathering of the members present here, he hands over the chair to Mr. Uehli, who then gives Dr. Unger the floor as speaker. Dr. Unger: We are in a difficult position with our movement in the midst of the decline of spiritual life, surrounded by organized opposition, behind which stand spiritual forces that we initially have to counter with only our free will to work. In order to arrive at a discussion of our main questions, some of the history of the anthroposophical movement should be presented, which is briefly outlined in my essay in the double issue of “Drei” appearing on the occasion of this congress, as it must be known to the public today. In future, no opponent must be allowed to claim ignorance of these facts. (What now follows is a reproduction of this essay, which may be read on the spot. The essay ends with the publication of the 'Draft of the Foundations of an Anthroposophical Society' written by Dr. Rudolf Steiner.) Unfortunately, there is reason to assume that even today this 'Draft of the Basic Principles' is not sufficiently known among the members of the Anthroposophical Society to fulfill its task. In the early days after the founding of the Society, it was my task to give lectures to the individual working groups that existed at the time and were forming rapidly about the tasks and goals of the Society. I had already indicated the Society's point of view in Number XIII (March 1912) of the “Mitteilungen” (Communications) for the members of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, and characterized it by the words “trust” and “responsibility”. The founding committee considered itself responsible for the spiritual current and wanted to call for people to come forward who were willing to share this responsibility. Working groups were to be formed and a kind of trust organization was to be created from trustworthy personalities, who in turn should be willing to take responsibility for what they achieve to the founding committee, just as each individual member should be willing to take their share of responsibility to the trustworthy personalities. Trust should be the prerequisite for responsibility: just as the task was entrusted to the anthroposophical movement, so should trust be expressed in people, that in their hearts the spiritual current that is to be served is at work, trust in the will and understanding of those who approached the task in order to take on the responsible task of building something that could last into the future within the increasingly collapsing world of the present. A motto precedes the 'Draft of the Basic Principles': 'Wisdom is only in the truth'. (From Goethe's Prose Sayings.) This motto was placed in its position when the Theosophical Society fought against the truth in an organizational way, when untruthfulness, lies and defamation began to cloak themselves in the nimbus of wisdom. In a serious sense, this motto calls us to the starting points of our society. A simple overview of the content of the “Draft” shows that the prerequisites, tasks and goals of the Anthroposophical Society are set out here. It contains an obligation in that every member must know it before joining the Society. But this obligation does not lie in the external organizational structure; rather, the Society as such should mean something to its members in a human sense. There are secret societies with which the Anthroposophical Society is often compared, albeit wrongly. But for the members of such secret societies, their society means something. Of course there are also disputes among their members, and there are also apostates, but it will certainly not happen that such people will carry anything to the outside world that could harm their society. The Society as such is respected above and beyond all differences of opinion. This is one of the prerequisites of the Anthroposophical Society, which cannot establish a connection between its members through external discipline, obedience and the like, but must achieve this connection out of a free understanding of genuine spiritual life. The goal of “a satisfying and healthy way of life” is pursued by the Anthroposophical Society in accordance with the “Draft of the Basic Principles” “by promoting genuine and healthy research directed towards the supersensible and by cultivating its influence on the human way of life”; “true spiritual research and the attitude of mind that arises from it shall give the Society its character”; thus from the very beginning the main emphasis has been placed on the practical side of life, and what has since emerged as the effect of anthroposophy on the various areas of life is precisely part of the ‘cultivation of its influence on human conduct’. The three guiding principles, in which the character of the Society can be expressed, are based on true spiritual research. They are prerequisites or conditions for the work of the Society, which sets itself and is not intended to present an external commandment. In particular, the first guiding principle shows that brotherhood is not presented as a phrase or abstract demand, but that it can result from observing the spiritual that is common to all human souls. In order to gain influence on the way of life, the work of Dr. Steiner had to be given the widest possible distribution. It must be added here to the history of the Anthroposophical Society that the initial period after its founding had to be devoted to the inner attitude towards the goals. However, this work was abruptly cut short by the outbreak of war. An Anthroposophical Society only makes sense on an international basis. However, the way in which national matters were handled during the war did not allow for external work. In addition, of the three founders of the Society who served as the Central Board, Dr. Steiner (Miss von Sivers) resigned from her post at the beginning of 1916, so that an interim administration of the Society had to be set up. And in the following years, Mr. Bauer's state of health repeatedly led him to announce his decision to resign from the central board, so that this wish could not be ignored. The fact that the inner work was able to continue to a certain extent is perhaps demonstrated by the fact that after the armistice was concluded, out of the necessity to make a serious effort to implement the life-promoting impulses of spiritual science in the midst of the collapse of the traditional way of life, many initiatives were taken, initially by individuals. Forms began to develop out of the anthroposophical movement that were increasingly isolated from the outside world: the threefolding movement, the artistic impulses of the Goetheanum, eurythmy, the Waldorf school, research institutes, university courses, etc. All of this worked to influence people's way of life. In the explanations of the “guiding principles”, the “draft principles” then speak of an ideal of life that can be a general human ideal of how to live. Reference is made to the exemplary nature that can flow from the living interaction of the members, but that can only be shaped if the members have the right attitude despite the “complete appreciation of the thinking and feeling of the individual”. The draft contains much that prompts us to ask: has the Anthroposophical Society fulfilled its tasks, is it in a position to fulfill them in the future? This will be the subject of our discussion. It has become quite evident in the present time that “the human being needs to know and cultivate his own supersensible nature and that of the world around him,” as stated at the beginning of the “Draft of Fundamental Principles”. The souls of people today, especially the souls of young people, are attracted by all kinds of movements with lofty goals that are pursued in an abstract way that suits the times. Such movements seek to attract people who we know are valuable and who should work with us towards our goals. Such valuable people experience great disappointments in these movements. Why don't they come to us? As a statistical comment, it may be said that the membership of our Society has increased from 3647 in 1914 to 8238 on August 1 of this year; a large increase in membership coincides with the time when strong opposition has become effective. Let us assume that all of the more than 8,000 members own the fundamental works of Dr. Steiner (although not all of them are subscribers to the Threefolding Journal or the “Drei”!). Most of these fundamental works have reached print runs of over 20,000, with the “Core Points of the Social Question” reaching 40,000. With print runs of 20,000, one can certainly expect a readership of 40,000, and these are truly interested readers, because Dr. Steiner's books do not appear in second-hand bookshops. This proves that spiritual science as such is effective; but the Anthroposophical Society is not effective. It must be said, without fear of contradiction, that it is a stumbling block in many quarters, especially for valuable people. Why is this so? That should be the subject of our discussion, for the cooperation of the members of our Society does not correspond to what is stated as a prerequisite in the “Draft of the Basic Principles”. The Society as such means little in the consciousness of many of its members. One symptom of this is that hundreds of members present here have come to our congress as people interested in the lectures, but not as members of the Society as such. This is shown by the fact that hundreds came without a membership card; this is said without reproach for the individual. There is much that can be said about what happens among us that flies in the face of our principles. But it has consequences that are felt throughout the world. So, in an organization that wants to be based on freedom, giving advice is what can prove to be spiritually effective. In such a society, one must be able to give advice, and such advice should be properly appreciated. Dr. Steiner's position within society is particularly that of an advisor. Dr. Steiner often gave advice, and often the opposite of what he advised happened. But often enough, the effect is that Dr. Steiner is blamed for the opposite of what he advised. I have been able to mention only a few. But much can come from the impulses of this congress for the fulfillment of the tasks of the Anthroposophical Society, which must break away from the inheritance of the old Theosophical Society. I pointed out many things in a circular letter a year ago; the circular letter had no effect. At that time, the success of such a congress could not be assumed with certainty. Now we have ventured this undertaking. Whether it will have the desired effect as an action will depend on the members of the Anthroposophical Society. To do this, we must take a serious and honest look at the situation. What I have said should be the basis for discussion, and you will contribute the best to it. Mr. Uehli opens the discussion on the presentation and asks for written contributions. Rector Bartsch underscores Dr. Unger's comments about Dr. Steiner's almost superhuman work and would now like to see the relationships of the members to the only remaining member of the central Executive Council regulated. He continues: Much has come from Stuttgart, as this congress also proves, and much would be better if the members of the Anthroposophical Society had shown themselves equal to their task. A movement with such great tasks would need a daily newspaper, and if the well over 5,000 members in Germany were each to recruit two to three subscribers to the three-part newspaper by Christmas, that would be a great success. Of course, differences of opinion will always arise, but they can be resolved in the way I have described. We can only become a cohesive society if we are based on mutual trust. We must work towards solidarity. Various prominent figures at the forefront of our movement have been moved by such thoughts and feel it necessary to express that we have confidence in the extension of the board through free election, so that such an active board has the opportunity to embody the thoughts that have flowed from anthroposophy. Mr. Graf von Polzer-Hoditz: It is one of the basic truths of our spiritual movement that everything we decide and do happens at the right time. It is part of the signature of our time that everything has been stirred up in the individual human being. Therefore, we must approach our tasks with the right attitude. On behalf of many anthroposophists in various working groups in Austria, and speaking from my experience of being involved in the movement, I would like to express our confidence that the Central Board, which now consists of only one member, will be able to act again. From our relations with our friends in Czechoslovakia, I can also speak on behalf of those anthroposophists who live in Czechoslovakia today. Dr. Stein uses an example to show how important it is to consider not only what may bother individuals, but also how things appear to the outside world. This is not given enough thought in our circles. He continues: “From this point of view, I would like to say a few words about the opposition, which is little known by members. You can't let the opponents be dealt with by a few specialists, of whom I am one. We must also take care of the individual issues raised by our opponents, for example, against the new edition of “The Philosophy of Freedom”. We do not represent our spiritual heritage at all if we accept it authoritatively. Each individual has the duty to examine the issues that an opponent wants to cast doubt on, and then to stand up for them when they know that they themselves stand for the cause with their entire personality. We are facing an opposition that does not just want to fight us, but to destroy us. The opponents organize themselves by loving evil. If our members knew that evil is even enthusiastically loved, then the strength would also be mustered to defend what wants to flow out of the sources of anthroposophy into all of humanity. Mr. Ch. von Morgenstierne: Many difficulties have already been pointed out, and much more could be mentioned, for example, the great danger that our movement is perceived as a sect from many sides. Many influential people are repelled by this. We can best avoid this if we try to present the matter as it is done in the two main centers in Central Europe, in Dornach and Stuttgart. This could be seen at the summer course in Dornach that has just ended and at the present congress. We want to try to follow this example in the different countries. This is also said on behalf of many Nordic friends. We want to stand by the leadership of our movement, and I would also like to express the wish that the connection between the leadership of the Society and the other countries, for example with us in the north, becomes a firm and vibrant one. Mr. Paul Smit: A true coexistence between people, the interaction from one person to another, which is so necessary for today's world, is often prevented by ideas coming between people. But these perceptions must be overcome as such; they must die in order to be transformed into life. That is why it is so important for the Anthroposophical Society to have people who understand how to practise spiritual science by silencing their perceptions when they are in contact with another person. Mr. Uehli: Dr. Steiner wishes to read a statement. Dr. Steiner: In a letter addressed to Dr. Steiner and myself, Mr. Kurt Walther, who has admirably led the management of the Anthroposophical Society in recent years, has resigned his office into the hands of those from whom he received it, in view of the changed circumstances and because it might be necessary to make changes that would be beneficial for the further development of the Society. Mr. Walther has devotedly administered the office within the Central Executive Council during these years, which I resigned at the beginning of 1916 for no other reason than because I did not want to associate Dr. Steiner's name with the thousand small affairs of the Society. Mr. Walther has thus taken on many arduous duties. I would like to publicly express my gratitude to him, who has to be absent today for official reasons. Mr. George Kaufmann: Conscious of the tasks that the Anthroposophical Society has to fulfill in the whole civilized world today, I would like to warmly welcome the impulses that arise from this assembly. As it is also written in the 'Draft of the Fundamental Principles', this is connected with the fact that a knowledge of the supersensible nature of the human being and the world outside the human being is flowing into the hearts of many people. Therefore, our work is always directed towards the ability to judge and the sense of truth. Much is being done from here and from Dornach in all fields, which is beginning to give the anthroposophical spiritual knowledge respect in the world. The Anthroposophical Society should form the spiritual center of this work. Therefore, the Society must not be a sect, but the serious representative of a deep spiritual impulse. This movement is international, and in our hearts, we who work in different countries, live Dornach and the Goetheanum as the actual center of the movement; but it must be said that what could realize the Goetheanum as the center of the spiritual movement has not yet been done. Something could go out from this assembly to all parts of the world that can realize the internationality of the movement with its spiritual center in the Goetheanum; if a new revival of society emanates from here, where the strongest work is being done, and leads to concrete solidarity, then it will be able to have an effect on the non-German countries. Mr. J. van Leer: In his opening speech, Dr. Unger pointed out that we are openly expressing here what is on our minds. I would like to point out some of the things that are to blame for the fact that we have not realized what could and should have been realized. The Anthroposophical Society welcomes all people who want to work in our spirit, but when Dr. Steiner pointed in a certain direction, cliques easily formed. One cannot say that the artistic is the main thing, or the threefold social order, or the economic, the school, but one must also look at what has been worked on in the branches for ten to fifteen years. That is also necessary. Recently, for example, Dr. Steiner's work has been focused on science, but if we want to let all of anthroposophy flow into all human hearts, then we must not consider the other aspects as unimportant either, even if sectarianism in the branches is reprehensible. This is one of the serious mistakes in our movement: we do not have enough trust to appreciate all the work. Not everyone can do all the work, but everyone can do work in their own field. We also need people who are not scientifically educated. In our society, everything is represented. If we appreciate the work of all people, we have the basis for the proper leadership of the Anthroposophical Society. If everyone works together and places their trust in the board, then we are a cohesive body that has power in the world, and we will also be able to cope with our opponents. Mr. Vegelahn: Why is it that spiritual science works but the Anthroposophical Society does not work? I fully agree when the confidence is expressed to the central board here. It is indeed nice when it is said that we must strive for community, but what is given as a knowledge of the supersensible world must be put into the right relationship to what can be experienced here in the physical world. The right foundation for spiritual science can be gained from the 'Philosophy of Freedom'. Dr. Unger has given figures about high print runs. The 'Philosophy of Freedom' was out of print for a long time, and one would have expected the new edition to sell quickly. However, it took quite a long time. If the anthroposophists can show that their powers of judgment have been developed, then other people will have to change their judgment of them over time. Many people come to the Society as if seeking refuge from the disappointments of life, but they must also be able to leave this refuge and return to the world. To do this, they need to have strengthened their powers of judgment through the Philosophy of Freedom. Dr. Kolisko: It has already been pointed out from various sides how necessary it is for our Society to present a unified front to the outside world. However, it can clearly be observed that a large part of what is directed against our movement as opposition arises from the fact that such a unified approach by all members of the Society is not present, because in many cases a basis of trust is still lacking. For example, when certain things are done after careful consideration, one can be sure that one will encounter mistrust or a lack of understanding and that the actions of many members will be in opposition to this. One must remember a peculiar prejudice against the Threefolding Newspaper, which I often encountered when traveling: namely, that it is too polemical, and that this is the main obstacle to all members supporting it and ensuring its distribution. This is because people are not sufficiently interested in the opposition. It has not been realized that, after the opposition had opened the fight, one was forced to take such a tone, as for example with what we have called positive time criticism. It is the case in our society that before the emergence of the threefolding movement, there was never any possibility of forming a social judgment. One was taken by surprise by the emergence into the public. But this had always been pointed out in the anthroposophical movement. The newspaper has been made as well as it could be, and if it is not yet better, it is because there is not yet broad support. But one could also notice that there was a certain mistrust when, say, something was undertaken from Dornach or Stuttgart. They do not have the confidence that the things that have been undertaken have emerged from a certain solidarity between groups. We will not be able to work externally if we do not try to let what is being done take effect. So many things are thwarted. For example, negotiations were held with opponents when it would have been better not to negotiate with them after taking the opposing view towards them. It is often the case that outsiders have the impression that there is no society in which things are done in such an unsolidaristic way as in the Anthroposophical Society. This comes from the extraordinarily strong individualization in our society, but we must create such a basis of trust that our actions in public are carried out out of an ever-growing understanding of the movement's overall tasks, following joint deliberation. We must be able to trust the people working in the public sphere, because we have the impression that they are acting out of common understanding. Then we can counteract the formation of cliques. Not everyone needs to be an expert in everything, but everyone can take an interest in what is going on in the anthroposophical movement. The fact that they are not properly integrated into society gives rise to a wide range of grievances. I would just like to mention the issue of Dr. Steiner's lecture cycles, which are intended only for members of the Anthroposophical Society. The Society has been unable to preserve this spiritual material. The situation is such that these cycles have been leaked to a very large extent. In many cases, publishers have been keen to get hold of them. There is a tendency in the Society not to take seriously the words that are written down in the cycles. The admission of members to the Society is also handled in a casual manner, so that people have been admitted who then, due to a certain necessity, had to be excluded again. It is clear that precisely those whom one was forced to exclude have become the worst enemies of the movement. Consider where the opponents get their ideas! From the writings of Seiling. Such people, who like Seiling become our opponents, always come from certain cliques, and what confronts us is a reflection of what is present in our own circles. All those in society who are really active in their work – and there should be as many as possible – must have the opportunity to trust each other, so that one has the impression that things are happening under responsibility. The individual can only come to a correct judgment through intensive, real collaboration. The task we face today must be to create such a basis of trust in the Anthroposophical Society, so that collaboration takes place from the point of view of feeling that one is standing in the same thing and trusting one another. Mr. Uehli: A motion has been made to take a break now. Before that, Dr. Unger would like to say a few words. Dr. Unger: I support this motion and would like to see something happen that will serve to fulfill our tasks. But before that, I have to discharge the most important duty. Various speakers have been kind enough to express their trust in me for what I have done or can still do for society. I can only accept this on the condition that I am allowed to express this trust and our heartfelt thanks to those individuals who were particularly involved in the creation of our society. Above all, I would like to mention Dr. Steiner (applause), who from the very beginning did everything that could be done by human beings to bring about a movement. I have already mentioned that Dr. Steiner's works were not yet valued by people in the sense that a movement came about around the turn of the century. The credit for initiating the movement goes to Dr. Steiner. She combined within herself the knowledge and abilities needed, and especially the will to achieve. It is only thanks to her work that forces could develop within society that can now try to develop something for life based on the spiritual science given by Dr. Steiner. Among our friends, Mr. Bauer is known precisely for always being a personal center for all living things that can work among us. His intimate experience of the spiritual world flows through invisible channels into the hearts of people. In the most sincere and profound sense, I would like to transfer to Mr. Bauer what has been expressed here in terms of approval. I would also like to express my special thanks to Dr. Steiner for what she shared about our friend Mr. Walther. For it was precisely during the most difficult times that he had an extraordinary workload on his shoulders. Mr. Walther stepped into the breach when something needed to be done, which he took on in such a commendable way. Since words of trust and thanks are too weak for what is in our hearts at this moment for Dr. Steiner, I would like to express it in the form of a request; because, of course, everything that I and others have said here is based on what Dr. Steiner himself has done. And since everything depends on our being able to listen to advice in the right way, I would like to ask Dr. Steiner to give us his advice on this extremely important matter, where everything can depend on what comes from here, when we meet here again. It is decided to continue the discussion in the evening. Mr. Uehli opens the continuation at [9] p.m. Mr. Mengen: I have given particular attention to the question of why our society is often a stumbling block, and have found that we have an individualism in which people come together, listen to a lecture and then drift apart again. It is not recognized that there is a connection between the different areas of life. A free spiritual life is just as necessary as a fraternal economic life. When people talk about fraternity today, it is a cliché. Fresh forces must be brought into economic life from the living forces that are among us. An associative economic collaboration is the necessary complement to spiritual individualism. Today it is necessary for each individual to feel responsible for everything that happens. Mr. M. Grundig: If we want to get to the point where everyone can be responsible for everything, it is necessary that everyone not only be content to be a member of the Anthroposophical Society, but that if they want to bring something into the public sphere, they must be imbued with the idea of anthroposophy. It has been pointed out that not everyone can be in science. But anyone who is in the circles of the working class knows that it is precisely here that we have to approach the matter as scientifically as possible. In his 'Key Points of the Social Question', Dr. Steiner pointed out how strongly natural science ideas have affected the proletariat. These ideas can only be made fruitful through anthroposophy. One can, as Dr. Steiner once said, come to an appreciation of spiritual science through a healthy feeling, but especially in the face of what can arise from scientific ideas in the proletariat, one must be able to provide sufficient knowledge. And then anthroposophy must intervene in the daily life of the broad masses of the people. To do this, something must be created, such as the foundation stone for the “Waldorf School” and so on, as laid out in “The Coming Day”. In this way, the worker can also do something good for the Anthroposophical Society. Mr. Heydenreich: As a young person who has asked for the floor, I would like to make an announcement in all modesty. We anthroposophists who emerged from the youth movement came together during the congress in a few special discussions and realized that we have special tasks in our intermediary position between the youth movement and anthroposophy. We have come to realize that it is not only our duty to bring anthroposophy to the youth movement, but also that it is our duty to place our young forces at the service of anthroposophy, so that a corresponding action can emerge from it. Mr. Michael Bauer: I would just like to make a few brief remarks that the assembly is expecting. It concerns the new central committee. I wanted to make this announcement myself so that people can feel and know from this fact that the new members of the central committee have emerged from the continuity of our movement. The two new members were not chosen over the heads of the outgoing members of the Central Committee, but with their consent, after much deliberation. They are Ernst Uehli and Emil Leinhas. Although both are friends of Stuttgart, it should be noted that it was one of the weaknesses of the old Central Committee that its members lived in different places. There must be close and constant contact between the members of the Central Committee if healthy and fruitful work is to be done, and now that all three members of the Central Committee live in Stuttgart, this is guaranteed. I probably do not need to mention that it is precisely the best factual reasons that justify this election. Allow me to touch on a thought that has already been widely expressed in today's speeches, particularly in Mr. Kaufmann's speech from London. There has been much talk of trust, and I would like to add that there can be no meaningful communication from person to person if there is no trust in the background of the soul. When I speak a word to any human being and he has the will to understand me, something of my soul plays into the other; and it plays, strictly speaking, on the basis of what is in the first of our guiding principles, on the basis of a common spiritual. That which connects one soul with another, by which one can communicate in words, is consciously the very basis of our society. I could go on to explain that this trust that speaks from person to person in words can intensify and blossom forth as love. I could also point out that what we feel when we listen carefully, as the heartbeat of our aspirations, is a being that may be called the good spirit – I could also say the holy spirit – of humanity. Our society is based on the good spirit of humanity, which must weave from person to person if something healthy is to come about. In recent weeks, I have often been preoccupied with Uehli's beautiful book 'A New Search for the Holy Grail'; it tells how the Knights Templar were obliged not to leave the battlefield as long as a flag was still flying. Do believe that we are in an equally hard fight as the Templars had to face many times! And we should enter the fight with the same loyalty and full consciousness. I want to point out such loyalty at this moment, when you are facing a new central committee that has been formed after the most loyal and conscientious deliberation. And I would like to add the request that you reflect on the common spiritual that is placed in the hearts of people at this moment, when a new start is being made to step into the future with all that this movement wants to bring into the world, in loyalty and in the awareness of our obligation. Then the advice we are now expecting will be fruitfully received. Dr. Steiner: My dear friends! The occasion for our being together today is an extraordinarily important and significant one; I therefore want to meet Dr. Unger's request in any case. If this request implied that I should give advice, then that will only be possible if I too try to say something about some characteristics of our social life that seems to me to be particularly necessary today. In the Anthroposophical Society, if it is to have full legitimacy and a good inner reason for being, it is necessary to address each individual. Individualism is that which cannot be separated from the nature of such a society as the Anthroposophical Society must be, and therefore it is always difficult to say this or that in small circles if there is no possibility that what has been discussed or, for my sake, reported there will really find its way to the individual members as quickly as possible and then find a responsive heart in the individual members. Today, however, it is possible to speak to a large number of my dear friends, and so mentioning one or other of them today can also have a very special significance. And so please allow me, even if I do not claim to do so even in outline, to go into some of the history of our anthroposophical movement, and then to come to certain current details. From the very beginning, significant obstacles have stood in the way of this Anthroposophical movement, to the extent that it should live in society. It has already been mentioned today that for certain reasons, what is being attempted within the Anthroposophical Society was first attempted within the framework of the Theosophical Society. Twenty years ago, the German Section of the Theosophical Society was formed in Berlin. During the formation of this German Section, I gave a lecture for a completely different audience that was part of a lecture cycle called “Anthroposophical Reflections on the History of Humanity”. Even at the founding of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, the anthroposophical goal was the decisive one for me. I do not want to go into the details of the founding now, but just mention that everything that happened in this context led to a small scene, to an argument between two celebrities – at that time German celebrities of the Theosophical Society. They were so angry about everything that had happened back then that the day after the founding they made the following very harsh statement: “Yesterday we buried the Theosophical movement in Germany.” That was the prognosis that two Theosophical celebrities gave at the time to the movement that was to be inaugurated in the way described to them. What had to happen could not be done differently at that time than it was done. But it had the effect that the whole anthroposophical movement carried certain fetters. I would like to characterize these fetters, at least in a few pages. What gradually became the practice of the Theosophical Society was something that, I would say, was second nature to a large number of the members who joined together to form the German Section at that time. They simply had the idea that they could not do anything differently from the way it was done in the Theosophical Society; you will see later why I am emphasizing and mentioning these things. But my dear friends, for me it was actually impossible at that time, despite my involvement in the German Section of the Theosophical Society, to understand anything of these practices. I will mention just one fact: at that time, a person working with the German Theosophical Society gave a lecture in which she presented an excerpt from Misses Besant's “Ancient Wisdom”. At that time I had not really concerned myself with the literature of the Theosophical Society, but in one excerpt I heard the main teachings being put forward – and with the retention of the whole style of thinking, of looking at things – that were being spread within the Theosophical movement. I found the whole thing terribly unappealing, and I actually rejected such dilettantish, lay talk out of an inner scientific conscientiousness. This led to my being compelled to write my book 'Theosophy' as a matter of course, so that there would be something to hold on to that could also stand up to science. To me, standing up to science was always something different from being recognized by conventional science. Then I want to highlight one more thing from all these things: I went on a lecture tour in Holland. I presented what I had to say from my own point of view. It actually caused consternation among the members of the Dutch Theosophical Society, because in essence it was heretical in their opinion. This also led to the fact that these Dutch 'Theosophists were the first to turn with all their might against what was then expressed at the Munich Congress in 1907. What came close to the Theosophical Society, but was actually intended by Anthroposophy, was, my dear friends, in many respects a crowd of dreamers who took an extraordinary pleasure in their “dreams”. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not talking about any doctrine today, not about any occult facts or the like, but about human moods. Within the Theosophical Society, it was simply the custom to absorb the Theosophical attitude in the following way: As an external person, one lived exactly the same way as one had lived before becoming a Theosophist; one was a civil servant, teacher, noblewoman or anything else in the same way. One continued to live in the same way as before, but one had, if I may say so, a new sensation, albeit of a better kind. One pleased oneself in knowing, or at least in pretending to know, something about the whole world from occult sources. Now, my dear friends, they particularly liked to say: “Yes, somewhere, in a place that is as inaccessible as possible, there live certain individuals who are called ‘masters’; they are the guides of humanity, who have been guiding the development of humanity for so long, we are all in their care, we have to serve them.” One took pleasure in these services, which were particularly enhanced by the fact that these masters lived in an inaccessible distance, so that one never knew anything about whom one served as an actor or the like. Perhaps by extinguishing the light or darkening the room and sitting down at a small table, head in hands, one imagined that one was serving the masters in such a way that one was involved in all the most important matters of the present. In particular, one liked to sit down and then send out thoughts; this sending out of thoughts was even practiced with great enthusiasm in circles, especially within theosophical circles. With these things, I only want to hint at the moods that, out of a certain pleasure in reverie, actually substantiated what, as a kind of mystical coquetry, was one of the vital nerves of the Theosophical Society and of theosophers in general. You see, my dear friends, this kind of mood has become too entrenched within the movement that was now incumbent upon us. No one is to be reproached for this; some have worked devotedly and sacrificially out of this mood. But one cannot say that this mood has prepared well for what Dr. Unger emphasized today. When 1919 came, the task was suddenly to throw oneself into the stream of world evolution, to show that one had grown with what one had prepared in order to work in the stream of human development. It was no longer a matter of sitting down with a dim lamp, resting one's head in one's hands and sending out thoughts, but of grasping reality with one's thinking, which had been worked through with anthroposophy and had become practical. In principle, this attitude had always been in preparation, but as far as I was concerned, I perhaps encountered the most vehement opposition – even if it was not expressed – from those followers who, in a certain respect, rightly considered themselves the most loyal followers. For there was always a certain tendency towards nebulous mysticism, which had to be fought against in the most terrible way, especially among those who were most well-meaning and well-intentioned. It is the after-effects of this tendency towards nebulous mysticism that is causing us such great difficulties within the Anthroposophical Society today. Because, my dear friends, we do not want to live in abstractions; we want to see reality as it is everywhere, and it must be said that this mood of dreaming is what becomes the most dangerous seducer of untruthfulness and volatility in relation to real life. No one is more exposed to taking real life lightly than the one who blurs his soul in nebulous mysticism. But that, in turn, is what makes it so difficult for anthroposophists to look at things realistically with a healthy mind. If anthroposophy were taken as it is given, if sometimes, by flowing into the other soul, a completely different soul content did not flow out of it, then the ability to take things of external reality quickly, with presence of mind and simply, would flow out of this very anthroposophy, and from the simple one would then also find the basis for confronting the organized opposition, which is much more than you think. Let me also say a few words about this, because if the Anthroposophical Society wants to continue to exist, it is necessary to be very clear about these things. It has been pointed out today that a large proportion of the opponents copy the judgments they release from a book by Max Seiling, who once behaved as one of the most loyal confessors of the anthroposophical view. He was cajoled in the most diverse cliques, and again out of a certain nebulous mysticism, he was given a great deal of importance in certain cliques. Now, this man has written a book. Why did he write this book? One can disregard all the filth that can be found in this book. But this is to be envisaged with a healthy sense of reality: this man, who at first threw himself with all his might at - forgive the trivial expression - our Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House, was allowed to publish a small booklet, for which I because this booklet was basically quite useful, I even wrote an afterword; but then this man wanted to have a book published by the same publishing house, half of which consisted of plagiarism from my lectures and half of his foolish spiritualist ramblings. This wish had to be rejected, and out of annoyance at this and out of his character, which simply lies when it hates, all kinds of lies were sent out into the world by Max Seiling. That is the reality, and any other judgment about it is nonsense; anyone with a clear mind sees through things. I will give you another example, which may not be so easy to see through; but if one were to see that within the Anthroposophical Society there really is what has often been expressed today by the word “trust”, then one would only need to say something characteristically significant to illuminate a case on the basis of this trust. This would take hold within the Anthroposophical Society, a truthful judgment would be established. And that is what we need above all. I would like to mention the Goesch case as a small example. Goesch was also someone who, in every way, first of all threw himself at it, if I may use the trivial expression again. One day, Dr. Goesch's wife came to me with her children and introduced me to one of the children, of whom she seriously claimed that this child – I don't know how many days, but a sufficiently large number of days, as the woman believed, always knew in advance when – it was during the war – when the French would attack the Germans in some battle. Well, my dear friends, you see, all that was needed was to set up a telephone line between the Goesch house in Dornach and the large headquarters, and then, according to the promptings of this little child, it would have been possible to communicate to the large headquarters in Germany every time the French would attack the Germans again. The fact that I was told something like that led me to say a few words about the somewhat inadequate education, and I had to point out in particular the man who was to blame for some of the failings in the education. From the next day onwards, Dr. Goesch was the opponent he has become. My dear friends, things are not that simple. But one must not look for something other than this simplicity, and to achieve this simplicity one must first acquire the ability to judge; this is acquired through healthy anthroposophy, not through that which still remains from the old practices of the Theosophical Society. My first advice is to ensure that the remnants, not of Theosophy, but of the theosophical-social feeling, may finally be expelled from our Society. Now, this also means that certain things that happen must be taken with the necessary weight. In my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Mysteries of the Soul), I pointed out the whole corruption of Max Dessoir. If what is said in my book about Dessoir's character had been taken seriously – I am not talking, of course, about the powerless anthroposophists, but about those who had the obligation to take such things seriously – then it would be clear that This is not about defending anthroposophy, but about the character of a university lecturer, and my book shows that a person contaminated by such scientific immorality must never be allowed to remain a university lecturer for a moment. This is not really relevant here, but I still had to learn that, after the fact, I was told that our side had personally negotiated with that individual Max Dessoir, so it was considered important to somehow make this man more inclined towards our anthroposophical movement than he is. And a man like Traub has been sufficiently characterized by the reference to the sentence that he, invoked as an authority, wrote in an important Württemberg newspaper: “In my ‘Theosophy’ I claim that in the devachan, spirits move like tables and chairs here in physical space!” My dear friends! Anyone who is capable of writing such things without thinking must be judged as a pest in the position he holds. And when one is constantly confronted with such things as the sentence: “Yes, the threefold order should deal with positive things, it should not deal with these things in a polemical way so much.” – then, my dear friends, it must be said: This is a complete misunderstanding of what reality demands of us. It is necessary that the truth be told in all its unvarnishedness, and I could multiply a hundredfold what I have given only in examples. But if such an attitude, which is thoroughly compatible with what brotherhood and universal love are, if such an attitude were to penetrate our ranks, then we would be better off. But we are still very far from this attitude, because one cannot rise to find the way from a false judgment to a true judgment. The false judgment is: “Be loving towards such a Traub, who, as a weak human being, can make a mistake, perhaps out of the best of knowledge and belief!” My dear friends, I call that a misjudgment. I call it a correct judgment: “Be loving towards all those who are corrupted by such a university educator!” That is what it is about, not throwing one's love in the wrong place, but understanding where to let it flow. Anyone who wants to be benevolent towards the corrupters of youth out of nebulous sentimentality lacks true human love. But this must be developed within humanity, although the first may be more comfortable. Today, a question has also been touched upon that is indeed important for the existence of the Anthroposophical Society, namely the “cycle question”. In fact, every single member has undertaken to ensure that the cycles remain within the Society. For me personally, it was less important that these cycles should not be read outside the Society than that the form in which these cycles had to be printed, because I did not have time to correct the typesetting, should remain known only to those who are aware of the circumstances. Nevertheless, it has turned out that it is even possible that Count Keyserling can continually boast that he has read the cycles, the man who, when confronted with the objective untruths he has told about me, simply has the frivolous excuse: he has no time to do research on Steiner. - In other words, this Count Keyserling has no time to inquire about the truth, so he spreads untruth. The Cycles have been delivered to people with such an attitude; and if I wanted to go over to the other side, I could cite many other things. So it has come about that today, torn out of the cycles by the enemies everywhere, sentences can be quoted. Actually, I would have to say today: Now that this has happened through the membership, the cycles can be sold anywhere, because it would be better to hand over the cycles to the public than to hand them over to those who misuse them. No one should be criticized in a derogatory way, because what has happened has happened because of all the continuation of what I have referred to as nebulous sentimentality, nebulous mystification and the like. But such grounds have led to something else, and it is really important to speak out in this regard. Today, too, it has often been said, and it has sounded to me like a shrill discordant note, that changes have occurred in our society, that in the past there was somehow a way of dealing with things by which even the non-scientifically educated could approach society as collaborators, and that it has now become fashionable to proceed scientifically. Now, my dear friends, in forming such judgments, they spread. They are false judgments. Compare the way I presented the beginning of the Anthroposophical Society with the way I present it today; compare how I spoke to the public then and how I speak to the public now, and you will find nothing that could seriously be called a change of direction in the Anthroposophical Society. It is a different matter that individual things have been added that the times have demanded. I would even say the opposite. Anyone who takes some of the public lectures from the beginning of the century will find a more scientific tone from me from a certain point of view than he can find today; but if one were to sense correctly from the depths of the soul in this regard , then one would not come to say, as no one has said today, but as has been said many times: “Now the scientists rule, now the scientists are in favor, now is the scientific era!” No, a healthy sense of reality would lead one to say: Well, it is quite good that people have finally come to the anthroposophical movement who are able to defend anthroposophy against all scientific criticism. In any case, people would be pleased about the active work of our scientists. But from there, my dear friends, it is only one step to a healthy judgment, which is extremely important in terms of cultural history. And for that I would like to present you with a small piece of evidence. In issue no. 48 of “Zukunft” you will find an open letter written by a man who is not particularly well-liked by me, but he is a university teacher among university teachers, and he apostrophizes the entirety of German university teachers in the following manner:
In an open letter, an attempt is made to show that Harnack, Rubner, Eduard Meyer, the celebrities, simply lied about the scholar in question.
This is how university teachers talk to each other today.
My dear friends! I do not want to pass judgment on who is right or wrong here; that would be far from my mind. But I am drawing your attention to the tone in which people speak to one another today, even among intellectual leaders. Is it not time to rejoice that on anthroposophical soil a number of scholars have come together who have what it takes to lead humanity out of what is not me, but one who belongs to the people, worse than a Sodom and Gomorrah calls? I believe that this joy could be greater than the characteristic that we have now entered the era of science. What we really need to do is to take things straight and simply and look for the most important and meaningful, never closing our eyes to what is. And if the anthroposophical movement had to broaden its circles, so to speak, how did that happen? Please study the history of this movement and you will see that it was usually not out of an urge for further work. My dear friends! I have — I think — five or six uncorrected new editions of my books, and I have had them for months. There is truly no urge, and never has been, to keep on being busy. What looks like a change has come about under the pressure of the times, under the demands that have arisen. The Federation for Threefolding, Waldorf Schools, Kommender Tag magazine – none of this came out of anthroposophical initiative. Study history and you will see how it really lies. But this is something that every single anthroposophist should know. And that is the second piece of advice I would like to give: that institutions take root in our society that are designed to foster not only ideal trust, which is to be valued in the highest degree, among our members, but also to enable a living exchange that is never and nowhere interrupted. How often have I had to hear it in recent times: Yes, anthroposophy, that's very beautiful, threefold social order very beautiful, but you can't agree with what those people in Stuttgart are doing. And a certain opposition to Stuttgart is something you come across everywhere. My dear friends! Among those prominent figures who are directing affairs here from Stuttgart, there are many who, if they could act according to personal sympathies and antipathies, would gladly lay down this burden. If one really takes into account all the things I have tried to point out, one must also come to some conclusion about how the circumstances, how the whole course of events in our anthroposophical movement, have brought those personalities into the leading positions who now hold them. Then we will criticize these leading personalities less for personal reasons and more for everything else. Then we will have active trust and then we will also make it possible for these personalities not to always have to deal with personal differences among the membership and to lose time with it , but then these personalities will be able to make the necessary arrangements to ensure that, with the help of the branches, everything that can be observed at the center as being important for the movement is passed on to each individual member. My dear friends! It is like trying to open an open door when you point out that the branch work should be appreciated. Branch work has never been underestimated, and least of all by those who have found their way into the Society as scientists. This branch work should be organized in such a way that less judgment is heard: “Yes, we don't hear anything from headquarters.” You can also do something to make sure you hear something, and I have often found that the response “We're not hearing anything” is based on the fact that you're not listening. For example, it shouldn't have happened that Dr. Unger was able to say that he circulated a letter last year and that nothing of significance came of it. This, my dear friends, is what brings us to the central issue: it is necessary for each individual member to regard the Society as their very own concern, not just as a framework for individual cliques that then stick together very closely, but as something in which anthroposophy can live as a reality. If each person regards the society as their own business, then interests in the whole of this society will arise from it. And this interest, the most vital interest in the whole of this society, is what we need if we want to realize what should be realized through the anthroposophical movement. The situation at the Goetheanum in Dornach, at the Waldorf School, at the Kommende Tag, Futurum and so on would be quite different if this interest were present; because living deeds would flow from this interest. But as it is – I am pleased that I can now also mention something that is outside the borders of the Reich, which here is actually only of theoretical interest – but as it is, I had to experience it. Because of what I call the inner opposition, which, contrary to my intentions, is actually very strong, , that last fall in Dornach I pointed out in the sharpest terms the necessity for founding a World School Society and that during my lecture tour in Holland this winter I repeatedly pointed out the necessity for this World School Society. My dear friends! This world school association has failed, despite my conviction that it was up to us to be able to finish building the Goetheanum in peace. So it is necessary, I would say from month to month, to face the heavy concern that we will not be able to finish building the Goetheanum at all because the funds are gradually drying up. As I said, I do not need to tell you that the countries of Central Europe cannot do anything for the construction of the Goetheanum at present. But it is an example of how little respect is shown for what is, so to speak, thrown into the Anthroposophical Society as a necessity. I would not say it has failed if I believed it was impossible to do this or that, if I had not seen that the words were not understood in the sense in which I had to understand them, that the seriousness and the earnestness needed for such a matter are not taking hold in people's hearts. And that is the third piece of advice I would like to give: that we acquire the ability to take things seriously enough, not with the superficiality that exists in the world today. We need this within the Anthroposophical Society, and if we translate what I have taken more out of the historical development into the practical, then today it would be a matter of each and every one of the dear friends who are here trying to do what is possible for them, where they are, so that the future central board society, with such trust that it makes it possible, at the moment when one disagrees with this or that, to also say to oneself, it does not depend on the individual case, it depends on having the necessary total trust in the people who are in their place, even if one cannot see in the individual case what has led them to one or the other. And again, this central board will have to co-opt a number of personalities who are out in the world, working either like the branch leaders or in some other way on the anthroposophical movement and on related matters. This central board will have to choose these personalities from the available options and will have to do so as quickly as possible if the Anthroposophical Society is to continue to make sense. And then this central board will have to assume that, on the one hand, these trusted representatives, who are a kind of extended board, really do not work with it, the central board, in such a way that makes everything difficult for it, but in a way that, despite the very full working hours, nevertheless makes it possible to exchange everything that is necessary with this trusted board. And these trusted personalities will have to consider it their sacred duty to work with the individual members for whom they are the trusted representative in such a way that the affairs of the entire Society, the welfare of the entire Society, is truly the most sacred thing for each individual of the thousands and thousands of members.This is an organization that cannot be made mechanically. It is an organization that must be done with heart and soul, whether it concerns spiritual matters or scientific ones. We will make progress in everything if we want to bring life into the Society in this way. This life will ignite many other things and extinguish many damages that have occurred because, in recent times, very little has been seen of such life. Then, when such a living organism emerges from society, those personal discrepancies will cease, which today rise up like terrible waves from society and actually disfigure everything, everything, impair all work, because in the face of the great interest in the great cause of society, all these pettinesses in one's own heart will be able to disappear. That is what we must work towards. I would like to say that the first thing we would take from today's meeting would be unconditional trust in the central committee and the conviction that if this central committee now forms its extended trust committee, the right trust can also be placed in this extended committee. It will be hard work for the Central Board to bring this extended board into being in accordance with the wishes of the members, which cannot be expressed in a vote but must be expressed in quite a different way. But it must be done; and when it is done, my dear friends, the details will have been followed in accordance with the advice that I could have given right at the start in a few words if I had wanted to spare my voice today. I could have said: “The ‘Draft of the Principles of an Anthroposophical Society’ has been printed at the beginning of the Anthroposophical Society, which has now been reprinted in the ‘Three’. And I could have summarized my advice in the words: ‘Realize these principles, because everything is contained in these principles’. And if these principles are realized, then everything will be all right in the Anthroposophical Society and with everything connected with it. But one must understand these principles in their totality; if one understands them in their totality, then one also knows how to develop a feeling for what is approaching this anthroposophical movement. A representative of the youth movement has spoken here! There are a whole number of student representatives here, my dear friends! The fact that members of such movements or such bodies have come to our Anthroposophical Society is something we must regard as epoch-making in the history of our Anthroposophical Movement. We must feel the need to do everything that can rightly be expected of the Anthroposophical Society from such quarters. The student movement that has emerged within our Anthroposophical Society bears a great deal of the hope for the success of our Society. And how did this student movement come about? Well, it comes from something that I have already mentioned from other points of view: it comes from the fact that young scholars, scientifically minded people, have found their way into our Society. It is because of this “fashion”, this alleged “change of course” in our society, that we have a guarantee for a fruitful future of our movement through the entry of the student body. My dear friends! We must have an open, free eye for everything that occurs in our society. You cannot give advice in the form of telling someone to do this or that. The only advice that can be given is addressed to the heart and mind of each individual member. Such advice must not shy away from saying something that could be taken by some as unloving criticism. No, if you really care about someone, then out of love you must tell them the truth. And today it is necessary to express the truth in all areas in the most concise words possible. We must see what kind of contrast this truth must be given in order to provide our anthroposophical movement with the momentum it needs. My dear friends! We must speak of certain necessary educational measures; if we are true anthroposophists, we regard what should be made general through the Waldorf School as something that must necessarily be brought to life for the benefit of our cultural and civilizational development in the present day, for there are remarkable principles precisely in relation to the present. When I mention such principles, you will say, “That is rare.” No, this attitude is very widespread, even if it is not expressed in such drastic words everywhere. The educational principles of an opponent who has recently made himself very badly known, and who, among other things, has also campaigned against the Waldorf School and its educational system, have come to light. And I would like to share with you one of his educational principles, which is: “Children are actually hardly more intelligent than dogs, so you have to educate them similarly.” We are already speaking into the strange perceptions and attitudes of the present, and we must not shrink from developing all the strength that is necessary to be able to work into what is being treated in this way from many sides in the present. A clear understanding of the present, an interest in the present, and an open eye for what is must, like the recovery of humanity in general, also lead to the recovery of the Anthroposophical Society. Then a time will come when perhaps the possibility will arise to no longer have to negotiate such things as the scattering of the cycles and the like. But if the attitude that I sincerely desire and that I have characterized by speaking today the words that may be displeasing to some takes hold, then perhaps it will be avoided having to sell the cycles in any way, because there is no difference in attitude within the walls and outside of them with regard to this point. So I had to tell you, my dear friends, my advice, actually characterizing; but it cannot be any different within the Anthroposophical Society. It rests on the individuality of each individual, so one can only speak to each individual. And this society will only flourish if the heart and soul and spirit of each individual strive to unfold in full health. |
| 70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: The Fundamental Power of the German Spirit in the Light of Spiritual Science
16 Jun 1915, Düsseldorf Rudolf Steiner |
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| The French philosopher Bergson said in a Christmas speech that the German mind today shows that it can no longer grasp the living, it can only grasp the mechanistic. |
| 70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: The Fundamental Power of the German Spirit in the Light of Spiritual Science
16 Jun 1915, Düsseldorf Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear attendees! In the past, almost every year I have been able to give a lecture in this city in the field that I have recently taken to calling spiritual science. Since our friends have also requested such a reflection in these fateful times, it shall be given this evening. But you will understand that in our present time, when all our feelings, our emotions and our thoughts are focused on the great events, on those events that claim so many hopes, so much confidence, on the events that undoubtedly most significant events are now unfolding, events that are also causing so much pain and suffering. You will understand that at this time, such a reflection, especially if it is to be based on the spiritual scientific worldview, must also be made in view of the fateful events of our time. But it cannot be my task to add yet another of the numerous reflections that are being set forth today in lectures on the things that are so powerfully moving our time. Rather, it must be my task to say, from the point of view of spiritual science, from which I have always spoken here, what can be said in brief about our time from precisely this point of view. It has been emphasized many times that the present struggle, the present mighty struggle, in which, in fact, apart from smaller tribal and linguistic differences, 35 different peoples of the earth are at war with each other; it has been said often that this mighty struggle is caused above all by the present-day commercial, economic, social and political antagonisms, and that it is of primary importance to look clearly and energetically at reality and the values in question and not to obscure these considerations with metaphysical speculations. From the standpoint of spiritual science, one can only agree with such a view and never oppose it. But spiritual science also wants to stand on the standpoint of reality. This is one way in which this evening's meditation will differ from those that are so often practiced, in that it takes into account the realistic admonition of our contemporaries, while also considering that this mighty struggle is, after all, part of the whole course of human development, in which, above all, great impulses are at work that can only be achieved through spiritual contemplation. One could also say: At that time, when the Germanic tribes of Central Europe threatened the southern empires, the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Middle Ages, only the Roman spheres of interest with their social and political intentions were confronted with what was to come from Central Europe. Of course, at the time, one could justifiably speak in this way. But if we look at things today, and judge from a higher point of view, as we must today, because the world has advanced, we would see that if these struggles had not taken place back then, the reorganization of Europe through these struggles, which were initially caused by the Roman spheres of interest, of course, took place in a certain way —, then the whole Western development up to our time would have taken on a different face. That is one thing. The other thing, however, is that anyone who follows the intellectual development of nations, the intellectual development in history, must really come to the conclusion, without indulging in any fantasies, without speculating, that what is now being fought out between thirty-five nations of the earth is, in fact, certainly the most significant thing imaginable for the present. It is not words that will fight it out, nor thoughts and human philosophies, but the bravery of the armies. But behind all this, one can see another struggle, a struggle of spiritual forces, a struggle of world views. And without going into what has often been said, I should perhaps emphasize that history will one day regard it as the most absurd of claims that Central Europe somehow provided the immediate cause of this world war. It will be seen more and more clearly, especially when viewed from a higher perspective, that Central Europe and particularly the German people are involved in a purely defensive struggle. But if we look at this defensive struggle, then from a certain point of view we can see how this struggle is one part of a great, mighty defensive struggle that German intellectual life, intellectual impulses, have already had to fight out in part, and in part have to fight out with ever-increasing strength, against that which is also a kind of intellectual encirclement of Central European intellectual life. What I mean by this, I would like to characterize it with a symptom that may not seem very meaningful to you. But one could cite many things and one would always find the same thing. What we in many respects count among the greatest and most significant things that the spiritual life of modern times has taken up, is called the “idea of development,” the “worldview of development.” And no one tires of emphasizing how significant it was for the whole development of the spiritual life of humanity that people learned to see how not the individual entities of the world around us stand side by side, but that they have developed apart; how one can trace a developmental series from the lowest creatures up to humans. The one who, out of the deepest impulses of the supporting forces of the German spirit, spoke of such a development in a deeply inward sense is none other than Goethe. And it may be said that, since Goethe, German culture has had a wonderful, to use a Goethean expression: a spiritual doctrine of development. This spiritual doctrine of development has not been taken up into the general world view, nor into the European world view. In contrast, it takes five to six decades for the general consciousness of modern cultural humanity to accept the doctrine of development - but in what form - in the form of Darwinism. When something like this is said, it still seems to have a chauvinistic coloring for many today. But future times will see it in all the power that is inherent in it. Darwinism has given the idea of development a materialistic [utilitarian] slant; and in this slant, which has been forced upon it, the idea of development has been incorporated into modern cultural ideas by an entirely English thinker. And the deeper German developmental idea is definitely faced with the necessity of defending itself. In the future, the world will realize that it is not necessary to say that Darwinism is something wrong, something incorrect, but that it will be necessary to take the deeper foundations, the more vigorous knowledge from the sources of German intellectual life for the developmental idea as well. In other words, it will be necessary to forge weapons that can defend the spiritual goods of Central Europe against the attacks that are being waged in countless fields, as in the field just mentioned, against this Central European intellectual life. And just as it is not important, when one is in the midst of a struggle between nations such as that which exists today, to wage war with these or those words, so to speak, between individual nations, whether words of hatred or sympathy, but rather, as is much more natural, to take the position that one has to defend what one recognizes as one's fatherland, as one defend one's family without disparaging anything else, so in the field of spiritual struggles, which, as everything shows, we will face in the near future in a tremendous way, it is important to be fully imbued with what the forces of this Central European, especially German, intellectual life are. In these forces there will be weapons that will be needed in the future. I cannot go into more detail, but I would like to suggest that the current struggle of external weapons will only be the beginning of what is to come in terms of spiritual struggles, and that the ill-intentioned, malicious, defamatory views that are hurled at German culture from all sides already show us the beginning. If we now want to talk about these things from the point of view of spiritual science, it is of course incumbent upon us to at least characterize this point of view of spiritual science with a few words. Even though today, as in other lectures that I have also given in this city, I cannot go into the details of this spiritual science, which is to enter the development of time and the world as something new, and even though I will not be able to say anything conclusive in favor of spiritual science, I would still like to indicate with a few words, with a few points of view, what spiritual science wants. Spiritual science wants to be a real science of the spirit. Above all, it wants to show how the human soul life, that which we call our innermost human nature, is connected with the real and true spirit that flows and weaves through nature and humanity. And just as natural science renewed the world view of humanity a few centuries ago, so spiritual science today wants to enter into the spiritual development of humanity in a very similar way, albeit from a different point of view. I would like to draw attention to the following: if you were to say to someone who knows nothing about chemistry, who has never heard of chemistry and only knows water – of course, we can only imagine such a person hypothetically – that in this water, which is liquid and extinguishes fire, extinguishes fire, there is a gas in it that can be separated out, that is hydrogen; this hydrogen burns, it is not liquid but gaseous, so the person who has never heard of chemistry may consider this to be a highly fantastic idea. Natural science has made this into a very ordinary, even trivial, idea today. There was certainly a time when those who claimed such things were thought of as fantasists. Today, on the other hand, anyone who knows nothing of spiritual science is considered a fantasist who says: When we have the human body with its soul before us, it presents itself in such a way that we cannot recognize the essence of what is directly connected to it while this essence is inside the body itself. One must separate it by the spiritual-scientific method, the spiritual-soul from the physical-bodily, as one separates hydrogen from water by chemical methods, if one wants to recognize it. This spiritual-scientific method does not take place in an external laboratory, but in the intimate processes of the human soul itself. But there are spiritual scientific methods by which man can truly become a spiritual scientist, by which he can come to separate his spiritual soul from the physical body so that it is outside, as hydrogen is outside of water. But then the spiritual researcher lives in this spiritual-soul realm. He learns to recognize the characteristics and nature of this spiritual-soul realm, that which goes through birth and death in man, that which passes through the gate of death into a spiritual world and then, after death, world with a higher consciousness, with a consciousness that the spiritual researcher learns to recognize when he applies the spiritual scientific method to his soul, just as the chemist learns the properties of water when he applies the chemical methods. A time will come when people will speak of these things as they speak today of the Copernican world view, which was also once regarded as fantasy, or of similar things. Just as today the spiritual researcher has to present to humanity the truth that there is a spiritual core in us that passes through the gate of death to return to repeated lives on earth, to repeated and repeated lives on earth, so one day this will be a truth, as the idea of development in external natural science is considered true today. If today what the spiritual researcher has to say is quite naturally regarded as a dream, as a fantasy, from many sides, then those who have immersed themselves in these things may point out how, at a certain time, Copernicanism, which is generally recognized today, was regarded as contradicting the five senses. And so it is today. What spiritual science has to say about repeated lives on earth, about the independence of the soul, and so on, is said to contradict the five senses. And if you take a materialistic point of view, you say: the life of the soul is enclosed between birth and death. One must compare such a view with another view that still existed in the Middle Ages: that the blue firmament arches over us, which is a conclusion, a boundary, a spatial boundary. Modern science shows us that this boundary is only formed by our ability to see, that space extends into an infinite world, that we are embedded in infinite space on the earth. When modern science dawned, the blue firmament was broken through and recognized as something that is evoked by human vision. Through spiritual science it will be recognized that the boundaries that seek to enclose life between birth and death are like the blue firmament in relation to space. Through spiritual science, people will learn to look beyond this temporal firmament, which is set by birth and death, and they will find human life embedded in a line of development from which it emerges again and again. Between earthly lives lie realms of development of a purely spiritual nature. And so, by learning to experience himself in this way, the spiritual researcher has something to proclaim in spiritual science: in the spiritual and soul realm, the human being feels, not through philosophical speculation but through experience, a connection with the real spiritual world, which surrounds the physical, from which the spiritual-soul is released - spiritual science speaks of an experience of the spiritual world, a spiritual world in which spiritual beings are, as physical beings are around us here. It is perhaps still somewhat unpopular today if one is obliged to present these basic concepts of spiritual science in this way. But we live in a time in which humanity is living in a time of transformation of all thinking. Just as a Copernicus or a Galilei had to be anticipated in the dawn of modern natural science, so one can see something in spiritual science that lies, as it were, in the bosom of our time. If we now follow German spiritual life and really immerse ourselves in it, then from the point of view of spiritual science we will have to gain a very definite view of German spiritual life, of that which has constantly revealed itself in it. I cannot go into details now, only with regard to the last times of German spiritual life. Thus, I said, the peculiarity of spiritual science is that the spiritual researcher, through his special spiritual-scientific method, learns to experience himself in the spiritual-soul that has been freed from the physical body and now knows itself, not in time but in eternity. Let us see, by visualizing this spiritual view, how the most German of philosophers, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, I would say, lived out his belief in immortality and his belief in the soul. Fichte, like his contemporaries, was not yet able to have a real spiritual science. But how he drew from the spiritual life and knew this life in connection with the life of his national spirit is shown in the speeches he addressed to his people in one of Germany's most difficult times. But I don't want to talk about that today, but rather about how Fichte expressed himself, for example, where he wanted to give a “directions for a blessed life” philosophically, about his doctrine of immortality and soul. There he says:
This is not yet spiritual science, but it is the germ of spiritual science. And this germ of spiritual science can be found wherever we look at the fruits of German intellectual life. Everywhere we find the urge, the longing, not to satisfy ourselves with the abstractions of thought, with the external spirit of science, from which the science of the senses or the combination of the sensual is born. The German does not seek only for concepts and ideas, but also for their connection with the living spirit. The German feels moved when he can realize that science is not an external absorption of knowledge, but that it is the true life of knowledge, which he strives for so that the soul communes with the spirit that pervades and permeates the world. In the real connection with what spiritually permeates and permeates the world, the German wants to see the ideal of his knowledge, that he does not just want to absorb ideas, not just concepts, a science that is like an image of something external. He wants to have something in his soul that flows like a spiritual lifeblood in him, like the God himself who lives in him. And this is expressed more intensely and powerfully in a creation that no nation in the world has; which may not stand at the pinnacle of world creation in an artistic sense, but in the way it expresses itself, in that the German does not strive for a merely external visual connection with the spirit, but for a confrontation, spiritual eye in spiritual eye, with the spirit. You know that by this creation I mean the Goethean “Faust” poetry. Do we not see in Faust how his consciousness turns away from all that is mere external knowledge, what is mere derivation from something external? Do we not see how he strives for the source of life, the manifestation of the spirit; how he strives to confront this spirit eye to eye? How he turns away from the external and strives to experience supersensible worlds? The German can never be satisfied with something he has achieved as knowledge. This is best seen by looking at the following: the beginning of Goethe's “Faust” has become almost trivial. It reflects the mood of Goethe in the 1770s. We see how Faust wants to get out of a knowledge that is not connected to the living spiritual world. When we grasp its full depth, we are shaken when Faust speaks the words:
Now let us see how this German intellectual life unfolds. Let us see how Goethe, in the 1770s, longs for the appearance of the earth spirit, for the sources of intellectual life, for higher self-knowledge, which is achieved by the soul immersing itself in the living spiritual of the transcendental world. Then we see how greatly the German philosophers strove in this respect after Goethe's time. We see that, after Goethe wrote his “Faust”, German thought, German poetry and German music all seek to look at things from the deepest sources. We see the emergence of thinkers such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel; we see them connecting with Goethe; we see how they create something from a knowledge that is supposed to be more original than all that has gone before, that is also supposed to come from the very depths of the human soul; we see that they are creating a philosophy; and when we consider that Hegel created a “natural right” and that Schelling published a medical journal, that all these minds were searching for a renewal of science, despairing at Faust! They also sought to renew theology, for they all wanted to be theologians. We see how all this greatness, which has not yet been properly appreciated, springs from the fundamental forces of the German spirit, and we can perhaps say: Goethe could have stood there, after he had seen all this pass him by, and could have said: What I felt in despair back then in the 1770s has been brilliantly brought forth by the German spirit from the sources of life! And let us assume that Goethe had grown even older than he did; let us assume – and I believe that no one would dispute this hypothesis – that Goethe had begun in 1840 [or let us assume that he had been even younger ], to write “Faust” again after all that had happened in the meantime in German intellectual life, can we believe that the beginning of “Faust” around 1840 would have sounded like this:
Do you think the beginning of “Faust” would have sounded like that? Certainly not. It would have sounded exactly the same as in 1772. Exactly the same! But what does that tell us? It testifies that it is in the essence of this quintessentially German, Goethean idea of Faust to regard everything that has already been achieved not as something that can satisfy the individual, but that a striving is rooted in this German spiritual life, where it is manifested precisely in its representatives, that every individual, in turn, has to go through, in every age, an eternal becoming, never being complete. This is the case because German intellectual life can only describe the grasping of the spiritual as a true one if the spirit is experienced. But it can never be experienced if one wants to grasp it in an established way. To experience the spirit, one must always approach the spirit in a renewed way. But this is a typically German trait, and at the same time it is what can be called the “supporting force of the German spirit”. Not concepts, not ideas, not something acquired in reason is what the German strives for, but what is to be striven for is that which can be grasped again at any time in original power. Not the spirit in a coffin, but the ever-living spirit is striven for. So that we may say: Admittedly, we do not see an archetypally German striving in the older times in the same way that we see spiritual science today. But we see the seeds; in what lives in the best, we see the same striving for direct experience of the connection with the spirit. This is always being witnessed anew. That means: a real life of the spirit is presupposed, in which the individual stands. That means: the supporting power of the spirit lives in him in such a way that they hold secret dialogue, that he is touched by what the German spirit wants from him. And this we see continuing to have an effect even where German intellectual life has been pushed back on itself by attacks from left and right, from above and below; we see the original German being carried by the real spirit continuing to have an effect. I would like to mention just one of the many phenomena that could be cited from the second half of the nineteenth century. One of the most important representatives of the German spirit in the second half of the nineteenth century, who has not yet been fully recognized today, is Herman Grimm, the son of one, the nephew of the other of the Brothers Grimm, the great researchers of myths and legends, the researcher of the German language. Herman Grimm is first known as a German cultural historian, as an art historian. If you now delve into Herman Grimm's art history, you come across something peculiar. There is nothing in Herman Grimm's writings of what could be called pedantic erudition, of external systematics, but there is something that originally springs from the spiritual. The most important thing that one can gain from the works of Herman Grimm must be read between the lines, it must be sensed from what is said. Why? Because in Herman Grimm lives the sustaining power of the German spirit, which is brought to life by him, and through which he lets himself be whispered in each individual case through an inspiration as to what he has to say about an artistic phenomenon. So that one cannot but feel the affinity between the one who writes and the one who inspires him, one feels like a living conversation of the German national spirit with the one who speaks to us through his books in terms of art history. This Herman Grimm, he prepared himself in a peculiar way for his art historical profession. In his youth, he wrote novellas and also a significant novel. The recognition of these things also belongs to the living German intellectual heritage. For it is not because of their German nature that they have been forgotten, but because attacks have been made on German intellectual property from outside. I will briefly outline one of Herman Grimm's novellas. We will see shortly what the purpose of this is. The novella is called “The Songstress”. We are presented with a very beautiful characterization of a woman. We see a man in the woman's surroundings. The man is deeply in love with the woman; the woman cloaks herself more in a nobly flirtatious being. He suffers terribly. Herman Grimm wrote a so-called first-person novella with this novella. What he writes is as if the story were being told by a person who lives next door to the couple and experiences everything that happens. And so, in the novella, the author – but in reality, of course, his friend – describes the events that transpire. The singer's coquettish behavior finally drives the lover completely mad. He distances himself from her. He cannot bear the situation. Later, his friend meets him again and sees that he has completely fallen apart. He takes him into his house and sees that this person has come to the edge of the grave because of his love. He sees that he is on the verge of suicide at any moment. So he takes him into his house. But he sees that it is necessary to get the singer over there. He fetches her. And lo and behold, as he approaches the house with the singer, who is to come as the unfortunate man's last hope, so to speak, they hear a shot. The unhappy lover has shot himself, he is dead. The content of the novella is wonderfully beautiful in its characteristics; but that is not what matters to me now. What matters to me is what happens to the singer now that she has found only the dead, suicidal lover. The singer stays in the friend's house for some time. She explains to her friend that she cannot remain in this house, that she is experiencing terrible things in this house. The friend to whom she relates her experiences does not believe this, of course; he is a rationalist. He thinks as rationalists of the present day think. So she asks him to watch with her for one night. And there he is convinced of what is happening to this woman as a result of the death of her lover. He sees for himself how the woman straightens up. He sees a figure enter through the door; that is, he only recognizes it from the words, he does not see the figure, but through what the woman sees, he is convinced that this is indeed a subjective but true experience, that the woman is really in contact with the dead, that this is a matter of the working out of destiny, which throws its rays over death. Not because I want to use a work of fiction to prove spiritual science, but because the spiritual scientist has to say: Herman Grimm describes like a spiritual science expert, Herman Grimm wants to describe that a person's destiny is not only understood between birth and death. This novella is wonderfully moving, deeply moving, because it describes a person's life beyond death. Now this is not a temporary phenomenon in writing. In his great cultural-historical novel, Herman Grimm again describes a female character who also has to experience the death of her lover. He describes how real the death is, how the death of the hero occurs, how the spiritual figure rises out of the physical figure. Now Herman Grimm describes how - appropriately - this figure enters into the spiritual world and how a connection remains between the dead and what rises out of the physical body of the heroine. I describe these things because they show how, in German literature, where one is confronted with representatives of the Germanic spirit, the supporting power of the German spirit works in such a way that the novellist, the novelist, too, can do so if he wants to rise into the world of real, supersensible reality. We are shown how the best minds do not stop at outward, visible reality, but how they follow the human soul into the spiritual world. These representatives of the German character did not yet have spiritual science, but their souls were so directed that they sensed the supporting power of the German spirit, which wants to lead the German character to the experience of the spiritual. Therefore, one can have the strongest confidence in the development of spiritual science when one looks at what is there as a germ for this spiritual science in German idealism, in the German longing, not for the abstract but to the living spirit that lives in the supersensible world, just as the mineral world, the plant world, and the animal world live in the sensory world around us. This testifies to the fact that to be German means to be connected in a very specific way as an individual human being with a totality of spiritual life. And in this respect, German experience is not only easily misunderstood, but is attacked and will be attacked again and again. It is not easy for German experience, which is more profound than anything that has developed around it, to take up the weapons with which German intellectual life, which has been pushed into a corner, will have to defend itself over the course of millennia against the hostile forces that come from all sides through the conditions of life. What then springs from these original German spiritual impulses? They can perhaps be best characterized by pointing to an older time. This German spiritual life did not first appear with this character in modern times, but already in the Middle Ages. If we go back to the mystic Angelus Silesius, he has left many sayings. One particularly meaningful saying is where he says: “Not I as a human soul experience death, in the depths of my human soul dwells God, and God experiences death in me.” The depth of such a saying is not immediately apparent. It proves the primal German thinking and feeling and sensing, which experiences in itself a being with the world spirit that permeates and interweaves everything. Let us only think of the words of Faust:
That is what the German has always sought in his best representatives. That is what he has sought: to truly find in his soul, to find in his deepest inner being the living spirit, to live together with this living spirit. So that Angelus Silesius, in all his peculiarity, already expounds great ideas of immortality when he speaks of the experience of death. For God can only be felt as alive. But he who experiences God in this way within himself knows that he is immortal. For God must be immortal, therefore death can only be an appearance. From this feeling of the German soul, even the grasp of the immortal life for this German soul emerges. But that is what has given this German soul this certainty, this firm footing in its development. That is what has always brought this German soul, of all national souls, closest to what we today call spiritual science. I would like to bring this home to your souls from a certain point of view. Let us compare this German spiritual life with Eastern spiritual life, not in its lower regions, but let us go up to the highest regions of Russian spiritual life. Let us try to visualize one of Russia's most outstanding minds, Soloviev. Soloviev, who really took everything that was in Russian intellectual life into his soul and gave it back as a world view – not just as what is called a “philosophical world view”, but in such a way that one feels the Russian life vibrating – gave something that lived in this deep soul. I can only refer here to his works, only a small part of which have been translated, I cannot go into all of them. But I would like to point out that this philosopher, who retained his faith throughout his life – the faith that lives in many Russians, that Western European life, and Central European life as well, is a dying life, the renewal of which can only come from Russia. He lives according to this error. But this error gives his philosophy its special character. And again and again, in rousing speeches, Solowjow assures his people of the creative and sustaining forces within them. Then came the end of his life. Solowjow ended his life by increasingly arriving at a meager worldview, which I will characterize by comparing it to what lives in a similar field in the German worldview. Let us see what lives in the German world view: it is the certainty that the human soul can live together with the spirit of the world, that it can hold its dialogue with the spirit of the world. We have seen this in the representative figure of Faust. Solowjow does not speak of the certainty of spiritual experience in the way that a human soul speaks out of the Germanic nature. Rather, he speaks thus: Yes, the Russian people have a great mission, but it is fulfilled by a divine being from the other world, who, through grace, takes hold of the Russian people and gives them their mission. God must work in the Russian people. And the Russians are waiting for the miracle, for a god, a kind of manifestation of the light of Christ, to appear and call the Russian people to their task. In Central European spiritual culture, people know that they can experience their soul, they can experience God in their soul. Soloviev is waiting for that which pushes and drives and urges him from outside; he is waiting for the miracle. But now, in the year of Solowjow's death, the remarkable thing is that Solowjow appeared before the Petersburg public with a speech that must have been wonderfully moving, because something deeply emotional spoke from his words, which so convinced the audience that this power of persuasion passed over to people like a magic breath. He said: “Everything that has ever been believed about humanity being able to find something within itself that would redeem it, that would lead it to a divine state, is a vain deception and illusion. All that is deception, what believes that humanity will ever find the strength within itself to experience the divine through what it is now. No, Solowjow emphasizes, everything that humanity has of strength now, everything that it has of seemingly highest culture, that must perish. “The whole world lies in ruins” - such are his words - for there is nothing in present-day humanity that could lead this humanity to a spiritual goal. Only when everything has perished will the God who redeems souls step in from outside the dissolved earth, the perished earth. We cannot find anything in our souls that points us to something we could seek ourselves. And he also describes in detail what he expects. As in a powerful vision, he sees the Asian peoples approaching, he sees them waging war on Europe, he sees how, in the twentieth, twenty-first century, Christianity will have declined to such an extent that only one-tenth of those who are on earth will still be Christians, while the whole world will be flooded with a harsh, materialistic worldview, which is pouring over the world, because “the whole world is in a state of decay.” He who listened to what the greatest philosophical mind of the Russian people spoke out of a deep faith shortly before his death, just weeks before his death, might ask: What could have inspired the one who has passed away to say: My soul, through its own power, has lost all eternity. Let us instead consider the will and testament of a German. There are still people today who scoff at Lessing's momentous will and testament, 'The Education of the Human Race', in which he describes how development continues through all times, how souls keep coming back. For Lessing was the first to incorporate the doctrine of repeated earthly lives into German spiritual life. People often say: Well, yes, Lessing was a great man, but when he wrote this 'Education of the Human Race', he was already an old man. Well, people always arrange what they want to acknowledge as they want. But Lessing did not weaken, rather he had ascended to a deep sense of this direct communion, this speaking of the human soul with the living spirit, which pours out its sustaining strength over the soul of the individual, so that the individual soul can live with it in the sustaining strength of the German spirit. Lessing said something like the following as the closing words of his will: Is it not clear to my soul, from what it experiences within itself, that it must keep coming back to a new life on earth in order to keep learning new things and developing ever higher? That would take a lot of time, well, isn't eternity mine? - That is what Lessing extracts from the depths of the human soul itself, that is what he lays down in his testament. This is a spiritual culture that comes to different words than the one that says: We will never find the strength from the human soul itself. From such a juxtaposition of different moods, one will understand that in the East, the Russian spiritual mood is asserting itself, which stands without understanding in relation to what is taking place in Central Europe, and which does not overlook everything that is emerging here as a living spiritual life, but always speaks of the decaying culture of the West. Thus, the so-called intellectuals justify, from a spiritual point of view, what they had always intended to do against the West, including politically. The terrible war in which we are engaged was caused as much by the moods of the East as by external interests. But these moods will not disappear with this war. In order to bring German intellectual life to bear, it will be necessary to forge weapons from the spirit, from which the greatest minds of Central Europe have taken their weapons, for this confrontation with the spirit must always be renewed. And how, by a completely natural process, the enemies of this German intellectual life must be encircled – we can see this if we take a look at how German intellectual life is understood, the German intellectual life that I was able to sketch out in a charcoal drawing, the subject of much discussion. In defense of and in an effort to understand this German intellectual life, I would like to call to mind a Western spirit that truly belongs to the best [Western spirits] of the nineteenth century, an American who wrote in English, Emerson. He is truly not someone to invoke when one wants to describe the contrast between the West and German intellectual life based on prejudice. Emerson portrays the English people as the first world people; but strangely, he places the Germans higher. Despite Emerson's description of the English as the first world people, he says:
But now I would like to mention something else that is very characteristic from the point of view on which I have based this reflection today. Emerson wrote two wonderful essays, one about Shakespeare and one about Goethe. Unfortunately, people today only read with half a mind, but it could be interesting if a number of people really did what I am about to suggest. It would be interesting to get involved in the essays that Emerson wrote and that bear the title “Representatives of the Human Race,” reading the two essays, one about “Shakespeare, or the Poet,” the other about “Goethe, or the Writer.” You will not believe that I am so brutal, or, one could also say, so “barbaric”, that I want to denigrate Shakespeare in any way, or that I do not revere him to the highest degree as one of the greatest poets of humanity. That is what he is, for Emerson too. And Emerson states that if you want to characterize the poet, you have to name Shakespeare as the representative poet. By comparison, you have to call Goethe the representative writer. Now, one should not just read what is there, but one should feel from the words what passed through the whole soul of the presenter when he gave the characteristics. Emerson tries to present Shakespeare as the representative of the poet in general, based on the characteristics of the English national soul, and then Goethe as the representative of the writer in general. And Emerson seeks to draw out the traits that one must consider if one wants to truly characterize Shakespeare inwardly. And with Emerson it is the case that when he is confronted with an appearance, he characterizes the one appearance with all the power of the word, as if there were nothing else, he immerses himself in the individual appearance. In Shakespeare, when he discusses Shakespeare, in Goethe, when he discusses Goethe. [It is a special gift.] And what is it that he seeks to express when he contemplates Shakespeare, Shakespeare the poet, [whom he regards as the most exquisite poet and this as the most exquisite of the English, and this as the most exquisite of the peoples]? He feels compelled to say, while characterizing Shakespeare: An original mind is not, as is usually thought, one that creates everything out of itself, but one that works as Shakespeare did, who goes everywhere and takes the intellectual property he can find. And now he shows how the whole of England thought like Shakespeare, how he was only the echo of his people. On the other hand, he tries to show how Shakespeare used French and Italian sources, how he gathered everything together to become Shakespeare, how he became the great man by organizing the great intellectual goods from other worlds and other peoples. That is what Emerson comes to through Shakespeare. And I would like to read you a few characteristic words:
Thus Emerson characterizes Shakespeare in such a way as to show: I must show why Shakespeare is so unoriginal. “The essence of truly valuable originality does not lie in dissimilarity to others.” And one saying, to which particularly much value must be attached in Emerson's characteristics of Shakespeare, is the following, which is not said by me, but Emerson speaks thus about Shakespeare:
So Emerson, when characterizing one of the greatest minds of the world order, needs nothing less than to excuse Shakespeare for being original, even by stealing from others and combining what has been stolen. You have to look a little deeper into what the impulses of human development are when you are standing in such a momentous world period as today. And then we turn the page, especially in the beautiful translation by Herman Grimm, which he made of Emerson's essays on Shakespeare and Goethe. Let us now turn to Goethe. Again, Emerson delves into Goethe, absorbed in the essence of Goethe, as if nothing else existed. And what comes to Emerson's mind now to characterize Goethe as the representative of writing? He comes up with the following words: All of nature, every stone, everything that is and will be strives to be expressed. The whole world strives for expression. And favored human souls, whom other souls cannot emulate, who therefore stand alone, they find the words to express, in wrestling with the world spirit, what is wrestling with the world spirit. With Shakespeare, Emerson describes how he [makes references everywhere]. With Goethe, he describes how Goethe himself is connected to the world spirit, which works in the individual realms of nature. Compare the one with the other. About Goethe, Emerson says:
In direct contrast to the beginning of the world, he brings Goethe. Shakespeare he believes he has to excuse. And further he says of Goethe:
About Shakespeare, he says:
Shakespeare is explained entirely out of the environment, out of the world that surrounds him. Regarding Goethe, Emerson says:
I believe, my dear audience, that one can feel something deep and meaningful by comparing Emerson's essay on Shakespeare with his essay on Goethe; one will feel everywhere that this American had a certain right to say: “The English [do not appreciate the depth of German intellectual life. The German thinks for Europe.] He tried to fathom it, but in fathoming it, he sensed something of what I wanted to characterize today as the living forces of the German spirit, which penetrate into every single soul; not that power that flows from the commonality of human beings, but from the direct intercourse of the individual soul with the spirit. And one can feel how Emerson is imbued with this sustaining power of the German spirit when, at the end of his meditation on Goethe, he speaks words that must be taken with feeling, not just with the mind. At the end of his meditation on Shakespeare, Emerson says:
What feelings does Shakespeare inspire in Emerson? The feeling that we must wait for the coming of the one who will bring reconciliation. What does the contemplation of Goethe inspire in him? He says at the end of the contemplation:
Thus, it was not only Goethe but also Shakespeare who inspired Emerson not to wait for anyone. And the words I have just read are preceded by the following:
We would say today: We have to immerse ourselves in spiritual science, in what human science can be. But Emerson does not grasp the depth of German intellectual life, and is fundamentally hostile to it. This, however, is precisely why German intellectual life will be in a kind of defensive position for a long time to come. For it experiences strange things even with those of whom it is said that they are trying to penetrate into this German intellectual life. I would also like to give you a sample of this. Those who are reasonably familiar with the intellectual life of the recent past may have been surprised that such high hopes were placed in some German minds before this war taught people, let's say, about someone like Romain Rolland, a different lesson. The people who admired him represent, to a certain extent, a break in the intellectual life of the present. Those who admired him could not really understand how he could speak so contemptuously of the Germans after the outbreak of the war. One has indeed been able to read strange articles in Germany about Romain Rolland. I will only refer to one work by Romain Rolland, “Jean-Christophe”. In this novel, Romain Rolland portrays a German, but you will see in a moment how. Even this description of Jean-Christophe is to be said: it is given by a person who has never been touched by the real inner strength of the spiritual life. What is Jean-Christophe in the two-volume novel? It is a German musician and how he develops in his Germanness. Romain Rolland wants to describe that. And he really does describe something, yes, you can't say otherwise, than a chaotic mixture of the destinies of various Germans such as Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Wagner, Gustav Mahler and so on. All of this is mixed up in the most impossible way, and that gives the completely impossible character of Jean-Christophe, who has been so much admired, but who shows himself to be nothing more than the result of an artist's inability to face reality, which not only records external nature but also penetrates into the depths of existence, and can see the impossibility of mixing up such chaos. I am well aware that there may be many people who will interpret what I am about to say about Romain Rolland as “barbaric”. But I believe that I can take on what these people defend from their apparent aesthetic high ground when it comes to judging the particular aesthetic and artistic nature of people like Romain Rolland. [It has nothing to do with what Schiller said to Goethe. “People say that there is something immoral in Wilhelm Meister. No, the characters are as they have to be.”] For with Romain Rolland, you never know what the author says and what his characters say. Therefore, what his characters say can be seen as the attitude of Romain Rolland himself. This attitude comes across to us wherever he talks about Germanness. For example, he describes the father of Jean-Christoph. I will now only quote a few significant things that we can say are a Frenchman's recent judgment of the German character. And I will cite evidence because there were people who said: This novel is the first great act since 1870 that will bring about the reconciliation of Germans and French. No political act is as important for this reconciliation as Romain Rolland's novel, so people said. Well, anyone who reads the novel will agree with me if I disagree. You can't say that Romain Rolland didn't want to say what his characters say, you just have to look at it from an artistic point of view. Because what we are hearing from this Romain Rolland, this “reconciler between Germanness and Frenchness”, has recently been presented to us in the most defamatory way as German “barbarism” from the West. So it is said of the father:
Then he characterizes a number of chamber musicians, whom he considers typical of German chamber music, in the following way:
Romain Rolland characterizes Uncle Theodor, the stepson of Jean-Christophe's grandfather, as follows:
That is Romain Rolland's description of certain Germans. We have heard it again through Romain Rolland. But then we are told about Jean-Christophe himself:
Of course, Romain Rolland sees German idealism, but he wants to show it in the light that, in his opinion, is the true light. He wants to characterize this German idealism somewhat, and there he says about this German idealism – since Romain Rolland is a good musician, his friends claim that he understands German music particularly well, he may refer to it –; Romain Rolland seeks to characterize German idealism as what the Germans delude themselves about as a blue haze that the Germans fear to see and therefore idealize. He sees in it something with which the Germans mask all kinds of things so as not to see reality. Then he says:
– he speaks, I beg to be heard, he speaks as if it were a characteristic of Schumann and Wagner – that is not the problematic thing in music, that idealism fakes feelings, but that feelings are fake, that is shown in Schumann. The German feels fake. These are Romain Rolland's own words:
He wants to get to the very heart of this German idealism. That is why he refers to Mrs. von Stael, who once characterized the Germans, as Romain Rolland reports. She said:
Romain Rolland refers to these words of Mrs. von Stael.
— he says. And then, to say something quite characteristic of the Germans, he adds:
We are hearing all of this again now. The novel already contains the same words that we are hearing again now, with the only difference being that later on, the French no longer thought that the muzzles were only pointed at their own German cities, but sensed that they could be pointed elsewhere. But it cannot be said that Romain Rolland is entirely unjust towards the Germans, whom he characterizes in this way. He does find that these Germans have nothing of the true esthete. In music, he grants them some talent. He calls thinking “clear but cloudy,” and so on. But in the opinion of this Frenchman, who is considered one of the best minds in France today, the Germans do not have much of a sense of beauty. He describes a German girl: “The nose [gap in the text] up one side, down the other.” That, according to him, is the typical German girl. I also ask you to consider the following words:
This refers to the face with the nose that I just described. It would not have taken too much persuasion to get old Euler to declare that [his] granddaughter had the nose of Juno Ludovisi. But it cannot be said that Romain Rolland is or wants to be completely unjust. He also praises where he wants to praise and recognizes in the German character what he believes he can acknowledge. For example, after he has shown how this Jean-Christophe, who is such a talented fellow that he cannot stand it in the German world, that he strives outwards, because such a genius cannot flourish in the German world. After showing this, he finally invites him to be a guest of a professor, whom he wants to depict as a typical German. And what unfolds in the presence of this German professor is where Romain Rolland does praise the Germans, finding something praiseworthy in them. You see, the professor takes great pains to have his housekeeper prepare the best meal possible. And she, so convinced that she has achieved great art, leaves the door ajar to see how the gentlemen are enjoying their meal.
You can see that he also has something good to say about the Germans! And he particularly benefits from the meal that has now been taken and a real German, a singing German, is to be described. He describes him in such a way that you can see; he is actually wondering why this particular specimen can sing, and even sing well. He says that the German actually has no idea how to sing:
The so-called German militarism has grown deep into the soul of those who speak of it today with voluptuous expressions. He now describes a real singer by saying: He was a fat man who always sweated when walking, but especially when he made sounds. - He describes his nature, his figure. Then he says: He looked like a Bavarian, a particular variety of German. He says that there are many of these Bavarians, because they have “the secret of this human race, which came about through a system of pasta-eating similar to how poultry is fattened.” He wants to find out what the people who are actually able to practice this German art of singing, which he also admires, look like. Now, it is no wonder that this mixture of Beethoven, Strauss, Wagner and Mahler, who has the peculiarity of not having a spark of any of the four in his soul, cannot endure this artificial construct in Germany. He must get out of Germanness! It is said that although he did not know it, he is driven by German confusion to “Golden Paris”.
Now it is described how the one who has to leave Germanness has to find his way in Latin culture. There he becomes a great mystic. I hope you will excuse me from pursuing the further paths. But we would find many a characteristic there of what must be called the misunderstanding of that which sustains and carries the individual German from the supporting power of the living spirit, with which the German essence feels connected. Therefore, it may be said that it must be clear to all those who believe that humanity's future lies in the strong and vigorous representation of intellectual life through a world culture how the German spirit has not yet completed its mission in the world, but how this German spirit has laid the seeds from which it can be seen that they must continue to flourish ever more abundantly. And that appears to us as the fundamental strength of the German spirit, that we know: we can only hope for the blossoms and fruits of the future. We stand confidently in the midst of it, in the living experience of the German spirit. This must also give us the strength for the necessary defense, for the defense of German intellectual life as well, which, as perhaps few today already suspect, is in a fundamental struggle, just as much as the external life of the immediate present. It would be out of place to present a reflection that was only meant as a consolation. Who needed weak consolation or who needed words of strength or the like, when a nation that knows how to defend its goods with such strength has shown and has already held out for almost a year with strength and courage and a willingness to make sacrifices? But we must be aware that the German spirit must be on guard just as much as external German life had to be on guard. And when we look more deeply into this spiritual life of the German, we find something of which we can say: This is the core and the root of Germanness: its yearning for the living spirit, its living together with the living spirit. Those who revile the Germans today and say: We do not mean this German spirit when we revile them, must be told: You seem to us like someone who says: I know there is a person with strong hands, but when he uses these hands, we do not like it! The French philosopher Bergson said in a Christmas speech that the German mind today shows that it can no longer grasp the living, it can only grasp the mechanistic. Today, only cannons stand against the French; only mechanisms are seen coming from Germany, and armies. There is not much logic in what he says, as logic is generally missing today when the world situation is discussed so beautifully. You would have to ask this philosopher Bergson whether he expected the French soldiers to be confronted with recitations of Schiller's poems or with Novalis' works. But a glance, which I could only hint at with weak words – a glance into the essence and life, into the roots of the German spirit, shows us that, looking at this spirit, we can say: It has not only not completed; it shows that it is taking its ascending path to a fully blossoming and fruitful spiritual life. And anyone who can trust in inner strength can have the utmost confidence in what the German spirit is willing to accomplish. And anyone who has such an insight into the inner effectiveness of the German spirit also knows what great and powerful things must be defended with external weapons today; he knows that the soul of the German nation still has much, much more to bear. Therefore, let me express what I wanted to express to you today in a few words, and what I ask you to take more from what underlies my words as feelings and emotions. Finally, let me summarize it in a few words that are based on my feelings, which should be words of confidence for the soul, from what can be known about the sustaining power of the German spirit, in the past and into the future. I would like to say: If you follow through in your thoughts what I have only been able to sketch with a few lines of charcoal, you will increasingly come to the feeling that I would like to express at the end with the words:
Handwritten summary of contents for the censors. During the war, public events were subject to the supervision of the censorship authorities. For this purpose, Rudoif Steiner wrote the following table of contents for his lecture scheduled for June 16, 1915 in Düsseldorf (NZ 1564-1566). Contents of the lecture to be given by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in Düsseldorf. The lecture has already been given in Berlin, Leipzig and in a similar form in Munich. The lecture begins with the introduction of personalities who, in fateful times within the development of German culture, placed the security, the confidence, the true invincibility of the German being before the soul of the people by evoking the soul's deep permeation with the effective power of the ruling spirit. For them, this “spirit” was not a “concept” or an “idea,” as it is for the naturalistically thinking consciousness; for them, the spirit was a real being with which the soul maintains contact in its deepest interior, from which it draws spiritual life-force, just as the body draws physical life-force from the air through the lungs. Thus Fichte stood in the midst of his people when they had to work their way up to freedom, supported only by their own strength, by showing how the German people, in contrast to the Romance peoples, already prove through their language that they are connected in their very essence to the innermost roots of the vital impulse of spiritual existence. The German does not feel spiritual life as something that is only recognized in the individual human soul, but as something that reigns over this individual soul as an independent being and that carries the individual soul. From this consciousness, a creation within German culture has emerged that is only possible within the German people: Goethe's “Faust”. Faust strives out of dead knowledge towards an inner living contact with the essence of the spirit. In Faust, the most ancient German consciousness of nature and the world comes to life again in a newer way. One does not need to deny the great significance of Shakespeare; but one must still say that in Faust, everything human rises to a nobler height than in Hamlet. Consider how, when confronted with the truly spiritual, the latter can only fall back on doubt and uncertainty, on the hopeless question, “To be or not to be?” By contrast, when confronted with the power of evil, of material things, Faust asserts the inner certainty of victory of his connection with the spirit: “In thy nothing I hope to find the All.” Those who belong to the nations that today do not want to revile German deeds enough, must have come to the same conclusion that Ernest Renan expressed in 1870, when they sensed the nature of this in the development of German culture. 70, that Germany has added something to the development of humanity in terms of “depth and extent” that “for those who have experienced it, it is as if they only know elementary mathematics compared to those who are proficient in differential calculus”. This connection of the German soul with the sustaining power of the world-ruling spirit has, in minds like Herder's, evoked the consciousness of the world-significant task of German culture, of the fact that this culture has a contribution to make to the overall education of the human race, insofar as this illuminates the lofty goal of working “until everything has happened, until the genius of enlightenment has traversed the earth.” This consciousness warmed Lessing's soul as he wrote his incomparable testament to the “education of the human race,” which elevated all contemplation of history to an experience of the eternal spiritual activity of the world through the human soul. And this consciousness lives on to the present day in the most exquisite minds of the German people. It will now be shown how this fundamental strength of the German spirit has led to a deep world view and outlook on life in individual personalities of the nineteenth century. Herman Grimm's genuine German character is characterized; lesser-known personalities are also mentioned to show what particular German character is in thinking, feeling and experiencing. Finally, it is suggested how, in the present day, the consciousness that comes from the sources, in which the German essence is intimately connected with the power of the spirit, may live in the German mind, and how this consciousness may trust in its power within the world of enemies, in the face of which it has to assert itself in our fateful days. |
| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: The World View Of German Idealism. A Consideration Regarding Our Fateful Times
15 Feb 1916, Hamburg Rudolf Steiner |
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| The father is angry about it because he gave Fichte the Siegfried saga as a present last Christmas. But it turned out that Fichte, who had been a good student until then, became completely absorbed in the Siegfried saga and was now less inclined to study. |
| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: The World View Of German Idealism. A Consideration Regarding Our Fateful Times
15 Feb 1916, Hamburg Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear Attendees! For many years, I have had the privilege of speaking in other German cities, as well as here in Hamburg, about subjects related to the humanities, the science that is aware of being a true continuation of the scientific way of thinking for the knowledge of the spiritual life of man, which has developed within humanity for three to four centuries. Now it is not out of short-sighted feelings, but, as I believe, precisely out of the knowledge of this spiritual science itself, that the power to recognize the human being in a spiritual way, to recognize that in man which extends beyond birth and death, that the power for this must be sought for humanity from that which one is justified in calling the spiritual idealism of the German people, that idealism which has developed in the most profound and also in the sharpest way in the greatest period of German intellectual life from the end of the eighteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century, but which continues to have an effect into our own days. And I believe – just as this belief already underlay the reflection that I was allowed to make last year here in this city – I believe that it is well suited to the great facts and developmental impulses that we face in our time when the members of the German people immerse themselves in can bring in the deepest sense of the word knowledge of their own nature, which can then lead to an evaluation of this own nature in relation to the insults and slander that are without precedent - like these world events in the entire history of the development of mankind. I believe that it is more appropriate in the face of these insults and slander to pursue an objective course of thought that is more in keeping with the nature of the German people, to objectively clarify the significance that the German people could assume through their achievements in the overall development of humanity. Above all, attention must be drawn to a prejudice, one might say, if the word were not strongly taken out against the feelings in the present, above all attention must be drawn to a prejudice that repeatedly and repeatedly arises within the circles of our people, the prejudice that the newer intellectual life must, for the very reason that it wants to appear on scientific ground, have an international character from the outset. How often have we heard it said, and how matter-of-factly we accept it: science must be international. Certainly, to a certain limited degree that is absolutely true. But the question is whether it is really one of the fruitful perceptions and feelings that we should keep building on this saying over and over again when we want to express our thoughts about the relationship between individual nations. The sun is certainly international, and so is the moon. But how different are the ideas, the perceptions, the feelings that the various peoples are able to express about the moon and the sun. International is certainly the science; but is the way in which the individual peoples approach science international, and why do some approach it perhaps more superficially, while others delve into it? And is it not especially important for Germans to reflect on a word spoken by one of the greatest Germans, Goethe, when he had completed a great part of his journey to the south and had occupied himself not only with the contemplation of various art treasures, but had also occupied himself with the contemplation of the most diverse natural objects and natural facts, when he said: He would most like to make a journey to India, not to discover anything new, but to contemplate what has been discovered in his own way, that is, to see it again. viewing the most diverse natural objects and natural facts, he said: He would most like to make a journey to India, not to discover something new, but to view what has been discovered in his own way, that is, to see again in the external phenomena that which is alive in his soul. It is not that which is internationally abstract that acts as a motivating and sustaining element in the forces of nations, but rather that which the individual souls of the individual nations are able to see in the [gap in the transcript] Now, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to approach the consideration from the point of view of spiritual scientific knowledge. And I firmly believe that the German may approach this observation of his relationship to other nations in this objective way. Spiritual science, as it is meant here, dear honored attendees, is still very young, even if, as we shall see, this spiritual science can develop in a very organic way out of German idealism. But regardless of this, it is all too easy to understand that this spiritual science still finds opponents everywhere today, and that what it has to say – has to say from a consideration that is just as thorough and profound as that [for science] – is still sometimes ridiculed and mocked as something paradoxical, perhaps even insane. But it is precisely such a question, as that about the souls of different peoples, that spiritual science attempts to grasp objectively in a certain sense. If you look at the human soul in a spiritual scientific sense, it does not appear to you from this point of view as today's conventional soul science or psychology often believes. I would say that everything in the soul is mixed up. Spiritual science must observe the soul as natural science observes any phenomenon. Just as the natural scientist must seek to recognize the essence of sunlight by observing its manifestation in the world of colors, so the soul researcher must seek the soul essence in its manifestations if he is to strive for an understanding of this essence. Sunlight reveals itself in reddish, greenish and blue-violet color shades. Just as the natural scientist distinguishes the reddish-yellow shade on the one side of the color spectrum of light, so the spiritual scientist distinguishes on the one side of the soul that which can be called the sentient soul. And just as the natural scientist distinguishes the greenish center as a phenomenon in sunlight, so it appears to the spiritual scientist, as it were, in the center of the soul being, that which can be called the intellectual soul; viewed from another side, this intellectual soul can appear as the soul of feeling. And as the other end of the soul rainbow, so to speak, appears that which can be addressed as the consciousness soul. When one looks at the human soul in this way, from a spiritual science perspective, one comes to the conclusion that in the sentient soul, everything lives that emerges more from the subconscious depths of the soul, that lives out more in sensations, in will impulses, in a semi-unconscious, instinctive way. But at the same time it contains that which is first lived out in an indeterminate way within the soul, that which is the soul's share in the spiritual, in eternal life. The mind soul is that through which man comprehends the surrounding world in such a way that he brings concepts and ideas into everything, that he, so to speak, builds the world for himself like an external structure of natural laws. The consciousness soul contains that which is most closely related to what man recognizes as his position in the physical world, whereby he places himself most in the finite, in the interwoven nature of death. This is how it is initially with the three – I would say rainbow – shades of the soul. And just as the light, the common light, lives in all colors, lives in the three color shades, so the I, the actual self, the eternal being of the human being that passes through births and deaths, lives in these three soul shades. And just as these three soul nuances are found in the individual human soul, so they show themselves in the different nations. So that in the soul life of nations - I now say explicitly: of nations, not of individuals within nations, not of individuals, but of nations as a whole - the soul of the different nations is expressed in the one national soul, especially the sentient soul, while the other aspects of the soul are more in the background: in the case of the other people, the intellectual soul is more in the background, in the case of a third people, the consciousness soul is more in the background, and in the case of a fourth people, what permeates and imbues the individual soul aspects: the I, the self. And, however paradoxical it may still appear to many today, one understands a part of European humanity only when one knows how these individual shades of soul are distributed among the souls of the individual nations. Thus, when we consider the Italian national soul, we find that the soul of feeling predominates in this Italian national soul. In the French national soul, what must be called the soul of reason predominates in the most eminent sense. In the British national soul, what must be called the consciousness soul predominates. In the German national soul – and this is not spoken out of some particular feeling, but out of knowledge – what must be called the ego, the self, that which seeks to harmonize and unify the various soul nuances, that which radiates through the various soul nuances, predominates. And all the individual phenomena of life within the individual nations, even the way in which the different nations do not understand each other, all this follows from this knowledge of the national souls. If the German people in particular seems to me to be called upon to gain an understanding of what actually prevails between nations, based on an awareness of the nature of the soul, while the one-sidedness of other nations prevents them from truly gaining an understanding of the nature of each different nation. Can it not be grasped with one's hands – if I may use the image, ladies and gentlemen – that in the Italian national soul, unconscious, instinctive impulses live everywhere? Even when we go to the greatest, whose greatness should certainly not be belittled, we find the life of feeling prevailing everywhere. If you immerse yourself in the works of thinkers such as Giordano Bruno or Dante, you will find that it is the life of feeling that wells up from the unconscious and is given visual form, that which is not first sought after in a thought that justifies it, but which one simply wants to bring up from the soul and, I would say, let it speak. And if you take the French national soul – not the individual Frenchman – if you take the national soul, then you have to say to yourself – and this is something that, for example, in an external relationship, not out of the knowledge with which we are dealing here, is recognized by many who think objectively, for example in neutral countries, for example, if you look at the French national soul, you will find wit everywhere; you will find what the intellect can crystallize; but you will especially find a certain constructive spirit, that understanding spirit that seeks to build the world in the way that the intellect can build the world. And there is nothing clearer, dear attendees, than the way in which – I would say – one of the greatest minds, especially in the French world view, shows how reason works in the soul in particular. Descartes at the beginning of the seventeenth century - or Cartesius - one of the greatest Frenchmen, on whom all French world-view people are still fundamentally dependent today, Descartes, he starts from the premise that he actually wants to doubt everything in his observation of the world, in the creation of a world view. But the first thing he comes up with, “I think, therefore I am”, the famous “Cogito ergo sum”, does it not bear the stamp of reason? Even in the “ergo”, in the “therefore”, there is the fact that reason, through its own thinking, even wants to become clear about its own existence. And then he goes further. And one of the strangest conclusions is this with Cartesius - with Descartes - one of the strangest conclusions is this, that he now tries to use his intellect to create a picture of the world. But what does this picture of the world become? Well, we need only bring one symptom of this picture of the world before our soul, and it will immediately become clear to us. Descartes comes to say: When we observe the world, we find soul, real soul, spirit, only within our own self. When we observe the world outside, it is a mechanism everywhere; and the animals, for Cartesius - for Descartes - are soulless automatons, mere moving machines. This is not just something that I am saying here, I would like to say, but this is Cartesius' conviction. And because it was his conviction, later French minds became dependent on it, creating materialism or mechanism in the most eminent sense - because it is fundamentally of French origin in the development of nations - that mechanism, that materialism, which Goethe, for example, encountered in his youth, and of which Goethe said at the time: Yes, they describe the world to you as if everything in it were just moving atoms bumping into each other; and if they could at least show us how the diversity of phenomena could actually arise from these colliding atoms. But they only show us the whole world as a machine. Goethe rejected this world view, this image of the world, from the German idealism that prevailed in him, even in his youth. But basically, it has taken root to the present day.The French are now calling one of their greatest philosophers – yes, I don't know, should we say 'fils de montagne'? He was called 'Bergson' until the war, and that's what I call him after the war, but they don't want us to call him that across the border. He is the one who, in the most incredible way, I would say, imagines his French world view into the German people, because, yes, he seems to have believed that when the French advance with cannons and rifles, the Germans will confront them with recitations of Novalis or Goethe or Schiller. And since they didn't do that, since they also have cannons, and bigger cannons than the French have, and have set them against the French, he talks about how all of German culture is mechanized, how everything is just like one big machine. And at a certain hour – you can read about it in foreign newspapers – he entertained his audience at a French academy by showing them how the Germans have degenerated in modern times from the heights they occupied under Goethe, Schiller, under Fichte, under Schelling, under Hegel and Kant and Schopenhauer, how they cling to everything, everything hang on to superficialities, how they are, in a hypocritical way, something like [gap in the transcript], how, in a hypocritical way, especially in the present, they refer again to Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, but how they understand them today in a very mechanical way and unite them with their soul in a very mechanical way. Admittedly, these Germans are unpleasant – but the French will perhaps only realize this when the borders are open again – [the Germans] are unpleasant, because they could prove that they have indeed recently been dealing more intensively with the aforementioned spirits, who drew their world view deeply from their essence, and thus sought to deepen the German essence. But something else could be proven. They could, for example, prove that Henri Bergson copied entire long pages almost word for word from Schelling, Schopenhauer and so on, and that basically his entire philosophy, which is certainly a sign of our time, is largely German plagiarism. That is non-mechanical appropriation! And, esteemed attendees, if we now look, say, for example, across to the British national soul: just as the Italian national soul bears the main nuance of the sentient soul, and the French national soul bears the intellectual soul, so the British national soul bears the consciousness soul for our present time. The Italian feels, the Frenchman thinks, the Briton asserts himself in the physical world, that is, he seeks to develop his relationship to the physical world in some way. I am not speaking out of some national sentiment, but out of what can be proven down to the details. One might say: How Kant had to strive to deepen this view, which was only directed towards the physical world, in a conceptual sense. Kant's entire striving is, from a certain point of view, a working out of what he has become, for example through Hume, through Locke and other British minds. And it is fitting to take a good look at this aspect of the development of more recent spiritual life. Hume – let us single him out. What did he achieve? He managed to say: Yes, when we look at the world, we actually find everywhere not the truth, not even cause and effect, no connections, but only that one phenomenon follows on from another. The most superficial of world views! With regard to everything else, he arrives at what is called skepticism, a doubting of everything. Kant had to work his way out of this. But now, if we look at where this world view – insofar as it is now the expression of the soul of the people – has led, what has it led to? We see a remarkable world view developing in modern times, in the present, which has emerged precisely from the British national spirit, which is supported in this by the American national spirit. We have seen that out of this consciousness soul, which above all wants to assert the I in the world, in the physical world, what is called pragmatism has developed. We cannot speak about this objectively, because a number of Germans have also fallen for it – if I may use the trivial word – because they are philosophers, have fallen for this pragmatism. What is this pragmatism? Well, this pragmatism actually does no more or no less than say: Oh, truth, as it is supposed to develop out of the soul as truth, does not actually exist. What we summarize in individual judgments, in ideas that we then regard as truth, is only thought up by the human mind in order to prove useful out in the world. When you speak of the soul, soul is only a pragmatic concept. We see how there are individual phenomena in human life that fall apart and we cannot hold them together properly if we do not presuppose a unity. We only have it to grasp what is an external phenomenon. The truth must be something, an advantage that can be used in the external physical world. That is pragmatism. One must not believe that this is just a philosophical hair-splitting. It is deeply connected with the national spirit and with what creates out of this national spirit. In the 1880s and 1890s, [Robert Seeley], a professor of history, looked at English history – the relevant work was published in 1883 – and pointed out that it is actually a kind of prejudice – because that is the meaning of the history book – that in the nineteenth century, in Englishness, one has always regarded the struggle of Englishness for freedom and democracy as running through English history. He goes back a little further and tries to look at this English history and finds that what has happened can be summarized under the name “British expansion”; first Great Britain, then Greater Britain. The Italians were just parroting them, talking about “greater Italy.” And then the professor says, “But history is not just there to be learned from, to gain some truth that you now carry with you, so that you know something from history. Rather, history must be shaped, must be introduced into life.” And how is it shaped? It is characterized by the fact that one sees: Britain has expanded more and more over the last few centuries. So one must learn from it how to expand further. – The truth, as one can use it, as one can put it at the service of outer physical life! I do not believe, esteemed readers, that I am presenting a one-sided view of these things, but rather that people have always been one-sided in their consideration of these matters because they have not been willing to consider the things in their real essence. In this context, it should always be emphasized how we Germans actually fared in the course of the nineteenth century in the spiritual realm with regard to the formation of a world view. Goethe – I am in a position to speak about this because I have spent the whole of my life, thirty-five years, studying Goethe – Goethe tried to build a world view from the observation of external facts, which considers the relationship of external nature in detail. He tried to find the spirit in the development of beings. But basically, he made very little impression on the time. Then Darwin came along. He approached the task in an English way, truly in an English way, that is, he approached it in such a way that it is not particularly difficult to delve into his train of thought. And he gave everything that can be followed externally in the physical world, that can be seen with the eyes and grasped with the hands. That made an impression. And when it comes to Goethe, the world is still indebted to recognize – even if it is of course more difficult to find one's way into Goethe's theory of evolution – to recognize how much higher Goethe's theory of evolution is than that which arose in the nineteenth century on the basis of Darwinian research. However, a Frenchman, a French philosopher, yes, I would almost say, of course, one who not so long ago before the war traveled around in Germany, even spoke at a German university about the deep friendship between the French and German mind, a Frenchman, he has tried to highlight the differences in recent weeks between the scientific world view that the German is seeking and that which the Frenchman and the Englishman are seeking. He told the French audience in Paris that if they want to get to know animals, want to have knowledge of animals, want to integrate their concepts of things into their world view, then they go to a menagerie and look at the animals. That's one way, certainly. The Englishman, said this French philosopher to his Parisian audience, the Englishman goes on a journey around the world, sees the animals in the various parts of the world and then describes what he has seen. And the German – he would go neither to the menagerie nor to the different parts of the world, but he would go into his room and delve into his own inner being to bring the essence of the lion, the essence of the hyena, and so on, to the surface from his own inner being. If you want to characterize the three peoples with a certain wit, which is certainly not to be denied the French, and perhaps also want to characterize them according to the proportion of thought and ideas present in their world view, then you can do that. Yes, but there is a catch to this story. The wit that the French professor has made out of his thoroughness is not his own, but Heinrich Heine's. Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is clear to a certain extent that German intellectual life has always tried to avoid one-sidedness and to find something that can shine through the whole of the individual shades of the soul. To do this, however, German intellectual life had to penetrate again and again into the innermost part of the human soul. And in order to show – I would like to say – by the facts how the German tried to get to the essence of the world, to the essence of what the world springs from and wells up from, I would like to present three German figures today. Not because, dear attendees, I believe that one could somehow dogmatically accept what these three figures have created as a world view within German idealism, but because I believe that there are indeed three figures that have emerged from the innermost essence of German nationality, the German national soul. I would like to say: Today we can go far beyond regarding a figure that appears in the world history of the spirit in such a way that we accept what he has expressed as individual sentences, as individual ideas, as individual opinions, as if it were a dogma. We can look at people as they have striven, as they stand in their search for a world view. Here we encounter a German figure whom I tried to point out from a different point of view here in this city last winter, and who is much talked about now. First of all, we encounter the figure who was aware that what he had to say about a world view had been created entirely, as it were, through a dialogue with the German national soul itself: Johann Gottlieb Fichte. I would like to give just a few traits of this Johann Gottlieb Fichte, to show that he is indeed a figure that could only have emerged from the wholeness of German intellectual life; for such a figure as Fichte really did arise out of German intellectual life. When we see Fichte in the blue peasant's coat, we can meet him as a seven-year-old boy standing on the bank of a stream, the stream that flows past his father's house, throwing a book into the stream, the Siegfried saga. His father comes along. The father is angry about it because he gave Fichte the Siegfried saga as a present last Christmas. But it turned out that Fichte, who had been a good student until then, became completely absorbed in the Siegfried saga and was now less inclined to study. He only needed to be made aware of his duty, and he would immediately say: “Duty must give way to everything.” And we can find the seven-year-old boy throwing the Siegfried saga, which has kept him from his duty, into the stream. The soul felt and sensed everything in the deepest, most intimate connection with this soul. On a Sunday, a neighboring landowner came to the simple farming village where Fichte grew up. At that time, Fichte was a nine-year-old boy. The neighboring landowner had come to hear the sermon, but he was too late. The sermon was no longer being heard by the landowner. So they called for nine-year-old Fichte, because they knew how Fichte, even as a nine-year-old boy, knew how to connect what he heard with his soul. He came in his blue farmer's coat and repeated word for word the sermon he had just heard, with such inner fire that it was clear that every word he said had grown together with the innermost part of his soul. It was not just the soul of feeling or the soul of mind or consciousness that was at work, but the soul as a whole. In this sense, Fichte is – I would say – one of the most quintessentially German minds, but one that was also intimately connected with the whole mission, or rather, with the whole essence of German nationality. I would say that one has to let one's gaze wander far and wide if one wants to characterize this essence of German nationality in just a few words. Let us look across to Asia, where the Germans' relatives, their Aryan relatives, are to be found. There we find in these Aryan relatives the urge to find the divine and spiritual in the world. But everywhere we find this urge coupled with another: to tone down the self, to dampen it so that it feels extinguished in order to merge into the universe. The other pole has found expression in the German nature, in the German being's search for a world view. Do the Aryan relatives in Asia seek to pour themselves out into the universe and thus find a world picture by muting the ego, as they do in India, for example? The German, on the other hand, seeks to find within this ego that which pours the divine into this ego by elevating and strengthening, ensoulings and spiritualizing this ego within himself. So that it is not by being subdued, but by being elevated, by the elevated striving of the ego, that this ego is led up into that which, as the divine-spiritual, pulsates through, permeates and interweaves the world. And so Fichte again confronted the human ego, the human self, with his whole being, in order to discover in the self the forces that give a world view. I would say that he does this not only by attempting to express through abstract theories and through all kinds of mere abstract ideas what a world view can constitute, but rather that it is his entire being, the totality of this being, through which he presents himself, whether to his students or to his people in general. Someone who listened to him once said: When Fichte speaks publicly or even to his students, his speech rolls like a thunderstorm that breaks into individual fires. His imagination is not lush, but energetic; his images are not magnificent, but strong and powerful. And he reigns in the realm of ideas, so that it becomes apparent that he not only dwells in this invisible world of ideas, but can rule in it. But in this way of speaking, there was something in Fichte by which he tried to let his whole soul overwhelm his listeners. Therefore, a friend who knew him well could say: He sought not only to educate good people, but to educate great people. And he did not just seek to tell his listeners something, but he sought to make a living whole out of what he and his listeners together were. Those people who prefer to just listen passively and accept what does not demand any thought of their own while listening would not have been particularly fond of Fichte, the quintessentially German mind. For example, he repeatedly did the following with his audience. He said: “Think about the wall!” And so the audience thought about the wall, tried to think about the wall. Of course they managed it quite well. — “So,” he said, “now try to think of the one who thinks the wall!” — Then you could see how many were stunned, how many were quite strangely affected. But by such an imposition, Fichte tried to reject the human being to that which wells up and overflows within himself. For he could not say like Cartesius: “I think, therefore I am,” but he regarded this I in its perpetual liveliness, in its perpetual arising. And only such an I did he allow, which continually generates itself, which has the power to arise anew in each moment, in each following moment. The will, the will prevailing in the I, became for him the fundamental power of the I. And in that the I grasps itself in the highest sense in its fundamental powers, it grasps the highest divine power, which weaves and undulates into the I. For Descartes, the world view was such that he did not even admit souls in animals, but rather, to him, they were mechanisms, machines - the whole world a mechanism. Of course, Fichte also saw how the mechanical is present in the external physical world; but for him, this mechanical was not dismissed when it was observed. Rather, one could only find one's way into this mechanical if one found the divine-spiritual source of things, which, however, could only be found in the will nature of man. And so for Fichte, the spiritual that permeates and flows through the world became, for Fichte, the moral order of the world - above a mechanical order of the world. The divine-spiritual appeared to him in the effect of duty, which pulsates into the human soul. And the mechanisms, the external products of nature, appeared to him in this way in relation to the whole of creation in his world view, as if the human being, who first and foremost wants to be morally active, makes individual machines for himself, in which he cannot ask to what extent they are moral, but which nevertheless serve the moral, the moral order of the human being. Thus, for Fichte, mechanical nature was only, as he says, the expression of the realization of duty, of the moral order of the world, that it was the sensitized material of duty. For Fichte, the mechanical nature is everywhere the world-moral world order, and everything that is not moral is there so that duty has tools to realize itself in the world. That is the power of the mind that prevailed in Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Today, you don't have to take Fichte's point of view. You don't have to accept what he expressed as his opinion. But that is not the point at issue. The point is what can be gained by allowing oneself to be inspired, as it were, by the way that a thinker like Fichte approached the spiritual world and formed one of the worldviews of German idealism on that basis. Strengthening of the soul, but also development of the soul, can be gained by not engaging dogmatically, but humanly, with the kind of striving that appears in Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Now we turn to his successor, the much-misunderstood Schelling. For him, external nature was not something soulless either. He could not stop at considering external nature only a sensualized material of the moral world order, but for him, external nature was a strengthened spirit. And the spirit was a nature endowed with soul. And in his world view, the two combined to form a whole. And the divine-spiritual that rules the world was for him the great artist who creates by bringing forth the world out of the divine-benevolent, because it is meant to stand as beauty in the face of the invisible spiritual. In this much-misunderstood Schelling, contemplation of spirit and contemplation of nature grow together in an intimate way. But in fact this man was a reflection of his whole personality, who in his old age still stood before his audience with sparkling eyes, from which, as if through the gaze of man, a deep contemplation of nature spoke naturally, a contemplation of nature that glowed with beauty. This man was such that we can say: he only represented the other side of German intellectual life, of the German national soul, so to speak. Fichte, too, could be said to represent something like the consciousness soul of the human being, but this consciousness soul is illuminated by the I. Schelling, too, represents something like the intellectual soul of the human being; but this intellectual soul is illuminated by the I, so that it has an effect on the human mind. Again, it is the exaltation, the strengthening of that which is always in the human soul that Schelling seeks. He goes so far as to make the following statement, which certainly cannot be substantiated: To know nature is to create nature. But this saying is still so fruitful that it should not be accepted as a dogma, but rather be recognized as coming from the soul of a man who wants to plunge with his whole soul into nature and seek the spirit in nature. The third aspect of German national character is portrayed by the much-misunderstood Hegel. Only he presents this German folk-spirit with the greatest power. For him, that which reigns through the world as the Divine-Spiritual is thought everywhere. Man seeks thought. But man not only imagines thought, he draws thought out of all phenomena, because thought lives in everything. One may, of course, unreservedly acknowledge the one-sidedness. The spiritual-divine appears as a mere logician. The world recognizes Hegel as if it were only thought. Of course, one will never come to a different understanding of the world than to an understanding of the world as thought. But that is not the point; rather, the point is that one should be able to reflect, I would say, to reflect, in order to develop thought in such a fine way as Hegel developed it. And that is how he came to see, in terms of his world view, that we only know the world to the extent that we can recognize it as reasonable in all its aspects. Everything real is reasonable, and everything reasonable is real. You can scoff, but the sneer is cheap. You can even scoff at such passion and write it off, as Bergson does! But the sneer is cheap. That is not the point. The point is that this one-sidedness was bound to emerge from the very depths of German national character, because, by immersing himself in this pure, crystal-clear thought, which emerged through Hegel in the development of the spiritual being of humanity, because man thereby grows together in this pure thought with what, in turn, pulses and weaves through the world as pure thought. What matters is not the thoughts that Hegel produced, but the feeling that he associated with his thought life, this feeling: to know oneself as one with the divine thinking that permeates the world and that is reflected in the individual human soul. Everywhere it is the exaltation, the strengthening, the energizing of the self that is sought, in order to find, through this exaltation, energizing, strengthening of the self, that which can open up in the innermost part of the soul, can reveal itself as the most divine, which in the life of human beings, in the life of all beings, in the life of all nature, reveals itself. These thoughts were too great, these aspirations were too comprehensive, which emerged from the three – I would say – most powerful world view personalities of the German people, to immediately gain a complete foothold. But they are there. And they should be considered not in so far as they said this or that, but in so far as the German essence can be recognized by the fact that such thoughts and feelings and possibilities of knowledge lay within it. Our intention cannot be to get to know Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, but to get to know the German essence in its revelations, in so far as they express this German essence. That is what matters. Certainly, this world view of German Idealism, this tripartite world view, as I would call it, has passed its peak, the justified peak of the scientific world view. And so far, no one has been able to combine both, this scientific world view and this world view of German Idealism, in a living way. But they will become one. And it is my conviction that it is precisely through spiritual science that this becoming one can be made possible. What does the Italian ask today — I mean, insofar as he grows out of his nationality, not as an individual — what does he ask, how does what he creates as a world view relate to religious feelings? What does the Frenchman ask about when he wants to develop a scientific world view? The Englishman asks more about it. But he asks about it in a peculiar way. We can study this with Darwin, but also with many others. This Darwin seeks a world view purely from the facts of the physical world. But he draws no conclusions from it. He allows to exist alongside the world view that is based only on convention, on external origin. And so we find that Darwin does not feel the need to somehow modify his convictions about spiritual matters by creating an external world view about the physical world - although, by immersing himself in German development, this does become a big, all-encompassing question. The German cannot see a mere mental image based on tradition alongside a natural image, because that would seem like a lie to him. And he would rather accept Haeckel's materialism than a British world view, which can place the most pious sentiments next to naturalism without motivation and without seeking a connection. Therefore, we are witnessing such a tragic phenomenon, one that I would go so far as to call heartbreaking. Ernst Haeckel, who today, out of his German sensibilities, is vigorously turning against Britain, has become completely Germanized, and with stronger words than some others, because basically his entire world view is based on Huxley and Darwin. Anyone who can sense what can live in the human soul from the heights of a world view will see the tragedy in Haeckel's soul, the tragedy that is based purely on the fact that the German - Haeckel - could not, like Darwin, let a spiritual world view exist alongside a purely natural world because he strove for wholeness and did not have the strength, like Fichte, like Schelling, like Hegel, to get into the spirit, and therefore constructed a world view that was directed towards Darwinism, towards the contemplation of external nature. But one should not think that what is now beginning to assert itself, where spiritual science begins, that what this spiritual science itself has to say, could basically be based on anything other than - I would say - the world view of German idealism. That is, so to speak, the root. And spiritual science will have to be its blossoms and fruits. In spiritual science, we speak of the fact that the human soul can be shaped in a certain way – and those of you who have listened to me here in the past year will know what these various methods there are for slowly freeing the soul, as it were, from the physical, from the bodily, so that it may, as it were, enter the spiritual world outside the body and truly see the spiritual world. We know that we really see the spiritual world when we undergo certain spiritual exercises in the soul. The spiritual researcher cannot conduct external experiments, but he conducts research in a higher, spiritual realm just as the natural scientist does. He brings his soul to the point where this soul can truly free itself from the tools of the body, and also from the thinking apparatus, and can face the spiritual phenomena of the world as a soul. Once these things are considered in a deeper sense, it will be found that what we call meditation and concentration of thought today, through which the soul attains liberation from physical existence, through which it recognizes within itself the eternal powers that pass through birth and death and remain present when man lays aside his physical body. It will be recognized that these exercises had their strongest beginning in the days when Fichte wanted to strengthen the will, Schelling the mind, and Hegel the thought; for it is essentially the strengthening of thinking, feeling, and willing that brings the soul to contemplate the eternal, whereby we also bring the soul to that objectivism by which it recognizes that it carries within itself an eternal essence, which has united with the physical body through birth, and which re-enters the spiritual world for other experiences of existence when the outer, physical body is discarded. The world view of German idealism has not yet been able to lead to actual spiritual science, just as the root is not yet the flower and the fruit. But if one does not want to use materialism in its most real form to contemplate the spirit, where, for example, one uses external events, which can only exist in the sensual-physical world, to recognize the spirit, when one physical nature to recognize the spirit, but when one wants to recognize the spirit through the spirit, then one will find that one has the best guidance in what Fichte, Schelling, Hegel tried to do. And when we speak today of the fact that man, completely absorbed in himself, is searching for the foundations of his soul, by having to live what we call meditation, and when we now turn our gaze again to the whole German national spirit, we cannot do so in that dreamy way, like the Asian-minded spirit, but in a lively way. Through the elevation and invigoration of the self, what Fichte, Schelling and Hegel sought has come about: a meditation of the whole German people, a striving for knowledge of the real spirit. And in this striving for knowledge of the real spirit, there really was a release of the soul from the body. And to prove this to you, I would like to read a few words from Schelling, where Schelling says:
This liberation of the soul from the body is the goal of German idealism's world view. This world view is not a one-sided scientific one, it is not something that can be gained through an international science, but it is something by which the soul of man in all its powers, in its totality, makes itself inclined and suited to face the divine-spiritual of the world directly. The depth of feeling cannot be conceived from this world view. And basically, something always weaves and lives in the deepest striving of the German for a world view of what Jakob Böhme expresses so beautifully:
he means the blue depth of the sky
says Jakob Böhme
This is the depth that is inseparable from German thought, and that can be sought within the West on the paths that are indispensable for the further development of humanity, that which the Aryan Indian seeks on paths that can no longer be the paths of the present, that must be abandoned must be abandoned for the sake of the present, what is sought as an experience of the Divine-Spiritual permeating the world in a world picture that does not exclude sensuality, but which also encompasses the spirit and includes sensuality, indeed, which recognizes sensuality itself as a spiritual one. Such is the world view, dear attendees, such is the world view of German Idealism, sought on new paths of life in the Divine-Spiritual, but not by a damping down of the I, of the self, but by an upward forcing, so that the I and that which, as Divine-Spiritual, pulsates through the world, can become one, that is, can experience each other in each other. And so this striving for a world view in German Idealism actually places itself in the context of the entire more recent historical development, insofar as it is spiritual, and knows: because it is about a world view that has been experienced, that is why the German is so difficult to understand. For one would have to be able to identify with his experience, one would have to seek in his totality that which he seeks as a totality, and which the others can only see as one-sidedness. And if we now turn our gaze away from Western and Central Europe and look towards Eastern Europe, we find a people living there in large areas who, above all, are characterized by the fact that the soul has not yet emerged at all , neither to the sentient soul nor to the consciousness soul nor to the mind soul, that it also does not grasp what can be experienced in the I, but that it still longs and wants to see, quite like an external being, what pulses through the world as its essence. The Russian people are a very peculiar people. They are a very peculiar people because, unlike the peoples of the West, they do not have within themselves the source from which a world view can arise. The longing to receive a world view from outside lives in this Russian people, but at the same time there is an unwillingness to receive this world view from the West. That is why in modern Russian literature we repeatedly encounter the view that all Western and Central European culture is rotten and dead, and that only from the young Russian spiritual life can arise that world view which can redeem humanity. Again and again it comes to us. I would like to say: It comes to us in such a way that one sees the enormous arrogance that lies in regarding everything Western as something decrepit and wanting to start the world over, but with the awareness that one is starting with something better. And so we see in Russian minds, for example in Herzen, as in his - one only has to read his writing “From the Other Bank” - as in his, to be sure, a precise knowledge - let us say, for example, of Hegel, also of the other German achievements in relation to an idealistic world view - as he explicitly says: With that, nothing is done. All of this is in the world. What he finds particularly unappealing about Hegel is that he claims that reality is reasonable. He claims that reality is fundamentally unreasonable and foolish; and that the Russian must first come to bring something reasonable to the world. For the other thing that is considered reasonable in Europe, he says, is decrepit and ripe for extinction. “From the other bank” is the title of his book, because, he says, all these minds: Hegel and the rest, have all stood on the other side of the river in a hustle and bustle that must disappear, that only deserves to be viewed from the other bank. But on the other hand, one must say that at least this Russian national soul understood something at the end of the nineteenth century, understood it while at the same time connecting it with a tremendous arrogance. As it were, the Russian national soul looked out over the vast expanse of Asia and saw that something there was also ripe for destruction and needed to be fertilized by the West. But what was to fertilize was seen as the Russian element. And this is expressed very particularly in a book by Yushakov published in 1885. It is an interesting book, a very interesting book. Let us first consider the positive part, for it is interesting to let the world picture of German idealism take full effect on us. If you take it all in, you can say that through the way in which the German, in this idealism, seeks a world view, he creates in modern times that which Pan-Asianism created in primeval times, which found expression in Asia, but at an earlier stage of human development. How does the Russian Yushakov see the matter? Well, of course, he first finds a Russian mission, Russianizing all over Asia. Then he says: Well, in Asia one has seen how, over the course of long periods of time, two spiritual forces have confronted each other, so to speak. And the ancient Iranians – he says, Yushakov – saw quite correctly these two opposing spiritual forces as Ahriman and Ormuzd, in the Iranians, Persians, Indians and so on – Ahriman and Ormuzd. In the Iranians, Ormuzd was the predominant influence. Ormuzd worked in such a way that man sought to bring forth from nature everything that could be turned to his benefit. Work with nature could have made man rich, if the earlier Asiatic spirit had not been condemned from the start, by its suppression of the ego, to a kind of dream existence, and not to a certain degree of elevation. But in a way these Iranians, under the leadership of Ormuzd, were happy. Then came the Turanian spirit under the leadership of Ahriman, which devastated everything. Yushakov says that the Russians are destined to restore the balance between Ormuzd and Ahriman in Asia, in the whole of Asia, because the whole of Asia must be flooded and churned up by the way in which order and harmony can be created between Ormuzd and Ahriman from Russian spiritual life. After all, what have the Europeans done in Asia so far? What have they done that must arouse the disgust of the Russians in particular, that must show the Russians how they must be different in everything they accomplish? What have these Europeans done? They have discovered over the centuries that under the stimulus of the Ormuzd force, the Asians produce many, many material goods. They set out to snatch from the Asians what they had acquired under the beneficent influence of Ormuzd – so the Russian says; the Russians must come and join forces with the Asians in Asia, not out of selfishness but out of love, and they must help the Asians to defeat Ahriman. And now he goes on to explain how Russia has the task of liberating the Asians from Ahriman through selfless devotion to and coexistence with the Asian peoples; while the Europeans have so far only taken from them what they had acquired under the beneficent Ormuzd. And it is quite characteristic of the Russian Yushakov to find in which European nation he can identify the one that has primarily stolen the Ormuzd goods from the Asians, and in which European nation he believes that it must be thoroughly and energetically opposed by the Russians. Yushakov calls the thieves of the Ormuzd culture of Asia the English, namely! I think that this is particularly interesting today, in our time, because we will find a remarkable connection in this alliance between Russianness and Englishness. In 1885, as I said, Yushakov wrote in his book “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”: “Ah, these poor Asian peoples, what they have become through the English!” These English have treated these poor Asian peoples as if these Asian peoples were there for no
And further he says:
Now, esteemed attendees, I would like to say that the Russian world view is still in the future, and that this has a truly irrepressible nature alongside, I would say, absolute passivity. This is where all the grotesque contradictions that confront us when we engage with this Russian world view come from. And yet, again and again in the course of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, we are confronted with the fact that what we have been able to characterize, and what we needed to characterize, of the outstanding Russian minds, really by stating the facts - and I have actually only tried to present facts in order to characterize the idealistic world view of the Germans - that this idealistic world view is presented as something decrepit, as something that must be overgrown by that which emanates from Russia. And especially at the end of the nineteenth century, it is not only the legacy of Peter the Great in the political sphere - anyone who takes my writing in hand, “Thoughts During the Time of War,” will see how this conviction lived in the most outstanding Russian minds, that Russianism must expand towards the West. They soon abandoned the Pan-Asian dream and the European dream arose from the belief that the aging Western and Central European culture would have to experience salvation after the Russians conquered Constantinople, destroyed Austria, destroyed Germany and so on. Only deeply insightful Russians themselves were able to see through what this was actually about. And I cannot refrain from quoting what a reasonable Russian, Solowjow, said about this arrogance of the Russians from his Russian point of view. Solowjow wants to refute such a spirit, the Danilewski, who has so rightly pointed out how Europeanism must be eradicated root and branch and replaced by the Russian. And Solowjow replies. Danilewski has in fact brought to light the saying
And Solowjow answers.
says Danilewski,
writes Solowjow,
Soloviev means Strakhov,
And now Solowjow gives his answer from what he calls the Russian soul:
says Solowjow,
And now Solowjow answers the question of why Russia is sick. And from the answer he gives, I think you can see, dear attendees, that he thinks differently about how to cure this disease than those who are now leading Russia against Europe, who believe that sick Russia should be cured by stamping the corroded culture of Central Europe into the ground. But Solowjow says:
That was the war in the 1870s.
And Solowjow himself tried to absorb as much as possible of Western European and especially Central European culture into his thinking. And to combine it with what the Russian people have as a result of their Orthodox faith. That is precisely what makes Solowjow great. But he also became important for another reason. We have seen the revival – I would like to say, already in Central Europe, of the great period of German Idealism, which initially fell into a kind of dream but did not live on any less because of it. We have also seen a revival of intellectual Slavophilism there, which has now become a kind of intellectual Pan-Slavism. They tried to justify, almost with scientific ideological arguments, that the Russian spirit must come over Europe. Solowjow took a look at that, really immersed himself in the works of those who wanted to be completely original by showing the essence of the Russian world view, how it must come over Europe. And what did Solowjow find? Very strangely, he found only Western European ideas everywhere, and not exactly the best ones, those Western European ideas that are derived from the great ideas of the world view of German idealism as minor ideas. These have become interwoven, and from them they have justified their spiritual Slavophilism. It is a very characteristic phenomenon, very characteristic in that what must happen in reality does happen, that the forces that come from the world-historical mission of the German people must work, that they are needed within the world views of the other nations. That is what I have tried to put before you today, ladies and gentlemen, that this world view of German idealism, which lives within the German nation and which is destined to bring forth greater and greater things for the whole of humanity from the German nation in the development of the world Germanic people. One need only look at this world view of German idealism objectively, and not, as our enemies are doing, try to justify their actions and hatred of what the Germans have achieved in the intellectual field. Of course, the German could never help but look objectively at how the intellectual achievements of other nations compare with those of the Germans. The German always has that which he calls his Germanness more in mind as a duty, while the other nations really do not understand what the German actually means by his national principle. Carneri, an important or perhaps even the most important Austrian philosopher of the nineteenth century, Carneri – the wonderful man who, from an ailing body, also tried to grasp world-view ideas on the basis of Darwinism but built pure, noble, ethical thoughts on the basis of this Darwinism, the German deepened this Darwinism – Carneri now also delves into a consideration of the different national souls of the European peoples. And with such a mind, which speaks not out of passion but out of knowledge, one can already see that what spiritual science creates out of its knowledge about the different national souls has already been instinctively recognized. What has emerged in English pragmatism as a concept of truth is that one should actually only use the truth in order to find one's way in the world. Carneri says, not yet using the word “pragmatism”, which was only coined very recently: the English are certainly very often ahead: they are practical, practical. They can apply their practicality to anything they can think of, create and invent. But they are so practical that their practicality has even led them – Carneri says this, as I said, from a deep insight – to the fact that the insight that they produced the greatest playwright of all time, Shakespeare, had to be taught to them by the Germans. That is absolutely the case. For whoever has to write the history of the recognition of Shakespeare will have to write a chapter of the history of German intellectual life, not English intellectual life. Shakespeare was only recognized from the depths of the idealistic German world view. And Shakespeare is actually homeless in today's England. We do not need to talk in the way that French philosophers or Englishmen talk about German nature today. We can simply point to that which is. But in pointing to it, we are aware that it is the force that must work, must work when the great world conflict has been decided, which now presents humanity with the greatest task that has ever been set. Ladies and gentlemen, the weapons, the circumstances, will decide what happens next, not the word. But there is also something to be decided that will only be decided slowly and gradually: that is the full penetration of the German spirit into the overall development of humanity. And certainly, it is not for me in this reflection to point out the more detailed cause of the war or the like. But the consciousness that must live in us in this time is certainly connected with what we can call: a sinking into the own essence of the German people and that which must continue to live and work in the German people, and in which we must trust. What is the external situation like? Yes, actually in a most peculiar way. It is remarkable that this thought is so rarely expressed – not by us, but by our enemies. Do these enemies really need to hate the German character so much? If one may put the question in this way, does the German character take up so much of the earth's surface? The figures also answer this question: the Entente Powers possess 68 million square kilometers of the earth; the Central European Powers, on the other hand, possess 6 million square kilometers! 68 million square kilometers against 6 million square kilometers. The Central European powers have 150 million inhabitants; the Entente powers 777 million! One should also reflect on this outside the borders of Central Europe, and consider what it means in the face of this fact that 777 million people are standing against 150 million people and do not want to defeat them in open battle, but want to starve them out by surrounding them. That is the better part of valor! But to draw attention to such things so readily - it is understandable that one does not love that, and that one can love in contrast the suspicions and slanders of what the Germans have not only achieved intellectually, but are, because what has been achieved can show it to anyone who wants to see it. Admittedly, it is easier to become discouraged when considering the German character as a Frenchman, for example, who finds – and has also told his Parisians – that a Frenchman, the same Frenchman, incidentally, who first spoke of the deep friendship between the German character and the Frenchman, who was the first to speak of the deep friendship between the German and the French character here in Germany when he traveled around: “He says that you can see from some phenomena of the German language, for example, how the Germans cannot have the nobler side of the human ideal in their world view because they do not have words for it. For example, the Germans have no word for 'generosity'; so they don't have this beautiful quality at all. The French, on the other hand, have no word for 'gloating', which the Germans often use: 'Schadenfreude haben'. So the Germans have gloating in their world view, the French have generosity! One day, esteemed attendees, it will be recognized that there is much to whitewash and dream away, because one cannot place oneself in relation to this Central European intellectual culture today, that if one places oneself as one should place oneself, one could still appear to some extent as a person justified before himself. If you want to characterize the Germans from abroad today, you need something other than objectivity and truth. Another Frenchman, Ernest Renan, did indeed once manage –- even during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 –- to say: when he became acquainted with German literature and German intellectual life in the time of Herder and Goethe, it was as if he had entered a temple. And what he had known before seemed to him to be no more than worn scraps of paper compared to the inner gold value, compared to what German intellectual life has produced as a world view at the time of its highest idealism. But the same Frenchman, he now decides, his Frenchmen at the same time to establish such a relationship in Europe that it corresponds to the value of the German essence that he himself has acknowledged? No, says Ernest Renan, who says that what the rest of European humanity has achieved in comparison to German intellectual life is like elementary mathematics in comparison to the differential calculus. He says:
This trend has triumphed in France. Nothing else can be said, except that this trend has triumphed in France. But if one has an idea of what one actually wants to destroy, if one swears destruction on the Germanic race - one actually means only the German people - then one must not admit it to oneself. And these individual nations must not admit it to themselves at all. They dare not even think about what might live in the German national character as the soul of this national character, out of which, for example, the high point of the German world view of idealism arose. They dare not admit it to themselves. Therefore, they have to whitewash it with something else. And with what? For example, Russia has to whitewash it with a mission - of course with the mission of rejuvenating Europe. One of their newer poets once characterized the French, his own French, by pointing out how the cockerel that crows in the morning when the sun rises becomes aware that there is a connection between his crowing and the rising of the sun. He imagines: if I don't crow, the sun cannot rise. Of course, dear attendees, the tragedy of the present French people should not be in the slightest diminished by this; because it is not about the misled people at all. For those who have in fact led this “led people astray”, who can already be compared to the crowing cock, who believe that if they do not crow the sun will not rise - for there are leading French minds who hold this view: that nothing can happen in the world unless they crow to it – for this, Frenchness needs a new fantasy image from time to time. And it is from such a fantasy image that those who, in such a desolate way, especially in Paris, such as Bergson or Boutroux, want to so disparage the German essence in what is its soul. The English – yes, these English, one does not want to do them wrong. Do the Russians need a new mission, the French a new fantasy image of their own greatness in the world – they have always needed that, and they have only ever forgotten that they had to be pushed back so that the others would also have some space – yes, what do the English need? One would not want to be harsh; one would want to be fair to the enemy. But when you hear the enlightened minds over there saying that the English only went to war because they, with their fine sense of morality, could not reconcile the fact that the unfortunate Belgian people had been invaded – because they are enthusiastic about the fact that small nations can live out freedom and independence – when you look at how strangely these Englishmen have taken on the freedom of these small nations, yes, and then hear how the enlightened minds over there keep declaiming: “For freedom” and against “unfreedom” England had to go to war, because the Germans, they are completely imbued with the saying - an outstanding English politician said that recently — the Germans are completely imbued with the saying: “might is right”; he forgot, the poor — clever man, I mean to say — that this saying was first made by Thomas Hobbes, the Englishman, yes, even advocated as an entire philosophy, that this saying is deeply anchored in the whole world view of English naturalism. Yes, if one wants to be objective, dear attendees, one cannot say otherwise: the English need a new lie to conceal the truth and justify themselves to the world. There is simply no other way than to say that this must be the verdict of history, at least with regard to the behavior of the speaking people during the war. The Italians – they need something to whitewash what is really there. They are the people of the sentient soul. Before the war, before the world war, an outstanding Italian politician confessed to me – because one did not need to be naive before the world war, believing that when the world war came, Italy would be on the side of the medium-sized powers, right? – an outstanding Italian politician confessed to me at the time: When the world war comes, Italy will have to take part. Yes, but why? “It simply has to take part,” he said, “because the Italian people are lazy, they are depraved. If they are allowed to continue living like this for much longer,” he said, “they will become completely depraved. They need to feel something properly again” - that's where we have the sentient soul - “they need to have a feeling, a sensation.” I am not saying that this is the only cause of war. The Russian needs a new mission, since the Pan-Asian one has been extinguished; the Englishman needs a new lie; the Frenchman needs a new fantasy; the Italian needs a new sensation in – yes, in the form of a new saint, because it must first be possible to grasp it with the sentient soul: holy egoism was invented in Italy, holy egoism. In the name of holy egoism, we have been told over and over again, Italy went to war. A new saint, a new saint who is fully worthy of his great representative d'Annunzio. D'Annunzio, the priest of holy egoism – a sensation, as if made for the inner pages of the sentimental soul character! I do not think we need to fall back on the mistakes of our enemies when we think about what is at the heart of the German people and their tendency towards a particular world view. We only need to look at what we have found to be great, significant and effective in this German people, in the folklore of Central Europe. In this respect, the Germans of Austria and the Germans of Germany are one and the same. Today they feel completely at one. The concept of Mitteleuropa must not only become a reality in an economic sense, but also in a spiritual sense. This can be said in particular by someone who, like me, lived in Austria for thirty years. And when we look, esteemed attendees, at what appears to us as the innermost – I may say – spiritual essence, as the spiritual essence of German nationality, we must say: this essence is not directly something that can only be grasped in terms of concepts and ideas. It is something that is experienced at the center, at the core of the German soul. The German soul must remain, which can only flourish if the German soul can carry it alive from the present into the future. History will be able to show this, the actual course of the history of the Germans and Germanness, of all humanity on earth, that there is something in this German nation that has only just taken root and put forth leaves, and that carries within itself the strength to become blossoms and fruit. But we Germans can doubt the arrogance of other peoples without being unjust to other peoples. Especially in the present difficult times, but also in the great and promising times to come, we can realize how we can feel German precisely when we also permeate ourselves with its highest development, with its spiritual life, how we can then believe: Yes, this spiritual life shows itself to us in its roots and in its leaves in such a way that we can have the deepest faith and trust in the blossoms and fruits to be borne. And so, precisely from this point of view, by keeping in mind the numbers 777 million people against 150 million people, 68 million square kilometers against 6 million square kilometers, we should never allow ourselves to be distracted from the fact that our German past presents itself to us in such a way that it guarantees our German future by its own strength, precisely by its spiritual strength, and we should never never allow ourselves to be dissuaded from the fact that our German past presents itself to us as being guaranteed by its own strength, and especially by its intellectual strength, for our German future, to which we want to fully embrace not only out of mere instinct and feeling, but also out of bright insight. |
| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: The Forgotten Pursuit of Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought
21 Feb 1916, Leipzig Rudolf Steiner |
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| His father rewards the young boy by giving him the book 'The Horned Siegfried' for Christmas when he is seven. Fichte, the young Fichte, the boy, is completely gripped by what comes to life through the human personality that is in a soul like that of “Gehörnte Siegfried”! |
| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: The Forgotten Pursuit of Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought
21 Feb 1916, Leipzig Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear Attendees! Unlike in previous years when I had the honor of speaking here in this city about subjects of spiritual science, last year I did not venture to speak about a subject of spiritual science in the strict sense, but rather about something that is connected with the spiritual development of the German people, who are currently facing one of the most significant events in world history, with world-historical facts that have no equal in the entire developmental history of modern times. And so, honored attendees, may this evening's reflection also be dedicated to such a topic, the reflection of a certain current in German intellectual life, which I believe, however, not out of a vague feeling, but out of real spiritual-scientific conviction that it contains, in the most essential, in the very most essential sense, German intellectual development, the seeds of that spiritual science as it was always meant, when I was allowed to speak about it here in earlier years. This spiritual science wants, in the best sense of the word, to be a real science, a real, genuine continuation of the scientific world view that has emerged over the past three to four hundred years in the development of humanity. As a spiritual science, it aims to penetrate into the spiritual realm of the world, just as natural science methodically penetrates into the external world through the external senses and through the mind bound to the external senses, into the mind bound to the external senses and its observations, and into the external senses and their observations. However, spiritual science requires a certain development of the human soul for its research. It is necessary for this research that what can lead to it is first developed from the human soul. To a certain extent - to apply Goethe's often-used words again today - the spiritual eyes and ears that slumber in man himself must first be awakened from the human soul so that he can look and listen into the spiritual world. Now, however, it might seem from the outset, esteemed attendees, as if, when speaking of science - and that is the opinion of some; some think that one has no right to speak of anything other than such a thing that belongs to all nations. In certain circles, there is the opinion that one is already thinking unscientifically if one allows oneself the opinion that even that which is the scientific study of the world has its origins in the essence of folklore. However, as superficial as this opinion may be, it is superficial when it comes to the deeper objects of spiritual science. The moon is also common to all peoples of the earth, but how the thoughts and feelings that the individual peoples have attached to the experiences of the moon differ. One could indeed say: that may relate to poetry. But when it comes to penetrating the deeper secrets of the world, then the different predispositions that exist in different ways in the individual peoples speak. And according to these different predispositions, people penetrate more or less deeply into the secrets of existence. The German does not need to resort to the clay when speaking of the significance and value of the German national character for the development of the world and humanity, as the opponents of Central Europe are currently doing, using our fateful time not only to vilify the German character in the most hateful way possible, but to downright slander it. The German can quite appropriately penetrate into that which has emerged in the course of his intellectual development. And it will be shown that this appropriate consideration leads precisely to placing German essence, German intellectual life, in the right place in the world development of humanity, not through self-assured arrogance, but by letting the facts speak. When we consider the events that affect us all so deeply today, that claim so many, so many victims from humanity, that fill us with so much definite hope and confidence, when we consider these events, then there is really only one fact that needs to be mentioned – to strike a chord that will resonate again and again in the future history of humanity: Today, around Central Europe, 777 million people stand, in a row, 150 million hostile. The 777 million people have no reason to envy the size of the land on which the other 150 million live in Central Europe; the people of the so-called Entente live on 68 million square kilometers, and the people of Central Europe live on only 6 million square kilometers! But leading personalities in particular have repeatedly managed, out of the 777 million, to insult and defame even the best and highest intellectual products of the 150 million. It is therefore particularly appropriate for the German to reflect on his intellectual life in such a way that it may appear to him as rooted in the actual germinating power of his nationality. And so, esteemed attendees, we are repeatedly and again and again, although this should only be mentioned in the introduction today, repeatedly and again and again referred to the three great figures within the German world view development, which today, unfortunately, may say, unfortunately, no longer considered in the right, deep way, but whose essence nevertheless lives on to this day, and whose essence wants to rise again, [whose essence] must belong to the best impact forces of German spiritual culture in the future. Three figures are pointed out: Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, those personalities in the development of the German world view who tried to lift the German people in time onto the scene of the development of thought, of the highest, purest development of thought, in the time when, from the depths of this national life, such minds as Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller and all the others who belong to them have worked so that what has come from them after the Greek intellectual blossoming of humanity means a time of the highest intellectual blossoming of humanity for anyone who is unbiased. And how does Johann Gottlieb Fichte appear in the mind's eye of the human being? That which lived in his soul as feeling made his world view appear to him, who can be called one of the most German of men, as something that he had attained by having something directly in his lonely soul life, something like a kind of dialogue with the German national spirit itself. This mood of the soul emerged when he delivered his powerful “Discourses to the German Nation,” which sought to reveal all the power and developmental possibilities of German nationality in order to give impetus to the further development of “Germanness,” as Fichte himself put it. But what is the essence of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's endeavors? It can be said that everything that has been striven for in the best sense from the center of the German soul for centuries appears again in Fichte in the most powerful way. Thus it is that Fichte wanted to gain a well-illuminated world view, an energetic understanding of the world through this. What Fichte strove for was to delve into the human soul, to inwardly experience its deepest powers, to experience them in such a way that in this experience he also experiences what the world as a whole is living through and working through as a spiritual, world-creating entity. [What Fichte strove for was to] experience the spiritual, world-creating essence in one's own soul in such a way that, by unfolding one's own soul powers, one experiences what works and lives and dwells in the innermost part of the world. That was what Fichte wanted: to experience the spirit of the world by making it present in one's own soul. That was for him the true meaning of the word “knowledge”. That was for him also the content of all truth worth striving for by man – the truth that for him was the direct expression of the divine spirituality that lives through the world, that knowledge, as truth, permeates the human soul so that this human soul can grasp it in an inward, powerful experience. But through this, Fichte felt as if the whole world were pulsating and alive and interwoven with the will of the world, with the divine will of the world. And as man grasps himself in his innermost being, as he becomes in the truest sense an I-conscious being, an imprint arises within this I, a revelation of the world-will pulsating through the world, which is completely imbued of what Fichte calls the “duties”; those duties that could never reveal themselves to one from a merely material world, that penetrate from the world of the spiritual into the human soul, [which] grasp the will of humanity; so that for Fichte, the external sensual, material world becomes that which, like the material-physical, expands before us, in order to be able to live out the dutiful will and the will-imbued duty in anything. Not that Fichte diverted his approach from the external sense world, not as if he wanted to escape into a one-sided world free of the senses! It is not like that; but it is the case that everything that the eyes can see externally, that the hands can grasp, for Fichte became the tool, the means of the spirit, so that the spirit could present itself, [so that] the spirit, -the spirit permeated by duty, the duty that man can grasp in his soul, can be represented by an external materiality: a world view that Fichte himself, in the very sense of the word, regards as a world view. One may say, esteemed attendees, while remaining entirely objective: Nothing stands in such contrast to another as this Fichtean world view stands, say, to the world view born of the spirit of the French Romance language, as it was outlined by one of the greatest French philosophers, Cartesius or Descartes, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, as an embodiment of the French spirit itself – a philosophical embodiment. Descartes, the Frenchman, the Frenchman who, like Fichte from the Germanic, so from the French national character draws and creates, Descartes starts from the fact that man feels himself a stranger to the outer world, that man must start from doubt in his soul. There can be no doubt for Fichte in the sense that Descartes means it, for his knowledge is an immediate co-experience of that which lives and breathes through the world. Fichte does not place himself outside of the spirit of the world by knowing, but inwardly seeks to unite with the spirit. Descartes, on the other hand, stands before the world as mere observation, as external observation. What kind of world view emerges from this? One need only mention one thing that appears as a consequence of the French Descartesian world view. As I said, it is really not necessary to develop national biases, but one can remain objective when saying this. What is one consequence of Descartes' view of the world? Well, it is enough to mention that Descartes, in his striving, which also emanates from self-awareness, but from mere rational, intellectual self-awareness, not from the living inner life, like Fichte's self-awareness, this Descartes' view of the world imagines the world as a large machine, as a powerful mechanism. And for Descartes, animals themselves are moving machines, inanimate, moving machines. Everything that developed as a mechanism in later times, as a mechanistic world view, which also took hold in other nations from France, basically leads back to this starting point of Descartes. You only have to consider the contrast: On the one hand, the Roman philosopher who turns the world into a machine; on the other hand, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who wants to pour out the soul itself over the whole world from the German folk tradition, so that this soul can experience everything soulful, everything in the world that is pulsating with will – and one has expressed something important about the relationship of the German folk spirit to its western neighbor. This Descartesian worldview then produced, I might say, one materialistic outgrowth after another. We see how, at the end of the eighteenth century, the worldview that Goethe encountered from France emerged, and of which Goethe, from his German consciousness, said: Oh, how bleak, how desolate! And then the philosopher shows us atoms moving, colliding, pushing each other – a mere mechanism! And all this is supposed to explain the rich abundance of the world in which we live? It is fair to say – again, entirely objectively: From the abundance and vibrancy of the German mind, Goethe turned away from this merely mechanistic world view, which then, in de La Mettrie's “Man a Machine” at the end of the eighteenth century, had a flowering that of all those who want to build a worldview based on superficial vanity, on that vanity that would be quite satisfied if there were no human soul, but if, like a phonograph, the human mechanical thinking apparatus purred away what man has to say about the world. And well into the nineteenth century, this worldview continued to unfold. We see it in [gap in transcript], but we also see it in a spirit like – yes, it is still not called French today, but is still called Bergson – like in Bergson, who has found the most shameful thing, again and again, to defame and slander that which wells up from the German soul as a world view. One would like to say: Because he can see nothing else in a world picture that is alive, that is filled with inner life, he believes he can defame it, defames this German world picture as such, which shows - as he repeatedly says in his writings – how the German, from his lofty position at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, has descended and degenerated completely into a mechanistic world mechanism. It is a pity that this so celebrated Bergson not only drew a picture of the world - I have explained it in detail, not only in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”, written before the war - but not only drew a picture of the world that was much more powerful, much more forceful, by a German mind, Preuss, who is rarely mentioned and little known, the German thinker, thinker, for example in his book “Spirit and Matter” 1882 [is presented] - of which Bergson either knows nothing, which is an equally big mistake, or does not want to know anything - but not only this, but it has also been shown that entire pages in the so-praised writings of Bergson are simply copied from Schelling or from Schopenhauer! – That is one way of relating to the intellectual life of Central Europe! This intellectual life is contrasted with that of Fichte, an intellectual life that does not want to understand the world as dead, but that wants to understand the world as a spiritual-living entity, down to the smallest parts, and for which knowledge is nothing other than the experience of this spiritual vitality of the world. Just as with the French conception of the world, Fichte, with his energetic grasp of the human ego, in which he wants to experience the world, stands in contrast to the English conception of the world, that English conception of the world that took its starting point from Baco of Verul am, and which, one might say, has found its repulsive sides, its repulsive one-sidedness, precisely in the most recent world view that English intellectual life has produced in so-called pragmatism – in Baco von Verulam. As Goethe, for example, very profoundly remarks, one sees everywhere how [Baco von Verulam] actually regards the spiritual life in such a way that what otherwise [lives] in the human spirit as truth is actually only there to summarize and form the diversity of the external materials and forces of the world, which can be seen with the eyes and grasped with the hands, and to again disassemble them and the like. A means of dominating the external physical world is philosophy, based on Baco von Verulam, basically everything that could be called philosophy. And up to our days, this meaning has been preserved. What actually appears as pragmatism? Within English intellectual life, something highly peculiar appears as pragmatism – Schiller, James and other representatives of this pragmatism. For these representatives of pragmatism, for these pragmatists, truth is not something that man experiences inwardly like an image of gods or spirits, something that – as in the Fichte in the sense of Fichte, enters the human soul from the spirit that pulsates, lives and weaves through the world, but in the sense of this pragmatism, truth is actually only something that man thinks up in order to have a direction in the multiplicity of external phenomena. For example, the soul - this concept of “soul”, this unified concept of soul - you cannot see the soul: What is it then for pragmatism? For pragmatism, the unifying concept of soul, the unifying concept of the ego, of self-awareness, is nothing more than a means of holding together the manifoldness of the soul life and its expressions in the body, so that they do not fall apart in contemplation; so that one has, as it were, brackets and bindings. Concepts are created for the external material. How far removed this is from Fichte's world view, drawn from the depths of the soul, for which spirit is the most original of the world and reality, the spirit that flows into the individual human soul life. And by feeling this influx, man knows himself one with the spirit of the world. And then the external world becomes, as Fichte put it, a field for the spirit to unfold in. Exactly the opposite! Here with Fichte: the spirit is supreme, the actual reality, the highest living thing, for the sake of which the external world of the senses exists, so that the spirit can find its means of expression in it. There: the mind is capable of nothing more than creating binders and clamps in its concepts and ideas, so that it - which is the main thing - can place these concepts in the service of external material reality, and can ultimately find itself in external material reality. It is indeed necessary, most honored attendees, to consider the interrelations in this very light. Only through this does the German come to a real, enlightened realization of what is actually taking place in the depths of his people. Then, in one of the most difficult times in German development, Fichte tried to express what emerged to him as a power of consciousness from this soul power, which was connected to his inner life of will, in order to inspire, to strengthen, to invigorate his people. He did this in his “Addresses to the German Nation” to the German Nation» that the true man of world-view does not merely live in unworldly contemplation, but that these contemplations can intervene directly in that which the time demands and what mankind – I would like to say – [in fact] needs in order to be strengthened and invigorated in soul. And at the appropriate moment, a second personality appears before us alongside Fichte – the second personality who tried no less to grasp the innermost part of the world with his own soul. These spirits sought to grasp the whole, great world spirit with their own souls, investing their entire personality. In the case of Fichte, I probably only needed to tell you a few details of his life so that you could see how truly what he experienced – I would say – on the icy heights of thought, but which were permeated by pure human warmth in his case, was connected to his personality, to his immediate human being. A picture of the very young Fichte: he is a good student, already devoting himself to his duties at school as a six- or seven-year-old. His father rewards the young boy by giving him the book 'The Horned Siegfried' for Christmas when he is seven. Fichte, the young Fichte, the boy, is completely gripped by what comes to life through the human personality that is in a soul like that of “Gehörnte Siegfried”! And so it turns out that he now needs to be admonished because he is no longer as diligent at school as he was before. One day we see the boy in his blue farmer's smock; he is standing by the stream that flows past his father's house: suddenly he throws the “Gehörnte Siegfried”, which he was holding in his hand, into the water, and he stands there crying and watches as the book floats away in the waves. His father arrives and is initially indignant that his little boy has thrown the book he had given him into the water. Then he has to learn that in this case what Fichte later made the actual core of his philosophical work – the dutiful will – that this dutiful will already lived in the boy Fichte in such a way that he could not bear, by the distracted attention to the “Horned Siegfried”, no longer fulfill his duty as a learner! And everything he experienced as a boy was probably already connected with the innermost workings and nature of his soul. And once, when Fichte was nine years old, the estate neighbor from the neighboring village came to Fichte's place of residence. He wanted to hear the sermon; but he was too late. He could no longer hear the pastor preach; the church bells had already rung. So it was suggested that the nine-year-old boy could retell the content of the sermon to the estate neighbor. And they sent for him. Young Fichte entered in his blue peasant's smock; and after he had behaved somewhat awkwardly at first, he approached the public figure and developed the thoughts that he had taken in from the sermon with such intimacy that it was clear: he had not only taken something in externally, but had united with his whole soul what he had listened to. Thus it was that this personality – one might say – that, if I may use the trivial word, it always absorbed everything that affected it with the whole person, out of its own genius, so effectively that everything that came from this person, on the one hand, bore the deepest human character, and on the other hand, rose again to the highest heights of world-historical contemplation. One beautiful trait of this most German of German thinkers, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, must be emphasized again and again: when Fichte later spoke to his audience as a professor, he did not want to speak like someone else who simply conveyed the content of what he had conquered to his listeners. Someone who knew Fichte well and had often heard him speak said that his words rushed forth like a thunderstorm that discharges in individual sparks; [and he said] that he not only wanted to produce good people, but great people. And in such a way was also the work-you can not say-set up, the work of this German, because in the thoughts of this German thinker lived something in this lecture, which was much more than presented: He wanted, by mounting the lectern, to carry something up to this lectern, which flowed as a living entity from him into flowed from him into the audience, so that the audience, if they listened attentively and left the lecture hall, took with them not only a content, not only a teaching, but something that was more in their soul than what they had brought into the lecture hall, something that seized their whole humanity, permeated it, inspired it! And truly, Fichte knew how to work in this way, to penetrate so directly to the center of the human soul, that he wanted to bring his listeners, these listeners, in direct contact with his listeners, to revive in themselves what really connected them – one might say – immediately connected them to what the soul could experience of the spiritual that flows and permeates the world. So, for example, he once said to his listeners: “Imagine the wall.” The listeners turned their eyes to the wall and thought, “That would be easy.” After he had let them think about the wall for a while, he said, “So, now imagine the one who imagined the wall!” At first they were amazed. But now a way had been found to win the hearts and minds of the audience directly for the realization of the secrets of the world, as they can play out in the human soul. And so, with his whole personality directly immersed in the life of knowledge, was also Johann Wilhelm Schelling, of whom those who saw him – and I certainly knew such people! – who saw and heard him – not only read his books and knew what was in his books – thus they said that something emerged from his sparkling eyes that was like the gaze of knowledge itself! Schelling, too, wanted to experience directly in his own soul what lives in nature as spirit. For him, the soul was only something like the outer face of a spirit that lives and weaves through the world. And as the human soul approaches nature, it recognizes in nature what it itself is as spirit and soul. Spirit flows through the world. It forms an external impression by crystallizing nature around itself. In this way, it creates the ground for the spirit itself to appear in the human soul on this ground. Therefore, for Schelling, the spirit of nature and the spirit of soul grew together into a unity. And with such a view, he knew how to rise to wonderful possibilities. He only penetrated them in seemingly dry concepts – incidentally, in concepts and ideas that sometimes rose to the most tremendous, most alert, intuitive glow. He only spoke in seemingly dry terms about nature and about how one can be in harmony with nature and the spiritual world, and how the concepts arise from nature and how one can be in harmony in cognition. Once he said the word, the word that was certainly one-sided: To recognize nature is to create nature. - Certainly, a one-sided word; one can only recreate nature in the act of recognizing it. But Schelling felt such a close kinship between what takes place in the human soul and what takes place in nature that he could imagine himself to be living as if he were creating natural forces when he believed that the right cognitive drives had been released in the soul. And so, on the one hand, the human form appears to Schelling as the highest natural expression of the natural forces of the spirit and soul, and on the other hand, art [...] that which is the human expression of spiritual striving. One would like to say: Schelling feels the highest as two halves that only complement each other: what the artist is able to create in art, on the one hand; the human form, on the other hand, as the crown and blossom of nature. And so we see how Schelling developed a world view that is entirely born out of – indeed, itself appears like a rebirth – the rebirth of the human mind. The German mind itself has become the organ of vision in Schelling, to see in nature and in intellectual life that which speaks to the human mind as external sensory objects speak to the human eyes and ears. But as a result, Schelling has become the one for the German spiritual development who could raise to an enormous height that which, as a spiritual world, could inspire from the Romance world view, for example, Giordano Bruno, but only inspire. How passionately born out of the [Italian] world-feeling the world-picture of Giordano Bruno appears, if we compare it with the world-picture—with the calm world-picture reborn out of the German soul—of Schelling. And the third is Hegel. Hegel, the third, the philosopher of the Germans who, I might say, lived in the most intimate union with the Goethean Weltanschauung; Hegel, who, I might say, sought on the third of the paths that were possible from the German folk, on the third of the paths to lead the soul to the place where it can directly grasp the spiritual activity and weaving and essence of the world. In Johann Gottlieb Fichte, it is the will that pulses through the soul and creates expression in duty; in Schelling, it is the feeling, the innermost part of the soul, while a natural will takes hold of it and gives it birth; in Hegel, it is the life of thought - the life of thought that is felt by Hegel in such a way that, as the thoughts that he lets pass through his soul are moved and experienced by this soul, they appear directly as thoughts of the divine-spiritual life of the world itself, which permeates all spaces and all times. So that man, by letting his thoughts live in himself, free from sensuality and without being influenced by the outside world, has the divine-spiritual thinking of the world simultaneously living and revealing itself in him through this experience of thought. Admittedly, this is how Hegel became a spirit who created a world view as if the whole world were built only out of logic – which is one-sided. But he added to what Fichte and Schelling had offered, the third sound from German folk tradition. It may be said that what makes Hegel appear particularly as a German spirit is that, unlike Descartes, for example - Rosenkranz, a faithful disciple of Hegel, wrote the fine book “Hegel as a German National Philosopher” - what makes Hegel particularly German spirit, is that, unlike Descartes, who also bases everything on thinking but only arrives at a mechanistic view of the world, he does not experience thinking as if thinking were something that arises in the soul and is alien to existence, but rather: the spirit, the world spirit itself thinks itself in man. The world spirit itself sees itself through thinking in man. In his thinking, Hegel feels interwoven with the thoughts of the world spirit. One can also say that Descartes' one-sided, naked view of the world is given life – if only as a thought – in Hegel's view of the world. Today, ladies and gentlemen, there is no need to take a dogmatic stand on the views of the three men mentioned. We can go further than that today; to be a partisan or an opponent may perhaps view all that these minds have expressed as one-sided. There is no need to take a dogmatic stand on them; they can be seen as an extension of what lives and weaves in German national character. They are something that has emerged from the flowering of German intellectual life, which will certainly change in many ways over time as it continues to flourish and bear fruit, but which can provide the deepest and most significant insights for anyone striving for spiritual knowledge of the world because a spiritual world knowledge must arise from such a germ within German intellectual life, as was striven for by Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and basically arose out of the spirit of Goethe. What is peculiar about these three personalities is that they basically express three sides, three different shades of something that hovers invisibly over them, that was the common expression of the highest peak of German intellectual life at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, and that in Goethe and others the great fruits emerge in such a way that one always starts not to seek a knowledge of the world in such a way that one simply applies man as he stands in his powers, but that one first tries to awaken the human powers of knowledge that lie deeply dormant in the depths of the soul, and with the opened spiritual eye and spiritual ear - as I said, these are Goethe's words - then wants to look out into the world and life with the opened spiritual eye and spiritual ear. This is how Goethe did it. That is why Goethe, following Kant, speaks of an intuitive power of judgment, which he ascribed to himself. And truly, from this intuitive power of judgment emerged the blossoms of Goethe's achievements. “Intuitive power of judgment” - what does Goethe mean? The ordinary power of judgment lives in human concepts. With this power of judgment, man faces things, he faces nature; he looks at it with his senses; with his mind he judges what he has seen with his senses. Goethe says to himself: If one can see the spiritual through the power of judgment, just as the eyes see the sensual, then one lives and moves in the spiritual. - And so Goethe wanted to look at plants and animals, so he wanted to look at human life. And so he observed it! And so he even wanted to be active in the field of physics. There one comes upon a chapter in which it is clearly shown how German folk-life must express something different about the external facts of physical life than, for example, English folk-life. The time has not yet come, however, to see the connections in this area. For more than thirty years now, I myself have endeavored – I may say this without immodesty, because it is simply a fact – to show what Goethe actually wanted, from a spiritual view of nature, from an judgment, as [he opposed his] theory of colors to Newton's color theory, which is based on atomism and mechanism, as a theory of life. Today, physics cannot yet understand this. But once German culture in the spiritual realm truly reflects on itself, one will understand how the German spirit in Goethe had to rebel against Newton's purely mechanical scientific view in the field of color theory as well. And the chapter “Goethe versus Newton” – by that I mean German science versus the mechanical utilitarian English science. This chapter will reappear. And perhaps it is precisely such a chapter that will show the relationship of the German soul in its depth and in its deeper contemplation of knowledge to the other judgments of Europe's striving for knowledge. And what place the German national soul has come to occupy in the overall development of German intellectual life is only one particular, special aspect; but this particular, this single, special aspect is the expression of the general that lived in the Goethe , and that lives on into our days, albeit – I would like to say – under the stream of consciousness, but nevertheless clearly in all deeper recognition of the spiritual in the German: to seek the spiritual organ of knowledge. Fichte called it a “higher spiritual sense” when he spoke to his Berlin students from 1811 to 1813. Schelling called it “intellectual intuition.” To arrive at a higher organ of spiritual knowledge – which is uncomfortable, and which a philosophy based merely on utility or mechanism, like the Romance or British philosophy, cannot achieve – to create an organ of knowledge organ that is built out of the spirit and can therefore look into the spirit; [that] does not see the spirit in abstract, dry, empty theoretical concepts, but grasps it as fully as the outer senses grasp the world of the senses. And because such striving was so powerfully alive in the development of the German spirit, it was possible that even lesser minds that followed the time of Goethe were seized and imbued with what had germinated and sprouted in the great age of German life that has just been discussed, and that these lesser minds could even create something that is more similar to the paths that are actually the real paths to grasp the world spiritual as a human spirit in a living way, to get something that is even more similar to this real path than what appeared in Schelling, Fichte and Hegel. Because there is so much that is fruitful in this Fichte-Schelling-Hegel worldview, it could have such a fertilizing effect even on lesser minds, who - let us say - like Fichte's son, Immanuel Hermann Fichte, come to recognize how in what sensually to man as a human-like form – also as a sensual animal form, but there it does not have the same meaning – what lives in the sensual human form as in a finer bodily organization in a coarser bodily organization, as we say in spiritual science: an etheric body alongside the coarse physical body; and how in this etheric body [work] the great cosmic forces that give birth to man out of the eternal, just as the physical forces give birth to him physically out of the physical. That is to say, Hermann Immanuel Fichte is already seeking a way to directly access the external physical, not only through thoughts, not only through abstractions, but by directly grasping in a higher, spiritual-sensual way that lies beyond birth and death in man. And then we see a remarkable spirit, little known, who also walks this path, undoubtedly not as ingeniously and magnificently conceived as Schelling and Fichte, for example, but advancing further along the actual spiritual-scientific path than they, because he was allowed to live after them. Although he wrote his wonderful book “Glimpses into the Essence of Man” in 1811, we can still say that Troxler – for that is who we mean – is one of those who are truly at home in a forgotten chapter of German intellectual life. Because he lived later, Troxler was able to find true paths into the spiritual world when even his greater – greater than he – his greater predecessors could not. It is remarkable that Troxler, when he presented his “[Lectures] on Philosophy” in 1835, spoke of the fact that man can develop something in his soul if he only wants to, something that relates to the purely intellectual view of the world, which works in theoretical concepts and, so to speak, only collects individual concepts from observation, how something could develop in the human soul, which he calls Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler, an “super-spiritual sense”. “Supra-spiritual sense” - that is a soul power that Troxler refers to as [one that] can only be developed in man, and which does not, I would say, merely grasp things conceptually, not so abstractly as ordinary abstract cognition, but which grasps things so fully, so fully, that they , like the spirit itself, before man; that man thereby beholds a spiritual world, which is not exhausted in concepts, like even Hegel's, but which sees spiritual reality as the senses see sensual reality, so that the world is truly enriched by a new element of its being, by the spiritual. But the spiritual consists of concrete, fully developed entities that stand side by side and interact with each other in such a way that they can be grasped by the senses. “Supra-sensible meaning” is one soul force. Troxler speaks of the other as the “supra-sensible spirit”. So that one must see in it that which can be developed in the human soul as a special power, so that the soul comes to go beyond the ordinary sensual, and yet not to fall into spiritual emptiness, as for example the mechanical natural science, but [that one comes to a] being filled by the spirit. “Supersensible spirit”, “superspiritual sense” - for Troxler, these are two faculties in the human soul. He speaks of this in 1835; and one can receive an enormously significant stimulus for that which one can call knowledge of the spirit from these Troxler lectures, which consciously emerged from the depths of German nationality. For it is this German nationality that encourages us not to look at the world merely from the outside, but to really feel again and again, in what the soul can experience most intimately, the flooding through of the soul-spiritual being of the human being and of the whole world itself. Thus this German national character is called upon to develop something that otherwise could not have occurred within a national character in the course of time. Now let us see how strangely - even if one characterizes quite one-sidedly that which is really in the sense of this national character - can be expressed, and what can be proved about these characterized spirits, let us look at what it is. We must say that we also see mysticism within the spiritual development of France and England, but this mysticism exists alongside other forms of science. It is either condemned to lead a sectarian existence alongside other forms of science or to close itself off as a special spiritual current. German intellectual life, by rising to something like what Schelling, Hegel, Fichte, Troxler, Immanuel Hermann Fichte have achieved, shows that one can, in the fullest sense can remain in the fullest sense of the word in a scientific spirit and can work precisely out of a scientific spirit, and that which is to be achieved through mysticism, for example, does not stand alongside this scientific current, but can be directly and organically connected to it and can emerge from it. Therefore, we see how, for example, in Hegel there arises something that lives in the purest clarity of thought – even if many dispute it, it is still so – but there is nothing in the purest clarity of thought that might be just a nebulous mysticism of feeling or what would be a mystic prattling about all kinds of things, but what, with crystal-clear thoughts, at the same time wants to grasp the thinking of the world mystically in its own thinking: we find thought-like mysticism - if the word may be used - in Hegel. And we find this intellectual mysticism spiritualized — because the life of thought is inwardly illuminated by the supersensible spirit, by the supra-spiritual meaning — in such personalities as, for example, Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler. It is interesting to see how Troxler endeavors to reveal what should lead to a world view from the forces of the soul, how what man knows reveals itself from what actually stands behind what man has in ordinary everyday life for the maintenance and orientation of his life. In Troxler's view, man has faith - faith, which, in the realm of religious belief, supports humanity's highest spiritual supports, but which also plays a major role in other areas of human life: faith. Man has this faith in his soul life. I am not just repeating Troxler's words, but speaking as one would have to think if one took in what Troxler said and developed it a little further. This power of belief is something that the outer physical body must have, something that can be grasped by the soul just as it arises directly in the soul, even without the development of higher cognitive powers. But behind this belief lives, hidden in the soul, [a higher organ of knowledge, so that belief is, as it were, for ordinary daily life, the living out of this higher organ of knowledge. Troxler calls what lives behind faith: spiritual hearing, the supersensible, spiritual hearing. So that in Troxler's sense, faith is to be imagined as the beautiful that flows in from an unconscious or subconscious spiritual part of the soul, which drives faith to the surface. But if it is developed itself, it becomes a spiritual ear that would become hearing in the spiritual world. Spiritual hearing means perceiving in the same way as the sensory ear perceives external sounds that live in the air. Love, a soul power, which we again find as if born out of the soul-spiritual, the most beautiful power of outer human life, love – behind it stands for Troxler – I would like to say: for Troxler's pious mind – a spiritual, a soul power of knowledge. He calls it “soul feeling”, “soul sensing”. Thus faith is, as it were, the outer expression, the outer image of what lives in the full soul as hearing. Thus love is the outer fruit of what lives in the inner soul as spiritual sensing, as spiritual feeling. For Troxler, hope is the outer expression of that which lives in the soul as a higher soul power, as a higher soul sense, as a super-spiritual sense in the soul as an inner spiritual eye. It is a wonderful image, but one that is not born out of fantasy alone, but is based on real facts of the soul life that everyone can develop within themselves. A wonderful image. There stands man within the physical and the spiritual world. There he develops, in relation to what flows through the world as the Divine-Spiritual, and in relation to what flows towards him from people and other beings: faith, hope, love. He develops them because, when he carries within him that which can stand free of the body in relation to the spiritual world, because he carries within him that which hears spiritually, feels spiritually and can see spiritually. And because the human being, that which he is in his soul, has been shrouded for the time between death – or, let us say, until birth with the bodily covering – that which connects him through spiritual hearing to the world-tone harmony , with the spiritual harmony of the world, which connects him to the world, which through grace leans towards him from the spiritual, through spiritual groping, which connects with him through spiritual vision, which wraps itself for him in faith, love, hope. [And so the soul forces that confront us in everyday life and in ordinary soul education are, for Troxler, an expression of a spiritual life that slumbers down there in the soul, that weaves and lives, and that, when developed, can enter into a direct connection with the spiritual-soul life of the whole world that flows around us. In this, the Troxler feels so at home in this, one can say, temporarily forgotten link in German thought and spiritual development. Beautifully, wonderfully, he expresses this feeling of being at home by expressing himself in connection with other spirits who have striven for something similar. He says:
of man
"we could cite a myriad more similar ways of thinking and writing, which in the end are only different views and ideas in which [the one Evangelical Apostolic idea, which Paul revealed to the Corinthians, , saying: “A body animated by the soul is sunk, and a body animated by the spirit rises, for as there is a body endowed with a soul, so there is also a body endowed with a spirit.” And in this is] contained the true, only doctrine of the individuality and immortality of man. Troxler wanted a science that approached the world from all the powers of human nature, not just from the intellect and the ordinary, so-called powers of knowledge, but - but a science, a knowledge that the whole personality contributes to the world, so that in turn the whole human personality, the whole human being, can recreate or relive the world within itself. Not only in poetry, Troxler believes, but also in real knowledge it must become so. Therefore Troxler says the beautiful words in 1835:
Thus, Troxler is faced with the idea of an anthroposophy, as he calls it, an anthroposophy that is not, like anthropology, the study of that which can be observed externally in man with the senses and with the mind from which these senses seem to be drawn, but a higher kind of anthropology ology stands before Troxler's eyes, before Troxler's spiritual eye, which wants to develop an organ in man that is basically only the higher man in man, who then, to use this Goethean expression, directly recognizes and experiences that which is also higher than all nature: the higher nature in nature. Then, when the whole personality presents itself to the world as a cognitive organ, as a super-spiritual sense organ, as a supersensible spiritual organ – as a “super-spiritual sense, as a ‘supersensible spirit’, [as a] spiritual organ, so that the world comes to life in the whole personality, then, in Troxler's view, ‘anthroposophy’ arises! Thus, as if in a forgotten aspiration of German intellectual development, anthroposophy lives in the germ. Its blossoms and fruits will sprout from this German intellectual life if one correctly understands German intellectual life. And that they are intimately connected with this German intellectual life - I would like to say: every being, every trait of this German intellectual life shows it to us. It is the case in the world, esteemed attendees, that individual things that flourish in the development of humanity must live for a time, I would say, as if under the stream; the rest of the stream shows something else, something superficial; but under the stream, the deeper things live on. And so it is with what can now sound to us as a faded note from German intellectual life. Or is it not wonderful, absolutely wonderful, when we see how out of this intellectual life - it was in 1858, when a pastor, a simple pastor in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck - Pastor Rocholl, published a little book - yes a truly wonderful booklet, in which he wanted to explain how the human spirit must elevate and strengthen itself in order to be able to join that which, as the spirit of the world, permeates and flows through the world. This wonderful, forgotten little book, which in the most eminent sense is, I would say, a document of the just mentioned faded tone of German spiritual life, is called: “Contributions to German Theosophy”. It was published in 1856 by a simple pastor, in whom his theosophical reflections sprouted from his piety. But it is a little book that must be said to rise to a truly wonderful height of spiritual insight and spiritual feeling about the world, even if it may often seem fantastic in relation to what spiritual science has to say today. One need not be either a supporter or an opponent of these things, but one can simply face them by saying to oneself: they are an expression of what lives in German national culture. And so I could cite many, many more examples, especially from German intellectual life. Everywhere one would find confirmation that this striving for spiritual science is present in German intellectual life, which today has to present itself as half-forgotten – forgotten! And forgotten in such a way that it must be recognized in the course of time. It does no harm for something like this to be forgotten. Why does it do no harm? Well, dear attendees, the secrets of the world that are in nature do not impose themselves in such a way that they do not need to be explored first! Why should we believe that the spiritual history of mankind does not also contain such secrets that need to be explored first? Why should we believe that only that which - I want to say - has come to light through the favor of the destiny of the time, that only that is the essence of the progress of humanity? In the subsoil of human development lives that which can only be found by those who come afterwards; but that is how it is in the history of ideas; it is also in the history of nature. But basically, all these minds were more or less aware that – I have already used this image in relation to Fichte – that which lived in them and which was to lead them in their souls to the spiritual secrets of the world, that this was, so to speak, a dialogue with the German folk spirit itself. And now let me give you another example. I would also mention the remarkable Karl Christian Planck, from whose posthumous writings the Testament of a German was published not so long ago. Karl Christian Planck, who, proceeding from a truly spiritual point of view, sought to place man in the context of the whole of existence. The time will come when such minds will be recognized, minds that have drawn from the depths of the German soul, when there will be full consciousness of the fact that in order that the German spirit may develop fully can fully develop – also in the realm of knowledge, everything foreign, which sometimes – like Newton's theory of colors – is more readily understood by the superficial human soul than the German, for the understanding of which one must first prepare. What does the earth look like to a modern mind, which is completely sickened by the Romanesque-British-mechanistic in the scientific view, by the world view that is born entirely of the mind, which Schelling even called a mental power in 1803, what does the earth look like to such a view? Now the earth stands as revealed by external mechanical geology: mineral-mechanical. Before Planck's soul, this lonely thinker in Germany, who had his first books published in Ulm in the 1860s, speaking out of the most genuine German essence, speaking out of the spiritual, but only being recognized by the better minds, how does the earth stand before his mind, before this consciously German mind? Like a mighty organism! Yes, not just like an organism, but like a blessed, spiritualized organism that has shaped its own spiritual-soul out of its own spirit: the human being himself! For Planck, the human being, with all that lives and moves in him, belongs to the earth. One does not fully understand the earth if one does not see man as the flower of the earth. For Planck, to regard the earth as the mere geologist does would be just as if one were to regard the plant only in its root and not to go to its flower. The earth must be regarded in such a way that the possibility of human development lives in the earth itself; that the earth bears within itself something that, out of its forces, out of its being, demands man as its flower! Thus Planck's world view goes out into the great from its spirit. And how does he speak himself? In 1864, in his “Foundations of a Science of Nature,” he writes wonderful words about the earth:
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| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: The Forgotten Pursuit of Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought
13 Mar 1916, Stuttgart Rudolf Steiner |
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| That which is called a sense of duty lived in his soul with the greatest strength; and because he was so diligent, his father gave him a book for the last Christmas: “Gehörnte Siegfried” (Siegfried Horned). The seven-year-old boy, who could already read fluently, was so extremely interested in the book of the “Horned Siegfried” and he was always absorbed in the great figure of the horned Siegfried; so that one could have noticed that he had become a little less diligent at school, and it was held against him. |
| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: The Forgotten Pursuit of Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought
13 Mar 1916, Stuttgart Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear Attendees! Once again, as in my previous attendances during this fateful time, it seems appropriate to me to begin with a consideration that is related to the development of German intellectual life, and then tomorrow to come to a subject that more strictly belongs to spiritual science. And if today's reflection is to be linked to the development of German thought, then I would like to emphasize, first and foremost, that this reflection should not fall into the trap of establishing an external connection between all kinds of intellectual changes and the fateful historical facts of our time, a trap into which so many reflections today fall. At a time when the fate of nations is decided by the force of arms, the word cannot possibly intervene, meaningfully intervene, for example, in that which is to be decided by the force of arms. But this is the age in which self-reflection - including national self-reflection - seems to be entirely appropriate. Now, when it is said, from the point of view of science, including spiritual science, that certain developmental forces of such a spiritual science are rooted in popular forces, as is to happen today, one will immediately encounter, dear attendees, all kinds of objections, objections that are extremely reasonable because they are so self-evident, from a certain point of view, that they seem extraordinarily plausible precisely because of their self-evidence to those who do not want to rise to certain higher points of view. In such a consideration, one will repeatedly encounter the objection that science as such, and everything that somehow wants to claim that it is so, is said to be “international,” and that one is not entitled to claim any rootedness in popular culture. This objection can be appropriately countered only by means of a comparison. “International”, dear attendees, is also the moon, for example. It is the same for everyone; but what different things the various peoples have to say about the moon! Of course someone may object: Yes, that is in the realm of poetry. Yes, of course; but anyone who delves a little deeper into the spiritual life of humanity will notice that – even if the observations and insights relating to the external, actual things are all the same in the science of the moon – that which comes from the innermost drives of the human soul, on the basis of what man can recognize, that this is different for each individual people, and that each people penetrates more or less deeply into the secrets of existence, depending on their different dispositions and drives. And the overall progress of humanity does not depend on what is the same everywhere, but on what is incorporated from the driving forces of the overall development of humanity, which are peculiar to the innermost individual nature of each people. From this point of view, it should be pointed out today how German nationality is intimately connected with the endeavour not only to found an external science of the senses, but also to penetrate deeply into the spiritual secrets of existence – how the very search for a way to arrive at the spiritual secrets of existence is peculiar to much of what can be called German nationality. And there is another reason, esteemed attendees, for such a consideration here, because it is my conviction – not arising from a narrow-minded, parochial sentiment, but from what I believe is the appropriate consideration of the German essence that what has been advocated here for years as spiritual science is strongly rooted in the general spiritual life of the German people, that all the seeds of a genuine spiritual science are present in the spiritual development of the German people. Dear attendees, I will take as my starting point three personalities about whom I had the honor of speaking here in this city a few months ago, when I tried to sketch out the world view of German idealism. Even at the risk of repeating certain details, I will take as my starting point the three great figures who appear within the development of thought and spirit of the German people and who create a world view that provides the foundation, the background, one might say, for what was then artistically and poetically achieved by Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and so on within German intellectual life, as a flowering of the newer intellectual life in general, which can only be compared with the tremendous flowering of human intellectual life in ancient Greece: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were the starting point once again. Fichte stands before us – and I already remarked this in the lecture a few months ago – as he has something like the feeling that he has given his people everything that he has to give as the best, in terms of a world view and insights into the nature of his people, and that he has gained this through a dialogue with the German national spirit itself. Carried inwardly by the consciousness that the most German essence speaks out of his soul, Johann Gottlieb Fichte is. It is also he who, not only in one of the most difficult times of German intellectual development, found tones that were highly suited to inspiring the entire nation to rise up from oppression, but he was also [the one] who, in the way he wants to receive a world view for his knowledge, so clearly shows that he seeks this world view from the qualities of the human soul, from the powers of the human soul, which are essentially German qualities of spiritual life, German powers. He emphasized that. And that is certainly the truth with regard to Johann Gottlieb Fichte. And what is it that is so distinctly German about Johann Gottlieb Fichte's endeavors? It consists in the fact that, out of his Germanness, as he himself calls it, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was led to seek in a living way to deepen and at the same time strengthen his own soul-being, his own ego, and was convinced from the living inner that what permeates the world as divine-spiritual, illuminates and warms, can flow into this I, if it experiences itself in the right way, if it becomes fully aware of itself. So that, in Fichte's view, what speaks outside in all natural phenomena, what speaks in the course of history, but also what speaks behind natural phenomena and behind history as spiritual forces, flows into human will. The human will that asserts itself in the self is only the innermost, secret expression of the soul for that which permeates and warms all beings in the world, from the most materialistic to the most spiritual. This intimate interconnection of the experiences of the soul with the great mystery of the universe, as far as man can fathom it, that is the very German in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's striving. And if you observe Fichte as he presents himself, you can see how this is to be judged, how it is not something invented, something acquired, but how it arises from the most secret depths of his soul as his natural disposition. To substantiate this, a few details from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's life will be given. As I said, even at the risk of repeating details that I have already taken the liberty of mentioning. For example, we see this Johann Gottlieb as a small, seven-year-old boy in front of his father's house, who was a poor master weaver. We see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seven years old, standing in front of the small stream that flows past his father's house; and he has thrown a book into this stream. His father comes along and is amazed at what has happened. What had happened? Well, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a six- to seven-year-old boy and a diligent student. That which is called a sense of duty lived in his soul with the greatest strength; and because he was so diligent, his father gave him a book for the last Christmas: “Gehörnte Siegfried” (Siegfried Horned). The seven-year-old boy, who could already read fluently, was so extremely interested in the book of the “Horned Siegfried” and he was always absorbed in the great figure of the horned Siegfried; so that one could have noticed that he had become a little less diligent at school, and it was held against him. Now, within the life of the will, even in the seven-year-old boy, the soul's duty stirred: he no longer wanted to read on, nor be tempted to read on in the book of horned Siegfried. And to be quite sure, he throws the book into the stream, crying! Such was the nature of the one who, according to his own consciousness, was to create the German worldview for his time! And again, let us look at nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. One Sunday morning, the estate neighbor had come to hear the sermon. But he had arrived too late, and so was unable to hear the sermon. Some of the squire's acquaintances had hit on the expedient of sending for little Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was so good at listening to sermons that he could repeat them word for word. So they fetched nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. After he had appeared awkwardly at first in his blue peasant's coat, he then stood and repeated the sermon, but now not in a way that was only an external adherence to the words, but with the most inner participation, not only in terms of memory, but with the most inner participation, so that one saw: everything that had been spoken lived a very own life in his soul. These are the small traits that show how intimately entwined Johann Gottlieb Fichte's soul was with what he called duty on the one hand, and on the other hand with what was in him the urge to elevate his own human ego so powerfully that what willfully permeates and warms the world as primal laws could live and reveal itself in him. And how he later aimed to work when he was appointed professor in Jena is told to us by people who heard him speak and who assure us that when he spoke, his words were serious and strict, but at the same time forceful, as if interwoven with the language that spoke the secrets of the world from the nature of things themselves. His language was like the rolling of thunder, and the words discharged themselves – so someone who heard him speak and was friends with him tells us – the words discharged themselves like lightning. His imagination was not lavish – we are told – but it was majestic and grand. And so we are told that he lived in the realm of supersensible ideas, not like one who merely dwells within it, but like one who essentially mastered this realm of ideas. And it was also peculiar, for example, how he perceived his teaching profession: there was not much of what one is accustomed to from a speaker or teacher. He was in constant inner work. His preparation for any lecture or speech consisted not so much in working out the content as in trying to place himself, with his soul, in that spiritual inwardness that he wanted to infuse not only through the content of the words, but through the way in which he , he strove to work in such a way that it was not so much the content of his words that mattered as the fact that the souls of his listeners were moved by the whole way in which the spiritual was expressed in the flow of his speech. Thus, again, someone who knew him well could say: He strove not only to educate good people, but great souls. We should like to draw attention to a little-known trait that must be mentioned again and again if we want to bring to life the direct and lively way in which Fichte related to his audience. For example, the deep thinker Steffens told us that in Jena Fichte said to his listeners: “Think the wall!” – The people found that easy, of course: they thought the wall. After he had let them think the wall for a while, he said: So, and now think the one who has just thought the wall! – Some were amazed! This was an indication of one's own soul, in which that which flows through and warms the world at its deepest core should be ignited. However much he may have amazed people with this, at the same time it is also a testimony to how Fichte actually did not just want to convey spiritual ideas to his listeners with clever words. He wanted to work through words, not just in words. That is why it could happen that this man also sought to actively grasp the historical aspect of the creative national spirit. And in that he wanted to connect vividly, as with the workings of the world in general, he also wanted to connect vividly with that which is part of this world-working and lives close to him as a member of his nationality; he wanted to connect with the essence of the German national spirit. And no one can understand the meaning and the significance of the wonderful words which Johann Gottlieb Fichte addressed to the German people in his 'Discourses to the German Nation' during such a difficult period in the history of the German nation. No one can understand this unless he sees the connection between the way in which Fichte wanted to grasp the world-will in himself in his own ego, and then to carry the power that arose in his soul into action, into events, into the social and other forms of human coexistence, and into the conception of life. There he stands before us – albeit in our way – this Johann Gottlieb Fichte! And – as I said – it is not out of narrow-minded patriotism, but rather out of actual observation that these things are to be said, which must now be discussed. We need not fall into the error that the enemies of the German spirit are now falling into, who not only accuse this German spirit, but even slander it in the truest sense of the word; we can take an objective point of view within the considerations of the German spirit and will be able, precisely through this objective point of view, to recognize in the right way what the essence of German nationality is. Fichte wanted to grasp the will of the world in itself. And this will of the world was for him the bearer of what he called the duty of the world, which in turn separates into individual human duties. Thus, that which lives outside becomes for him a living being everywhere. But this also puts him in opposition to everything, as he himself emphasized in his “Discourses to the German Nation.” You can read about this in my essay in my little booklet “Thoughts During the Time of War,” which is now out of print , but will soon be reissued, [how] he, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seeks the living everywhere and is aware that he is thus in opposition to much of what he calls a dead science. And this dead science, Fichte also finds it among the Western European peoples, among the French and the British. Only, as I said, for the sake of actual characterization, not to impose anything on any people, may that be said; but it must be recognized in which relation the German spirit stands to the other national spirits in this fateful time! In my earlier essay on the world picture of German Idealism, I pointed out that Descartes, Cartesius, is a typical example of the development of the French world-view at the beginning of the seventeenth century. I pointed out how he characteristically expresses that which lives in his worldview from his nationality, in that not only the mineral and plant world, but even the animal world is nothing more to him than a sum of living — not souled, but only moving — machines! That is the peculiarity of this Western mind, that it can only grasp a dead science at bottom. In this respect, Fichte, with his living approach in all his works, stands in essential contrast to the path of knowledge and the striving of the West, [where] animals are like machines. This has continued. And not long before Johann Gottlieb Fichte worked in Germany to show life in all the facts and beings of the world from the living grasp of the secrets of the world, a descendant, I might say, of that Descartes - Cartesius - worked in France: de La Mettrie. And while Cartesius at least conceded to man a special soul from inner experience, from inner experience, de La Mettrie, in an exaggeration of this western dead science, expressed himself in his book “Man a Machine” that even that which stands before us as a human being is itself part of the world in the same way as a mere machine; that we can understand the whole person by regarding him as the result of purely material processes and forces. According to de La Mettrie, everything about a person, including all soul qualities and activities, should be understood in such a way that the person is only recognized as a machine. Of course, to a certain extent, man is a machine. This is not the essence of spiritual science, that it contradicts what such assertions have right about it; but that it can show other ways - we will talk about this tomorrow - that it can show other [supplementary] ways to this, that it knows other ways that also lead beyond the justified claims of materialism. De La Mettrie is basically, from the French folklore, one of the most significant minds of this view that the whole world of man is only a kind of mechanism. And it is interesting to consider the contrast between the Frenchman de La Mettrie and the German Johann Gottlieb Fichte. For de La Mettrie, everything about man is mechanism; for Fichte, everything is spirit. He received into his soul what he calls the will of the world, and for him, the external material world is only an internalized field for the performance of duties arising from the spirit. Hence that beautiful, that wonderful striving of Fichte to derive everything that appears to man in the world of the senses from the spirit; whereas, in de La Mettrie, everything is imbued with the goal of regarding the external physical as an immediately decisive impulse for the spiritual as well. De La Mettrie is sometimes quite witty in such matters, for he is just as deeply immersed in his mechanistic worldview as Johann Gottlieb Fichte is in his spiritual worldview. For example, when de La Mettrie says in his book The Machine Stops Here: Can't you see how the body shapes the soul? Take a famous poet, for example, whose soul can be seen to consist of one half rascal and the other half Promethean fire. de La Mettrie was a little clever in not saying which poet he meant, but Voltaire flew into a rage at this remark. When he was told this, de La Mettrie said: Well, okay, I withdraw the one half of the claim – he meant half of Prometheus! – but I maintain the “filou.” He just expressed it in his own way; there's no need to press it. But if you take the individual statements, that man is a machine – and in this he is tireless in showing how the machine-like, the heating-up [gap in the transcript] in man, as it were, how that characterizes the whole man, causes satisfaction – that is where he sometimes becomes quite remarkable. And I don't know, and I don't know with what feelings a passage from 'Man a Machine' will be read in France today! I certainly don't want to quote it as something that a German, for example, needs to share; but I would like to quote it because it is quite characteristic and because – you will see in a moment why I would like to quote it – one could perhaps ask precisely from the point of view of spiritual science: how such a soul – he did deny that this was possible – but how such a soul, more than a hundred years after its death, looks down on the praise that has been exchanged between France and England, when he, de La Mettrie, the Frenchman, in his book “Man a Machine” proves how people's characters are dependent on the way the materialistic affects them, when he says the following:
He cites this as proof that material things also condition the spiritual.
says de La Mettrie, the Frenchman,
As I said, there is no need to adopt this characterization of the French materialist; but it could not be uninteresting to recall it today, from the point of view of how perceptions change over time. If we, dearest ones present, picture the second of the spirits who created a worldview background for that which German art and German poetry created in the age of Goethe, then it is Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. And if, in the case of Fichte, one must admire above all how he conceives of the influence of the will on the ego and how he permeates himself with the awareness of this influence of the will on the ego, then in the case of Schelling it is that he establishes a science of nature and a science of the spirit in such a way that one can truly say: Wherever he wants to understand and recognize natural phenomena in an abstract way, the German soul is at work in him. This makes Schelling, in a very special way, not the opposite of idealism, but rather its successor and enhancer. In Schelling there stands, alive, created out of the German soul, a world-picture which in the best sense of the word lifts to a higher level of spirituality that which, for example, a Giordano Bruno could only inspire. In this soul of Schelling's, which was so completely aglow with the German soul, also artistically aglow, nature and spirit grew together in a unity. He could go so far as to claim that nature and spirit grew together in unity. Of course, such a thing is one-sided, but today it really does not matter that one must be a childish supporter or opponent of a worldview, but that one knows that it is not a matter of being a supporter or opponent, but of considering the striving that lives in such a person, the striving for truth, the striving for the knowledge of the deeper secrets of human existence. From a one-sided but vigorously powerful point of view, Schelling came to the assertion, to which I have already referred here in one of the last lectures: To know nature is to create nature. - Certainly a one-sided assertion, but an assertion from which one can say: It arises from a soul that knows itself to be one with what lives and weaves in nature. Again, out of the essence of the Germanic spirit, a creator of a world view who knows that the human ego can be so exalted, so invigorated, so ensouled that it expresses that which mysteriously pervades and warms the world in a spiritual way. And again, one could say, precisely because of the effect that Schelling had on his contemporaries, Schelling is also clearly recognizable. We are told – by the deeply spiritual Schubert, himself a student and friend of Schelling, – how people knew when there was a special buzz in the streets of Jena in the afternoons. Schelling was a professor in Jena, and it wasn't a student event, but Schelling speaking about what he wanted to gain as a world view. Schubert, who heard him in Jena, expressed it as Schelling appeared to him. I would like to read this passage verbatim from Schubert so that you can see how a contemporary spoke about Schelling, about this Schelling, who really, as can be seen in Fichte, grew together in his whole way, in his whole human way – with his spiritual striving – with the secrets of the world. This immediate – I would say – deeply sincere merging of the soul with the mystery of the world is the very essence of the striving of the time of which we are now speaking. [Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert describes Schelling as a young man. And] I knew, dear honored attendees, people who heard Schelling in his old age, and it was still the case that what lived in him spoke directly and personally out of Schelling's entire personality, lived as if it had flowed in from what spiritually reigns and weaves in the world. Therefore, he appeared to those who listened to him as the seer who was surrounded by a kind of spiritual aura and spoke as a kind of seer by coining words not out of human arbitrariness, but because he looked into the spiritual driving forces that underlay the world. That is why Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, a lovable and brilliant thinker, says:
It was not only that.
indeed
Schubert writes down in 1854 what he had experienced with Schelling in the 1790s
as Schubert said,
Schelling's speaking of such a world of the spirit out of such a direct intuition is what Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert wants to express. And as if the German spirit wanted to reveal itself in all directions, we see in Hegel - who, like Schelling, is a native of Württemberg; he is even from Stuttgart - we see in Hegel how he is endeavoring to experience in what the soul can experience in itself, at the same time, what, as divine-spiritual, flows through the world and can live into one's own soul, only in a third way. As if the German spirit wanted to reveal itself on all sides: Hegel tries to do this in the third way. For him, what permeates and illuminates the world is divine-spiritual thought. And as man thinks, as man illuminates thought within himself – thought that does not depend on memory, but thought that is free of sensuality – this thinking in the soul grows together with what, as thought in the laws of the world themselves, floods the world. And here Hegel establishes something — as I said, one need be neither an adherent nor an opponent, but [one may] turn one's gaze to the contemplation of the striving — here Hegel establishes something that is so very characteristic of the German national soul. The way in which Hegel strives, one could say, is the nature of mystical striving grown together within oneself with what fundamentally fills the world as divine-spiritual. But this growing together does not take place in dark, nebulous conceptions, in chaotic feelings, as many who aspire to be mystics love to do. Rather, it is a striving that is mystical in its way, but in its own way, in its very own way, it is a striving that is filled with thoughts and clear thoughts. The characteristic feature of the fundamental quality of the German striving for a world view is that one does not want a dark world view that arises from mere feelings or mere trivial clairvoyance, but one that is on the way to the divine-spiritual of the world, but which is illuminated and illuminated by clarity and light of thought. And now that is the peculiar thing about Hegel! And when one lets these three momentous figures step before one's soul – Fichte, Schelling, Hegel – one always has the feeling that three sides of the development of German thought are expressed in these three minds – sides of the development of German thought that are already becoming popular. Last time, when I spoke from a different point of view, I pointed out that a way can be found - even if the dull-witted still say, “Oh, that's all abstract thinking!” Despite the objections of these dullwitted people, a way will be found to express these great forces, these great driving forces that seek to connect the human soul with the world secret, in the simplest language, so that - one would like to say - every child can understand and every child will be able to listen. That they could be expressed in this way will be the result of the spiritual self-contemplation of the German people. But one always has the feeling that within what is expressed in these three revelations of German intellectual life, there is something deeper, a higher spirit, as it were, speaking through the three. And then one gets the impression that this is the German national spirit itself. It expresses itself in three different ways, forming a worldview with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel! And one gets this feeling in particular when one considers what I would like to call in today's reflection: a forgotten striving, a forgotten, a faded tone of German intellectual life. For the peculiar thing, honored attendees, is that the aforementioned minds, which are minds of the very first rank in development, have followers, smaller minds, minds that appear to be less significant than these three great minds, but that these smaller minds are able to produce more significant things than the great ones. There is no need to be surprised at this; every schoolboy can grasp the Pythagorean theorem. The stimulus to grasp it naturally had to come from Pythagoras! But, as I said, I wanted to express what is at issue here only in a somewhat paradoxical way; it does not apply in such a paradoxical way. But it is true that these three spirits have successors who, to be sure, cannot hold a candle to them in terms of developmental power, resilience of soul, and talent, but who, in terms of the path that the human soul must take to enter the spiritual world, the living spiritual world, can achieve even more than these three great, inspiring ancestors. And there we see the son of Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Hermann Immanuel Fichte. He is not as great a mind as his father, but he was certainly under his father's influence as long as his father lived. And Immanuel Hermann Fichte - who also taught at the University of Tübingen - Immanuel Hermann Fichte, he comes from the newer thinking, from the newer development of thought, to speak of how man, as he appears to us in the world, not only has the outer physical body, but Immanuel Hermann Fichte speaks of an ethereal body that underlies the outer physical body. And just as the outer physical body is bound by its forces and laws to the outer material of physical existence, so the etheric body is bound by its forces and laws to the element that pervades and interweaves the world. And starting from the physical, Immanuel Hermann Fichte sees at the bottom of man, as it were, a higher man in man, the etheric man; and he looks at this etheric man. And then we see how, as a successor to the greats mentioned, a spirit emerges that is truly rooted in the faded, forgotten tone of the development of German thought. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Troxler, Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler. Who knows Troxler? But that is quite characteristic of the smaller ones, who now follow and create greater things than the great ones, because the German nation pulsates through them and expresses itself in them. A remarkable personality - this Troxler! He begins to write early under the influence of Fichte and Schelling in particular: “Glimpses into [the essence of man],” he writes. In his “Lectures,” which were published in 1835, he writes in a wonderful way about how man can develop from the recognition of the sensory world to a supersensory recognition of it; how man can come - and I am now using the characteristic expressions that Troxler used - to two soul powers that lie dormant in the soul in ordinary life. Troxler says that man is not only dependent - in terms of knowing the world, not only dependent - on the ordinary sense and on the ordinary mind that is tied to the brain, but Troxler says that although man does not use these higher powers that lie dormant in him for the external world, they can be developed. Troxler speaks of two forces in the human soul, of the “supersensible spirit” and of the “super-spiritual sense”. These are Troxler's own words. But I would like to characterize the essence of what he believes with a few words that resonate with what I have already developed here in spiritual scientific terms. Troxler says that when we look out into the world here, we do not speak in such abstract terms of “nature, nature, nature” and mean plants in general, but we speak of the tulip, the lily, the clover, and so on, don't we. But the philosophers, the abstract thinkers, that is what they talk about: the spirit in general, this spirit that as a spirit - but not actually in the gray general - permeates and permeates everything. And one feels exalted when one can be a pantheist, but for the external life of nature. Troxler sees this clearly: If you go into the concrete, into the individual things through the sense, then there is a “supersensory sense” that does not merely, in general - forgive the expression - sulfur from what, as spirit, is pantheistically at the basis of all phenomena and facts and at the basis of all entities, but which engages with the concrete, with the individual reality of the individual spiritual beings: “supersensory sense”. And again: “supersensible spirit” - [meaning a spirit that is by no means bound to the brain, but] that it stands directly in the spiritual world, without the mediation of the senses and the nervous system, just as physical cognition of man stands in the bodily being: “super-spiritual sense” - “supersensible spirit”. And not in a generally vague way, but in a genuinely scientific way, Troxler talks about the fact that feelings can become intelligent, can be elevated – we will have to talk about this tomorrow, not in relation to Troxler, but in relation to the subject that will be discussed tomorrow – can be elevated and themselves provide cognitive powers. In 1835, Troxler speaks of intelligent feeling and sentient thoughts, of thoughts that touch spiritual being. This is a tone that has faded away, striving for spiritual science out of a primal German essence within the development of German thought. But Troxler goes even deeper into the human soul by saying the following: Now, certainly, here in the physical world, the soul is embodied in a body and works through the body. And the most beautiful, the greatest thing that this soul can embody here in the physical body, can express in this embodiment, is faith, that is love – the crown and blossom of the physical existence of man – and that is hope. But when these three eternal powers – faith, love, hope – express themselves through the human being's soul working through the body, then higher powers are experienced in the eternal powers of the human soul that pass through death and enter the spiritual world. Because they are inherent to the soul, which is purely spiritual and exists beyond the physical, what stands behind the power of faith - which is supreme as the power of faith but in the body - stands for Troxler in what he calls “spiritual hearing”. What a wonderful, magnificent view of spiritual knowledge, the details of which we will discuss tomorrow. What the human being does here in the body in the face of certain phenomena is this: he develops his power of faith. But this power of faith is the outer shell for what the soul has freed from the body, with which it can enter the spiritual world through the gate of death: spiritual hearing, spiritual listening. And this spiritual hearing in the body expresses itself in the power of faith. And love, this crown and blossom of life, of the soul in the body – what is that for the soul, insofar as it, this soul, carries the eternal powers within itself? Love is the outer shell for spiritual sensing. Troxler speaks of it: Just as one reaches out one's hand and touches physical things, so one can extend the feelers, but the spiritual feelers of the soul, and touch spiritual things. And that which manifests itself as love here in the body is the outer material for the spiritual power of feeling. And hope is the outer shell of spiritual vision. We see that this development of thought in Germany is absolutely on the right path, the path that has always been sought in these lectures here as the spiritual path, which we will speak about again tomorrow. Troxler feels that there is a faded tone within German intellectual life, he feels so at home in it that he talks about how one can seek spiritual reality in and outside of the human being, just as the senses and the mind bound to the senses seek physical reality. I would like to read a passage from Troxler that is characteristic in this regard. He says:
of man
continue to
And now, as I said, Troxler has before his mind what I am communicating here, contained in other writings of Troxler's, in particular in his “Lectures,” published in 1835, in which he seeks to present a world picture in his own way. Anthropology is the science that arises when man observes man with the senses, that which he combines with reason. Anthropology: the observation of the outer human being by the outer human being. Troxler presents the image of a science in which the inner human being, the human being with the awakened faculties of the supersensible spirit and the super-spiritual sense, in which the invisible, supersensible human being also observes the invisible, supersensible human being. And how does Troxler speak of this science, which is supposed to be a higher spiritual one in contrast to anthropology, which is directed towards the sensual? Let me read this to you literally from Troxler's book. There he says:
Troxler has an anthroposophy in which the spiritual person contemplates the spiritual person, as in anthropology the sensual person contemplates the sensual person. When anthroposophy is spoken of today, one speaks of the continuation of what lies in the germs in the faded tone of German intellectual life, of which I speak. And is it not wonderful, esteemed attendees, truly wonderful, when we see – and not only where one strives for a worldview in a professional sense, albeit in a higher sense, as with Hermann Immanuel Fichte, as with Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler – that not only do such things emerge there, but that they can emerge within German intellectual life from the simplest of circumstances! Is it not wonderful when we see a book published in 1856, a small booklet by a simple pastor – Rudolf Rocholl, who was a pastor in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck – who, as a simple pastor, is trying to develop out of German spiritual life into a spiritually appropriate worldview? And anyone who reads this little book, which is called 'Contributions to the History of German Theosophy', and which was written by this simple pastor as early as 1856, gets the impression that a human being is speaking here! From today's point of view, much of it may seem fanciful, but that is not the point. What is important is the impression of striving that one gets, the impression that here we are dealing with a person who is not merely able to speak in philosophically abstract sentences, but of a concrete spiritual world through which one can see. And in a wonderful way, this simple pastor in 1856 points in his little book “Contributions to a History of German Theosophy” to a lively, spiritual worldview! These are just a few isolated points in German intellectual life. One could take issue with them all, and hundreds and hundreds of examples could be given that belong to the fading sound of German intellectual life. But right now I want to talk to you about another spirit, a spirit - I would like to say - in whose local aura we actually live here. Although he is so important for German intellectual life that I – and I mention this explicitly, otherwise someone might think that I just wanted to flatter the Württembergers – I have emphasized this spirit in recent times in Hamburg, Bremen, Leipzig, everywhere that it was possible to talk about this topic: “A forgotten pursuit of spiritual science within the development of German thought.” The person I mean is Karl Christian Planck, who was born here in Stuttgart in 1819, a — I would like to say — genuine son of the German national spirit and a conscious son of the German national spirit, Christian Karl Planck, a son of the German national spirit who only wanted to create what he created as a spiritual worldview out of the most original essence of this German national spirit! Christian Karl Planck is a wonderful spirit. He strove against what seemed to him to be far too idealistic and thus selfish – for even idealism can be completely selfish – he strove against the idealism of the Germans, which he considered to be one-sided and merely a realism, but a spiritual-scientific realism, a realism that should produce precisely the power of thought development in a spiritual way, in order to penetrate reality; but not only into the outer, material reality, but into the whole, full reality, to which matter and spirit belong. This is quite characteristic - one can only emphasize individual, so to speak symptomatic aspects of his world view. How does Christian Karl Planck see the Earth from his point of view? Dear attendees, one can only grasp the magnitude of the thought that Christian Karl Planck has conceived when one sees how geologists - ordinary scientific geologists - view the Earth. There is this Earth, caked together, isn't it, made of mere mineral substance. To look at the earth in this way seemed to Christian Karl Planck as if one wanted to look at a tree only in relation to the trunk and its bark, and did not want to accept that blossoms and fruit belong to the whole of the tree; and that one only looks at the tree one-sidedly and half-heartedly if one does not look at that which belongs to its innermost being. Thus, the Earth appears to Planck not only as a living being, but as a spiritual-soul being, which is not merely material, but which drives forth from itself the flowers and fruits of its own being, just as a tree drives forth the blossoms and fruits of its own being. Karl Christian Planck strives for the wholeness of an earthly conception. And he strives for this in all fields, and not only in such a way that this is a theory, as I said, but he wants a foundation that is equally aware of the soul, so that one can grasp that which permeates and lives through the world in terms of strength, but which can also have an effect on external human conditions, on human coexistence. This Christian Karl Planck – of course, there are all kinds of people like the ones I just called dullards, and they can come and say: yes, if you look at the later writings, namely the work left behind after Christian Karl Planck's death , the work he left behind, 'Testament of a German', you can see an increased self-confidence; and then they will talk about the fact - and these dullards are right on hand with that - that he was half crazy, right! But now, it was a sad life! Planck was aware that the German essence is not only surrounded – we will talk about this in a moment – in a political sense, but that it is surrounded by a foreign essence, that it must be saved from this above all. You encounter this at every turn, which is extremely important to consider in this area. So, dear attendees, it must be said again and again: Goethe created his theory of colors out of the depths of the German essence; and out of the depths of the German essence, in this “theory of colors,” he became the opponent of an color-egg that has encircled the world in the English way: Newton's theory of colors! Today, all physicists will naturally tell you what I was told years ago: the only objection a physicist can make to such amateurishness in relation to Goethe's theory of colors is that he cannot conceive of it at all! Certainly; but the time will come when this chapter “Goethe in the Right against Newton” will be understood in a different way than it is today. In the field of the theory of colors, too, there may come that self-contemplation of the German spirit, which is so necessary and for which the present time may be an extraordinary sign, when we shall no longer forget such spirits as Karl Christian Planck, who consciously wanted to create out of German national character. Only the Viennese, the noble Viennese, has taken care of him; it has been of little use, just as I characterized Karl Christian Planck in the first edition of my “Welt- und Lebensanschauungen” as early as 1901. These things are still not being addressed today. But when the German spirit becomes conscious of its full world-historical position, and this will happen, then people will understand such things and appreciate how Karl Christian Planck was conscious of creating out of the depths of the German spirit. The following words, which he wrote down in Ulm in 1864 in his “Foundations of a Science of Nature”, show this:
the author's
- 1864, written before Wagner's Parsifal! —
Thus spoke Karl Christian Planck, who then summarized what he had to say. He died in 1881; in his last year he wrote his book Testament of a German, which was published by Karl Köstlin, his fellow countryman, in a first edition, and in a new edition in 1912. As already mentioned, Karl Christian Planck was not given much attention, even after the second edition of “The Last Will of a German” was published in 1912. They had other things to do. Those who at that time were much concerned with questions of world-view were occupied, for example, with other books from the same publishing house as Karl Christian Planck's Testament of a German. At that time people were preoccupied with the great spirit of Henri - yes, he is still called Bergson today -, of Henri Bergson, the spirit that now, in such an unintelligent and foolish way, not only defames but really slanders the German essence, the German knowledge, everywhere. Until now he has done so in Paris, telling the French all kinds of nonsense about German intellectual life so that the French and their allies could see what terrible things live in Central Europe, what wolfish and tigerish spirits dwell there. He is now to do the same in Sweden. One had, if I may use this trivial expression, fallen for him. If you look at what can at least be shown in Bergson – I pointed this out in my “Riddles of Philosophy”, and the passage in question was written before the war, as you can see from the preface itself – if you look at what can be shown to some extent in Bergson's world view, then it is that in Bergson's view it turns out that one must not start from the different beings in the consideration of the world, but that one must put man first, that man would be, so to speak, the first work, and that man, as he develops, then repels the other realms, the animal, the vegetable, the mineral. I cannot go into the justification for this world view today, although it may seem as incorrect as possible to the contemporary world view, it is nevertheless true that there is something in this world view that hits the mark in terms of reality. But I also pointed this out in my book “Riddles of Philosophy”, as I said, not prompted by the war, but long before the war, that this thought, before it took root in Bergson's mind, in a deeper more penetrating and comprehensive manner, because it arose from the depths of German intellectual life, in the German philosopher Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss, who in turn is mentioned in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”. The idea was expressed much earlier than Bergson put it forward – as early as 1882 and even earlier – forcefully expressed by Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss in his book on “Geist und Stoff”! We cannot know whether Bergson knew it from Preuss – which, in the case of a philosopher, is just as culpable as if he knew something and did not quote Preuss. Based on what has now been revealed, we can also assume and believe the latter about Bergson. For if one investigates the matter, one can show that in Bergson's books entire pages are copied from Schopenhauer and Schelling, in part quite literally! It is certainly a strange process: you ascribe to German intellectual life, and then you stand there and explain to people how this German intellectual life has degenerated since this great period, how this German intellectual life is mechanistically conducted – I have already said this once before last year. When one looks across to Germany, one has the impression of being confronted only with the mechanical. Bergson thought, as I have already said, that if the French shoot with cannons and rifles, the Germans will step forward and recite Goethe or Novalis! What Bergson has to say today is about as logical as that! As I said, I can only highlight in a few isolated examples what is really there as a forgotten tone of German intellectual life, but which is nevertheless present within this German intellectual life. It will only depend on the length of time, ladies and gentlemen, to suppress what creative minds like Troxler or a Karl Christian Planck, for example – those with limited knowledge of him may say of him: he just became somewhat twisted at the end of his life – at the end of their lives, because they had to counter the world, which today is also spiritually encircled, with words from the German consciousness, as Planck writes in the preface to his Testament of a German. He says:
The time will come when everything alien will be seen for what it is, how it has crept into German, into the original German intellectual life, and then people will reflect on what this German intellectual life is capable of! Then we shall see much more clearly the relations that exist between this Central European intellectual life and that – which is not to be reviled, only characterized – [and] that which is all around, and which is currently trying so hard to fight this German intellectual life, as I said: they not only fight the German character with weapons, but also revile and even slander German intellectual life! History will one day be able to express something with large numbers, albeit sober numbers, dear attendees, which in view of today's facts may be brought to mind; history will have to record something strange after all. One may ask: how does the area on which German intellectual life develops relate to the area - and how does the population of Central European intellectual life relate to the population of those who today not only not only use arms against Central Europe, but even, through the better part of valor, want to starve the Central Europeans – which is how it had to come about that this Central Europe is being starved! It is, after all, the better part of bravery – especially when you consider the circumstances that history will one day speak of! History will have to ask: What percentage of the entire dry land, mainland earth, do these Central European people own? It is four percent! What percentage do the small nations own today, even without the Japanese – those who face them as the so-called antipodes: 46 percent! That means that today, 6 million square kilometers are owned by those who encircled Central Europe, compared to 69 million square kilometers for Central Europe. They really had no need to be envious of what Central Europe was taking away from them. And without counting the Italians: 741 million people on the side of the Entente are opposed by 150 million people in Central Europe. That means: with nine percent of humanity, Central Europe is facing almost half of humanity on earth: 45 to 47 percent. History will one day record this as the situation in which people lived in this present time. And what forces have led to this can also be seen in the spiritual realm. In my booklet 'Thoughts During the Time of War' - which is now being reissued after being out of print for some time, as I said - you can read about how the forces have been moving in recent decades. Not only is there in the West an opposing force that expresses itself in the same way, as has been characterized, at least in very general terms, by means of a few strokes of the pen, but in the East there are opposing forces that perhaps need to be taken into account even more than those of the West. There is no need to stoop to the level of our opponents! There is no need to vilify the Russian people. If we are to exercise German self-restraint, we need not stoop to the level of our opponents. But attention can still be drawn to certain characteristic aspects that are truly indicative of the Russian character. They must be emphasized, especially in a people that, with a certain versatility and adaptability, and even, when you look at the people, with a certain peace-loving character, want to elevate themselves to intellectuals within the Russian East of Europe, there emerge, for example, the views – I have already emphasized them here in earlier lectures – the views that this Central European, this Western European intellectual life is basically decrepit and has fallen into death and that Russian intellectual life must replace this Central European intellectual life. This view took root deeply, first in those who appeared as Slavophiles; and then it took root deeply in those who replaced the Slavophiles as Pan-Slavists. And I do not want to mention anything uncharacteristic, but only to present what has really been expressed in a spiritual way - one after the other from different sides - but is the same as what has been expressed in the political sphere. For example, as early as 1829, Ivan Vasilyevich Kireyevsky, speaking from what he believed to be knowledge, said that European essence and life had become decrepit, was dying, and that Russian essence should gradually replace and supersede this Central European and also Western European essence. And then Ivan Vassilyevich Kireyevsky says:
That means that they aspire to Russia belonging to all of Europe; and then, once they have it, they would be inclined to divide it, of course, under the care of all of Russia. This is what lives on in Russian intellectual life from the 19th into the 20th century; it lives everywhere. These people, who are the intelligentsia in the East, could not really understand much of German intellectual life – as I said, let me just emphasize these things at the end! They did try to understand something like Goethe's 'Faust'. And it is interesting to read the mind of the Russian people - [Michajlovskij] - when he says something like: Yes, these Germans, they see something in 'Faust' where the human soul strives for world secrets, for a kind of redemption. But this “Faust”, he is before a deeper realization, says Michajlovskij, he is before a deeper realization, but he is nothing more than the purest expression of Central and Western European egoism, of capitalist striving. This Faust is a real capitalist metaphysician. And when he comes to speak of metaphysicians, of those people who go beyond the immediately sensual, then Michajlovskij becomes quite strange. There he says, for example, metaphysicians are people who have gone mad with fat. — I don't know whether one can find particularly much of this view in Central Europe of all places, of this sort of people “who have gone mad with fat”. But now he also counts Faust among these metaphysicians who have gone mad with fat! In short, we see that there is not much understanding among those who want to conquer first and then divide. Much could be said about this, but, as I said, I would like to emphasize this at the end, as one of the most characteristic minds of Russian intellectual life, Yushakov, in a book at the end of the nineteenth century, makes observations about Russia's relationship on the one hand to Asia and on the other to the European West - not just to the German European West, but to the European West - in the broader sense. In 1885, he – I mean this Yushakov – wrote the book, [it is a remarkable book]. There he turns his gaze across to Asia, and he sees: over there in Asia, there live peoples; they are indeed somewhat run down today, but they show the last traces of a great, spiritual worldview that once lived with them. They have tried to lift themselves up to the spiritual side of existence, but they could only do so, they only succeeded in doing so, says Jushakow, by mentioning a myth of the Orient, by uniting with the good God Ormuzd against the evil spirit Ahriman. From Turan, from the Turan peoples, there emanated that which Ahriman, as an opponent, had done against the good Iranians, to whom he also counts the Hindus and the Persians, according to Yushakov. They sighed under the deeds of Ahriman, these Asians who had joined forces with the good Ormuzd, and thus created their culture. Then the Europeans came - in 1885 he can't speak much about the Germans yet, can he. But he does speak about Europe - we will see in a moment which Europe he is talking about in particular - and then he says: These Europeans, what have they done to these Asians who had taken up the fight, who had joined forces with the good Ormuzd against the evil Ahriman? They have taken from the Asians, the goods they have acquired by fighting alongside Ormuzd against Ahriman, and have even more handed them over to the clutches of Ahriman. And with whom does Jushakow see this evil? The book is called “The Anglo-Russian Conflict” - dispute, war - and there he says, in particular with regard to the English - in 1885, this Yushakov - the following, showing how the English treat these Asian peoples. There Yushakov says: They - the English - treat these Asian peoples as if they believe: These Asian peoples are only there to
And pointing out once more what he finds so terrible about these Englishmen, Yushakov says: This will only oppress the Asians; Russia must intervene and liberate these Asians by empathizing with them. And – it is not me saying this, it is Yushakov himself: a great force will arise from Russia, a wonderful alliance will arise from Russia, an alliance between the peasant, who knows the value of the earth, and the bearer of the noblest spiritual life, the Cossack. And from this alliance between the peasant and the Cossack – and it is not I who say this, but Yushakov – will emerge, and will move towards Asia, that which will in turn bring the Asians to the pleasures of Ormuzd and free them from the clutches of Ahriman. Then he says in summary:
1885 spoken by a Russian intellectual. Perhaps this is where we have to look for the reason why Russia allied itself with England? I do not want to say that the Asians have been liberated from the clutches of Ahriman and that it has somehow come back from glorifying this wonderful alliance of the peasantry and the Cossacks. But a change has also occurred in the relationship. It is important to consider such changes and to understand the circumstances, dear attendees! I have not undertaken these considerations in order to speak fruitlessly about a faded tone of German intellectual life, but because I believe that what could be said about German intellectual life does indeed contain living seeds. They can live for a time – I would say – below the surface of progressive conscious education; but they will emerge. And we can be aware that a spiritual life that carries such seeds [...] has a future, that it cannot be crushed, not even by the kind of union that it is currently facing. Perhaps it is precisely in our fateful time that the German spirit will find self-reflection on the great aspects of its nature. And that is more important to us than the present hostile attitude towards us, and more important than the vilification of other nations. Above all, it is more important to us to realize that when the German nation turns to spiritual matters, it does not need to become unfree, but that, like the power of real thinking allied with spiritual life, it can also be free. I could cite to you a great deal of evidence that this is the most trivial of objections, that the statement that spiritual life makes one unfree and that a complicated idealist must be the one who lives in the spirit is the most unjustified thing that - if the expression is used again - dullards can object to the spiritual life. Karl Christian Planck, the Württemberger, is an example of what could and would be shown in hundreds of cases, if something like this is seen, it is characterized precisely by Karl Christian Planck. Dear attendees, “practical people” have always spoken about European politics, about what is rooted in and present in the political forces of Europe, and about what can come of it – “practical politicians” who certainly look down on people like Karl Christian Planck, people of the intellectual life, as on the impractical idealists who know nothing of reality. These “practitioners”, whether they are diplomats or politicians who think they are great, look down on them because they are the practitioners, because they, who believe they have mastered the practical side of life, look down on such “impractical idealists” as Karl Christian Planck is! But from Planck's Testament of a German, I want to read you a sentence that was written in 1880, in which Karl Christian Planck speaks of the present war. This is what he, the “impractical” idealist, says about the present war:
Written in 1880! Where have we ever had a “practitioner” describe the current situation so accurately based on such knowledge of the facts! A time will come, most honored attendees, when people will realize that it is precisely the reflection on the best forces of the German people that will lead to the fact that no more un-German entities can exist in Central Europe and [that that what the justified striving – or at least much justified striving – wants to suppress, remains in the power of the incompetent], so that Germanic nature, as Germanic nature is in its own root, would not be eradicated in the world. It is only right to speak serious words in serious times, if these serious words are based on facts and not on all kinds of crazy idealism that any amateur can find without taking the trouble to look into the facts. If you look at it, this Central European essence: you will indeed find it in contrast, in a meaningful contrast to the Oriental essence, which today stands so threateningly behind Oriental Russia; you will find it in a characteristic contrast. What lives in Asia today is the remnant of a search for the spiritual world, but a search as it was and as it had to be at a time when the greatest impulse had not yet impacted development, the development of humanity: the Christ impulse. The striving for the spiritual world in pre-Christian times was as follows: it occurs in Asia, in which the human being is paralyzed, the ego is paralyzed, so that the human being can merge into the spiritual world with a subdued and dulled ego. This was a merging as it occurred in Hinduism, Brahmanism, Buddhism and so on, but as it is never appropriate for a newer time, in which the Christ impulse has struck. This essence of modern times has emerged most profoundly in what the faded tone of German intellectual life so beautifully indicates to us today: not the paralysis of the ego, but the invigoration, the revitalization of the ego, the right standing within the ego. The opposite of what was once oriental nature, which finds, by strengthening itself inwardly, in man also the way into the spiritual worlds. The fact that the German nature has this task puts it, with its mission, into the overall development of humanity – it stands on the ground of 6 million square kilometers against 68 million square kilometers of the peoples who threaten the German nature all around it today. Let me conclude by quoting you the words of an Austrian poet, which show how deeply rooted in all of Central Europe is what I have dared to mention today, the “German essence”, and which I have tried to characterize in its world-historical sense. Let me characterize it by referring you, as I said, to a poet of Central Europe who belongs to Austria. I myself have spent almost thirty-one years in Austria and have been associated with all the struggles that the German character has also had to fight in recent times. I must be allowed to refer to Robert Hamerling; to that Robert Hamerling who, in view of the circumstances, the welding together of Central Europe, from Germany and Austria, in terms of intellectual life as well; but since he was not immune to external circumstances, how deeply such minds feel rooted in the overall Central European, German essence is shown by such statements as the one just made by Robert Hamerling, who says, “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland”. This is felt precisely by someone who is connected to Central European culture as a German from Austria. But he is also connected, such a German Austrian, to all things German. Just – I would like to say – I would like to point out a small, insignificant [poem] that Robert Hamerling wrote in 1880, at the time when the French were burning the German flag in front of the Alsatian statue, in front of the statue of Strasbourg and performed a dance during which they burned the German flag in [Paris] at that time, then Robert Hamerling wrote – I do not want to point this out as a poetic meaning – but to something special; then he wrote the words:
Thus cried out the Austrian German Robert Hamerling from the Waldviertel. But the great mission of the German people also appeared to him; in 1862 he, Robert Hamerling, wrote his “Germanenzug”. It is wonderfully described how the ancestors of the later Germans moved from Asia to Europe with the Germanic peoples - how they camp in the evening sun, still on the border from Asia to Europe; the setting sun and the rising moon are wonderfully described. And wonderfully, Robert Hamerling expresses how one person watches over the sleeping Germanic people as they move from Asia to Europe. Hamerling expresses it wonderfully by letting Teut, the fair-haired youth, watch alone; and the genius – the genius of the future German people – now speaks words of the German future to the fair-haired Teut. There he speaks, the genius of the German people, to the blond Teut, while the other Teutons sleep all around:
And this essence of the German spirit, which is a post-Christian renewal, but a deepening of the spirit out of the self, which, among others, was so beautifully expressed by the one called the philosopher of Germanness, Jakob Böhme, this essence of the German spirit, which always wants to connect knowledge and recognition with a religious trait, this essence of the German spirit in Jakob Böhme we find it expressed thus:
, he means the depths of the blue sky
This mood of the German spirit is beautifully expressed in Robert Hamerling's 1862 poem “Germanenzug” (German March), in which the blond Teut speaks words that are intended to express how the best aspirations of Asia are to be developed in Europe by the German people with heightened vibrancy. The genius says to the blond Teut:
Thus, in all of Central Europe, the German is aware of his identity as a German. And if we consider the pure facts, as we have tried to do today, esteemed attendees, one can find that one may believe, as I have said here before in earlier lectures, that one may have the confidence and the belief in the nature of the German people, that because it contains germs in the spiritual realm, as characterized, it will one day, in distant times, bear the blossoms and fruits. And those who are the enemies of the German people will not be able to remove these blossoms and these fruits from world development. As I said, the fate of outer world history is decided by the power of arms. This power of arms, as it lives today in our fateful time, is only one side of the power of the German character. The other side is the power of the German spirit, which I wanted to reflect on this evening. I would like to have achieved this with words, which could only be fragmentary in the face of the task you set yourself, I would like to have achieved this from an actual, purely objective consideration of German intellectual life: the fruitful, indestructible nature of the German is that which, in the face of the most severe oppression, enables people who are surrounded by 6 million square kilometers to say, just as people in Central Europe are able to do, from the depths of German soul and the essence of the German heart, and in so far as it is connected with German intellectual life, to express what Robert Hamerling, summarizing the indestructibility of the German spirit, expressed in the beautiful words with which I would like to conclude this reflection today:
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| 185a. The Developmental History of Social Opinion: Fifth Lecture
17 Nov 1918, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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| If this is now carried out by such means, as I have also discussed here in the Christmas lectures of 1916, then it must lead to the same results as before and as it will continue to do in the future. |
| 185a. The Developmental History of Social Opinion: Fifth Lecture
17 Nov 1918, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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Before the lecture begins, Dr. Steiner will finish reciting the “Choir of Primordial Instincts”, the part that has not yet been recited by her. I would like to say a few words in advance, which I ask you, please, not to take suggestively; they are meant to be quite factual. We have organized things so that the lecture begins in such a way that our friends in Zurich can hopefully hear it to the end or at least to a point where they will not miss anything important. And I would like to make a comment in connection with the various requests, more or less justified requests, that have come in from here and there. This is that I would not consider it in the spirit of our movement if the opinion were to prevail that, considering the content of the lectures given here, the most important thing in our movement has already been done. Our movement should be in step with the times and take into account the things that arise from the demands of the time. And you can be quite sure that we will not achieve what you believe can be achieved by taking up the content of the lectures if we do not show ourselves to be accommodating and understanding, especially towards newer artistic endeavors that are taken up within our movement. This applies particularly to eurythmy, which is meant to be a new art in a certain sense and is meant to be felt as a new art, and to be felt as a new art in relation to all similar arts. But I myself would like it to be noted that it also applies to recitation. What one actually experiences in terms of recitation when one wants to develop artistic feeling in the world is something tremendously great, something terribly sorrowful that happens to one. We have, after all, developed a certain method that lies within the spirit of our spiritual-scientific movement, especially with regard to the art of recitation. And, no, I would not want it to be seen as if it were given, well, out of a hobby of this or that person, as an addition to our cause; no, it is one of the most important things for us to find our way into a new artistic way of feeling. As for recitation, most people have the most primitive ideas. Actually, one would think that anyone can recite and that reciting is not a special art. In a way, reciting is one of the most difficult arts, because you have to work on the material very slowly and gradually. And since we are striving to emphasize the artistically shaped word, and this is essential in the future social order of humanity for such things, that this interest is not lost, that the general bourgeois morass does not gradually take hold, which is particularly evident in as it is the recitative, which everyone thinks is just a reading, we strive for that, and I ask that this not be considered a minor matter, which, because the trains go one way or the other, can be moved to any random day or night hour. As I said, what I said was not meant to be offensive; but I just wanted to express my opinion on our cause with regard to what is otherwise often seen only as a tendril. Now the conclusion of “Choir of Primordial Drives” by Fercher von Steinwand is to be recited. What I started out from in these reflections – the necessity of sensing the truth at work in the facts of the world – I could also say sensing the active reason or the active spirit – must apply particularly to the understanding that one must acquire in the age of the consciousness soul, to the understanding of this catastrophic event in which we are immersed. For basically this event originated, one would like to say, in an illusion in which people lived. I have hinted at it to you in many different ways; it could be further explained. But you have already seen that the people who were involved in the outbreak, in the last outbreak of this catastrophic event, actually moved in appearances, that they were full of phantasms and illusions, that they were far from being in reality. But it must be said that over the years, more and more of what was wrongly named, because people lived in illusions and appearances, and what was wrongly scolded, because people lived in illusions and appearances, gradually and slowly developed into that which contained the truth of the matter itself. This has already emerged to some extent and will emerge even more over the next few years. I have often pointed out that this was not a war in the old sense between one group of powers and another, which in the ordinary sense can also be ended by a peace treaty; that it was much more a matter of what will happen as a surge in the social struggles, which will take on the most diverse forms. What we have to bear in mind is that the social struggles, which will gradually emerge as the truth, have, I might say, seized the superficial appearance and are initially acting out entirely in the superficial appearance, in the illusions and phantasms that have become deeds. And we should consider what is actually alive in the final conflicts of the present, what is actually hidden in these conflicts of the present. One cannot do so without repeatedly pointing out how human thinking and imagining, even the whole conception of life, has distanced itself from what is necessary for human beings in terms of understanding the world, but which has been lost precisely under the influence of the newer development of humanity. Our spiritual science has, in the most eminent sense, the task of again accessing this lost knowledge in the modern sense and making it accessible to people for whom it is so necessary in the present and for the future. I have often pointed out the threefold nature of man and the threefold world from different points of view, and that it is necessary to distinguish at least two other divisions in man, in addition to what is usually called man, and to distinguish other divisions in what is called the world. In all these things it is immaterial whether, as I have done for certain reasons, one calls one thing so or so out of the demands of spiritual science, or whether one calls it out of hunches, as Fercher von Steinwand does in his book Der Geisterzögling (The Spiritual Pupil). Where he speaks of what you find in my 'Theosophy' as the soul world, he speaks of 'Sinnheim'; for reasons that would lead us too far afield to discuss now, he speaks of what I have called the spirit world as 'Wahnheim', but he doesn't just mean a home where the madness is, but by speaking of 'Wahnheim' he actually means the spirit world. What matters is to really immerse oneself in these things in some way and take them seriously for one's life. One can say: With the gradual dying out of Greek culture, humanity in its development from the third to the fifth post-Atlantic period actually lost a great deal, which must be awakened again in a different form, from the point of view of the new spiritual science, if order is to be brought into the social chaos that will now develop. For it must be emphasized again and again: the most important thing today is that economic continuity is not disrupted, but that, as it were, an interim arrangement is created in the field of economic life and is also perceived as such. At the same time, however, general education must be tackled in all areas where it is so urgently needed by humanity. A new social order cannot be founded on the concepts that already exist today. It is best to try to come to terms with what is emerging as the most pressing demands, to create a provisional arrangement so that economic continuity is not lost, and to ensure that a start be made at the end where the beginning is so necessary: on the way of education, of teaching in the broadest sense, on the way of creating thoughts that start from an understanding of man and into the minds of men. Because you can only start something by creating thoughts in people's minds. If only these thoughts are already there in people's minds! You are not dealing with porcelain figures, which you can place here or there as you please and impose on them any order you like. You are dealing with human beings who must first acquire the ability to understand what is necessary in the development and evolution of mankind. The starting point of the human being must lead to a gradual enlightenment in people's minds about what people are together – call it a realm, call it a state, call it a democracy, call it what you will, all these things are much less important than the matter at hand. In the minds of men, the pure porridge has arisen in the ideas of this living together, of this form of living together, so that people can no longer form really concrete, plastic ideas of why one thing is there and why another thing is there. Plato's tripartite division of the human being is based on the primal wisdom that has been acquired by humanity in an atavistic way, as I have often explained to you, but which must be regained in a fully conscious way by the age of the consciousness soul. Today, this is seen as something childish. But it is based on a very deep wisdom, a wisdom that is truly deeper than what is taught about man today at our universities, whether it be from the natural sciences, from economics or from other sciences. Plato divided the human being into three parts. Today we structure things somewhat differently, but an awareness of this threefold nature was still present well into the eighteenth century. Only then did it disappear completely. And these nineteenth-century people, so clever and enlightened, only laughed at this threefold nature in its concrete form, and continue to laugh at it today. Plato first divided man, whom one must understand if one wants to understand the social structure, into the human being who unfolds wisdom, knowledge, the logical part of the soul, that which we attach to the head organism as its knowledge to its sense and nerve organism. Plato then distinguished the so-called active, irascible part of the soul, the courageous, brave part of the soul, everything that we associate with rhythmic life. You only need to read my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Soul Riddles). Then he distinguished the man of desire, the human being, insofar as he is the source of the capacity for desire, everything that we now know in a much more perfect form; Plato was able to link this physically to metabolism, spiritually to intuition, as we understand it in our threefold structure of the higher faculty of knowledge: imagination, inspiration, intuition. It is impossible to understand what is going on in the social structure of humanity and how social structures express themselves if we do not get to know the human being according to this threefold nature. For man is not so in the world, in which he is as a member of the physical plan, that he develops these three members equally in relation to their inner, intimate formations and qualities, but he develops them in different ways; one develops one part more, the other develops the other part more. And it is on the basis of the different ways in which the parts are developed that the classes are formed, as they have emerged in the course of the development of European humanity with its American appendix. It can be said that the part that mainly considered the rhythmic life and organized education, living together, and social views in such a way that the rhythmic life was what was primarily felt as human, is the estate or class that developed as the old nobility. If you imagine a social structure that arose from the fact that people mainly felt themselves to be chest people, then you have what constitutes the group of the nobility, the nobility class. If you imagine those people who preferably develop the head, the wise part – now I am also saying something that may reconcile you with some of what I have said – those people who were united in the class , who mainly develop the brain, the wise part, the part of the senses and nerves, that is the group that gradually united in the bourgeoisie. Those human beings who today form by far the greatest number, who have preferably united in all this – but you know that intuition is spiritually connected with metabolism – that has its source in will, in metabolism, that is the proletariat. So that in fact human beings are socially structured in the same way as the human being is structured in detail. Now, of course, one must recognize the special nature of the human association. And in this respect, everything still remains to be done for the consciousness, for the conceptualization of human beings, because in relation to what I mean now, modern humanity in particular has the most distorted ideas. This modern humanity has even gone so far as to imagine that the human being is less perfect as an individual than as a member of a state, that the human being gains something by becoming a member of a state, and it will be very difficult to get the idea into people's heads that the human being gains nothing by integrating himself into a state organism, but loses. He also loses by integrating himself into estates, into classes. That which the individual develops is not promoted by the fact that it lives in the social structure in the majority, but is instead paralyzed and suppressed. Thus the traditions and ideas of the aristocratic caste suppress the highly individual powers of the chest man. Not that they promote them, but they suppress them, they paralyze them. That is the point. It is important to realize that, although the group of noble human beings includes those whose souls primarily long to embody themselves as chest people, the external association on the physical plane paralyzes what would come out of the chest person. It would take us too far afield to show you this in detail. But just suppose, for example, that what is honor is developed in a very individual way out of the chest man; but the external concept of honor is precisely there to create the exterior so that the interior can sleep. All aggregation is actually there to constitute something externally so that the internal, original, elementary can sleep. I need not remind you of Rosegger's saying, which I have often quoted: One is a human being, more are leaders and the many are animals. Man is indeed what he is, out of the elementary forces as an individuality. I tried to show this in a scientific way in my “Philosophy of Freedom”. All that the modern proletariat strives for is not suited to bring to perfection that which is elementary in it, but to suppress it, to push it into the background, to paralyze it. And today is the time to recognize this, when you can only get ahead if you see through things. Because the instinctive forces - I have often said this - no longer work. And the bourgeoisie - now comes the other side of the coin - its union has mainly existed to paralyze wisdom. People have already come together in the bourgeoisie whose souls have striven to educate the head people; but especially the so-called science of the social bourgeoisie has brought about a structure that has made the head person as headless as possible. And he proves himself more and more in the face of the onslaught of modern times as a truly headless creature. Now, on the one hand, this human structure has developed in a pronounced and significant way. But the connection of understanding had been missed; one could no longer form ideas about the way one lives among people because one had lost the understanding of the threefold human being. It would be necessary, for example, and something like this would have to happen before one can set about founding a new social order somewhere or at some time: it will be necessary, for example, to study everything that is connected with the impulses of the chest-man. And only when we study this in a way that corresponds to reality, not in the way that theosophists think, only then will we have a true science of how labor, the fruits of labor, wages, rents, capital, means of production, and so on, must be arranged in the world to meet the instinctive demands of modern times. As far removed as possible from that which is officially called political economy, which is actually only a game with concepts and words and which will hopefully soon disappear from the scientific scene, as far removed as possible is that from what comes out when you really study the human being as a chest of drawers, where it comes out what must be demanded with regard to the distribution of labor, the means of production, the land and so on, as a requirement in the development of mankind. Likewise, we must study what is connected with the head, the sense and nerve man in the broadest sense, again not as abstractly as the theosophists imagine, but we must study in all concreteness what man is in the sense world as a spiritual creature with other people together in society, with other people together in any structure, be it state or other. It must be studied from the nature of the nervous and sensory human being. The study of the nervous and sensory human being gives a real social science. And finally, the study of the metabolic human being, which is connected with intuition, only this gives a real view of the development, of the becoming of the human being, only this gives a historical view of the development of humanity. Now you can easily understand that it was impossible to have a historical conception of the development of humanity without really understanding the microcosmic human being, nor a real view of the distribution of economic values, because one does not study the chest human being; nor could one understand how the individual human being stands within human society, because the head human being, the human being of nerves and senses, is not studied in his reality, in his complete connection with the cosmos and his historical development; for all these things had actually been lost from view. For centuries no conception of these things has been formed, or if so, it has only been laughed at. Therefore, above all, chaos arose in people's imaginations and then in reality. Now demands arose from that class of people who had been shaped by modern life, which was no longer based on outdated ideas but was moving forward. The modern proletariat has emerged from the modern machine, industrial system, from the mechanization of the world. Demands developed from this because this modern proletariat came into conflict with those who could provide the machines as means of production. You see, the impulses for the world view of this proletariat came from the metabolic human being. But of course the human being is in contact with the other links. From this, views were formed that radiated from the other links impulses of the threefold human being; views were formed that were a necessity on the basis of the proletarian human caste. Views were formed with the help of what the bourgeoisie had established as science. For the proletarians had inherited only the science of the four or, what do I know, six faculties, to which they had now grown, that the bourgeoisie had created. With purely bourgeois science, the proletarians gradually tried to form ideas in the age of the consciousness soul about the social structure in which they lived. Of course, that could not suffice. Out of all the astute and other fundamentals, but again, because he was a child of his time and had no idea of the existence of a spiritual science as we think of it, the proletarians created a science precisely as an expression of what the instincts of the proletariat develop out of themselves in an elementary way, the Karl Marx mentioned yesterday. The proletarians treated this Karl Marx differently than the so-called greats were treated by the bourgeoisie in the last centuries. He really penetrated the entire thinking of the proletariat throughout the civilized and industrialized world. He dominated the thoughts of the proletarians and developed these thoughts into a doctrine. Yes, for the first time thoughts have become facts, because the thoughts of the bourgeoisie are not facts, they have grown out of illusions, even if people believe that they are based on real positive science. But the thoughts of Karl Marx have become facts in the proletariat and live as facts and have an effect as facts, just as facts have an effect, with all the contradictions of life, with all the contradictions that arise in life, with all disharmony, with all that is fertilizing and destructive and paralyzing, with which life arises. In the instincts, in the subconscious of people, more is at work, especially in our age, than in their consciousness. The tripartite human being was not included in consciousness; but from instincts, and therefore insufficiently and, while fertilizing reality, converting thoughts into deeds, but insufficiently converting them into deeds, is how Karl Marx founded his doctrine of “political economy”. It was already expressed in 1848 in the “Communist Manifesto”, of which I spoke yesterday, and then in his book on “Political Economy”, which appeared in 1859, a year that was so endlessly fruitful for all kinds of achievements, at least at the end of the 1850s. Another of the many innovations of the late 1850s was Karl Marx's book “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.” To mention other things: it appeared at the same time – and there is an inner connection – Bunsen's spectral analysis. In the same year, more was also known about what is called Darwinism, as well as about what, on the one hand, had an endlessly stimulating effect but, on the other hand, also led to confusion in psychology: Gustav Theodor Fechner's Vorschule der Asthetik (Aesthetics: An Esthetic Primer), which then led to a psychophysics. This also belongs to this year; many other things could be mentioned. There are inner reasons that this occurred out of bourgeois science. For Hegel is also bourgeois science, profound bourgeois science. But out of bourgeois science, Karl Marx tried to understand the social structure of human beings. The way he understood it made sense to the proletariat. But they had forgotten the most important thing: the knowledge of the threefold human being. This must above all enter into people's heads before any kind of fruitful progress can be made, not theoretically, but by really living into the situation that the present has brought about. You see, one can say: the world also confronted Marx in three parts. This physical-sensual world also confronted Karl Marx in three parts, and so he sought to unravel it in three ways: firstly, through his theory of value, the theory of surplus value — I have already mentioned some of this to you — secondly, through his materialistic conception of history, and thirdly, through his view of the socialization of man. It is remarkable how, in the minds of millions of proletarians, the tripartite social structure is reflected in the mind of Karl Marx and in the minds of millions of people in the way I have explained it, , it is interesting to see how the three-part social structure is emerging, without people having any real, solid, fundamental ideas about what a human being lives as an entity and how he enters the world as a spiritual being. Insufficiently, instinctively, the impulses of the human being at the heart of the human being, the rhythmic human being, in whom the actual reservoir of what then becomes work in social life is, insufficiently incorporated into the ideas of Karl Marx and thus into proletarian ideas, the so-called surplus value theory developed. Let us look at this surplus value theory from a different point of view than we have done recently. The main question for Karl Marx was: How is value, be it in the form of use-value or exchange-value, actually created in the modern economy? — It is, of course, not true — as Karl Marx pointed out — that in the modern economy what a person receives as remuneration, for example, is really related to what he achieves. Such illusions can only be entertained by those who do not understand economic life, who believe that a person acquires what corresponds to his work, his performance. That is not the case. What a person can acquire in modern economic life, as it has developed over the last four centuries, especially in the civilized world, is not tied to any relationship between acquisition and work, but to the circulation of goods. What a person can acquire depends to a large extent on how values are produced by bringing goods to market, selling them and receiving a certain amount in return. That is what creates economic value. Not labor as such directly creates value today, in economic terms, but what one gets for it on the goods market when it is completed and put into circulation by the most diverse factors. So that in the modern world, when it comes to the creation of economic value, the only question that can be asked is: What is the constellation on the goods market for one thing or another? – This must be thought of in the broadest possible terms; but if it is thought of in this way, it is like that. Now Karl Marx came to express what was instinctively felt by those people who were pushed into the proletariat by their life circumstances, by their karma. If the market value of the commodity alone really produces the value ratio for everything that exists today and is the basis of every acquisition, it cannot be true that a worker is in any way actually remunerated for what he does as work. For what one does as work has no value in circulation in the national economy, but only what has become a commodity has value. And here Marx arrived at the formulation of what the proletarians felt out of their instincts: the formulation that what matters in the modern economy is not valued as a service, as an activity, as a creation, but that this too is valued as a commodity, as the commodity “labor power”. One buys, as Karl Marx put it, one buys cherries, one buys shirts, trousers and so on, but one also buys the commodity of labor power. The person who has the means of production, who owns the land, sells cherries, sells grain, sells trousers or skirts, sells machines; the person who does not have the means of production, who is without property in modern economic life, can only bring what his labor power is to the market. He must go there himself. But only that has a real economic value, which comes into consideration as the commodity value of his labor. What does that mean? It means that one must think about how to pay for goods. You pay for goods first according to what is necessary for their production. What happens to the goods on the market afterwards is something completely different. You pay for goods first after they have been produced. Right, you go to the cherry tree owner, and he sells the goods to you; then you ship them and so on, and it is only in the circulation process that the value of the goods is determined. But the commodity labor power must, so to speak, be bought at its source. The person themselves must carry it to the person who wants to buy it. The person must always be present. So what can the compensation, the purchase price of the commodity labor power consist of? Yes, according to what the production costs are. One has to think about how many hours of daily labor are necessary to maintain a worker with regard to his labor power, that is, to maintain him so that he is nourished, clothed, and so on. Then one must consider how many different other people have to work, how much time they have to work; let us say, for example, that five or six hours have to be worked to procure so much food, so much clothing and other necessities to equip a worker with labor power so that it can be bought and put on the labor market. The bourgeois pays compensation for what is necessary to maintain the worker, to produce the commodity of labor power. He pays for what is necessary to enable the worker to eat, clothe himself, and so on, to meet his family needs and the like, if any. For example, five to six hours of work are necessary for this. However, the worker sells himself, and by selling himself, he enters into the necessity of working longer than, say, five to six hours, through the general process of circulation. There he works for the one who is the entrepreneur. That is where the surplus value is generated. Only because labor power is a commodity in the modern circulation process and because you pay for the commodity according to the production costs, then the worker is made to work longer than he would if he only worked to earn what he needs, only then is the surplus value generated in modern economic life. This is something that Karl Marx used Hegelian dialectics to process in his books. This is something that made a lot of sense to the proletariat because it is a science that takes the human being as a whole, so to speak, because it not only takes the theoretical mind, it also takes the moral sensations, in that the worker knows that, politically speaking, he is being told: You are a free man – but because only commodities have value in the modern economy and only commodities are paid for, his labor power is made into a commodity in the modern circulation process. This makes him look at the surplus value that is generated not only through labor, but also through mere speculation, through entrepreneurial spirit, whatever. But something else is emerging as a result. This leads to the development of an awareness on the part of the worker, entirely in the sense of Marx: All the talk that something can be achieved through fraternity, through charity, through a sense of benevolence, these are always empty words, they must be social phrases. For he sees what has emerged: that labor, his labor, has become a commodity, he sees this as a necessity in modern development, and he says: Now, no matter how charitable, however fraternal, however philanthropic his attitude, he cannot help himself – historical development compels him to – but buy the commodity labor power at its production costs and then supply the other thing, in its own way, to the circulation process. Therefore, it is of no value for any social thinking to preach morality, to speculate on impulses of fraternity, of philanthropy, because none of that matters. The entrepreneur cannot do otherwise than to reap the added value. These are the things that are extremely important: that the proletarian has been drilled, so to speak, that it does not depend on the morality or immorality of entrepreneurship that he is in a subhuman existence, but that this is an historical necessity, but that it must also lead to class struggle with historical necessity; that is to say, there is no other way than for those who belong to the proletarian caste to fight those who belong to the owner caste, because they are opponents by the historical process itself. Therefore, it cannot happen otherwise than that a different order will come about through the powerful social struggle of the proletariat than the one that the last four centuries or the previous historical development has brought to the fore. What the proletarian wants is so infinitely important, it is making history, making history out of ideas, by saying to himself: Since it has come to this in modern economic development that only commodities are paid for, and I as a proletarian must sell my labor power as a commodity, but the others have something that does not come from the labor power , but comes from the surplus value, so I want to participate in the surplus value myself, I do not want to abolish the entrepreneur – because the entrepreneur has been brought about by the necessary historical process – but I want to become an entrepreneur myself, I want to take possession of the means of production as a proletarian, as a partner, in a communist way; then I myself am an entrepreneur as a partner. Only in this way can the class struggle be eliminated, when I no longer have the entrepreneur next to me, but am an entrepreneur myself. Moving on to the next historical phase, that is what follows from Marxist doctrine for the proletarian, making history, even if it can be presented more or less Kautsky or more Lenin or Trotsky, which are different shades. But what I said about the one thing that is recognized in its correct basis is true: namely, to build everything on the human being, on the human being who is in rhythm, it is the basis of the consciousness of the modern proletariat. It is something that should be seen differently, seen with enormous power and become action. And there is no other remedy than to see through the matter; there is no other remedy, since the bourgeois education with all its university system has failed to shed light on these things, since it does not even have the scientific methods to shed light on them, there is no other possibility than to create a provisional arrangement so that economic continuity is not lost, and to work for enlightenment from below. That is the starting point. Education from below can only happen if the knowledge of the threefold human being is brought into the present-day human being. But of course, if you speak to the modern proletarian today as I speak to you now after eighteen years of preparation, you will not be understood by him, but laughed at. You have to speak to him in his own language. To do that, you must, of course, first have a command of the subject matter and then have the good will to respond to the language that is understood there. You see, this theory of surplus value is constructed in such a way that it is truly, I would say, a closed Hegelian dialectic. The curious thing about it is that when Karl Marx died in 1883, in the 1880s, bourgeois economists, as they later called themselves, social scientists and so on, were very much inclined to say: Well, socialist agitator has no scientific value; scientific socialist! — They usually say it with a certain buttery mouth, with the buttery mouth of the expert who has mastered the subject. Well, that was the case back then. But this bourgeois science did not go into the subject in depth, at most people like Sombart and similar people, they took up some of it, they let themselves be infected. The actual bourgeois public was not interested in the feelings and thoughts of the proletariat; at most, they allowed it to be presented in plays, as I told you. But the university professors, who are barren themselves, accepted some of it and then took it over lock, stock, and barrel. And so you find in many books that come from university professors all kinds of Marxist ideas, sometimes criticized, but all unfruitful, because the things are not seen through, because above all, one did not have the will to evoke a real knowledge, a real understanding of the threefold human being. If one had this understanding, then one would come to the fundamentals, which are necessary to understand, and what I can only hint at to you, but of which an understanding must be evoked. For only when this fundamental understanding sets in with regard to two points will the greatness of Karl Marx's theory of surplus value and the proletarians appear, but only then will it also become clear where the correction has to be made, where that has to be made that is based on reality, not on Marxist illusion. But it is still difficult to find understanding for this. There are, of course, the most diverse offshoots – even if they are sometimes opponents – of the modern proletarian ethos. One such offshoot, from a completely different background – forgive the expression – came up against me in the 1890s in Berlin in the person of Adolf Damaschke, in the land reform. This Adolf Damaschke had followers, and a number of them were also our members, members of the Theosophical Society. They wanted me to enter into some kind of discussion with this Damaschke in front of them. They were our followers who had formed a group of land reformers at the same time, and Damaschke was supposed to present his thoughts on one issue or another. I then said, after Damaschke had presented his views: “You see, the situation is as follows. What you have said will certainly appeal to people, because it is presented with a certain economic clarity – I didn't say crystal clear, but that was the idea – and it sometimes seems to point in the direction I indicated yesterday. You do not want the means of production, like the Social Democrats, but you do want the land, and specifically the land on which houses stand, and thus, to a certain extent, nationalize the entire land communally, creating a sense of community in land ownership, in order to bring about a solution to the social question. Some of what you have said is correct, but the whole thing suffers from a capital error, which of course must escape you if you proceed merely theoretically and not realistically. What you say is not right, but it would be right under certain conditions. For example, if you could expand the soil elastically where two houses adjoin in a city, and a third house was to be built, so that one house stands there and the other house there, and in between you would create space for the third house – if the soil were elastic, then everything would be right. But since the earth has a certain area and is not elastic, does not grow, the whole land reform theory is in fact wrong. This is the most important objection from this point of view. I can only hint at it. Damaschke told me at the time that he had never noticed this before, but he promised me that he would think deeply about the matter. I have not heard anything further, and I do not know how deeply he has thought about it. In his subsequent writings, nothing of this could be seen. He continued in his old way and developed all his land reform ideas in this direction. There were always people who said: Yes, the Social Democratic idea does not work, but land reform is something that can certainly be realized. On the one hand, it must be studied in its broader scope; for social democracy also regards land as a means of production. It would only be that if it were elastic. The means of production that can be regarded in an elastic way, which is not taken into account, can be regarded in the way that Marxism does, as means of production that can also be produced, or created, if necessary. If you need machines, you can make them to produce this or that, and if you want to make more machines, you can put more workers in place; there is elasticity there. The moment you apply the same way of thinking – and it is the way of thinking that matters – to land, it fails because of the inelasticity of the land. That is one point where one must intervene. The other point where one must intervene is that social Marxist thinking must necessarily fail because it is formed entirely out of the economic process and only thinks of the means of production, which it thus wants to administer communally, in the economic process as they are as real means of production, as means of production for manual labor. This eliminates the infinitely important position that the spiritual has in the whole process of development, including the social process of humanity. For the spiritual has the peculiarity of having a minimum of means of production. For example, the only means of production for me is the pen. You can't even say that paper is a means of production, because that is an object of circulation. Only the pen is a means of production in the Marxist sense. But through this, the whole impulse that must come from the spiritual, and which would be paralyzed if the world were arranged in a social Marxist way, this spiritual process must be eliminated by Marxist thinking. That is the other pole. The Marxist way of thinking fails at two poles. In the middle, it is firmly established. In the middle, it is dialectically extremely astutely developed; at two poles it fails. And it fails in the most radical sense: it fails radically at these two poles. First, the surplus value theory. It fails because of the inelasticity of the land. It fails because of the inelasticity of land, in a much stronger sense than one might think. Because the entire population statistics in a limited territory do not come into their own economically, because the land remains the same, even if, for example, there is a population increase. This causes changes in the scale of values that cannot be taken into account by mere Marxist thinking. Furthermore, what cannot be taken into account in mere Marxist thinking is that which, in turn, cannot be increased or decreased in the economic process itself. It is strange that the two things are at the extreme ends of the economic process: what is in your head, excuse me for saying so, and what is on the ground. What lies in between is actually subject to the thinking of the means of production, as it is in Marxist thinking. But the soil depends on the weather, on all sorts of other things, it depends on its extent – so, as I said, it is not elastic. That is at one pole. I can only hint at it as a kind of result. If I were now to talk to you about it, to prove in all its details that Marxism must fail precisely because it must fail at these two poles, I would have to talk a lot first. That might be so, but it would lead too far for the moment. But it can be proved. And that is the most dangerous thing in the present social and economic experiment, that no account is taken of these two poles, that everything that arises from them corresponds merely to the industrially conceived Marxist-dialectical thought-images and only reckons with industrial concepts, with that which leaves out of account, on the left and on the right, land and that over which there can be just as little arbitrariness: talents and ideas. Consider what depends on them! The economic process comes to a standstill if you do not integrate the land into the right social structure and if you do not integrate human inventiveness, in the broadest sense, into the right social structure. Everything comes to a standstill. You can only overexploit what already exists for so long. You can exploit what is already there in terms of existing economic values. But one day there will be a standstill in what is already there if one does not really think realistically, does not develop what I always call realistic thinking, if one does not think realistically but only illusively, namely, again, only considers what is in the middle and does not consider the total, the full total again. From this, however, you can see that it is necessary above all to provide clarification. And I can assure you: the function of land and the function of intellectual activity are more difficult to understand in the economic process than what Marxism has contributed in a beautiful and astute way to the economic process in terms of insight. But for the rest, everything still remains to be done. Go peddling, and see how many people you can interest in these things today! But there is no salvation in the future without an interest in these things. And they can only be properly studied if one has the principles of spiritual science. Just as today bridges can only be built if one is a mathematician and has studied mathematics, so social structures can only be understood if one forms the elementary concepts from spiritual science. That is what must be borne in mind. Do not forget that it is necessary, above all, to create schools and educational opportunities everywhere, so that what people need to understand in this area in order to live together can enter their minds. you create only illusionary structures with all the best will in the world, with all the possible Lenins and Trotskys and Scheidemanns and all the more obvious ones that perhaps are not allowed to be named here, structures that can be plundered, but which are not real structures. It is better to create with the awareness that it is a provisional arrangement, a continuity of economic life, to regard it as a provisional arrangement and, above all, to work towards the disappearance of the bourgeois education system with its lack of understanding. You may consider this to be somewhat difficult and inconvenient, but it is a necessity. You can either want humanity to descend into chaos or you can want this to really happen – you cannot consider it inconvenient – and now we really have to start at the right end, namely first with the radical enlightenment of people. That is where the effort must be directed. Above all, it must be clearly understood that, since Karl Marx basically only took up bourgeois thinking and developed it very astutely dialectically, Karl Marx also evokes inadequate ideas about the other two areas. One can only gain an understanding of the way in which people come together with other people – coming together arises from interest, from feeling – and one can only gain an understanding of how the social structure must form in this sense by studying the nerve or head man. But the bourgeoisie, which is particularly organized around the nervous-mental type, has so paralyzed him that all real, enlightened spiritual concepts in this area have actually disappeared. Well, they have actually disappeared quite visibly, one can say, they have disappeared so vividly: you can still see pictures today from the eighteenth century – the attitude has carried over into the nineteenth century, albeit in a less obvious form – where people delight in how man is originally a social being, pictures: princesses, queens, in short, all sorts of people who hardly exist today, they dance in shepherd's costume, indulge in the warmth and fraternity that the original elementary human being develops in social life. You cannot imagine anything more false than all these things, which only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries then took on different forms. But the lie and illusion and fantasy dominated thinking to such an extent that what I discussed from this side, the theory of surplus value, asserted by Marxism as an expression of the proletarian mood, really strikes like a bolt of lightning: oh what, wishy-washy all the talk of brotherhood , of man's standing within society, of one person belonging to another; look at how, precisely in relation to industrial life, sociability has developed, which prevails between the mine owner and those who work in the coal mines in continuous labor and have to work so and so much. Consider the human and convivial relationship between the entrepreneurs and owners of sulfur mines in Sicily and the people who work in them in this life-destroying labor, and whose surplus value they possess. — In this peculiar way in which man works for man, in which man needs man in human life, Karl Marx has truly worked in a way that the proletariat can understand. And this was understood in turn: that the effect of person to person works above all in the differentiation into classes of the propertied and the propertyless. And programs emerged with the consequence: if this is to change, it can only change through the struggle of the proletarian class against the bourgeoisie, because that is a necessity. Of course there will be many who are mine owners, and when the sufferings of the miners are presented to them in the 'I' theater, their hearts will be full of compassion, full of sympathy, perhaps even their eyes will fill with tears. But that's not worth anything, says the proletarian, because this compassion does not help these people; they can't help it, they are not personally, individually to blame for it. Man is not an individual being; man is, through historical necessity, placed in a certain socialization - not sociability, as the idealistic conceptions of the eighteenth century were, but in a socialization that cannot be other than through a struggle. It is a necessity to understand this. There is no question of personal responsibility, because it is a necessity to promote a historical process. This is what Karl Marx drummed into his proletarians and what was so little understood in the bourgeoisie. And the third was the materialistic science of history. But before we consider this third point, we can ask: What is important if we want to understand socialization? — For Karl Marx did not grasp what man is as a nervous and sensory being: that he is an individuality, that he is more than any society can give him, as an individuality. This is what I had to counter in my Philosophy of Freedom, which touches on the fundamental nerve of the social question precisely on this point; and this is again what must be countered to Karl Marx's theory of socialization, where the individual disappears completely, just as the function of land and spiritual labor in socializing the means of production must be countered. For again, it can be shown that all social process must come to a standstill if it is not supplied with the sources that come from human individuality. This is important, but it will only be possible if we know the source of human impulses, human sensory and nervous beings. Again, it is necessary to start with the social work. We can only deduce what is fact from the other thoughts. Karl Marx, with a beautiful instinct, coined the wonderful word: “The philosophers have so far only interpreted the facts differently; but we want to create facts, change the facts.” And he wanted to change the facts from his thoughts, wanted to create thoughts that could become facts, and he achieved it; but he only achieved that the proletariat itself, the way of thinking, the way of feeling of the proletariat is there. But what lives in it? The thought-offspring of the bourgeoisie live in the proletariat, the inheritance of the thoughts of the bourgeoisie. This is what the proletarian must understand above all, that he cannot make progress on his way with his demands without a real spiritual-scientific knowledge of man, and that this can never come to him if he retains bourgeois science. He will understand if he is enlightened in the right way and has the opportunity to be enlightened in the right way. This possibility must be created. And finally, the third thing is to recognize the extent to which the human being is the being that he is from his metabolic process, which is precisely connected with his most spiritual being. This is where a real conception of history arises. But because Karl Marx had no idea about the threefold human being, because he was forgotten, the conception of history became a mere materialistic conception of history. He correctly recognized that what people carry within them as their instincts is more important than what they delude themselves about as their illusions. This comes from the classes. He said to people: Look at him, the bourgeois! Don't condemn him, he hasn't become that way because of anything he can be blamed for, but in the historical process the class of the bourgeoisie has simply been formed; as a result, he lives in his class in a very certain way. This life in his class determines the direction of his thoughts. Different thoughts are produced in you. You cannot help what you think; he cannot help what he thinks, because all these thoughts arise from the subconscious, namely from the class structure, from the social structure. Do not judge the matter morally, but recognize the necessity that he cannot help but oppress you, that he cannot help but be your opponent. Therefore become his opponent. Through class struggle, create for yourselves what is necessary. All three points culminate in the class struggle, which was presented as the great demand of the new era. Karl Marx took up the dialectic in a truly Hegelian way. He said: “As proletarians, we do not want anything that we invent, but rather what development itself teaches us; we just want to get the wheel rolling a little, so that it rolls on consciously. All that we want would come by itself, as entrepreneurship increasingly comes together in societies, trusts and so on. By putting state impulses at its service, the business community is already ensuring that it increasingly sets itself apart as a class from the proletariat, that the haves and have-nots are increasingly sharply opposed to each other , but in such a way that all this becomes more and more uniformed, that there are fewer and fewer individual property owners, but larger and larger property-owning societies, which would necessarily be brought about in this way by the proletariat. Property is organizing itself. Above all, it was the spirit of struggle that dawned on the proletariat from Marxist dialectics, from Marxist science. And this fighting spirit had been alive for decades in the antagonism between the proletariat, which felt itself to be merely the proletariat across all national and other borders, and between the entrepreneurial class, which increasingly socialized and finally grew into imperialism. So that gradually modern life more and more lost the old political form and that, of which one still confusingly had the illusion that they were old state structures, became the new imperialisms, which are actually nothing more than the embodiment of that which confronts the proletariat as entrepreneurship. And in the most eminent sense, those imperialisms include the one that imagines itself to be an old political entity, but which has gradually become entirely an entrepreneurial organization: the British Empire; and the United States belongs to that. You can read about this in the older writings and lectures of Wilson, who proved all this to be true, because in this area, in terms of perception – I have already shown it from a different perspective – Woodrow Wilson is truly an insightful man. So that is what, one could say, actually underlies this war, so-called war; that is what lurked and disguised itself in the so-called antagonism between the Central Powers and the Entente. This has been developing for decades. It had to come to expression in some way and will continue to do so. More and more the struggle will take on the form of expressing the antagonism that has emerged between the entrepreneurs and the proletariat of millions in some disguise. In the sense that the Western states want to remain states, one can only be called a state if one is used in some way as a framework for entrepreneurial endeavors, capitalist endeavors; and opponents and opposition will emerge where the consciousness of the proletariat prevails. This smoldered, glowed, glowed, glowed - what does not quite glow glows - glowed under what extended over the world as a great lie, as the lie of the so-called world war; it used all that now sounded like a catchphrase: “Freedom of nations, right of self-determination for every nation”. “Freedom of nations” sounds nicer than saying, ”We need a market in Eastern Europe, because where there is production, there must be consumption.” Perhaps it is only said if one belongs to a very secret lodge that rules the whole situation from the rear power realms. On the outside, the whole thing is embellished with beautiful-sounding phrases, dressed up by coining words that people can be outraged by, about all sorts of monstrous deeds and so on. But what is behind things as truth will show itself to people; it will show itself that what springs forth from the sum of untruthfulness is what is behind it and what can only be cured through such a deep understanding of reality as is possible only in spiritual science. For that which has organized itself in the old way, whether consciously or unconsciously, and that which organizes itself in a new way out of the spiritual, participates in the process in a peculiar way. We live in the age of the consciousness soul. The consciousness soul is the primary agent in all that is being united in the British Empire community in the English-speaking population. You know that I have developed in detail at other times; so that is the main contemporary issue. But this contemporary issue must actually be clothed in entrepreneurship, in imperialism. It must become world domination in terms of external material. If this is now carried out by such means, as I have also discussed here in the Christmas lectures of 1916, then it must lead to the same results as before and as it will continue to do in the future. That is what is the real driving force behind the scenes of history, the other is something that is easy to talk about. But the spread of world domination, and specifically materialistic, material world domination, that is what is actually going on — it is being promoted by one side, while people are revolting against it on the other. Everything else is just a cover. For that which has formed itself in a different order, which is less in keeping with the times in the process of human development, must also find its development in a different way. Thus it comes about that the Romance element, the most excellent bearers of which, if we disregard Spanish, which is corrupt, we see Italian and French, the Romance element, which has come from quite different conditions, inherited from the earlier cultural period, from the fourth post-Atlantic cultural period, into the fifth, will come to its decline, to its downfall, precisely through the victories it has now won. But you can also see this from certain things that can show you just how spiritual science is derived from reality. You see, I have explained to you what French unity is in the form of a state. I am not talking, of course, about the individual Frenchman, but about the Frenchman who feels French insofar as he belongs to the state of France, that state of France that attaches importance to possessing Alsace-Lorraine and so on. There is a great difference here. Nothing that is said is directed against the individual person. It is not directed against anything at all, but only characterizes. But it is directed against the extent to which a person belongs to this or that group, which always makes one worse: “Oaner is a Mensch...” (a person is a person...) because there are usually many nations. Well! So keep in mind that we are in the midst of a threefold development. French is particularly there to develop, at the stage at which it is now possible, what we call the mind or emotional soul; we have already spoken about this. This mind or emotional soul, in its particular development, falls within the years of a human being from 28 to 35, as you know: astral body until the age of 21, sentient soul until the age of 28, mind soul until the age of 35, from the age of 35 to 42 consciousness soul, then comes the spiritual self. But now developmental currents are running through each other. You know that the individual human being is today in the process of developing the consciousness soul, that is, he is only really introduced to the forces that his age can give him when he lives beyond the age of 35. Before that, he must learn, must be educated in it, but one can never learn even that which one's age then gives one unless one lives beyond the age of 35. This is unpleasant for those who want to postpone the voting age, but it is simply a developmental fact. So one can say: this development is particularly favorable for participation between the ages of 35 and 42. It is at this time that the forces that can really consolidate develop for that which is most in keeping with the times in the age of the consciousness soul. This could naturally lead to an understanding of how the consolidation of that which makes the British Empire great can come from English-speaking men and women between the ages of 35 and 42 – even if Lloyd George remained a twenty-seven-year-old, but Lloyd George is not a typical person for that, but a typical person for the humanity of the present, not for Britishness. In contrast, the whole of humanity is developing in such a way that people, as they become younger and younger, are currently in the process of developing the period from 21 to 28 years, the sentient soul. These two currents now run into each other in the forward development of humanity. You see, the period from 28 to 35 years remains fallow, barren. But this is precisely the period allotted to the development of France: the years from 28 to 35. What you can investigate spiritually is so strongly expressed that even the infertility of the French population is expressed in it, the outer physical infertility. At the same time, this is a perspective indication of what could otherwise be shown in numerous occult researches: that the French people are no longer able to maintain what is the inheritance of Romanism out of the confusion. Only that which flows to Italianism from the fact that Italianism is currently in the process of developing the sentient soul, 21st to 28th year, that precisely through this renewal Italianism acquires the hegemony of the Romance peoples, insofar as they still have a task in the future. This is so important that we have to keep such big things in mind in the European process, so that we know, for example, that something that has emerged from impulses that are completely different from the present ones, such as the after-effects of Romanism in European culture, is indeed in a state of decadence, but that the Italian people are coming to hegemony. Perhaps someone will not grant me the right to speak about this 'tragedy'. But that is also the one thing that can be said with a certain tragedy: that the French have not committed themselves to the French cause either way, but have done everything possible to promote that which will make the French essence disappear from the process of development of modern humanity. In the East, Russian Slavdom awaits; it can wait because it is destined for the future, all that will emerge from the confused chaos of what is developing here and there. Such things are the other thing that must emerge from a spiritual-scientific penetration of the facts. What I would like to point out again and again through such considerations, which in the near future can again be increased if possibilities are still opened to us, is to decide to see things in their truth, to really go out a little, not to stop at the illusions and phantasms, but to see things in their truth. Spiritual science is something that not only gives abstract concepts, but can also familiarize us with reality. Then, when we become familiar with reality through spiritual science, we will not overestimate all the strange concepts with which the spiritual life, and also humanity, has nourished itself in recent times. These concepts have been formed in many cases, I might say, in a Luciferic-Ahrimanic way, in that people have nourished themselves in their thinking and imagining with feelings from the most ancient times, which they have carried forward in time. People cling so tenaciously to inherited concepts, and one can feel deep sorrow when one observes this clinging, this rigid clinging to inherited concepts in people. Even in this time people have spoken of “great generals”. In a certain field, a real idolatry has been nourished for people like Hindenburg and Ludendorff, a real idolatry, as if this old hero worship could still have any meaning in the whole context of the catastrophe that has taken place! All the abilities that won battles in the past, or the inabilities that led to battles being lost in the past, no longer had any significance in this war process. You either won or you didn't, depending on the material, material in the form of cannons, material in the form of ammunition, material in the form of people, that was available at a particular place and if you had it or the other side had it; depending on that you won; or depending on whether one or the other had a more or less effective or ineffective gas. Victory or defeat depended on these factors. To that extent, the personal skill of the strategist was no longer a consideration, as it had been in the past. And here, too, we come upon a terrible untruth in the judgment of one man or another. You cannot believe where it is necessary today to correct the concepts of truth and untruth. Our time is so deeply entangled in empty phrases and untruthfulness, in illusions and phantasms. Therefore, it must be emphasized again and again that we must escape from this entanglement in these ideas. And these ideas are present especially in the field of education. Starting at the top and going down to the lowest level of schooling, it is necessary everywhere: medicine and theology and jurisprudence and philosophy, and all the other subjects that have been added at these universities, then the intermediate school system and everything else, that is what was suitable to undermine the ground of truth and what has lulled people most of all with regard to this undermining of the ground for truth. It is indeed extremely difficult to find understanding on this point, and there is no salvation if one does not find understanding on this point. Perhaps it is easier for me to have gained understanding on this point than for many others. For I do believe that it has done much, much harm in the present time, that that way of thinking has prevailed for so long and has really taken hold of broad masses of the human population, that way of thinking which consists in the parents already taking care of the young person – I will now leave out how they take care of their daughters , because that would be a chapter in itself. He just has to get a government job, where he, even if he gets it late – well, the old man has to help out there – then he rises from one five-year period to the next without having to do anything, rises from one five-year period to the next in his salary. He is provided for life because he is entitled to a pension. This lulls him into a certain carelessness. It is only a minor matter compared to the fact that you also know how to do a wide range of things: if you sit in one place long enough, you will receive the Red Eagle Order, 4th class, then 3rd class – that's in addition. That's what happens when you're at the first gate of life, the thing that can make you so carefree because it takes you out of the struggle for survival. Proletarian theory, Marxism would say: That is quite natural; anyone who subconsciously generates the ideas that arise from this sense of security of being entitled to a pension in a bourgeois way cannot understand the person who, no matter how much he destroys what is present, as a proletarian destroys nothing but his chains. — That is a constant saying in proletarian circles. But you can feel how ideas are really formed in their forms through the way you are involved in the social process. You stop taking an intense, interested part in the struggle for life, on which the only thing that depends is a prosperous, fruitful life, when you know that you will get a raise every five years and a pension of so and so much, and will be provided for for life. As I said, I don't want to talk about the daughters. But the way of thinking is by no means different in the social process with regard to the placing of daughters and women in social life. But I believe that a great deal depends on it. The facts are now such that they are beginning, perhaps precisely by shaking up many things that were firm, that were firmly believed, to hammer other ideas into people's heads. Some who have been able to wait patiently for the changes that have been taking place year by year may look into the future with some uneasiness when the next quinquennium comes around. Perhaps the experience, as I said, that I have never consciously sought any professional or other connection with anything to do with government employment or even just in any way with the state, has helped me to gain understanding for these events. It always disgusted me to have anything to do with anything smacking of the state. I do not boast of it, for it is of course a great failing; one is then a Bohemian. Now, how did Harlan call me for the nineties in the feature pages of the Vossische Zeitung? “An unsalaried, free-thinking scholar of God.” Someone I was friends with back then and who described me in such a way that his description still fits in the present day; he described many things, and he meant that I didn't fit into the then society of bohemians any more than he did. He called me an unpaid freethinking scholar of God, which I already was at the time, and which did not really fit into the circle of that time. But the whole of society at that time – I am now putting this in parentheses, don't be offended, we know each other too well for you to misunderstand me – the whole of society called itself the “Verbrechertisch” (the “Crooks' Table”), and under this title a number of people were grouped together who set themselves the harmless program, if one can speak of a program, of annoying the philistines. Jokes are there to conceal seriousness, and yet they are often only the expression of seriousness in a self-educating way of dealing with life. But the day before yesterday I spoke at the end about how, out of current events, Germanness must come to Judaism and Greekness in a certain way, that Germanness which will initially be eradicated, at least as a German essence, through brutalization, right? But it will play a role. Greece was also eradicated, Judaism was eradicated in a certain way. It will play its role. And it is just right for me that through the recitation of the “Choir of Primitive Instincts” one of the most pronounced minds of modern times, Fercher von Steinwand, who speaks so truly from German folk tradition, and also from that German folk tradition that thrives particularly in German-Austrian areas, has now has presented itself before your soul in those concrete, vivid ideas that will show you that a certain task has been given precisely for this Germanness, which never had a real talent for an external state structure; that this Germanness has certain possibilities of good self-knowledge precisely in such excellent individuals as Fercher von Steinwand was. Today, one feels compelled to say so many different things to the Germans. Especially in the last four and a half years, one has always felt compelled to say this and that to the Germans from the outside. We have experienced it again in these days, haven't we? I believe it was Lloyd George, I mean his Excellency himself, of course, who, after so many other speeches, has once again spoken about all that is depraved and immoral about Germanism, as if there were no possibility that precisely within this nationality the things that this nationality needs in terms of self-knowledge could arise. In this respect, Fercher von Steinwand is an extremely good example. You see, I told you about the lecture that he, Fercher von Steinwand, gave in 1859 about the Gypsies to the future King of Saxony, then Crown Prince Georg, to ministers and many generals – remember that: to many generals, because that is militarism, isn't it –; to many generals he gave this lecture. He said various things about the gypsies, because the gypsies seemed to him to be somehow related to the role that the German people will play in the future. 1859, isn't it, it's a strong piece of self-knowledge how he imagines it on the one hand, I read it to you the day before yesterday, but I will characterize it for you from another side. And to do that, allow me to read you another small piece from this Gypsy lecture by Ferchers von Steinwand. So imagine that Fercher von Steinwand speaks, speaks about what is favorable and unfavorable for the further development of the German people, before a crown prince, before ministers and before generals, imagine that he speaks in the following way: "In our mountainous country, there is a custom, which is otherwise praiseworthy, that immediately before bedtime, the head of the household kneels at the table and recites a prayer known as the rosary. This prayer is said aloud by the entire family, including the servants, in the present paragraphs, and its duration fills an hour, which is not to be doubted. Yes, it can be considerably extended by a pious housewife with the addition of Our Fathers. For this reason, it is not unnatural for the longed-for sleep, but postponed by continued holy “prayer for us”, to sometimes hastily take hold, interrupting the tired worker in the middle of the loud “Ave Maria” and repeatedly shakes the kneeling position of the same, and so on, until the eloquently begun piety has dragged on in a stammering manner to the end. This time, the master of the house himself was seized by the gentle hand of nature, and his “Lord, have mercy on us” had gradually lost all its usual emphasis. I myself knelt in a corner of the room, nodding more to the sleeping place than to God. Outside the open door of the room stood silently the black-browed horde” – there were gypsy visitors, in fact – ”sometimes revealing crystal-white teeth. The prematurely-withered face of a young woman, who was quietly turned towards the entrance, was shimmeringly illuminated by the glow of the fireplace. The white in her eye seemed to fade away in increasing drowsiness. The pale yellow enamel at the glazed, circular edge of the eyeball stood out all the more clearly, a delicate pale yellow enamel that characterizes every gypsy eye and is sometimes only discoverable to the painter. All our annoyance with the strangers had vanished, for tiredness dominated the house. Nobody except the gypsy mother we already knew, who had planted her knees in the middle of the floor, had followed the prayer with a brave voice, and piety was about to suffer a general defeat. Suddenly, the old woman, twitching like a viper, rose up with terrible force from the floorboard, stormed with rapid-fire superiority on the flagging prayer leader and tore the beaded symbol of the rosary from his limp hand, spraying up in cherubic rage. All devout mumbling stopped as if before the blare of the Last Judgment, and the room seemed to tremble, struck by the holy earthquake. Then the pythically inspired woman leaped or sprang into the middle of the circle of worshippers; her face had taken on a Gorgon-like transfiguration, her voice intensified to a thunderclap. Stretching both arms towards the sky, she cried: “But Lord, you will spew out of your mouth those who are lukewarm.” The dim light fluttered on her coppery, black-ringed forehead, and from beneath it, like the lightning of the archangel Michael, a fiery blaze flared up. Never before had I been told with such fiery urgency that wavering and undecided people are the worst and most worthless of the Creator's creations. What immense religious wealth this woman possessed, I thought, and how enviable! Poor student that I was, I had not yet learned what a difference there is between possessing spiritual content and expressing it. I did not yet know that it is enough to feel a few rudiments of content within oneself to possibly make an excellent interpreter of serious spiritual content. I once sat under a maple tree that was growing. But it did not make that clear with any drumming. However, it cannot be denied that inner nobility is necessary to be a good drummer. If it were not so, then the greatest noisemakers and braggarts, the most skillful gesticulators, would have to be the greatest creative spirits among mortals, and boldly expansive actors would have to be the most profound playwrights and modern Germany would have no lack of excellent tragedies. Where would such a reflection be more appropriate than in a history of the Gypsies? That is the nature of such self-awareness, which does not need to be preached to by the world, which could judge for itself that what existed in 1870 has come into decadence. But if one understood the issues, one did it as I did in my book on Friedrich Nietzsche, where I quoted Nietzsche's words: “Exstirpation of the German spirit in favor of the ‘German Reich’.” I could not have the book on Friedrich Nietzsche reprinted during the war because of what it says. Fercher von Steinwand continues: “The air is heavy and sulphurous from the oaths that have been sworn on constitutions for eight decades. How many states are there in which these oaths have not been broken many times over? Our minds are deaf from the blasts of the trumpets, the cries of jubilation with which we welcomed the heavenly benefactress, freedom.” You would think that Fercher von Steinwand was talking about Wilsonianism and Entente views! "But count the mortals who are man enough to be free! Where are there still four walls that do not resound with quotations from Schiller's writings? But where, in which hut, in which palace, under which star of the German zone, does something of the poet's energetic soul, of his fiery vein, of his stubborn urge for a great goal, still live? Who would have the courage and the gift to make his mistakes? The 'tribunes of all European empires totter under the burden of eloquence and science, through which order and happiness are to be introduced into human society. That is why I said yesterday: At least in Central Europe it will have come to pass that some contribution will have been made to breaking through the lie. Where it has triumphed, it will continue to live. "You of little heart! What is the thought that you have thought? Who among you is a Mirabeau? How ardent is your image of the happy state, if it is not already cold as a corpse before you announce it? Tell me, which of you is greater than the moment? How many scoundrels have you intimidated, how many noble-minded people have you encouraged? How many silent praises do you not hear in the complaints? Does misfortune not speak louder than ever? Is it really so terribly difficult to grasp the idea that every human being, without exception, must be educated from childhood for freedom, order and happiness, and even for the art of educating themselves, educated far less through reasoning than through love, patience, strictness and painful sacrifices? Is it really so terribly difficult, instead of paying for making a noise, to pay for a fruitful activity? Is it really so terribly difficult, instead of obeying the bayonets, to serve the mild, all-equalizing reason?“ ”Imagine a state” — please, there are the generals! -, ”imagine a state of the first or second order. Imagine, in addition, an insightful minister” — the ministers are sitting there too — ”who does not count as his own glory what harms or dishonors a neighbor; in a word, a minister who uses two-thirds of his enormous military coffers for the education of the lowest classes of the people — what do you think? Would not such a minister, within a few years, bring about the most tremendous change in all conditions, for his own benefit, for the benefit of his people, for the benefit of his lord and king? Would such a minister not change the character of world history in less than half a generation? I would have the heart to say “Yes” again, for it matters little to me whether some polished war hero or corpulent model official calls me a foolish ideologue. Meanwhile, take comfort, you Gypsies! You are not alone in your kind; you are not threatened with extinction: new reinforcements are flowing to you daily from all directions of life! It is a view of life that has taken firm root in the impulses in which it is based on real nationality, which in a certain sense justifies one to make such assertions as I have done and as I do not want to make them out of some mere impulse, but as they can be proven piece by piece. We will meet again next Friday at 7 p.m., and then we will continue our discussion. |
| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: The World View Of German Idealism. A Consideration Regarding Our Fateful Times
19 Feb 1916, Kassel Rudolf Steiner |
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| Two traits, wonderfully real in this sensitive beauty, we can hardly find them in any other mind: the six-year-old son of a simple, rural man is first of all a decent student; and because he is such a good student, he is given the book “Gehörnte Siegfried” by his father as a Christmas reward - he can already read. It soon becomes apparent that Johann Gottlieb Fichte is becoming somewhat inattentive in his studies; he is reproached for this. |
| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: The World View Of German Idealism. A Consideration Regarding Our Fateful Times
19 Feb 1916, Kassel Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear attendees! For many years now, I have had the honor of giving a lecture here almost every winter, as in various cities in Germany, on topics in the field that I dare to call spiritual science. In our fateful time, however, it will be appropriate to turn our attention to the events of which we are all participants and witnesses during this time. This seems all the more appropriate to me, esteemed attendees, as it is my conviction, flowing not from a dark feeling but from spiritual science itself, that precisely what spiritual scientific world knowledge is, is intimately connected with what the German people and the German soul have produced as the world picture of German idealism, which revealed itself most impressively and powerfully out of this German soul at the end of the eighteenth and in the first half of the nineteenth century, but which has continued to work and has worked into our days. In the true sense of being a study of spiritual life, spiritual science wants to be a continuation of what the natural scientific world view has achieved for the outer world of the senses. But to mature the spirit for such an understanding of the spiritual foundations of the world, this world view of German Idealism seems to me – as I said, I say this from the knowledge of the spirit itself – but this world view of German Idealism seems to me to be the actual root and the actual source. Therefore, allow me this evening to present a kind of reflection on this world view of German idealism and its influence on the present, its effect on the whole of time formation and on the world-historical development of humanity. Of course, this world view of German idealism is born, entirely born, as we shall see, out of the essence of German nationality, and in this respect one could deny it a certain comprehensive validity according to the saying often heard today: All knowledge, all science must actually assume an international character and becomes untrue to itself if it proves to be in any way shaded by the aspect of one nation. As plausible as it may seem at first, I would like to say, as self-evident as such an assertion appears, one must still say that from a deeper world view point of view it is misleading. It seems self-evident because it is, I would say, the most extraordinary thing that can be said about science and penetration into world knowledge. When we speak of the internationality of knowledge and insight, we are actually saying no more than that the sun or the moon are the common thought of all people. That is what they are; but the way in which what people have to say about the sun and the moon speaks from the souls, from the hearts of people, this way, it is different according to the talents, according to the spiritual directions and dispositions of the different peoples. The most diverse talents are involved in order to make this knowledge fruitful for human spiritual culture in one direction or another. That is precisely what is at stake: the extent to which what can be known can penetrate into all human spiritual development in a healthy way. But in this the talents, the soul directions of the different peoples have their very distinct specificity. Otherwise, how could it be otherwise meaningful to understand that one of the most German minds, Goethe, when he had begun his journey through the world, in order to see not only what was offered to him in the contemplation of art, but also what nature could offer him. How else could it have been possible for him to write to his German friends from Italy: “After all the natural phenomena and facts I have seen in public, I would now most like to take a trip to India - so said Goethe - not to discover it, but to see what I have discovered in my own way. The way in which we view what is given to everyone is what matters when we consider the actual impulses and driving forces for the progress of humanity as a whole. Now it is precisely possible for spiritual science to look at the souls of nations in a truly cognitive way. To do so, however, one must start from a spiritual-scientific insight that - like so many insights today - may be regarded by some as paradoxical, perhaps even fantastic. But what I will say next about the souls of different peoples from a spiritual-scientific point of view is something that may still seem fantastic and paradoxical to the present day, but which human knowledge wants to incorporate, just as certain physical and certain scientific knowledge has incorporated. If we consider the soul today in the light of current psychology, we see everything that swirls and lives in the soul in terms of impulses of will, feelings, perceptions, thoughts and ideas as a unity. Of course it is; but that does not lead to any real knowledge. Nor does one come to a real understanding of the soul itself, as one might come to a real understanding of light if one did not perceive its interaction with material existence, with material things that confront it, in such a way that one would believe that one would emerge from the light the different shades of colors: the reddish-yellow nuance on one side, the green nuance in the middle, the bluish-violet nuance on the other side - just as the physicist, in his interaction with material existence, must observe these color shades, structured from this one light , and how he cannot come to an understanding of the deeds of light, as Goethe says, in any other way, one cannot come to an understanding of what the human soul actually is if one does not, I would say, also divide it into three shades of its being. And so we call the first shade of the soul being - corresponding, as it were, to the red-yellow shades of light in the rainbow - [...] then the human sentient soul. The human sentient soul contains everything that often wells up unconsciously and subconsciously from the dark depths of the soul. Everything that lives in a person without them immediately having an intellectual grasp of it – their passions, their desires and so on, as well as what gives people this or that temperament – all this wells up in the sentient soul. But in this sentient soul is contained at the same time, in a certain way, if also, one might say, in a natural way, that which can be called the eternal powers of the human soul, which pass through births and deaths and can reappear in repeated earthly lives. Let us distinguish – as it were, as a parallel phenomenon for the greenish shading of the light – let us distinguish the so-called intellectual or emotional soul. This is the part of the soul through which man acquires an overview, a rationally considered overview, a level-headed overview of that which would otherwise live indeterminately and unconsciously in his soul as affects, as inner tremors. And as the third shade of life - corresponding to the color blue-violet in the light - we speak of the consciousness soul. It is that through which the human being is most connected, from his soul existence, with the surrounding physical world in which he finds himself; it is that which contains within itself the most temporal, the most transient, power of human being; it is also that through which the human being appears individually as a personality, through which he puts the world to use, through which he puts that which he deliberately lets flow out of the subconscious soul life into practical life. And just as the one light, the one sunlight, lives in the different colors of the rainbow, so the one I, the one, self-aware being of man, lives in the totality of the shades of the soul. And just as the light appears as the unity of that red and green and blue, as the unity of everything, so the self appears, so the personality, the individuality of man, the actual I appears. I cannot say more today in the way of an introduction to this scientifically well-founded fact, law of the soul, because it seems appropriate to me to apply this law of the soul to the different national souls, insofar as they are spread over European intellectual life. We have to say that [...] what can be called the soul of a nation is just as much a reality for spiritual science, something alive in itself, not just an abstract concept that summarizes the characteristics of a nation, but something alive in itself. You will also find the necessary references for this in our spiritual science literature, especially in my Theosophy. And here we must say that the individual nations differ so much that in one nation more of the shades of the sentient soul comes to the fore, in another nation more of a different shade of soul life. In this way the European peoples are structured according to their folk souls – not the individual people, but to the extent that these individual people belong to the folk soul – they bring to manifestation that which lives as the shade of the rainbow in the individual folk souls. In this context, the approach that I would like to say is justified by spiritual science shows us that when we look to the south, to the Italian people – to some extent this also applies to the Spanish people – when we look to the Italian people, we see that the folk soul of the Italian people is expressed through the shades of the and everything that can be observed in the various expressions of this Italian national soul, in its good and bad aspects, is connected with the fact that the Italian national soul is dominated by the shades of the sentient soul, that everything springs from the sentient soul. Today, we only want to emphasize the best qualities of the Italian people that come from their emotional soul; but it will be seen that the Italian people, insofar as they appear as a national soul – not as individual human beings, as I said – must have a certain one-sidedness because their expressions and revelations come from the emotional soul. Yes, if we take the greatest – I will refrain from the development of art, the actual visual arts, but they could very easily prove exactly what I have to say – if we take the greatest – Dante, Giordano Bruno – we learn, precisely when we immerse ourselves in them, that what they have achieved in a gloriously designed world view is created entirely from the sentient soul. One only has to read Giordano's work to see how he has become a great inspirer. When one delves into what he has brought, it is like an expression of feeling for the world view that man can create out of the abundance of the world's phenomena. Feeling lives in this one of the greatest [spirits of] Italians, in Giordano Bruno. I would just like to hint at this. It is particularly important to look at the French national soul from the point of view that has been gained. This French national soul shows itself to the spiritual-scientific gaze in such a way that it actually sets the tone for the chiseling of the intellectual soul. Everything in the French spirit that appears great but also one-sided stems from the fact that the intellectual soul finds particular expression there. And today we shall mention only that which has influenced the development of an actual world view. The greatest Frenchman in this field, under whose influence French world-view life still stands today, was born at the end of the sixteenth century and lived into the seventeenth century, namely Descartes or Cartesius; but it is precisely in this Descartes or Cart esius, the man of world-view who emerged at the dawn of the newer development of world-view — one can see how in him in particular everything lives that can lead from the intellect to a world-picture. His saying, “I think, therefore I am,” has become famous. Thinking, that is, that which lives in the soul of the intellect, is now based on the being of the soul itself. The human mind still has the peculiarity of building the world as if it were externally mechanical. It is indeed the peculiarity of the mind that it is unable to penetrate the inner vitality of the world, that it shrinks back, as it were, from the inner vitality, and that it wants to construct everything. But this is particularly evident in Descartes, in Cartesius. And now we will draw attention to one particular way in which this world view of Descartes came about: I would say that it is the one-sided expression of intellectual life. Descartes looks at the world; and after he has given himself over to doubting everything (and this doubt is also, in turn, an expression of the intellectual way of looking at the world), he comes to saying to himself how he can form a world picture that has sensuality. Indeed, this world view becomes such that everything mechanical only wants to be included in it. The world appears as a great mechanism. And it is characteristic of this – I would say genuinely French – world view that Descartes explicitly states: we can only perceive soul in ourselves, as humans. Animals are moving machines. Descartes denies that animals, or indeed all of nature except for human beings, have souls. Animals are automatons. Thus, for Descartes, the whole of nature except for human beings is like a complicated machine, and animals are within this complicated machine. Indeed, it is precisely the rational mind that recoils from the living. And this intellectualism, it remained in its one-sidedness, and in the end it led to the fact that precisely from France and right up to our times the impetus has been given to establish the actual materialism of the world view, of mechanism, one might say, the world view, Dear attendees, one could very easily reproach the one who describes the relationships of the folk souls in this way today: Yes, you are describing the feelings of the present time, because the war has brought about a situation in which what we ourselves regard as our world view, as the source of our national identity, is being vilified and even defamed from all sides in Europe. And so we are now trying – I would say – in this time to either justify or avenge ourselves. Now, esteemed attendees, there are listeners here who know that what I am saying about the different national souls in these difficult times of European events is something I have said again and again for many years, long before this war, and not only to Germans but also to members of other European nations. I consider this to be a firm result of spiritual scientific knowledge about European conditions. The mechanistic nature of this worldview has been so ingrained in French culture to this day that it has allowed what was French, materialistic or mechanistic world view to emerge. And today we may recall how Goethe, even as a young man, confronted the French mechanistic worldview from his German consciousness, which seeks to take account of the living soul and the vitality of the worldview. He said: They bring us this mechanical play, a mechanism only, a worldview as if the whole world were just a game, a real automaton! Yes, if only what one sees in the world of phenomena could at least be explained to one! These are moving atoms! But then, when he has explained how the atoms collide, he withdraws and leaves the whole world unexplained. This is what repels Goethe, even as a young man, about the one-sidedness that arises from a purely intellectual development of a world view. And basically, to this day, we can see how this mechanistic world view affects what we seek in a worldview, a folk worldview. For only a few individuals have tried to work their way out of it, for example, the famous philosopher Bergson, I don't know whether one can still mention him today, after the beginning of the war, after the mood of the French, or whether the word Bergson is now taboo as his name in France, I don't know. It is precisely Bergson who, since the war broke out, one might say, has continually presented his French to his French in the most savage manner against the German essence, namely against the German world view, and has managed to that it is precisely the Germans – who were great in a certain way, especially during the period of German idealism – but who have now fallen so low in the present day, [the Germans] have become a nation that only trains itself mechanically and in a machine-like way. The Germans have become a nation that itself represents only a kind of machine! Bergson probably thought – Bergson, who formed this view of the German people because the Germans opposed the French with cannons and rifles – he probably formed this view because he believed that the Germans will oppose the products of what he calls the “greatness, the great age” of the Germans to the French cannons and French rifles by reciting Novalis and Schiller and Goethe, because that is all they would rely on, right! Well, this Bergson, he has in a sense worked his way out. But I showed in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” - which was not written during the outbreak of the war, but appeared at the very beginning of the war and was finished long before - that those of Bergson's thoughts that are reasonably plausible could be found long before that in much more intense and much more thorough form in the minds of German thinkers! But quite apart from that, Bergson always wants to be seen as the one who brought the French a world view that went far beyond the mechanistic and materialistic view of things. Now, this world view, how did Bergson himself present it to the Germans in his lectures, to these Germans who are said to have come down so much since the time of their greatness? It is just a shame that it has been possible to prove, especially in recent times, that Bergson copied entire pages – not just repeating, but copying – from the German philosopher Schelling, the German philosopher Schopenhauer, and so on, and so on! What the Frenchman is able to counter as a higher world view to the German, whom he defames, esteemed attendees, is something he himself has copied! It is necessary to bear these things in mind more often in the present if one wants to have an understanding of the mutual relationship between the European peoples and what is now being said about this relationship by the opponents of this German essence. And, dearest attendees, when we turn our eye to the British national soul, we find that this British national soul bears the very shade of the consciousness soul. And in every detail of this British national soul, one can see how it expresses this consciousness soul, how the British, the Englishman in particular, has the intention of putting what wells up from his inner being into the service of practical life alone. This is what English culture has in itself, without taking into account the development of the whole world view. Starting with Milton and Bacon, it can be seen everywhere that a world view was actually sought that was to be placed only at the service of the actually immediately tangible life. But I will refrain from that now, I will only point out that in the very last period, this English national character, insofar as it really arose from the British national character, has led to a very peculiar direction: truth, that is what a person who has a sense of truth regards as something that is intimately and genuinely connected to the soul as a reality. Ladies and gentlemen: The English – and in this case in harmony with the Americans – have developed a world view that they call pragmatism. What is this pragmatism? Well, this pragmatism, dear attendees, is characterized above all by the fact that it treats the truth, the concept, the idea of truth itself, in a highly peculiar way. Truth as something that connects the soul with reality, with spiritual reality, is something that this pragmatism, this primeval English product, does not recognize at all. Man perceives truth as an idea, as an idea - in the sense of pragmatism - purely for the purpose of dealing with the external world of the senses, with external tangible reality, in order to intervene in it. In the sense of this pragmatism, truth is a concept that proves useful for practical life. One could say that truth is a tool for usefulness in the very outermost sense, including scientific truth, when understood in this way. Truth has no independent significance, but only serves as a tool for finding one's way in the outer life – that is what this pragmatism has brought forth. Do we not see this consciousness soul, which places everything that the human being produces in a spiritual way only at the service of the external life? Do we not see it at work in all the details - most honored attendees - that are found in the three peoples mentioned, that order and inner understanding will come into the matter when they are considered in terms of the guidelines that can only be briefly sketched here, but which can be fully substantiated from the insights of spiritual science? And if we now turn our gaze to the center of Europe, let us turn our gaze to German spiritual life, insofar as it is rooted in its national character. Let us turn our gaze to that spiritual striving within the German people that is to lead to a world view, to such a world view that at least corresponds to the German being, the German national character, then we find confirmed in the most comprehensive way that spiritual science also shows in other respects that this German soul is shaded in such a way that it appears like light in three different color shades: in reddish-yellow, in greenish, and in bluish-violet. That the German soul is such that the I, the self-awareness, works through the three different soul nuances, the unity of the soul-living, working through all three soul nuances, this turns out to be the essence of the German national spirit, the German national soul, in a truly lively, penetrating observation. And this can be said in a completely objective sense; it does not require any kind of one-sided nationalistic view, as we see it emerging from the Italian, French, and British national souls. The German is in a position to be able to truly rely on what an insight into his nature, striven for in the soul, gives him, and [he is in a position] to understand his nature from this insight. And if one wants historical proof that this I, this self, the whole living personality in German national character is really effective through the three soul nuances, then one can present precisely the three great world-view men who, at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, so clearly emerged within German intellectual life and sought to reveal German national character at the highest spiritual level. Kant, who tried to educate himself from philosophy, was indeed ahead of them; but we do not want to look at him, although he provided the foundation for the others, so to speak. But before our soul we want to place one of the most German men, one of those men who knew - even when they strove with their thoughts to the highest, to a world view - that they can only gain this world view in the right sense, in the living sense, within the German essence if this world view is the result of a conversation with the German national spirit itself. And so Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, knew that in the world view he created, German essence was most wonderfully revealed. How does he appear to us when we first consider his personality only in terms of appearance? Allow me, esteemed attendees, to mention just a few essential traits of his life, so that we can see how this whole man, Fichte, attempts to obtain, from the unity of human life, from the self itself, that which illuminates the world in its deepest life and can bring it to knowledge for man. The young Fichte, how does he appear to us? Two traits, wonderfully real in this sensitive beauty, we can hardly find them in any other mind: the six-year-old son of a simple, rural man is first of all a decent student; and because he is such a good student, he is given the book “Gehörnte Siegfried” by his father as a Christmas reward - he can already read. It soon becomes apparent that Johann Gottlieb Fichte is becoming somewhat inattentive in his studies; he is reproached for this. We see him one day standing by the stream that flows past his parents' house, throwing into it the “Gehörnte Siegfried”, which has become so dear to him, on which he has pinned his entire soul. And when his father comes along, the father realizes the reason for the boy's strange behavior: he could not tolerate, in the face of the iron concept of duty that was already living in him at the root of his soul, that what was dear to him as a human being, as a personality, should remain with him if he could violate his duty over it. Thus, even the boy Fichte, the six-year-old boy, feels trapped in a world that is, I would say, completely permeated by forces of duty. Later, when Johann Gottlieb Fichte was nine years old, the village where his parents lived was visited by the estate neighbor. He actually wanted to hear the sermon on Sunday; but he came too late. What happened? Because the pastor had already delivered the sermon, they showed him the young boy, the nine-year-old boy in the blue farmer's coat, who at first behaved awkwardly, but then, when he saw what they wanted from him, came to life and now the whole sermon, which he had listened to as a nine-year-old boy, had listened to as a nine-year-old boy, and he now recites it word for word to the neighbor of the estate, so that everything he said comes from his soul – he had connected with the innermost view of his soul with what he had just heard, and so he could let it flow out again from the innermost. Thus he lived a spiritual life in the immediacy of his own being. Thus he was prepared to find in Fichte the world picture of German idealism, which was able to flow to him, I might say, admittedly from a certain one-sided point of view, but still from a genuinely German one. Fichte's fundamental awareness of the fact that what lives in the human being, what is inside this I, how it contains the source forces of the world itself – that which pervades and permeates the world in a divine-spiritual way – how this can be found if only man plunges completely into the depths of his inner being, this is evident in all of Fichte's work. He was appointed to the professorship in Jena relatively early, which at that time was the center of German intellectual life. But the way in which Fichte as a teacher affected his listeners is really quite different from what one - I would say usually dreams of. People who heard Fichte characterize him in the following way: When Fichte spoke, it was like rolling thunder that discharged in sparks of lightning; and when he spoke, he wanted to educate not only good, but great individuals. And one of those who had listened to some of those standing nearby said: What Fichte said revealed that he had not practical, but bold images, energetic images, that his imagination was not graceful in the proper sense but forceful and powerful, and that he speaks in the realm of thought, in the realm of ideas, not like one who merely makes grand words, but like one who is able to rule in this invisible, in this supersensible world. When Fichte spoke to his listeners, he did not merely seek to communicate to them the content of what he had to say to them. He never spoke the same thing twice about a subject; he never spoke in such a way – I would say that he had only a certain content in his soul that he wanted to convey to his listeners, but rather he had in his own inner being an overall feeling of what he wanted to say, an overall feeling, and above all he sought to establish an inner bond between himself and each individual listener. He wanted that which lived in his soul to become active, not just as a word, but as a force in each individual listener, [but] that it resound in each individual listener himself. He wanted to pour a living fluid over his entire audience. He wanted the listeners, when they had heard his phrases, to leave with a different inner life than when they came. He wanted to awaken something in them. But that is how he worked, vividly, seizing the self. And so Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, was able to completely negate, I would say, that which emerged from Descartes' rational world view. Striving to be in one's own self and to strive for the divine in the self, by starting from thinking, and because one thinks, one shows – Fichte could not approve of that either – so the self would have been something dead. For him, the ego was something that could never become dead, for the reason that it constantly creates itself. It cannot cease to be - because it constantly creates itself. That is to say: He saw the essence of the ego - Fichte - in the will. And by the fact that the ego wills itself, it places itself into the world through its own power. But this also had to result in a world view for Fichte that saw in the will that pervades the world as the actual active force in the world. And the wonderful thing about Fichte is that he says: This external sense world, as it presents itself to us, is not the true, real one. Why is it there? It is there so that man can appear within this sensory world as a sensual being; so that in this human being the will that permeates the world and expresses itself as the divine duty that permeates the world, so that this will forms a material, in order to fulfill the duty, in order to fulfill the moral. Thus, for Fichte, the whole world is permeated by moral substance, by moral reality. For him, the whole world is a spiritual whole of duty, and that which exists as an individual is so that duty, so that the will, so that the divine that is alive in the will can live out itself. Fichte calls the external sensual world matter, the sensualized material of duty. If one tries to hold together Fichte's placing in a divine-moral world order with the mechanistic materialism that emerged from a unified rational world view, as with Descartes —- Cartesius —, one tries to recognize how this Johann Gottlieb Fichte lived - I would like to say - a certain inner connection of the soul with what, as the divine, flows through and permeates the world, how he then tried to see this connection in the individual national spirits. But Fichte could only ascribe to the German national spirit the ability of a national spirit to grasp this living connection with the universal spirit in the ego. And so Fichte became quite aware that the German national spirit, in connection with the development of humanity, would be called upon to bring living knowledge in place of mechanistic, dead knowledge. But what is true is that the “Addresses to the German Nation” are pulsating with an ethos, a world-historical sense of duty. Fichte delivered these magnificent addresses in Berlin, in the midst of the enemies who had invaded Berlin at that time, and during his Address to the German Nation, where he sought to show how the German national spirit is called upon to grasp, out of the living self, the connection of the human being with the spirit of the world, when he delivered these speeches, which can still have a wonderfully inspiring effect on the German mind today, the marching French regiments drummed outside. He could have been captured by the enemy at any moment. But he also stood firm as the German man, aware that he had to express the world-historical mission of the German national spirit. One need not, honored attendees, take a one-sided view today that one should accept the philosophy, the worldview, of such a mind in terms of its content as dogma. Today we can go beyond that. We do not have to profess everything that Fichte said here or there, or what the others said, which we will discuss later; we can turn our attention to the way these people strive and how, in this striving, they show – which Fichte was also fully aware of – that they wanted to draw from the depths of the German national spirit. Thus, we see Johann Gottlieb Fichte as one of those who, out of German Idealism, sought a world view. We want to look at this striving in him, and also in the others, not at what they said. One need not be a follower of anyone whom one finds to be a great and admirable personality, but one can continue to be inspired by the individual striving, even in those areas where one believes that one cannot go with him in terms of the content of a teaching. But it is not the doctrine that matters, it is the personality that matters, which, as it stands, can serve to characterize the German people themselves, because it must lie in the essence of the German people if, as I would say, with Fichte, such a thing can arise from this German essence with such awareness as Fichte brought forth from this German essence. Then we see Fichte's succession from another, from Schelling. Schelling is also such a personality. I am convinced, dear attendees, that precisely these three figures, whom I am speaking of here, will be called upon again when the time, which is certainly a time of great hopes and activity that we are living through, but which is also a difficult time of trial, when this time will bear fruit. We see Fichte's successor in Schelling. In him, too, we have a personality who wants to create a world picture directly from the depths of the ego, because he is clear that the divine-spiritual is at work in what man experiences in his innermost being, and that this divine-spiritual floods through all nature and all being and can be grasped in its activity in the world. If only man is able to experience his ego strongly enough within himself. If for Fichte the divine essence is something that permeates the world – I would like to say – like a great weaving and working morality, then for Schelling the divine essence is first of all the great artist who, out of the artistic weaving of his own being, first confronts nature in order to see his own truth, his own being and working in the mirror of nature. For Schelling, God's work of art is nature. No natural science that is to be abstractly intellectual - a natural science that works in such a way that with every idea that is brought forth about nature, the human soul feels at the same time related to nature. But Schelling feels this nature in such a way that he says: Now man has emerged, now other animated beings have emerged in nature. But all of nature had preceded this, as it were, as the unconscious and subconscious, which had to be present beforehand like a skeleton. The whole spiritualized world view is nature; as the past and at the same time as the solid ground for the present; as the past in terms of material on which the spirit can stand, having prepared its existence in the existence of nature. And so, for Schelling, nature and spirit grow together, but they grow together in such a way that what lives out of Schelling as a world view of German idealism is again connected to the entire personality, not just one-sidedly with the sentient soul, one-sidedly with the consciousness soul, one-sidedly with the mind soul, but out of the fullness of the soul's being. One would like to say: This whole Schelling was there. Those who knew him personally described how, even in old age, he spoke with his eyes sparkling, as if he wanted to pour out to his listeners through the shining gaze of his eyes what lived in his inner being as a spiritualized, ensouled nature, whereby he always felt that the soul of man was interwoven with all of nature. Schelling felt that this world view, which I would describe as having been woven out of the German mind, out of the soul of the emotions – as was the case with Fichte, out of the soul of the will – carried him to ever greater heights, to the point where he could ultimately be understood only to a limited extent. God as the artist, nature as a wonderful work of art, knowledge of nature through the senses, which Schelling believed was so interwoven with the human ego that he was carried away to say: To recognize nature is to create nature. Of course, these spirits were one-sided; but they were as one-sided as all human beings are one-sided, who have the faults of their virtues, not the faults of their small characteristics. - To recognize nature is to create nature! He felt that whatever lives as a force in nature can be grasped by the soul if that soul only grasps itself in its own ego, that nature can be recreated. And the third one is the much-maligned Hegel, who is, however, revered by some in the present day. If Fichte tried to revive in the will that can permeate everything, in the ego, if Schelling tried to create an idealistic world view in the world mind that comes to life in the ego and spiritualizes and ensouls everything, then Hegel tries to create a world view out of pure concepts, out of the idea. And with Hegel in particular it is obvious that he wanted to grasp a world picture in concepts, in ideas, to compare this Hegelian world picture with the mechanistic, with the intellectual one of Cartesius, of Descartes: there everything is intellectual! But what did Hegel want? Hegel did not want the concept, the idea, in such a way that his world picture was only an instrument, as it were, to recognize an external reality. Hegel wanted to have this world in such a way that the human soul, for its part, experiences the concepts themselves, that it lives with its I into the icy regions, but thereby also forms the experience of the pure concept. For Hegel had the inner experience - one may call it the inner experience - that when man grasps the ideas of the world in their purity, that he may then partake with the innermost part of his I-being in what, as divine thought itself, underlying all of the world, participating in the thought-work of the Godhead, because a thought in the soul is, so to speak, only an ideational representation of that which, as a divine thought, permeates the world - that is what Hegel wanted. This world view is also one-sided, because it reduces the divine spiritual beings that underlie the world to mere logic, because the whole world is reduced to a mere skeleton of its reality. But it is significant that for once — I would like to say — there appeared a stage in the development of the German being, this inwardly living feeling and interweaving of a thought that permeates the world: I want to unite myself with the thought that is active in the world, and I am convinced that in so doing I have not only something in my soul that outwardly reflects the world, but that when thoughts flow through my soul, it is divine activity itself that allows its thoughts to appear in my soul — those thoughts according to which minerals, plants, animals and human beings are created. Outside, God creates the form and the facts according to the ideas; then, having stripped them of the material, he lets these ideas flow through the human soul, and man participates by surrendering to this flow in a mysticism that is not vague, not an emotional mysticism, but an idea-mysticism, crystal clear: Man participates in the efficacy of divine thoughts in the world! Yes, esteemed attendees, with these three figures – who, much more than one might think, also in the period when they were rarely mentioned, in the second half of the nineteenth century and up to the present day, live on in the German essence – in these three figures, the world view of German idealism presents itself to us, that German idealism that was called upon – and we can see this directly and objectively in these minds, the spirits of this German idealism, - was called upon - I would say cognitively, I emphasize explicitly, not religiously, but cognitively - although the cognitive is a support of the religious, the religious emerges from another part - to conjure up the second great tidal wave in terms of a human world view from the depths of human existence. Let us look across to Asia. Asia, especially India, still retains, I would say, an ancient world view in which the human being has also tried to come to that from the depths of his being, which as divine-spiritual flows through, works through and lives through the world. But how does the Asian and the descendant of this ancient Asian, the present-day Indian, attempt to make the divine-spiritual activity and flow in the world present in their own soul being? By attenuating and paralyzing the soul and paralyzing the I. The I must be extinguished so that the human being can give themselves over to the general flow of Brahman. This is the ancient striving for a world picture, I would say, the primeval striving for a world picture. Characteristic of this is that the ego is tuned down, paralyzed to the point of extinction, so that what the human being experiences in his ego does not stand in the way when he wants to revive in his soul that which flows through the world in a divine-spiritual way, giving it soul. To extinguish himself so that the Divine may work in him, that is the ideal of this Pan-Asiatic world picture. This world picture was no longer possible when the greatest event in the world development of humanity had taken place. This world picture was no longer possible when the Christ Impulse had entered into humanity. From the religious side, humanity was given a deepening, of such magnitude that the Asian religion may never again emerge in its strength, for it could never again be adequate to this event, in which the Christ Impulse lives as the highest event. It was the destiny of the German national spirit to have created an understanding of earthly existence that is adequate to the Christ Impulse. And these three spirits are like the three symptoms in which the striving for such a world view is expressed. As I said, how does one not seek such a world view by extinguishing the self! We have seen how these three spirits in particular – Fichte, Schelling and Hegel – want to fully live out the I, how they place it at the center of the three soul shades, not by extinguishing the I, but precisely by fully experiencing it, by elevating the I; how the divine-spiritual flows into this I, that is what was incumbent on the German national spirit. And it could do so because it was able to let the I shine through the three soul nuances, just as the unified light shines through the three rainbow nuances. To place oneself in the more recent development of the world as those who now place everything that is recognized of the existence of nature and soul in the service of such an idealistic world view, that was the duty of the greatest German thinkers, who knew themselves to be one with what the truly German national spirit wants in the further development of humanity. It seems appropriate to me to point this out to you today, esteemed attendees. What will become of the great external events will be decided by weapons and other circumstances. But it seems appropriate to me, especially in the present, to delve into the nature of the German national spirit itself, which is now being reviled and slandered from all sides, and which, precisely because it must work in the manner indicated, is so little understood by those who, out of their hatred, today all around us, not only misunderstand the German world view, but also want to misunderstand it. But they cannot understand it because they work in a one-sided way, in the one-sidedness of their particular shade of soul; whereas the German must work out of his nature, out of his whole being, towards a wholeness. A kind of reverent mood is poured out over what the German spirit is meant to achieve in the world. This German national soul is particularly predisposed to acquiring knowledge through nature and the soul, and then enriching this knowledge in the soul so that this knowledge is like the soul's approach to the divine being. If we do not see this – and I would like to read these words to you literally – if we do not see this beautifully when we look at those who always wanted to visualize from the depths of the German being, that which is the German folk spirit? Do we not see this striving - to know what the German can know, how to make it accessible to the divine-spiritual, to develop a devout mood in science as well? How beautiful and wonderful it is, for example, when a German — and that is precisely why he may perhaps be mentioned today — who appears in Austria as one of the greatest German-Austrians, delves into the German essence, even if he has not perhaps arrived at the concepts that have been developed today and presented to us, so as to feel the full expression of what has been developed in ideas today here: I am referring to Robert Hamerling, Austria's greatest German poet of modern times, who spoke the beautiful words, feeling like a German in Austria, spoke the beautiful words: Austria is my fatherland; but I feel it: Germany is my motherland - thus expressing the unity that has been so firmly forged today through Germany and Austria, through Central Europe. All these peculiarities of the German national soul, which I have been trying to develop today from the idealistic world view of the Germans - at the time when they believed they could turn back the tide, when the Germans came over from Asia, bringing with them the urge to grasp the Allgeist, which they would later express in their art, in their education, in their philosophy, in all their being and working in the world, by elevating the ego, not by dampening the ego. And there, as in a beautiful poet's dream in his “Germanenzug”, Robert Hamerling remembers - the old ancestors of the Germans are still sitting over there in Asia, while these old ancestors of the Germans are moving into Europe, into the West , Robert Hamerling describes beautifully how these Teutons are camped on the border of Asia and Europe, how the sun goes down - he beautifully describes the moon that rises, the whole landscape -, how the Teutons are camped. Only one is awake: the blond Teut, the youth. But in front of Teut, the future destinies of the Germans are written in the stars in wonderful signs. And the genius of the Germans, the spirit of the German people, speaks to the blond Teut, to the leader of the Germanic peoples to the German West. And Hamerling says beautifully:
Not from such a self-exalting consciousness, not from national immodesty, as we often find among our opponents today, but from a devout consideration of the nature of the German, of the spiritual nature that has prevailed throughout world history. The poet speaks of duty, the Austrian poet, in complete harmony with those who have created a German world view, an imaginative world view of the Germans, out of the German world view. That is why it is so profoundly true what the “Philosophus teutonicus” Jakob Böhme said about all research and reflection on that world view that has a right to exist, which, fundamentally, for the German national character - so Jakob Böhme believes - the search for knowledge, for science, must be a path to God, even if it does not encroach on religion. Jakob Böhme expresses this, thereby characterizing the guiding principle for the world view of German idealism, beautifully from the depths of the German mind. Jakob Böhme says:
he means the depths of heaven
This is the union of the most beautiful sense of the German national character with the highest striving for knowledge of that which, in a divine and spiritual sense, permeates, interweaves and suffuses the world. Thus, in order to elevate his ego, the German seeks to penetrate into the innermost nature of things, and this is indeed something that can be understood only to a limited extent. One can see how little it can be understood! There is one of those who, shortly before the beginning of this war, used to move around in Germany as foreign spirits, talking about all kinds of friendships with the German essence, about all kinds of understanding that they claim to have acquired for the German essence: that is Emile Boutroux. Shortly before the war, he even lectured at German universities about how one should revere the depths of the German spirit. And now the true Frenchman [Boutroux] is telling his fellow Frenchmen – he wants to be funny, of course, the good [Boutroux] wants to be funny – he is telling them what a difference there is between the French, the English and the Germans; what we - though for the French, certainly in a joking way - have sought today from the depths of the German character, yes, Boutroux talked about that in a similar way to his French not too long ago. He said: Yes, when the French want to recognize a lion or a hyena – you don't get the news exactly, but that's roughly how he spoke – and in any case, what I am saying is essentially not inaccurate – when the French describe a lion or a hyena, they go to the menagerie and observe the lion or the hyena; when the English want to recognize a lion or a hyena, they travel around the world and observe the life of the lion or the hyena. But when the Germans want to recognize a lion or a hyena, they neither go to a menagerie nor travel around the world, but retreat to their study and design the image of the lion and the hyena from within, without looking at the outside! It is certainly a witty saying, and we are accustomed to the French speaking wittily from their intellectual culture; it is just a shame that this joke is by Heinrich Heine, repeated by Boutroux, because it comes from Heine; and the Frenchman, who we are accustomed to making good jokes, made a German joke in this case, to make a witty comment about the English and the French! This is another illustration of how the opponents of Germanness try to ascribe to themselves something higher than what a German can live with! However, this same man recently told his Parisians what a barbaric people the Germans actually are; one can already deduce this from the word. For example, he said: the Germans have no word for generosity; therefore they don't even have this quality, they lack it, only the French have it. On the other hand, the Germans have a word that the French don't have: that is the word 'Schadenfreude'; so only the Germans have the quality of Schadenfreude. The French don't have this ignoble quality. And similar things more are what indicates the spirit from which one today vilifies and degrades the German essence. But one has not always looked at this German essence in this way! And it would be particularly interesting to see which minds have tried to find their way into this German essence, as one can also see from this just how little account is taken of the actual meaning of this German essence, this spirit. Take, for example, the writer of “The Life of Jesus” — Ernest Renan — he wrote in a corresponding way even during the Franco-Prussian War about German essence to David Friedrich Strauß, who wrote about German essence. Strangely, the Frenchman, Ernest Renan, wrote; he says that at a certain age he realized what this German essence actually means. And he makes an interesting comparison. He says that after he had absorbed the French character in his education, he approached the German character through Goethe and Herder, and it was as if he encountered realities instead of mere concepts, whereas before he had only seen a lot of faded paper flowers. And then he compares the height of German intellectual life, which has been revealed to him in this way, by saying that everything he got to know outside of this German essence seems to him, well, like elementary mathematics to differential and potential mathematics. We shall see in a moment how such a mind itself utilizes, in terms of feeling, what has come to it through contact with the German essence. But first, let us see a little more of how this Central European, German essence is viewed in the East, in that East from which the European West, that is to say our West, is currently suffering so much for what is, after all, its sphere of influence, its work for freedom and democracy today, this European West. If we have to consider the Russian national soul, we have to say: in Russia's national soul, the direct driving force of the I, everything still lives as something external. The Russian receives his religion as a foreign one, the Greek-Christian religion, which he does not have within him in the form of rebirth, as the German has experienced it from his innermost being, but which he accepts as something like a cloud that hovers over him, that he has from outside. While the Italian works from the sentient soul, the Frenchman from the intellectual and mind soul, the Englishman, the Briton from the consciousness soul, the German from the actual self, the person who truly belongs to the Russian national soul, works from the subconscious of the ego, which still has the ego that the ego has not yet absorbed into itself, which the ego still wants to see in a mystical darkness. This Russian soul, this eastern Russian soul, works like the national soul that has not yet fully come to consciousness. And this is why this still immature national soul has not only so misunderstood the German national soul, but also all the national souls of Western Europe, especially in the course of the nineteenth century and up to our own times, so infinitely misunderstood them. People have not even noticed what the relationship is, let us say, between the nature of the German spirit and the Russian spirit. In selfless German modesty, one has naturally included the great Russians – Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky. They are not to be disparaged here; they can be fully recognized; but one must become aware of the gulf that exists between the Russian and the German essence, and which, especially in the Russian essence, has come to such an immature outbreak and revelation in our own time. In the course of the nineteenth century, we encounter the best Russian minds, which - I would like to say - philosophically and artistically express, as in a world view, what, in political terms, the “Testament of Peter the Great” – whether it is forged or not, that is not the point now – which, in political terms, aims to achieve the complete annihilation and replacement of Western and Central Europe, as it exists today, with Eastern Europe! [The “Testament of Peter the Great” is the only thing that should be considered sustainable.] But everything, I would like to say, even Russian literary-philosophical and artistic thought, is in the service of this “Testament of Peter the Great”. And this is what we encounter again and again in all of nineteenth-century Russian intellectual life. Then we encounter the best minds in Russia, who turn their gaze to what minds like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel have achieved. I would say that Herzen is able to observe this in a single such spirit. He seeks to delve into what Western culture has brought forth; he finds that it has all grown old, has become decrepit, that it must all disappear, that it is all superficial, because he cannot comprehend how this world view of German Idealism is inwardly lived and interwoven; and so it becomes worthless to him. In his book From the Other Bank, Herzen expresses how all these ideals that have sprung up in Western Europe must be destroyed and how something else must take their place. One of Herzen's opponents, also a Russian, wrote to Herzen: So you want to destroy everything that has emerged in Western Europe: Greater, more significant – as a Russian wrote to Herzen, one of his Russian opponents, to appeal to his conscience – Greater than all the ideals of Central Europe, is the Russian sheepskin coat to you? – the friend wrote to Herzen! What does he mean by the “Russian sheep's clothing”? Well, Herzen said it: In what this European culture, this European spiritual life has brought forth, there cannot be anything redemptive, anything salvific for humanity; but that which is salvific for humanity is the Russian peasant; that is, the one who, in all his originality, contains within him that which must flood the whole of Western and Central Europe. And this appears to be so deeply ingrained in Russian souls, especially in the most Russian of Russians, for example in Dostoyevsky, the great artist – whom we want to acknowledge in terms of his skill – that it is increasingly apparent in his work, when we take a closer look at it, that he regards German culture in particular as decrepit and obsolete, and that he already sees Russia as destined to be the redeemer. Basically, the delusional rage that is now to be poured out over Europe is nothing more than the brutal expression of this tendency, which has even found expression in great Russian writers; however, care has been taken to ensure that the good Germans do not become too aware of this, which, I might say, has always lived and breathed between the lines of Russian intellectual life! And so it comes about that - and those who know me better know how much I appreciate Tolstoy - but what is in Tolstoy, especially in such older works as “Anna Karenina” and so on, that shows how he - Tolstoy - always aimed to depict the German character in such a way that it appears decrepit and inferior. Why have the Germans paid so little attention to such things? Why are they now surprised at the fact that hatred is being heaped on them from all sides? Well, you only have to take the fact that, for example, the older translations of Tolstoy, namely those works by translators that people still read, up to the last translation in the middle of the nineteenth century by [Raphael Löwenfeld], which people no longer read, these translations all either left out the passages in question entirely or translated them differently, so that no one actually knows the real Tolstoy! It will be necessary, dear honored attendees, to go a little deeper into the nuances that live in the expressions of souls, so that the German knows how to fulfill his mission in the world. And so it came about that even insightful Russian minds, such as the great philosopher Soloviev, rebelled against this generally Russian view, against the view of those who, according to a Russian world view, had grown old and died, and that Russianism should overthrow this European essence. If I emphasize individual personalities, it is because I want to cite facts and show by individual characteristics how many there are. There is, for example, one Danilewski, who attempts to address the question in broad terms, entirely in the spirit of the Russian essence I have just hinted at, how Russia must expand, how Europe's west and center are ripe to because the European West and the Center have fulfilled their task; and Danilewski once asks the question in a book that is so completely formed from the Russian point of view: Why does Europe not love us, why does Europe fear us? Now he seeks to answer this question from his own point of view, and Danilevsky writes for his Russians something like this: Europe does not love us because Europe instinctively senses that we are the ones who are actually the only ones still entitled to exist, and who are to replace what lives in the rest of Europe. But Soloviev takes up this question, and Soloviev is one of those who has drawn from this life himself. And the great philosopher Solowjow, who, unbiased by his own Russian nature, takes up this question: Why does Germany not love us? He does not answer this question in the way Danilewski and the spirits of the most diverse kinds of Russians speak, that Europe feared Russia, but Solowjow answers Danilewski's question: Why does Europe not love us? Why does Europe fear us?” and Danilevsky's answer to this: ‘Because Europe instinctively senses that the Russians are the only ones who are still entitled to exist and should replace what is still alive in the rest of Europe,’ Solowjow replies to these words of Danilevsky:
referring to a certain Strachow
Solovyov wrote his reply, and it is certainly necessary for anyone who wants to get to know the conditions in the Russian east to listen to these Russians. Solovyov himself says:
And when we are asked how we intend to replace what we have destroyed and failed to accomplish, how we plan to rejuvenate the world intellectually and culturally, we either have to remain silent or spout meaningless phrases. And if Danilevsky's bitter confession is true, that Russia is beginning to fall ill, then instead of dealing with the question “Why doesn't Europe love us,” we would have to deal with another, more important question that is closer to us: “Why and how did we become ill?” Physically, Russia is still quite strong, as it showed in the last Russian war; so our suffering is a moral one. We are burdened, according to the words of an old writer, by the sins hidden in the national character and not conscious to us - and so it is necessary above all to bring these into the light of clear consciousness. As long as we are spiritually bound and paralyzed, all our elementary instincts must only harm us. The essential, indeed the only essential question of true patriotism is not the question of power and vocation, but of the sins of Russia." Thus the Russian Solowjow, from a spiritual insight into the Russian character, thus the great philosopher Solowjow about Russia itself. And it is interesting to see this in conclusion: how have others perceived this relationship between Russia and the West, even the further West – with whom they are now in league or who is in league with them, one does not quite know how to say – how have others perceived this relationship with their further West? Oh, there are also interesting facts here! For example, a book by the Russian writer Yushakov was published in 1885. In 1885, he wrote a book in which he speaks quite differently from how he was later spoken of regarding the views that he attributes to his Russian people. It is interesting to take a look at Yushakov's ideas. This man looks across to Asia and says: Yes, over there in Asia, we have peoples who have brought a very old culture from ancient times into more recent times. These peoples, how they have been mistreated by the Europeans. Russia must look across to Asia, and must bring redemption to this sacred, venerable, but by the Europeans mistreated Asian culture, this spiritual culture of Asia. Nice words Jushakow speaks. He says that Russia alone is capable – because it cannot yet grasp the human interior in such a way that it has been made sick and aged by the ego as in the European West – Russia alone can feel related to this Asia, which is now lying prostrate, groaning under the rape of Europe. And an old myth brings Yushakov back to mind when he says: Over there in Asia, Iranian, Turanian peoples are fighting. He himself also includes the Indians, the Persians, and so on, among the Iranian peoples. And then Yushakov says: These have found a wonderful, ancient myth of Ormuzd and Ahriman for their destiny. But we always see Ahriman and Ormuzd at work over there in Asia forever. And there, in his book, Yushakov says – in 1885 – and he points this out in his memoirs, that the Iranians worshiped the good Ormuzd over there in Asia; the good Ormuzd gave the Iranians all the fruits and crops that the earth can produce; they took them for themselves. Then they joined forces with Ahriman. These Europeans have worked like Ahriman, like the evil Ahriman himself. But Russia, by working across into Asia, will liberate people from the evil Ahriman. What the Asians have received under the blessing of the good Ormuzd, the selfish Europeans have appropriated for themselves. Russia will cross over to Asia and help by founding an alliance, yes – Yushakov says it, I have to repeat it to you – an alliance that will be formed with the greatest ideals in the world, as the most spiritual alliance in the world – Yushakov says it all, I am only repeating it. It will be formed by Russian peasants and Cossacks, who will rush over to Asia, which is groaning under European rule, and will carry over what Russia will be able to bring. Then the peasantry and Cossacks will advance into Asia, and Russia will redeem Asia from Ahriman. 1885, think Sic, written by Jushakow. It is interesting to hear some of what Jushakow said at the time in the book, which is called: “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”. It says that the comrades of Ahriman, the evil god – from whom Russia must liberate Asia and bring order and harmony – are primarily the English. The English – says Yushakov – have behaved in this Asia as if they believed that the Asian peoples existed only to clothe themselves in English fabrics, to fight each other with English weapons, to work with English tools, to eat from English vessels and to play with English baubles. And then he says:
And so he continues, Yushakov:
Apparently because these Russians were so keen to distance themselves from this Englishness, so that they could free Asia from this hideous England, they soon allied themselves with this England, not to free Asia, but to destroy Europe. One must also look at world development from this intellectual perspective in the nineteenth century, and in this way delve into what actually constitutes the German character and how it stands now, this German character, which has to defend itself in a way against the ring that has been formed around it, yes, in a way that can be simply hinted at when numbers are spoken. These people – who want to keep Germany and Austria locked up in a big fortress today – are taking a stand for freedom, for the rights of small nations, and for all sorts of things they believe in. You only have to look at the numbers: 777 million people in the so-called Entente around the Central European powers, against 150 million; 777 million are “fighting” - let's put that in quotation marks - “fighting” against 150 million, and fighting in such a way that to this day still want to strike at the very essence of their actual bravery, they also want to strike at the German spirit, which they believe they understand so well, that 777 million people are turning against 150 million, joining forces to starve them out, to defeat them with starvation, the better part of bravery. Actually, they had no need to be envious of what the Central Europeans were taking away from them; for the Entente Powers possess 68 million square kilometers of the earth, compared to 6 million square kilometers of the Central European Powers. One need only let these numbers speak. These numbers speak to this day, and will also speak in world history, ladies and gentlemen, that after all, within these 150 million present-day Central Europeans and on these 6 million square kilometers of Central European soil, those people live who have the world-historical, spiritual mission that we were allowed to speak of, and which they ascribe to themselves not ascribe it to themselves out of national chauvinism, but out of their spiritual gifts, out of the spirit of their Germanness, to which they have not devoted themselves through their egoism, but to which they have to approach if they want to offer the best of their being on the altar of this their national spirit. And those who feel this German essence in Central Europe feel a close bond with it, especially the best in Austria and Germany – and I am allowed to speak about this since I have spent thirty years of my life in Austria: Precisely the best Austrians, those who have grown up with Central European culture, like the excellent philosopher Carneri, know how to experience and fathom the relationship between their own people and the German national spirit and German essence not out of national chauvinism but out of a sure knowledge of the essence of their own people. For example, Carneri, the most important Austrian philosopher, says of the English: “Carneri, a wonderful man who, out of the deepest suffering, has founded a spiritual world view that is so completely in line with our time, a conceptual world view from German-Austria. Carneri talks about how the English have really focused their attention on external practical culture and he says: It has become so practical, this culture, that the English had to learn from the Germans the fact that the great playwright and poet Shakespeare lived among them. For it is true that it is only through the Germans delving into Shakespeare that Shakespeare has been recognized at all. And if one day someone has to write the story of Shakespeare's greatness, it will not be an English chapter in intellectual history that they have to write, but a German one. All this characterizes the nature of the German world view, which creates out of all intellectual inner life, in contrast to everything around it. And so we may well believe that this is what the German must strive for above all else: spiritual science, knowledge of the spirit, just as there is knowledge of nature. Knowledge of the spirit, which must be based above all on the sources, on the roots that lie in the world view of German idealism. This is, as I said, not a conviction born out of blind national sentiment, but a conviction born out of knowledge. It is that which humanity is to scientifically fathom in the future about the spirit, that this must grow out of German national culture – and above all out of the ideal world view of German national culture – as it has been attempted to describe today. And how little understanding there is among other nations today – let me say this in conclusion – this war can show the German so clearly how little understanding there is on the part of other nations towards the world view of German idealism and the German spirit, and how he must first ensure and strive to ensure that what he is called upon to create out of the depths of the German being can become part of the world development of humanity. The French, how did they look at this world view of German idealism? Or the Russians, for example, how did they look at this world view that the Germans have formed, this world view? The Russians look at it as if it only existed to be destroyed by them, as something decrepit and worn out. While we must see roots and leaves in it, from which the blossoms and fruits must first ripen in the future! We want to commit ourselves to this view! But the Russians need a new delusion; because the ego does not yet live in their soul, they must dream of a new delusion. They need a new delusion. What do the French need? What do the French need today if they want to characterize their relationship to the German essence? Well, perhaps one could refer to one of their youngest poets to avoid doing them an injustice. What do the French want? They have been so accustomed to their nature being everywhere in Europe, just as the Germans were accustomed to their nature living in the Germans themselves, just as the Germans were accustomed to the way they felt the power, the driving force of what, for example, also lived in this world view of German idealism, up to Lessing, until they had to free themselves, the Germans, [so] these French were so accustomed that their nature lived everywhere in Europe. And after that, they believed that nothing could actually be done without what they did and what they produced intellectually, that everything had to come from them, that they had to be the cause of everything. In a very interesting and witty poem, Rostand, one of their own poets, recently illustrated how the French – that is, his own – national character can be compared to the cock crowing in the morning; and when the cock crows, the sun rises. And because the sun rises when the cock crows, the Frenchman believes that with his crowing he makes the sun rise. So he says to himself: If I don't crow, the sun can't rise! This is said by the French poet Rostand himself as a characteristic of the French nature. The Frenchman thinks: If he doesn't crow, nothing at all can happen in the world. And that is why it is so incredible that he no longer occupies the position he once did; for it is actually the case that the German character, as expressed by Ranke, for example, is to be defended against the delusion of the crowing of the French national spirit, as early as 1870, when the Germans had to face the French: “We are still fighting against Louis XV!” The French need a new delusion. The Russians need a new mission. The English – well, one really doesn't want to do them an injustice. What should one say so as not to do them an injustice? They declaim to the world: for the sake of the violation of Belgium's neutrality, for the sake of justice and democracy, we must undertake this war to the point of destroying the German essence; for these Germans are disgraceful people. They preach the principle of might over right. It is likely that one only forgets, as a result of a particularly refined education, that the English minister who decreed this – only recently – that the phrase “might over right” comes from the English philosopher, English utilitarian philosopher Thomas Hobbes. But: “might over right” – and England has adhered to this phrase for centuries. [gap in the transcript] as a professor in England himself, where he said: freedom and democracy, that is something that cannot be united, which should be advocated after the last English history, but that Great Britain's expansion [gap in the transcript], he says, is also a truth, also a practical truth, as the English world view must strive for. Yes, what can you say? “Might is right” – since Thomas Hobbes this principle has been winding its way through English history, concealing the real reasons why England tramples underfoot the entire mission of the German people. Yes, one would not want to do such things an injustice, but one must say: the English need a new lie to drown out that which cannot be compensated for. The Russians need a new delusion; the French need a new conceit; the English need a new lie. The Italians – yes, a very outstanding man told me even before the Italian war broke out: “Italy needs this war!” There are people, of course, who are not so naive as to have believed that Italy could not join the Entente in this war. Italy needs this war; we must have this war; the Italians have become lethargic, sluggish and lazy; they are actually on the road to the abyss - said this important political figure at the time - and need to have something that will shake them up again, that will awaken them to life, otherwise they will become completely rotten and sluggish! What do these Italians need? These Italians needed a new sensation in order to have something at the same time – just as the French needed imagination, the English needed a new lie, the Russians needed a new delusion, a new mission, so the Italians needed a new saint, something very special! – They truly have a saint, namely, holy egoism – sacro egoismo – which is preached everywhere and on whose altar people are sacrificed. And the apostle of modern Italian nationalism, the hierophant, is Gabriele d'Annunzio! Perhaps history will one day rank him among the buffoons of the mind – that can be said without any national chauvinism. But he will nevertheless stand without dignity as the one who also made sacrifices to this new egoism, the sacro egoismo, which Italy represents and to which they have dedicated themselves, this new saint! When we see all this going on around us, we can truly say that, without the Germans needing to become as nationally egotistical as those who want to surround, encircle and contain them, we can truly say that, from the inner fertility and knowledge of the greatness of the German essence, to which we humbly bow, we cannot, in arrogance, say that we experience in the German essence: It is the germs, it is the roots, it is the leaves – and the blossoms and the fruits must develop from them. And we can look to the future with confidence and hope! And finally, I would like to say that – as if in a unified thinking – those who understood the German essence in Central Europe always felt it. One of my teachers in Austria once spoke a beautiful word. I may perhaps read it to you at the end, a little poem. It is called “Austria and Germany”. Today, when Austria and Germany are welded together, I may perhaps read it, this little poem:
Thus spoke the German of Austria in 1859. Those who feel that they are part of the German national spirit, who recognize it without national chauvinism, are so united in their awareness that loyalty springs from the soul to this German essence. Then this Karl Julius Schröer, who has remained so unknown, but who felt German essence in Austria quite extraordinarily, then he said:
To see him as a whole, this also includes the symptom that so clearly shows how the immortal martial forces come from the German essence. Likewise, the idealistic world view of the German stems from the primal power of the German essence, which has borne its roots and its leaves, and - looking towards it - we may have faith in the future: it must struggle through to its blossoms and fruits in the future, undisturbed by the hatred of the opposition. This awareness wells up in us as 150 million people facing 777 million, as standing on 6 million square kilometers against 68 million square kilometers; this wells up in us from the spiritual, from the soul, from the heart of the German spiritual being! So let us speak out of the knowledge itself and out of the most justified feeling: Yes, by being aware of our essence, we may believe, we may hope that the blossoms and fruits to the roots and leaves of the German being will unfold in the future. Therefore, we can confidently live into the future of this German national spirit, also from the depths of the German endeavor. And so may it be, because it must be so! |
| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: The Forgotten Pursuit of Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought
29 Feb 1916, Hanover Rudolf Steiner |
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| As a reward, he received a book from his father for Christmas when he turned seven: 'Gehörnte Siegfried' (The Horned Siegfried). After a while, it became apparent that he, who had previously been very eager to learn, was becoming careless about his studies. |
| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: The Forgotten Pursuit of Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought
29 Feb 1916, Hanover Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear Attendees! The momentous events in which the German nation finds itself justify my speaking, as I have done for many years in other German cities, about subjects related to spiritual science. This year, as in the past, last year, I shall not speak about a narrow subject of spiritual science itself, but about something that is intimately connected with the spiritual life of the German people, with that which is suitable to reveal something about the position of the German people within the overall development of humanity. If I do this, it is certainly not to give expression to mere emotional views, which are particularly close to the soul in these difficult but also, in a certain sense, hopeful times, but because it is not based on dark feelings and perceptions , but rather, as I believe, on real facts, cognitive facts, well-founded conviction, that what has always been characterized here as spiritual science, that it is rooted in the innermost depths of precisely those expressions of German intellectual life that we can count among the peaks of that intellectual life. We have no need, dearest ones present, as Germans in the present, to express our feelings and thoughts by denigrating and even slanderously distorting, before all things – as it is also done by the most outstanding personalities in the ranks of our enemies – that which what is outside of German life - as it is done from the other side in relation to the German essence - but we can look at it from a purely factual point of view, based on the German national character. It should be mentioned briefly in the introduction that spiritual science, as it is meant here, is based on the fact that it is possible, from within the human soul – through processes of the soul's life, which have been described here in this city many times and which can also be found in our literature can be found in our literature, that it is possible to develop such powers in the human soul that lead a person to an understanding of that which is not exhausted in the time between birth and death, but which goes through births and deaths and represents the eternal, the immortal essence of man. That such a deepening of the soul life is possible, and such a strengthening of the powers of the soul life, that the human being becomes aware within himself within his physical body that which has shaped this physical body out of the spiritual world and which, when the human being passes through the passes through the gate of death, returns to the spiritual world, that such knowledge is possible, and that such knowledge must gradually be incorporated into the spiritual life of humanity in our time, that is the spiritual-scientific conviction as it is meant here. And this spiritual-scientific conviction, which – as I believe – is true spiritual science, is contained in the most beautiful and meaningful striving of the German people. Now, precisely one objection could be raised: it is supposed to be about spiritual science, about that which gives the mind a similar knowledge to that of natural science for external nature, so it is supposed to be about a science. People who stand at a certain point of superficiality will immediately object: Yes, science is something completely international! This objection is so overwhelming for many because it is so endlessly superficial. One could say: superficial to the point of being taken for granted; because the moon, for example, is also common to all peoples internationally. But what the individual peoples have to say about the moon, what struggles out of their souls to characterize the moon, that differs from people to people. And if one could also say that this is limited to poetry, then the one who is not merely a scientist, who sees in science not only that which is a description of external things in the most external way, but also that which one can know about things , emerges from the foundations, from the basic forces and basic drives of the human being, and is individual, as the human souls themselves are individual, that is to say: that is why they are shaped so differently, depending on the way in which the individual peoples are predisposed to knowledge of the world. But these predispositions, these inner impulses of the individual people, are what carries humanity forward – not what can be described as “international” in a superficial sense that takes for granted everything that has gone before. If we want to characterize the German quest for knowledge, what immediately comes to mind are three figures, three great figures, which should only be mentioned in the introduction to today's discussion. But the development of German thought rests on the ground they prepared. These three figures are perhaps not often mentioned in the general German nation today. But that is not important. What is important is that these three figures are difficult to understand in what they created, but that these three figures will nevertheless play an ever greater and greater role in the development of German intellectual life in the future. And these three figures are: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel – the three figures who, as world-view thinkers, formed an enormous background, [who] from the depths of German nationality provided that from which the great creations of German intellectual life also flowed, which we encounter in Goethe, Herder, Lessing, Schiller, and which, after Greek culture, represented a greatest cultural flowering in the development of humanity. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, what do we see before us? He who only appears to be a difficult philosopher to understand, who rather felt that what he had to give as so-called philosophy is really, in the highest sense, the result of a dialogue that he himself held with the German national spirit. And when we approach Fichte, what does he show us? He shows us how a personality rooted in the essence of Germanness, in its quest for knowledge, starts from the premise that the human soul itself has something through which it can grasp and inwardly see that which lives and weaves through the world as spiritual and divine in its own inner experience. In terms of the power with which this came to expression in Fichte's soul, one might say that Fichte stands almost completely alone in the history of human development. Fichte tried to get into his own soul what pulsates and lives and weaves through the world. He was clear about the fact that one could not get to that point, [to experiencing in one's own experience what pervades the world as its fundamental essence, divinely and spiritually], through external observation, [not] through the senses, nor through the mind that is bound to the brain, but only by invoking the soul's deep, hidden powers. And in this he shows a fundamental disposition of the German character: this growing together in the innermost part of the soul with the secrets of the world, this not being able to be satisfied otherwise than by experiencing in the innermost part of the soul what spreads in the great, wide universe as the most hidden, the most mysterious. One need only recall a few details about this Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which I will mention because they are so characteristic of a figure like Fichte, and one will see how we have to revere in him a personality who, by virtue of his innermost disposition, must seek to give himself completely with his soul to that which he can call experiencing the mystery of the world. Fichte, the son of very simple people, from a simple Saxon village, is seven years old; he was already at school and was a good schoolboy. As a reward, he received a book from his father for Christmas when he turned seven: 'Gehörnte Siegfried' (The Horned Siegfried). After a while, it became apparent that he, who had previously been very eager to learn, was becoming careless about his studies. This was pointed out to him. One day, his father meets him standing by the stream that flows past the simple house: “Der gehörnte Siegfried”, which the boy had thrown into the stream, is floating in it. An extremely characteristic trait for seven-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. What had passed through his soul? What had passed through his soul was that he said to himself: I have neglected my duty by taking an almost irrepressible interest in this great, powerful material of Siegfried; but duty is what must come before everything else. That is why the book is thrown into the water! To live up to his duty. And another example: our Johann Gottlieb Fichte is nine years old; the neighboring landowner comes to the simple village one Sunday to listen to the pastor's sermon. He comes too late. The landowner is very sorry that he was unable to hear the village pastor's sermon. Then one reflects and realizes that there is a nine-year-old boy who remembers well what the pastor said in his sermon. They call the nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte; he steps forward, awkwardly, in his blue peasant's smock; but soon he gets into the rendition, so that he repeats the entire sermon with heartfelt sympathy for the neighboring estate owner – not from a dead memory, but he repeats it because his soul has grown together with what he heard and what then tinged his ear to his soul. This is what is characteristic of this growing together of Fichte's own soul with that which is experienced. And so this develops more and more in Fichte, so that in the end the whole universe is pulsating with will. The world will, the divine world will, it weaves and lives through all spaces and through all times, it sends its currents into the soul weaving of the human being. And when this weaving of the soul has been completely surrendered, then the soul experiences within itself a stream of the infinite world-will. Then one is united with that which pulsates through the world as Divine-Spiritual. Then one is borne by that which flows as the world-duty on the waves of the will, which shines into our soul and which is the highest that Fichte sought to grasp. Thus, his world view arises from the innermost essence of his personal character. This is the most German thing, to seek out the most personal and the most objective. Fichte is not seeking some soul essence that can be proven, but rather a soul essence that continually participates in the divine-spiritual creative power of the world, so that it can create itself in every moment. And in this inner creativity, which rests in the divine-creative, lies for Fichte the guarantee of the eternal, which goes through births and deaths and which lives in the spiritual world even after the human being has passed through the gate of death. In his beautiful speeches in Berlin in 1806, which he calls “Instructions for a blessed life”, Fichte says of what flows from the eternal duty of the divine power into the soul of man, in Berlin in 1806, which he calls “Instructions for a blessed life” - of which Fichte says: People talk about the fact that the immortal essence of man only comes into its own after death. The one who really gets to know the soul knows that immortality can be grasped directly in life within this body; and that is why he is immediately certain that - even if this body disintegrates into its elements - that which is grasped within it through real knowledge goes through the gate of death into the spiritual world. But Fichte is also convinced that the eternal spirit must be grasped in the most intimate inner self at the same time. Therefore, as a teacher at the then-famous University of Jena – because it was the home of the greatest German men – he is fundamentally quite different from any other teacher. He does not teach in order to impart a certain content, a certain set of propositions to his students, but prepares himself in such a way that what he has to teach is first an inner life in his soul, so that he experiences what he wants to let flow into the souls of his listeners. One listener who understood him well once said beautifully: Fichte's speech rushes along like a thunderstorm. What he had to say in words escaped him as if in a raging thunderstorm. It is clear that he does not just want to educate good people, he wants to educate great souls. Therefore, his endeavor was not just to communicate something to people, but to let something pass into them, so that these souls became something else when they left than they were when they entered the lecture hall. And more and more he referred to the power of the soul, to the strength that lies within the human being, which is beautifully demonstrated in the following sentence. In his lectures, there was always a striving for the direct coexistence of one's own soul life with that of the audience, which he sought to achieve through such beautiful things as this one, for example. An audience member, the naturalist Steffens, described it like this. In the course of his lecture, Fichte called upon the audience: “Think of the wall!” So they thought of the wall. He let this happen for a while – so said the man, Steffens. “And now think of the one who thought of the wall!” [was Fichte's next prompt]. There the human being was referred to himself. There the listeners were taken aback at first; they could not grasp it immediately. But it was the way to refer the human being to his own soul, as to the power that can arise from it, in order to live together with the divine-spiritual powers of the world. And so there he stands, this Johann Gottlieb Fichte, truly such that enthusiastic listeners could say of him: He lives in the realm of concepts as if in a transcendental world; but in such a way that he not only dwells in this transcendental world, but also rules over this transcendental world. And Fichte was aware that what lived in his soul had been in intimate dialogue with the spirit of the German people itself. In saying this, I am not characterizing something out of national narrow-mindedness, but rather something that Fichte experienced directly as his perception, and through which he was able to have such a great, such a significant and supportive effect on this German nation in one of the most difficult times for the German people. One need only compare what it means that a worldview like Fichte's could arise from a particular nationality with what is the pinnacle of the Romance worldview, a worldview that in turn arose entirely from the essence of the French national spirit. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, we have the French philosopher – one of the greatest and precisely one of those who most strikingly characterizes French nationality: Descartes or Cartesius. He also started from what lives in the human soul. He can therefore be compared favorably with Fichte. His “I think, therefore I am,” the “Cogito ergo sum,” has become famous. But what does it consist of, what he says: “I think, therefore I am. - Cogito ergo sum”? – By the fact that the thought lives in me, I can prove that I remain myself. That which lives in the soul is revealed, it is proved by a logical conclusion. Fichte wants to grasp it in direct life, that is the distinguishing feature. This extends to the broadest aspects of the world view. You can see this from a single detail. Dear attendees, you see, Descartes, who creates out of French folklore, comes to form a view of the world. What is this view? Yes, this view is this, that – I have to pick out one example because we don't have much time to characterize everything in detail – that he comes to see not only the external nature as one – one might say soulless, but that he also sees the animals as a soulless world. Only humans have a soul because they can experience it inwardly within themselves. Thus Descartes says: animals are no more than moving machines. This then continued to have an effect on the French world view well into the eighteenth century, when man was also made into a machine. When this world view then confronted Goethe, Goethe, out of his German consciousness, said: Yes, they offer us a world view in which the whole world is a machine, nothing but atoms and molecules bumping into each other. And if they could at least explain to you how the beautiful, glorious world comes from this mechanical pushing, then one could still be interested in such an undertaking. But they simply put the world machine in place without explaining anything about it. That was Goethe's objection to what comes from the French West as a mechanistic worldview. However, Fichte's view can be compared with this, which wants to immerse itself in every single creature and being, to live with everything, in order to recognize the will, the divine will in everything. This immersion in the world of beings is German. This confronting, only seeing soul in oneself, making everything a machine - [that is not spoken out of national narrow-mindedness] - that is the French way of doing things, for example. Now we are looking at Fichte's world view from a different perspective. For him, that which is only revealed to the senses is what he called: a material field for the fulfillment of duty. Everything that is not divine spiritual will, which weaves and lives through all beings, that which only presents itself to the senses, that is, as Fichte says, material material for duty to have an object on which it can exercise itself. That is the great thing that Fichte wants to experience – the spiritual in his own soul – and that he brings to the world, experiencing this spiritual in his own soul also from the other things. Let us compare this with what emerges, for example, within the English world view, insofar as this English world view has emerged entirely from English nationality. Of course, it is not the individual who is meant; the individual can always rise above his nation; but what is meant is that which is connected with nationality. We see that not only in older times the world view of Bacon of Verulam is based merely on the useful, merely on that which presents itself externally to the senses, for which the spirit, which experiences in itself, stands only as bands that bind together so that the spirit can find its way. There the spirit is only the means to bring the external sense into a system. There is no co-experiencing with what lives as spiritual in all sensuality. And that has been preserved until today. We see pragmatism at work there. For pragmatism is a word for something that, placed next to the Spruce worldview, really looks like darkness next to light. What is pragmatism? For pragmatism, there is not a truth for its own sake – truth that is sought so that one experiences it as truth in the soul – but the truth: Now, that is something that man forms as a concept, as an idea, so that he can find his way in the outside world. So man forms the concept of the “uniform soul”; but he does not want that in his soul, which is something like soul unity, but because man shows different expressions of his being, does this and does that. And one finds one's way around by assuming a concept like “uniform soul”. It is useful for holding together external, sensory things, for inventing something like truth. Truth only exists because it allows us to orient ourselves in sensory things. And in that which can be experienced at all, truth has no independent meaning. The opposite is the case in Fichte's quest for a worldview. What is external and sensual is certainly not underestimated; we are not dealing with a false, world-alien knowledge. But we are dealing with a desire for the soul to grow together with the world spirit and with an assertion of truth, which is experienced in the spirit as the most original, living and breathing in the world. For Fichte, things are there to reveal the world, not as they are for the pragmatists as the only reality; while that which is called truth is only there to have such bindings and brackets with which to summarize the externally coincident sense world so that the mind can comfortably survey it. I am not exaggerating, that is how things are! And so Fichte, in developing this view more and more, stands in 1811, 1813, before his Berlin students and tells them that anyone who wants to penetrate the world must look to the spirit. He speaks of a new spiritual sense – Fichte – and means by this that this sense can be developed, that when one speaks of the experiences of this sense, it is really, in the face of people who do not want to admit it, as if a single seer were speaking among a crowd of blind people! But Fichte strives to achieve in the human being that which directly connects the soul with the spiritual world. And from this he also draws the strength that is so profoundly evident in his “Speeches to the German Nation” at one of the most difficult times for the German people, through which he wanted to pour supporting forces into the future of the German people, into their souls. One can only characterize this extraordinary personality in these few words because of the shortness of the time! The even lesser known Joseph Wilhelm Schelling then stands there as his follower. But precisely this shows the infinite versatility of the German nature: that Schelling, too, wants to arrive at a world picture through the soul's living together with the secrets of the world, but — I would like to say — through completely different soul forces. While Fichte is the powerful man who wants to experience the will in himself and, in his own will, creates the world will, the eternal world will. Schelling creates out of the soul. And through this out-of-the-mind-creation, a world picture arises for him, through which nature and spiritual life grow together wonderfully. Even if it is difficult to read today what Schelling created - it is not at all important that one accepts the content, but the striving - even if it is difficult to read: one does not have to accept it like a teaching, in relation to which one must become a follower or an opponent. Look at people who have striven in this way – who have striven from the very heart of the German national character. Schelling strove to penetrate into every single being; to experience that which works within the being as a spiritual being. In this way, nature became for him a physiognomic expression of the spirit. And the spirit was that which built itself on the soil of nature. Just as the present human soul is built on the basis of its memories, so, in Schelling's sense, man felt himself to be facing nature with his spirit, as if he had lived through all times, but had left nature behind. And as he now looks at it, it offers him the memory of what he had previously created unconsciously, so that the ground for his consciousness could then be there. In this way, soul and nature grow together in Schelling. While Fichte had to be characterized by his contemporaries as the one who, above all, stood before them in German power, those who listened to Schelling, and who appreciate him, characterized him as a seer, as a personality who, when he spoke, was surrounded by what immediately showed that he was shaping words while his mind looked into a completely different world. Perhaps I may read such a word of a student and friend of Schelling, because it shows more than anything else how Schelling was seen by those who knew him. Even as a young man in Jena, Schelling had such an effect that the young men around him were immediately convinced that he not only had something to tell them that would immediately ignite their souls, but that, as he spoke, his spirit lived in the spiritual world and he spoke from within it. That is why Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, a man who himself tried to descend into the spiritual depths of the human soul, says the following. He characterizes Schelling as follows:
No, Schubert believes, it was not only that.
— Schubert writes down in 1854 what he had experienced with Schelling in the 1890s,
So it was once possible, esteemed attendees, to speak to the German people in such a way that it made this impression, from the spiritual world, that it could make this impression! Those who knew Schelling, and I myself knew people who still heard him in his old age, say that what he had to communicate was effective simply through the glance of his eyes, which still burned in his old age; so that one saw: it is the personality itself that wants to grow together with the world by giving a world-view. And the third of those who, coming from the depths of the German folk-soul, wanted to penetrate to a Weltanschhauung, is Hegel. Hegel, from whom those who do not want to make any effort when they are to absorb something flee at the first sentences - Hegel, what did he want? Schelling tried to create a world picture through the German soul. To penetrate into the spirit and the spiritual worlds through the will: Fichte. Through that which thought is, through the pure thought that lives in the soul when this soul does not turn its eye to the outer world of the senses, does not want to devote itself to the outer world of the senses with the mere intellect, through that which lives as pure, crystal-clear thought in the soul, Hegel tried to grow together in his own soul with that which is at work in the world. So that he says: When I think the thought purely, when I give myself to the life of thought, to the life of thought free of sensuality, in my own soul, then it is no longer my own arbitrary thoughts that live in the thoughts that live in the soul, but they are the thoughts that the divinity itself is in its soul. Then that which is light and illuminates the whole world ignites a little flame in one's own soul, and through this little flame the soul grows intellectually together with the world spirit. The soul rests in the world thought. In the German way, there is a striving for that which can be called mystical, but not a mysticism that revels and wants to revel in dark, confused feelings, but a mysticism that, while emotionally striving for what all mysticism strives for - a living together of one's own soul with the secrets of the world - does so on the basis of crystal-clear thinking. And this, in turn, is something characteristic of the German character: that the highest is striven for in all-spiritual clarity, not in confused, chaotic feelings. This is the world view that is in the background and from which it has also grown – from the same mother soil – from which Goethe's “Faust” and the other great works of art and literature of that time have grown, they too have grown from this same soil, as it were. And Goethe basically stands on this same soil. And Goethe says – in contrast to Kant – in a small, beautiful essay on “Contemplative Judgment,” he expresses how he strives for a knowledge that has indeed resounded within the soul, but which is an immediate revelation of that which is to develop out of it in the world. The soul does not limit itself to merely looking at the external world of the senses and judging it; but when the soul withdraws into itself, then something should awaken in this soul, so that the judging power itself becomes a contemplation - so that one learns to see spiritually. Goethe speaks of spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, which look directly into the spiritual, just as the physical eyes and ears look directly into the physical world. This permeates the Goethean soul. And Fichte could rightly say when he published his seemingly quite abstract trains of thought in 1794, he could write to Goethe:
There is a close harmony between what has emerged as the greatest, also in a poetic sense, from German intellectual life, and what lives in the background as a world view. Even if, in the period that followed, simply because the height of the outlook was simply astounding, something else came to the surface within the development of German thought than a pure continuation of the powerful thoughts of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, these thoughts are, after all, what lies at the depths of the German essence, what will continue to develop, has also continued to develop, as we shall see shortly, and what must lead to the most beautiful blossoms and fruits of the German essence. When we call to mind the spirits of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, we see that they reveal from three different sides what can be gained from a different kind of dialogue with the German national spirit. But behind them, as if invisible, is the German national spirit itself. And one expresses more than a mere image when one says: like a shade of the German national spirit itself, what comes to the surface through Fichte, Schelling and Hegel is like a shade of that which the German national spirit itself expresses. And behind that, one senses what passes through the currents of German intellectual life as an even more powerful wave. Hence the peculiar phenomenon can occur that the great minds of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were followed by lesser minds, who were less talented and who, in a certain way, sought to present that which had passed through German intellectual development as an aspiration through the German intellectual development in an even more beautiful, even brighter light. It is indeed a remarkable phenomenon, is it not, that minds that were less talented than these greats had more opportunities in later times, precisely because the German national spirit also stood behind the greats, which could then continue to work through the following, who already had the inspiration of the preceding ones. We see one such in the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Hermann Immanuel Fichte. Immanuel Hermann Fichte says it outright: that which the senses can see of man, which the mind, bound to the brain, can recognize of man, but can recognize through science, that is merely the outside of man; that contains only the powers that hold man together more for earthly things. But in this physical human being, according to Immanuel Hermann Fichte's view, there lives an etheric human being who permeates this physical human being and who is just as connected in his powers with the eternal world forces as the powers that live in the physical human being are connected to the actually perishable powers of the earth. What has been described here in these lectures over the years as the spiritual background of man, as the etheric human being, is laughed at by the current, but even within Germany , because it is influenced by foreign countries —, this etheric man has also been pointed out here in this city in lectures over the years, again and again. But we see an even higher, even more magnificent pointer to what Fichte saw in the human soul as a mere potential force, but which can be drawn out so that these eternal forces weave and live more and more. We see this even more clearly, even more magnificently, in an almost completely forgotten spirit, Troxler: Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler. Who still knows him? But he stands on the shoulders of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel! And he delves even deeper into the spiritual background of the world than his predecessors, who were far greater in terms of intellectual gifts than he was. He was simply able to receive the stimulus from them. What do we see in this Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler? We see in this Troxler how he definitely points out that when a person develops their soul, when a person brings out of their soul that which cannot be there for the outer life of the senses, then spirit is found in the human soul, that which Troxler calls on the one hand the “supernatural spirit”. And by this he means that if a person develops what lies dormant in his soul, he is then in a position to have nothing in his soul life when he turns his senses away from the outer world, but that an awakening can take place that goes beyond the senses – a supersensible spirit, a spirit that sees spiritual processes in the world as the senses see sensual processes and beings: a supersensible spirit. Even those who, as idealists, as abstract idealists, want to grasp the world through ideas and concepts will admit this. But Troxler goes further. He not only speaks of the supersensible spirit, but also of the 'super-spiritual sense'. What is super-spiritual sense? When this spirit, which looks at the world, is able to speak not only of concepts, not only of ideas, but when it can describe actual concrete entities, which it can describe as one describes an individual animal, so that one ascends to a world of higher beings that cannot be seen with the ordinary s , but which the “super-spiritual sense” can see - something that, again, popular science can easily laugh at, but which, as an energetic striving in this faded, forgotten tone, of which I will now speak to you, comes to us in such a wonderful way within the development of German thought. It becomes even more wonderful when we see the following in Troxler. Troxler says: When the human being brings forth the most beautiful thing that can live in his soul, insofar as this soul lives in the body; when he brings forth the most beautiful thing from his soul, the most beautiful thing in the soul that is bound to the body – when the soul becomes cosmic and is confronted with the world as a cosmic soul, then it develops in faith, in love, in hope. But faith, love, hope, for Troxler they are what outwardly reveals itself as the flower of earthly life, but only for this earthly life. Behind faith, behind the power of faith, which belongs to the soul insofar as the soul lives in some way, behind this power of faith, a higher power lives in the soul; the supersensible hearing, says Troxler. And faith is only the outer manifestation of a supersensible hearing, through which one can hear, as the sensory ear hears the sensory tones, the spiritual tones of the spiritual world, the spiritual language of the spiritual world , in a sense the soul in its world, because such a spiritual hearing takes place and because the soul lives in the body between birth and death, this spiritual hearing takes on the form of faith in the physical embodiment. This faith is the external revelation for the spiritual hearing. Love, this most beautiful, this most glorious flower of the soul's life within the body, is the outer revelation for the spiritual seeker of what he calls spiritual sensing, spiritual feeling. Just as one physically reaches out to touch material things, so behind the power of love lies another power, the purely spiritual power, through which the soul can extend its spiritual feelers to sense what lives as a concrete spiritual being in the spiritual world. In 1835, the beautiful lectures were published in which Troxler speaks so much about the spiritual-soul person who stands behind the believing, loving, hoping person. And behind what is the power of hope, the power of confidence, lies, in the soul, what Troxler now calls: spiritual vision, spiritual seeing. When the soul enters the body, it transforms spiritual hearing into faith, spiritual feeling into the power of love, and spiritual vision into the power of hope. And when the soul passes through death, that which was in its power of faith in the body between birth and death is transformed into spiritual ears; that which was in its power of light is transformed into spiritual touch; that which was in its power of hope is transformed into spiritual vision, into seeing the spiritual world. Thus Troxler speaks of “sensitive thoughts” - where thoughts do not pass ordinary judgments on the outer world, but where thoughts are inwardly so seized, so vividly seized, that through thoughts the spiritual world is directly grasped. And he speaks of “intelligent feelings,” where the soul does not judge through the intellectual power of mere intellectual science, as Schelling once expressed himself - that is strong, of course, but great people have the faults of their virtues - , but where the soul really judges in such a way that it lives with its thoughts together with the outer world, as it otherwise only lives with the feelings, but in clarity; Troxler speaks of “intelligent feeling”. Truly, this forgotten tone of the German world view, of the development of German thought, is wonderful. It is not necessary to be offended by the fact that this wonderful, faded tone has not continued to live externally visible; that does not matter, esteemed attendees: The important thing is that it is there and that, although it has not become outwardly visible, it nevertheless lives on in what Germanness strives for and hopes for in the world, and that it will revive again in the midst of even this materialistic science; and that the world position of the German people is precisely in the spiritual realm: to bring man and his soul to the spirit, as it lies in the sense of this faded, forgotten sound - only externally forgotten sound - of the German development of thought. Troxler quotes a beautiful sentence from his book in which he describes how he now conceives of the ethereal human being, the human being who is bound to eternal forces within the physical human being, who is bound to temporal power. Troxler says:
of man
continue to
That is a tone of the development of German thought that has faded away, but has not ceased to have an effect, and it is a great, powerful tone! If the German people today have the task of securing their place in the world through external forces, then what must be fought for today through the weapons is only the other side of the same essence, hidden in the depths of the German soul, which, through its versatility, could ascend to these peaks of thought life. - And Troxler says beautifully elsewhere:
Troxler is clear about the fact that there is a higher human being within each of us. And when this inner human being begins to work, then first comes not anthroposophy – anthropology, human science, first comes when the outer mind observes the human being, anthropology comes first, Troxler says. When the inner human being comes to the fore and gets to know the higher forces, the spiritual forces, the spiritual feelings, then anthroposophy comes. One therefore has the right to call a science that has grown out of the innermost striving of a German national being anthroposophy. And this must be stated, esteemed attendees, because it must not remain merely a forgotten and forgotten sound, but must become part of German national life again. And we shall see – perhaps official science will not accept the things, but it is only a prejudice that these things are too difficult to understand – a time will come when it will be recognized that the simplest person – it is precisely the simple souls that show this when they are approached in the right way – will understand that these things can be incorporated into the education of every child! Then this education of children will also be able to create from the very depths of German national character. This must be mentioned because one truly does not need national narrow-mindedness to characterize the world position of the German and his task in the overall development of humanity, because one does not need to lapse into a tone like that of some Frenchmen, like for example, leading world-view thinkers like Boutroux and Bergson – yes, it is still called Bergson, although it does not sound very French – like Boutroux and Bergson, who are still talking such nonsense to their French. You wouldn't believe it! For example, this striving of the German to grow together with what lives outside in things, what the soul wants to grasp within itself. Boutroux, who traveled around here in Germany before the war, who was also allowed to teach at German universities, was allowed to preach, who spoke of the fraternization of the German and the Latin, Romanic being, now, for example, he speaks of the fact that he says: the French have no expression for “Schadenfreude”. The Germans are characterized precisely by the fact that they have the word 'Schadenfreude', they have such a word; so they have Schadenfreude. On the other hand, they have no word for 'generosity', only the French have that. So the Germans don't have that, generosity, only the French have that. He also indoctrinates his French with other things. For example, the French are very easily inclined to treat everything with a certain wit. In this regard, it is perhaps not unnecessary to read the judgment on the French character. One could still have a small spark of faith that I also wanted to speak out of narrow-minded nationality here. Therefore, I will give another judgment - a judgment on the French character, French intellectual endeavor:
is the verdict of this judgment.
Everywhere just the opposite of what we have seen today. ... it suffocates everything! So I am not speaking; not even a German speaks, but Henri Frederic Amiel, the French Swiss Amiel, who as a French Swiss wrote these words on January 22, 1875. I have chosen the words of this man, this man of spirit who seeks to understand life, Henri Frederic Amiel, because he is actually a French Swiss who has only just become acquainted with German life, and can therefore compare it with what he knows within the French character. The Frenchman cannot easily understand this desire to grow together with the innermost essence that lives and moves in the most outwardly sensual thing! That is why Boutroux gives a speech in which he ridicules the German who wants to grasp everything from within: “The Frenchman,” he says, “who wants to get to know a camel goes to the menagerie, where he gets to know the camel. The Englishman goes on a journey and seeks out the camel in its environment; yes, he travels to distant countries on earth to get to know the camel where it lives. The German withdraws into his study, goes neither to the menagerie nor on a journey to distant lands, but rather deals with the camel in himself, as he can recognize it from his own soul. From this Boutroux draws the conclusion – yes, you can present this to your French people today, present it to your Parisians – from this Boutroux draws the conclusion: the Germans imagine that what they experience in their own soul is the delusion that this is the whole world. That is the one that really matters. And that is why, says Boutroux to his French audience, the Germans also imagine that they are something in the world. And then they don't look at the world any further; rather, what they imagine they are is directly divine-spiritual. And to explain that, he then made this joke. The French are, as everyone knows, a witty people; but the joke that Boutroux made was by Heinrich Heine! And so it is not even a joke. It was born on French soil, on French intellectual soil. Within German intellectual life, what I have called a forgotten tone is by no means something that perhaps only presents itself on the heights of philosophical endeavor, but it lives, it really lives. Isn't it, for example, truly wonderful? In 1856, a book was published, a small pamphlet by a simple pastor in Waldeck, in the countryside, in Sachsenberg, in the Principality of Waldeck. His name was Rocholl, and he was a simple parish priest; the little booklet is called “Contributions to the History of German Theosophy,” which shows, I would like to say, how its author is completely immersed in a view of the world as it reveals itself to the spirit. Even if some of it may not appear so simple as true in this little book today, but only fantastic, it does not matter whether one becomes a follower or an opponent, but it does matter that one sees how what man's striving is towards the spirit of the world can really reveal itself everywhere, especially within German intellectual life. If I had time, I could give you hundreds and hundreds of examples that show how, in our time – but that was not so long ago, a decade ago – a foreign essence, which also has taken over German intellectual life, [how] in an incredible way, only what can live within German intellectual life has been forgotten at first by foreign influence; for it is precisely because of this that the German people will have to take their great position in the eternity of time development. And that is what now has to defend itself in the small, relatively small area of Central Europe against the immense superiority of the rest of the world. For how will history speak one day about what is happening in the present? One can say in simple words how history will speak: 777 million people against a maximum of 150 million people in Central Europe! That is what history will have to record: 777 million people encircling 150 million people, defaming and slandering the spiritual life of these people. They need not be envious of the size of the earth's surface, these 777 million people! Because they have 68 million square kilometers, the 777 million people, compared to 6 million square kilometers that the Central European powers have - 6 million square kilometers that are surrounded! History will have to record that. And history will say that these 777 million people, with 68 million square kilometers, did not want to conquer the 150 million people on the 6 million square kilometers by bravery alone, but by starving them. The German may feel what is living in his national soul and what significance this has in the overall development of humanity. The German may live with calmness and confidence towards the future, precisely because he is aware of the forces that live in the depths of his national soul. They have always lived on; for what matters is not whether they have become famous, but that which is not known externally is revealed internally as the significant, the great. It is often difficult to bring out what is actually German spirit in contrast to foreign spirit. For example – I may mention this because I myself have been in the middle of a struggle of more than thirty years in relation to this: Goethe, in his German scientific consciousness, turned against Newton's mechanistic optics, which is still not at all understood today. But physics is so inundated with Western mechanism that today every physicist still sees nonsense in Goethe's optics. And for thirty-three years I have endeavored to establish what may be called: Goethe's right over Newton. It will take some time before people realize the situation regarding the chapter 'Goethe's Right over Newton'. Despite everything overwhelmingly self-evident that physics has presented to Goethe, there have always been individual German minds who knew whose side the law was on in this field! From Grävell, who wrote the beautiful book “Goethe Right Against Newton,” to what I myself have written about Goethe's physical-optical studies, about his color studies, one is dealing with something that, in terms of truly entering into German intellectual life, is still reserved for the future. But that future will come. In the 1850s, from the same stream of the faded, forgotten sound of German intellectual life, a man emerged: Planck, Christian Karl Planck. He wrote beautiful writings, wanting to see nature everywhere as itself imbued with spirit, forming the subsoil for the spirit, beautiful writings: “Truth and shallowness of Darwinism”, “Foundations for a science of nature”, “Spirit and Nature” - wonderful writings, entirely arising from - as he was aware, as he himself was aware - from the very deepest power of German thinking, German feeling, German scientific ethos, he describes the German essence. I can only emphasize one example: when we speak of the Earth today, how does external science speak of the Earth, how does a geologist speak of the Earth? The Earth is a material sphere, and it is only mentioned in passing that man also walks on it. For Planck, it is not. For Planck, the Earth is that to which all living beings belong. Christian Karl Planck seeks to develop a conception of the Earth that corresponds to what someone looking at the Earth from the outside would see, with all that it spiritually carries. It is not just an organism, but a spiritual being, and man belongs to the Earth as part of it. And to merely imagine the earth in terms of pure physical geology, that would be for Planck's consideration as if one would only look at the tree in relation to the trunk, at a lignified trunk, and does not see that what blossoms and fruits are, is connected with the innermost nature of the tree. Just as these belong to the tree, blossoms and fruits, according to its essence, so when one has the earth before one, one cannot be satisfied with a mere geological view. And so it is with Planck. And so, in Planck's view, something comes into play that he wanted to use to have a powerful effect on his contemporaries, but was unable to do so because they were not yet mature enough to absorb this view so directly. He wanted to say: By living with nature, one lives not only with external nature, but together with the spirit of nature. That is what he wanted, that the religious consciousness of humanity should be included in the moral, in the sense of right and wrong. The time in which Christian Karl Planck lived has not yet had the opportunity to see things in perspective. It has ultimately branded him as an “overly nervous person”. Such a thinker can often stand alone, not only in life. So that his last written work was published after his death by his dear friend Köstlin, under the title Testament of a German. All that I have mentioned led to Planck being spoken of as a hyperexcitable person; so that those who today only have a vague idea of the matter might speak of a megalomaniac. But he is a person who lives deeply and consciously within the forgotten tone of German intellectual life – so consciously that in 1864 Karl Christian Planck was able to write about what he wanted to seek as a German scientist:
of the author
Now he continues:
written in 1864, before Wagner's Parsifal!
Thus Planck in 1864, with the awareness that he could bring forth a spiritual-scientific discipline out of the German tradition. Now, many people will say, won't they, “Well, a poor philosopher who dreams in his mind doesn't know anything that actually lives in reality!” In addition, there are the practical people who know how to handle and judge practical life in the right way. When such philosophers come with their ideals: But what do they know of reality? Yes, I would like to give you an example of this Christian Karl Planck. The man died in 1880; in 1881 his Testament of a German was published – in 1881, ten years after the Franco-Prussian War had changed some of the German conditions. Let us note this point in time. How many Germans have since then believed different things about European affairs, have imagined what would come, statesmen and non-statesmen, diplomats and non-diplomats, what have they all imagined the “practical” people, who know how things are going out there! What have they all imagined! How they smiled at the idealists who, from their dream world of ideas, formed an idea about the currents in the world! Well, the “impractical idealist” Christian Karl Planck wrote in 1880 at the latest – because he died in 1881 – he wrote in his “Testament of a German”: A great European war will come!
And now I ask you to listen carefully to these words:
This is the “dreaming philosopher” of 1881, who says to people: You will be able to do whatever you want, I no longer believe it today - he couldn't say it then, but there is something in his words that clever people still [believed] in 1913, 1914, that for example Italy would be on the side of the Central Powers. The “impractical man”, the “impractical philosopher” Christian Karl Planck no longer believed it as early as 1880! You just have to get to know the true situation of life as it is today, the true situation of life that rests in the depths of the spiritual being, the whole situation as it is today was written down by a philosopher, by a German philosopher in 1880. It can be read by everyone! In 1912, the second edition of this “Testament of a German” was published by a publishing house that, at that time, had much more to do in its printing work than to deal with the “Testament of a German.” Rather, it preferred to focus on the numerous translations of the works of the French philosopher Bergson in Germany, as they say, popularized, that Bergson - I have in my “Riddles of Philosophy in their History as an Outline” also referred to Bergson in the new edition of the work “World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century”. But however difficult it may have been, or in fact still is, to realize that, although I pointed out the full significance of Christian Karl Planck as early as 1900 in my “Welt- und Lebens-Anschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert” (World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century) – supplemented by a prehistory of Western philosophy and continued up to the present – and conscious of the fact that a German philosopher can speak in this way, it did not even have the effect that I was able to point out in the past – written down even before the war – what, for example, is accepted as a particularly significant idea by those ignorant of Bergson, such as the famous sentence “Duration endures.” You could see that as saying nothing more than ‘Duration endures.’ It would be the same as saying ‘The heart beats.’ But what could be seen as something different was that in Bergson's work, the next thing that man has to consider in terms of a world view [...] is that he starts from man and puts the human being at the forefront, and the other beings as it were fall away from human development - that first the human being is there, then something arises from the realm of minerals, plants, animals, which some will consider madness, but which is the actual real world view - one admired that and pointed it out. One might say that in this case, because there is no full diversity among those who have so enthusiastically turned to Bergson's philosophy and regurgitate many things. One was somewhat saddened when Bergson concluded his speech by saying that during the war the Germans had sunk so low – and I already mentioned this last year here that the Germans have come down so low from their heights, as they once had in Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, [as they had it] in a Goethe -, [that the Germans] have come down so low now that everything is mechanistic with them, [that they] want to let everything merge into machines and the industrial. The good Bergson probably believed that the Germans would declaim a Novalis, a Goethe or a Schiller for them. But I was able to show you at the time – this happened before the war – that what had been so admired as a weaker thought in Bergson, that in the German Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss – but in the works that appeared as early as the 1870s, especially in 1882 —, [that this] appeared and was advocated in a much more powerful way by the German Preuss! There we see how Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss, in his 1882 work “Geist und Stoff” (Mind and Matter), cites this entire forgotten and forgotten pursuit and current of German intellectual life as an example, and he very energetically points out that one must start from the human being. And only a view of nature that is not at all aware of the real connection between the human spirit and the spiritual can start from the lower beings and develop everything up to the human being, while what is otherwise present is seen as splintering. Preuss says:
Did Bergson not know whether he had actually known Preuss, Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss? Which would be just as big a mistake as if he had known him and simply written what Preuss's property is without pointing out that it is from Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss. It would be conceivable for him – the latter as well; for it has now become sufficiently well known that Bergson – who accuses the Germans of a mechanical world view in order to prove how they have degenerated in the present day – has himself taken a very strange path. It is sufficiently well known that Bergson copied entire pages of his books – Bergson's books! from Schelling, Schopenhauer and other German philosophers, simply copied – not a mechanical way of writing his books! And to copy pages and pages from the personalities of a people, a people that is so reviled and slandered! You simply copy, and thereby gain great fame and praise. These are things that are so easily forgotten in the present. Some people already see how things are! For example, Henry Frederic Amiel once said:
Thus Henri Frederic Amiel, the French Swiss, who wrote these words about the Germanic spirit and the French, Spanish and Russians in 1877, when he was staying in Ems. Through such things, dear attendees, you get to know what actually lives in the six million square kilometers that are now not only being enclosed, but also vilified and defamed by the prominent personalities of those who live on the 68 million square kilometers. But if we try to extract the essence, the most significant part of the individual national spirits as they now have to fight with each other, yes, we can truly say: if we look at the Italian national soul – I am sure there are many listeners here who know that I have been the war, not only to Germans but also to other European nations, so that they are not just caused by the mood of this war, these words, but are based on objective knowledge of the facts. If you look at the Italian people's soul, you can find a simple word to characterize it. The Italian turns to the world – of course I do not mean the individual, but insofar as he belongs to his people – the Italian turns to the world; but he says: this world must be such that I like it! Quite solely from this point of view – nationality is that. The Frenchman also turns to the world. But he says: This world must think nothing but what I want, what I, in my French concepts, imagine the world to be. And if he encounters different thinking somewhere, then it must be subordinated. Woe betide if something exists that the Frenchman cannot understand from his Frenchness. The Englishman, the Briton, thinks: Yes, the world is good too; the world, right, very good; but it must be made in such a way that it serves the Briton, that the Briton can assert his ego in this world above all else, and that it is otherwise arranged in such a way that it serves him. You can read about it in detail, especially in those who believed that they were creating from the depths of the English national soul - historians, philosophers - wherever you look, you can see it everywhere. The German in his development of thought thinks: The world is there, and as I stand as a human being before the world, I want to develop my human soul so that it becomes the threefold image of the great world. That is the essence of German thinking and feeling. The Russian, who thinks: the world as it is, is worth nothing at all; it must be replaced by another. And it is a matter of putting that world in the place of this world, in which the Russian person can flourish. That is the mood of the Russian people. Henri Frederic Amiel, the Swiss Frenchman, once painted a strange picture of what it would be like if the Russian national character were to flood and dominate Europe - as it wanted, and as the entire Russian national current in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries actually portrayed it from its own impulses. Henri Frederic Amiel says:
He names Russia as the country of the north, and includes France and Germany among the countries of the south.
In relation to Germany and Austria, the peoples allied with them, as we know, that time has not yet come. But just as the East, the Russian East, gradually learned to think about the European West in the course of the nineteenth century – what the European West is for it, which in the nineteenth century included not only Central Europe but also Western Europe, France and England – that which lies in the Russian people, incited by an incomprehension of the Western intellectual culture, especially also the German spiritual culture, has heated up to the point of megalomania, which has truly not only been counteracted in the “Testament of Peter the Great”, in the falsified or non-falsified “Testament of Peter the Great”, but has been counteracted in the whole developmental principle of leading personalities in nineteenth and twentieth century Russia. You can read more about this in my booklet “Thoughts During the Time of the War. For Germans and Those Who Don't Hate Them”; it is currently out of print, but the second edition will be coming out soon. It is therefore not available at the moment because it is out of print. It is a strange process. More and more, one sees in Russian literature, in the descriptions of Russian philosophers, a development of thought that says: everything that lives in the West, especially in German intellectual life, these thoughts that have emerged from Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and the others, are abstract thoughts that do not grasp the depths of what is happening. It is all decrepit; it is a world that must be done away with. And in its place must come the Russian world, the world that the Russian man will create. Kireyevsky is one of those who started with this way of thinking. In 1829, it was already a tone that had become dominant, then became political, and when the Russian steamroller was now to be sent over Europe. This Kireyevsky, who writes:
... 1829! So: all European goods, as soon as Russia extends over all of Europe. This is not only the political program, it is also the literary program, the artistic-aesthetic program, to possess all of Europe and then, out of good nature, to share as much as one sees fit - according to Kireyevsky. But Russian intellectual life did not immediately embrace the West. As late as 1885, we find a book by Yushakov, who dreams, as is typical of deeply rooted Russian identity, of having to exert an influence in Asia first – a kind of Pan-Asianism. Yushakov constructs a curious theory: he says that there are peoples living over there in Asia who once had a wonderful spiritual and economic culture. They themselves – these Asian peoples – have in a wonderful but true legend of Ormuzd and Ahriman that which has arisen and developed within their lives. They call Ormuzd the good god; Ahriman was always the evil god. But the Iranian peoples, to which the Indians and the Persians also belong, have placed themselves in the service of Ormuzd. They have taken from the evil Ahriman that which opposed them, so to speak, that which Ahriman left to them, the evil Ahriman left to them, took from him. And in 1885, Yushakov looks particularly at the West, at the Western peoples of Europe, and especially at one Western European people: the English. How were they robbed of their gifts of the good Ormuzd by these English, these Asians! These English treated the Asian peoples in such a way, intervened with what could come out of their worldview. But what did they bring to these Asian peoples? - says Yushakov in his book “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”, 1885. These English came to the Asian peoples and thought that they were only there to dress in English clothes, fight each other with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English vessels and play with English baubles. Then he goes on to say: Now the Russians have to take charge of the cultural blessings. They will not take away from the Asians what Ormuzd has given them, but they will ally themselves with the poor people enslaved by Ahriman and share their Ormuzd with them, in order to work their way up with them and collect Ormuzd's goods anew in Asia. In their hearts, with the hearts of the Asian peoples, they will be - not I say this, but Jushakow. So it will be that they will go over from Russia, those from Russia who are the real future types of humanity from Russia, the farmer and the Cossack, the greatest bearers of the moral world order, the greatest bearers of selfless humanity. From the union of the peasant and the Cossack will come forth that which will make Asia happy again. And then he, Yushakov, goes on to say, pointing again to England - 1885:
So England's existence. And then he continues:
my Russian fatherland
and has nothing to do with this terrible England. This was said by a Russian in 1885 about England, who longs for a state and is grateful that Russia is sufficiently far removed from what England brings upon the world. In such things lie the reasons, not the logical ones, but perhaps the illogical ones, who will then experiment on the world, who will then take the place where the Russian people have treated relations with the Asians, which, in the opinion of these people, and which one would have to free from Ahriman again that the Russians did not initially ally themselves with the Asians to fight the evil Ahriman and destroy him with them, but that the Russians initially allied themselves with the evil Western peoples, with the evil English, to crush Europe. We need not descend into the [tone] into which so much has been descended today on the part of the opponents of Germanness [...], who for martial reasons have also become opponents of the German essence and national character. With the characterization of Christian Karl Planck given earlier, we can say:
Therefore, we prefer to look at what, from a world-historical point of view, in terms of pure fact, the German spirit must strive towards. There we see something that existed long before the appearance of Christ on earth, in the form of spiritual striving in Asia. There they also tried to unite with the spirit that permeates and animates the world, the whole world, to attain a culture – for no culture can be attained otherwise. But how they tried to achieve this in Asia! By weakening, by extinguishing the I, by extinguishing the I as much as possible! This world view must belong to the past, now that the Christ Impulse, the greatest impulse to have come to Earth, has entered into life on Earth, and given it true spirit and meaning. This world view of the Orient can no longer found a real spiritual view. There the I must not extinguish itself, but must strengthen and uplift itself, and through this elevation grow as I into the spiritual universe, into the spiritual universe. Panasiatism has thus shown this Hinduism, whose height had been reached by extinguishing the ego. In more recent times, after the influence of the Christ Impulse, the realization of the self has been sought through knowledge, not by damping down the self, but by the self becoming aware of itself, experiencing itself, so that in its experiencing it has a sense of the world. The German receives this as his task; such a task was always present in the depths of the German people's striving for knowledge. And those who lived in Central Europe as Germans were united in such striving. And finally, I would like to mention a few words from an Austrian German, an Austrian German who says of Austria, “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland,” to express in the 1860s - it is 1862 written in 1862 to express how a shared spirit unites what was later – it only happened after Robert Hamerling's death – was later welded together so firmly by external ties, as Central Europe now stands. Robert Hamerling, the Austrian German, Austria's greatest poet in the second half of the nineteenth century, summarized this in the words: “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland.” I, as a closer compatriot of Hamerling, I, who myself lived almost thirty years of my life in Austria among Austrian Germans and fought with them, I may point out precisely this seriousness of the German character within the German-Austrian. Robert Hamerling expresses this trait, this trait in world history, beautifully in his “Germanenzug” (The German March) – as I said, written in 1862 – where he describes, as in a dream, how the ancient Germanic peoples migrate from Asia to Europe – and in them, as in a germ, the later Germans – how they seek out their new European homeland. It is beautifully described: the moon rises; it is evening. The Teutons lie down to sleep, these future Teutons migrating to Europe; only one is awake: the blond Teut. The genius of Teutonia, the genius of the later, the future Germany, speaks to Teut. He speaks of the spirituality that must rest in striving, which is German striving. Then Hamerling says, that is, he lets the spirit of the German people say it to the blond Teut:
This is the very deepest knowledge that can be derived from the tone of the partially forgotten tones quoted today from the development of German thought. It is a tone that can never be anti-religious, the tone that will also grasp all knowledge in man in such a way that this knowledge is offered as if on the altar to the world spirit, to the spiritual, real world. that tone of which Jakob Böhme, the “Philosophus teutonicus” - as he was also called - has spoken in the beautiful words that suggest the true popular character of German knowledge:
he means the depth of heaven, the blue
These are deep, German words. And Robert Hamerling, Austria's great German, who knew how to empathize with even the smallest German being – just by the way, I mention that in 1884 a statue of Strasbourg was erected in Paris and the German flag in front of the statue was burned, that went so close to Hamerling's heart that he wrote the words:
he wrote to the French
So it sounded from Austria to the French as they danced around the Strasbourg statue and burned the German flag. But Hamerling also knew how to remind people of the fact that the German spirit is the continuation of the greatest that once appeared in the world spirit in the ancient Orient, from which the ancient ancestors of the Germanic peoples emerged; he knew how to point out that, just in a pre-Christian manner, by a lowering of the ego, man wanted to merge with the universe, but how this still lives, is raised to a higher level, lives in the German character, which has to bring the greatest that the world once created in the Orient to this world in a new form, as befits Christian development. This connection with the whole development of humanity comes to Robert Hamerling's mind – also in his “Germanenzug” – this basic trait that everything the German recognizes should grasp his deepest being, become one with his whole personality; but that at the same time it is something that is a world-historical mission and ties in with the highest aspirations of humanity in the past. Therefore, Robert Hamerling again lets the spirit of the German people speak:
We may and must actually immerse ourselves today in that which can bring us to the realization of how truly the roots of a high spiritual striving live, which must have an effect on the future for the benefit of humanity. This spirituality lives in the most beautiful expressions of German intellectual life in the 6 million square kilometers that are threatened today by people who live in 68 million square kilometers. And one does not need to speak out of national sentiment, but out of objective knowledge, when one speaks of the world vocation of the German people, which cannot be overcome by those who today - not understanding it - not only revile but slander it. We Germans may look back to that which, in Germany's greatest spiritual period, has incorporated itself into the development of German thought and what lives in it and will flourish again. And we may look to what has presented itself to us in such a way that we look to it as to roots and germs. And by recognizing the rooting and germinating power of that which has passed, we have faith in the continued effect of this past. And in this belief in what we have to cherish and cultivate not only for the sake of the German people, but for the sake of humanity, we may love these roots of German national identity and cherish the hope and confidence that what has been recognized as germs and roots will bear blossoms and fruit in the future! Despite everything and everyone who rises up against it today, we are imbued with the power that expresses itself on the one hand in German intellectual life and that today has to undergo such trials in relation to our external daily life. We look to the future and trust this power, which must carry the German essence in the future as it has carried it in the past. From this, what was meant by these arguments can be briefly summarized, according to feeling. Again, in the words of Robert Hamerling, looking at what is being said against us, the Germans, and against our name, today, looking at what the German essence must be in the development of humanity, what I wanted to express today out of true, discerning feeling can be summarized in four short lines by Robert Hamerling, an Austrian German who sensed how strongly what is today welded together by the same, by such great and such sorrowful and such trials and tribulations rich time conditions in Central Europe belongs together. He, Robert Hamerling, who felt this, he coined the beautiful words with which we want to conclude this reflection:
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