The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Over the past four years, we have often heard that events as terrible for mankind as those that have just taken place have not occurred in the entire period covered by human historical thought. It is less common to hear this sentiment countered by the idea that the terrible events that have befallen mankind should at least be countered by attempts to reorganize social coexistence, which differ in their conceptual foundations just as thoroughly from what we are accustomed to think as the terrible events of recent years differ from what we have experienced in the course of human development. Indeed, when such an attempt arises to develop thoughts that run counter to ingrained habits of thought, then today one usually hears such an attempt met with reproach: Well, another utopia! - However, in the course of more recent times, we have already had some experience with the attitude on which such an accusation is based. It was precisely those people who think like those who speak of “utopia” in the case alluded to, who would have considered a description of the catastrophic events that affected us as late as the spring of 1914 to be a dream, a fantasy. They call themselves practitioners, these people. How did they talk back then, before the world-shattering catastrophe struck? Let's take a look at some of them. We need only look at some of the leading statesmen of Europe at that time, in the spring of 1914. They were almost verbatim when they said: “Such practitioners, such despisers of what they call utopias, spoke at that time something like this: the relations between the great European powers, thanks to the efforts of the cabinets, give a certain guarantee that world peace cannot be shaken for the foreseeable future. - Such talk is not an invention, it can be read in the parliamentary reports; it is contained there in the most diverse variations.

However, anyone who could not follow the thinking of such people in the inner state of his soul at that time, but who tried to maintain an unbiased view of events, perhaps spoke in the same way as the person who had to speak to a meeting in Vienna in April 1914, who is also speaking to you today. At that time, my intellectual conscience and my powers of observation forced me to say: with regard to the development of our social and international relations, we are in the midst of something that can only be described as a carcinoma, a cancerous disease in the life of nations, which must break out in a terrible way in a very short time. - Perhaps the force of events will force people to regard as utopians less those who speak out of this state of mind than those who, in what they say, are so well in tune with events as I have just indicated. Today, on the other hand, you can hear the practitioners, who are poring over some of what they call utopias, saying: “We cannot climb the highest mountain peaks of a new order in human society right now, we have to move forward step by step. Certainly some thoughts - say such people - are nice, and perhaps we will come to such things centuries from now; but today it is up to us to take the next steps.

Now it is quite certainly simply a matter of course that one must first take the very next steps, but he will climb a mountain badly who has no idea at all, when he takes the next step, which direction he should take; who has no idea at all in which direction the summit actually lies. And those who do not think in the sense of these utopia-despisers, but perhaps think in a realistic sense, will perhaps have to start today from a different comparison with what lies hidden in the germ and could also erupt in a terrible way. He will perhaps not have to start from the carcinoma that has broken out in the war catastrophe of recent years. But he will have to point out that many people are now thinking like those who live in a house that has cracks and fissures, who are threatening the house with collapse, but who cannot decide to do anything to rebuild the house, but who enter into all kinds of discussions about how to connect the individual rooms that they live in with each other through doors, so that they can help each other more easily through these doors. - The help that can be afforded through these doors will be of little help when the leaps have grown to a corresponding strength!

Thinking such things, it seems, is probably due to the development of the facts, which today speak a louder and clearer language than people are often inclined to hear today.

Now, out of the horrors that had to be lived through, this world war catastrophe has released a sentiment that has gradually crystallized in such views as are now again the basis of the significant meeting that is being held here in Bern as a League of Nations Conference. The call for a League of Nations has developed out of the terrible events of recent years. It must be said, however, that it might be justified to approach the call for a League of Nations with different feelings than some people do today. For perhaps it is more important to ask not only: What could be done for this League of Nations? What measures could be taken to bring it about in the best way imaginable? Rather, the question could perhaps be raised: What foundations exist in the life of the peoples for the establishment of such a League of Nations? For only if one looks at the forces that exist in the life of nations can one perhaps recognize from these forces to what extent one is in a position to achieve something fruitful with such a League of Nations. And does it not seem necessary, I would say, to shift the question somewhat in this direction, since the important conception of this League of Nations, which is particularly plausible to the world, arose together with an idea whose realization can no longer be spoken of today? In 1917, in a speech by Wilson to the American Senate, a thought emerged which, in connection with another thought, went something like this: What one could strive for with this League of Nations had a certain precondition, namely the precondition that in the events of the war neither one side nor the other would achieve what one would have to call victory or defeat in the decisive sense. - Wilson was looking towards an outcome that was not that of victory or defeat for one party. And from the direction of thought towards such an outcome he derived the feelings that urged him towards this League of Nations.

To be sure, the thought had a reality in itself; but the reality that was thought of then can no longer be spoken of today; for today the decisive victory on the one side is the decisive defeat on the other. Indeed, perhaps it is precisely for this reason that the question of the League of Nations, for example, must be posed in a completely different way.

I think it is particularly natural for me to ask the question about the League of Nations myself and to dare to discuss it in front of people today, to ask this question in a very special way. As a member of the people on whose side the decisive defeat is, it is not possible today to pose the question as if its answer could only emerge from a free agreement of those peoples who might wish to unite in such a League of Nations, and to whom, according to their innermost feelings, the Central European peoples most certainly also belong. The events in Paris basically rule out such a question for the Germans today, and one should have no illusions about this. But that is not how I want to pose this question either. My aim is to find a question and formulate a corresponding answer in which even those who may be excluded from participation in this League of Nations for the foreseeable future can have their say. In other words, the question will have to be posed in this way: Whatever agreements are reached at the moment, what can each individual nation contribute from its own resources, regardless of whether it has suffered victory or defeat, to a real League of Nations that can bring humanity what it longs for?

But since a League of Nations will undoubtedly have to deal with international affairs, it will have to turn its attention above all to the most important international affairs, which will concern all peoples in the near future under all circumstances.

When dealing with such matters today, we first look in two directions, as is customary in this day and age. On the one hand, we look at the state, and on the other hand, we look at economic life. Those people who today want something with regard to the coexistence of people look first of all to the state with regard to the guidelines of this will, asking: What should the state do in this or that matter for which a change has become ripe? - Or else, in order to arrive at an explanation, people look today, as if, I might say, with hypnotized eyes, to economic life; for economic conditions seem to be the only ones that cause today's conflicts, the greatest conflicts at least of the present day.

In these considerations, which are based on these two points of view, one thing is usually ignored. Even if one assures oneself that one wants to take account of the circumstances of the present day and, above all, focus on the human being, this is rarely done in reality. Here I would like to try not to shy away from looking at what we find when we look at the state on the one hand and at economic life on the other. But above all, I do not want to neglect to ask a question in a very energetic way, starting from the point of view of man as such: What do the states have to do in order to unite in a league of nations? That is what is asked first and foremost. And many things - do not think that I wish to criticize or condemn - many quite good things will come about in the near future if this question is posed in this way, by attempting to find from the construction of the states, from the individual customs of the states, something that transcends the states, as it were, such as a world federation or a world parliament. -- But today I would like to contrast the question: What should the states do? - the other question: What should states refrain from doing for the good of mankind? - In many respects we have learned through the terrible events of recent years what the states have accomplished with their actions; they have led mankind into this terrible catastrophe. We cannot deny it, it is the states that have led humanity into this terrible catastrophe!

Shouldn't it make sense to consider whether a person, when he has seen that he is causing all kinds of harm with his actions, should always ask himself: How do I do things differently? - Might it not be more useful to say: perhaps I should leave what I have done badly to someone else to do? - Then, you see, the question might be led down a completely different track.

It may be necessary to turn to the most important international questions if we want to obtain fruitful documentation on what can be said to be the cracks and fissures in the house that present-day humanity inhabits, consisting of various states. One must perhaps ask: Where do these cracks and fissures come from? Where does it come from that the states have driven people into this terrible catastrophe of war?

Two things have certainly become international in the course of modern times; apart from many others, they are capitalism and human labor. Undoubtedly, we had a “League of Nations” or something similar to it: the League based on international capital. And another “League of Nations” was also in the making, and it is very much in evidence today: it is the one based on the international of human labor. And we will have to fall back on these two things if we want to arrive at the fruitful germs of such a League of Nations, which can now really be built on the affairs of man as such.

With regard to capital, we see that a large number of people regard the way in which it has been administered over the course of time and what has led to so-called capitalism as that which is most contrary to the interests of a large part of humanity, and which, moreover, through much that lies within it, has led us to such terrible events. And the call is being raised from many sides - which is expressed in opposition to this capitalism - the radical call that the entire social order based on capitalism must be changed, that the private management of capitalism must give way to what we are now used to calling socialization. This, combined with a feeling about human labor power, gives international life its coloring today. It must be repeated again and again: however little it is clearly expressed in the consciously expressed thoughts of the proletarian world population, it lives unconsciously in the subsoil of a mass of people numbering in the millions that in the course of capitalist development it is precisely human labor power that has taken on a character that it should not continue to have.

Let us first look in these two directions. Capital, the capitalist administration of economic life, must, if we wish to see through it clearly, be quite distinctly separated from what it is connected with today. Two things are connected today with what is called capitalism: the one points to something that cannot be separated from capitalism; the other is something that must be distanced from it. Today, economic enterprises based on capital and private ownership of capital are combined into one. But the question must be asked: Can these two things be separated? For the private management of economic enterprises, which is built on the greater or lesser intensity of individual human abilities, this private management, which requires an auxiliary means, capital, for its operation, cannot be abolished. Anyone who somehow makes an impartial effort to ask under what conditions the social organism is viable will always have to say to himself: This social organism is not viable if it is deprived of its most important source, namely that which flows into it through the individual abilities that one person or another can acquire on different scales. What works in the direction of capital must also work in the direction of individual human abilities. This indicates that in no way can the necessary addition to social life, which comes from individual human abilities, be separated from its means, capital, in the future state.

However, the private possession of capital, the ownership of private capital, is something else. This ownership of private capital has a different social function from the management of the enterprises for which capital is necessary, by individual human capacities. The fact that someone acquires or has acquired private capital, by whatever means, gives him a certain power over other people. This power, which will mostly be an economic power, cannot be regulated in any other way than by bringing it into connection with the legal relations of the social organism. That which supplies the social organism with really fruitful forces is the work which the individual faculties perform through capital. But that which harms the social organism is when people who cannot perform such work themselves through their individual abilities are nevertheless in permanent possession of capital through some kind of relationship. For such people have economic power. What does it mean then? To have capital? - Having capital means having a number of people work according to your intentions, having power over the work of a number of people.

Health can only be brought about by ensuring that everything that has to be achieved in the social organism by means of capital is not separated from the human personality with its individual abilities behind it. But it is precisely through the possession of capital on the part of those persons who do not put their individual abilities into the use of capital that the fruitfulness of the effect of capital is again and again detached in the social organism from that which capital is in general, and which can also have very, very harmful consequences for the social coexistence of people. That is to say, at the present historical moment of mankind we are faced with the necessity of separating the possession of capital from the administration of capital. That is one question. Let us leave it at that for the moment. We shall see shortly afterwards what possible solution can be found to this question.

The second is the question of the social significance of human labor. This social significance of human labor can be seen if we can follow what has passed through the minds of the proletarian population over the last few decades, if we have seen the impact on these minds of what Karl Marx and those who worked in his direction have said about this human labor. What Karl Marx said in his theory of surplus value struck a chord in the souls of the proletariat! Why? Because there were feelings in them that brought this question about human labor power together with the deepest questions about human dignity and about an existence worthy of human beings in general. Marx had to put into such words what he had to say about the social significance of human labor power, which said that human labor power had not yet been freed by the modern capitalist economic order from the character of being a commodity. In the economic process commodities circulate; but in the modern economic process not only commodities circulate; not only commodities follow the dictates of supply and demand, but human labor is also offered on the commodity market, which in this case must be called the labor market, and it is paid for, just as commodities are otherwise paid for. The person who has to carry his human labor power to the market feels, despite the existence of the modern labor contract, the degradation of his human value when he sees his labor power turned into a commodity. For this modern labor contract, it is concluded on the condition that the labor manager - in this case the entrepreneur - takes the worker's labor power from him in return for a compensation that proves necessary on the economic market. In short: labor power is turned into a commodity.

But this question can only be solved by not stopping at what Karl Marx said. Today it will be a vital question for what is to be achieved - whether on the part of the proletarian population or on the part of the leading bourgeois circles - to bring about liberation on this very point by learning in the right way to go beyond what Karl Marx was able to teach the proletarian population in this field. Wherever there are people today who believe that their social will is entirely in the direction of the proletariat, they are always and forever based on the feeling that those who are otherwise propertyless, who have only their labor power, must go out for wages; that is, they must turn their labor power into a commodity. How can labor-power best be made into a commodity? this is how the question is formulated, how can it be made most profitable? - This question will never be solved in such a way that it cannot give rise to new social upheavals unless the opposite demand is made: How can human labor power be stripped of the character of a commodity? How is a social organization possible in which human labour power is no longer a commodity? - After all, the fact of labor in the actual sense results in the following. Through the joint - let us now call it work -, through the joint work of the manual worker and the intellectual leader, a product is created. The question is this: How can this joint production of a product for the commodity market be brought into a satisfactory relationship with what is today called the employee and with what is today called the employer?

These are the two most important questions that can and must be raised today across the entire international community: What is there in the use of capital in human social life? What, on the other hand, is there in the flow of human labor power into this social human life?

The worker today - let us consider his situation - even if he does not express this, even if Marx did not learn to think in this direction to the end, the worker can feel: I manufacture my product together with the entrepreneur. That which is produced at the workplace comes from both of us. It can only be a question of: what division occurs between what is today called the entrepreneur and what is today called the manual worker? And such a division must occur, which can be satisfactory to both sides in the immediate concrete case.

What is the actual relationship today between the employer and the employee? I do not want to fall into agitational phrases. But let us look at this whole relationship soberly, soberly, as it is formulated by today's proletarians - though not even in clear terms - but as it is deeply and intensely rooted in the subconscious feelings of these proletarians. Since the economic power of the entrepreneur does not enable the worker to conclude a contract about what they jointly produce as a commodity, or what the joint yield of this commodity is, about how much accrues to one and how much to the other, since he is only in a position to conclude a labor contract, the worker gets into a state of mind which gives him the feeling that basically no labor power can ever be compared with any commodity. And yet today we speak of exchanging commodity for commodity or its representative, money, in the economic process. And we also speak of exchanging goods or their representative, money, for human labor power. So the worker today gets the impression that although he works together with the entrepreneur on the production of goods, he is actually being cheated because he does not get the part he is entitled to.

This already points to the fact that the individual human abilities that have to make use of capital are actually running on a slippery slope. For what these individual human faculties accomplish by managing capital out of human mental or physical strength is perceived by a large part of humanity as overreaching, as a kind of fraud. Whether this is justified or not is not something we want to investigate at the moment, but it is perceived as such. And in the perception it forms the basis for the vocal facts of the present.

This, however, points to the fact that the individual abilities of human beings must be rooted in something that is, or at least can be, placed in the social organism today in a skewed way. This utilization of man's individual abilities is connected today in the modern capitalist economy with the appropriation of the ownership of the means of production; it is thus connected with the appropriation of a certain economic power, an economic superiority. But that which can express itself in a power, which can express itself in this superiority of one person over another, is nothing other than what constitutes a legal relationship in human life.

Whoever now takes a look at how a legal relationship is strangely intertwined with the application of individual human abilities will perhaps, as happened to the person speaking to you here, have to direct his gaze to something that is more deeply rooted in the entire nature of the social organism than the things that are very often sought today. It is obvious to ask from such premises: How is right and how is the use of individual human abilities, which must always be productive anew, which must always emerge anew from their original source in man, how is the utilization of individual abilities in the social organism justified?

Whoever has retained an unbiased view of human life will gradually come to the realization that three quite different, original sources of human life can be distinguished in a social organism. These three original sources of human life flow together quite naturally in the social organism, they work together. But the way in which they work together can only be fathomed if we are able to look at the reality of the human being as such, who must be a unity, a unified being within the social trinity.

In the social organism these individual human faculties are first of all present. And we can trace their domain from the highest spiritual achievements of man in art, in science, in religious life, down to that form of the application of individual human faculties as they are more or less grounded in the spiritual or in the physical, down to that application of individual human faculties which must be used in the most ordinary, in the materialistic process, which is based on capitalism, right into the economic process, which is usually called with a derogatory word the material sphere. Up to this point a uniform current can be traced down from the other intellectual achievements. Within this area everything is based on the corresponding, on the fruitful application of that which must always be lifted anew from the primal sources of human nature if it is to flow in the right way into the healthy social organism.

In the healthy social organism everything that is based on law lives quite differently. For this right is something that takes place between man and man simply because man is generally man. We must have the opportunity to develop our individual abilities in social life. The better we develop them, the better for the generality of the social organism. The more freedom we have in bringing out and utilizing our individual abilities, the better for the social organism. For anyone who does not start out from theories and dogmas, who is able to observe real life, everything that must play out as law between people stands in stark contrast to this in real life. There is nothing else to be considered but that in which all men are equal to each other.

A third thing that plays a role in human social coexistence, which in turn is totally different from the other two - the individual human faculties that come from the inequalities of human nature, the right that comes from the consciousness of right - is the human need that comes from the natural foundations of physical and spiritual life, and which must find its satisfaction in the cycle of economic life through production, circulation and consumption.

This threefold structure of the social organism has not been brought about by some abstract thinking, this threefold structure is there. And the question can only be: How can this threefold structure be regulated in such a way that the result is not a sick but a healthy social organism? An unbiased view of the social organism - and of course I can only cite results in these allusions - leads one to say: It is precisely the misjudgment of this radical difference between the three sources of social life in the course of recent historical development that has led to the discussion in which we are already involved today, and in which we will find ourselves more and more. In the course of modern times, these three currents of human interaction have been mixed up in an unlawful way.

What started it? When, in more recent times, economic life, I would like to say, took up the view as if hypnotized, it was found justified in the progress of mankind to merge with the purely political state - which has to do with that in which all men are equal, with the actual right - at first certain branches of the economy, especially telegraphy, railroads and so on, i.e. those branches of the economy which appeared to be the most suitable for merging with the state, on which, as on economic life, the human gaze was hypnotized. And what does the socialist thinker of today actually do? He is merely inheriting the legacy of bourgeois thinking in this respect. He does not merely want certain individual branches of the economy that seem suitable to be nationalized or socialized. He wants to socialize either the entire property or the entire business. He just wants to draw the final consequences of what has been done.

Now one could cite many things. One need only mention in the external political sphere the role played by what I need only call the “Baghdad Railway” among the disastrous causes of war that have been preparing for years. Hundreds and hundreds of such things could be mentioned. What do such things mean? Such things mean a merging of economic interests with the pure interests of the state. So that in the end the result is that the administrators of state life must give themselves up to rendering the services that are possible to them by virtue of their power, following economic interests. And in this way the political interests of the states are drawn into the conflicts of economic interests. The whole configuration of states in recent times has shown this intermingling of economic life with political life.

Anyone who has been able to observe Central European life from this point of view - as the person who is speaking to you today has been able to observe it in Austria - knows that much of what has wiped the Austrian state out of the circle of the existing state has contributed to what people think of least. When, in the sixties, people in Austria thought of establishing a constitutional life, this constitutional life was based on the fact that the mere economic life was actually used for the configuration of the state. For the Austrian Imperial Council, voting was organized in such a way that four electoral curiae voted: that of the large landowners, that of the chambers of commerce, that of the cities, markets and industrial towns, and that of the rural communities, all economic communities. What was elected out of these economic communities became law in Austria. What emerged as law from purely economic interests could not, of course, come to terms with something that came from the spiritual and individual foundations of humanity: the interests of the people of the so-called Austrian state. And so things became entangled in such a way that what the people elected by the four economic curiae wanted to make law in a sham state out of their economic interests was made law. This, in turn, confounded itself with what one particularly likes to confound out of the sentiments of modern times, that confounded itself with the spiritual interests and aspirations of mankind, with all that which one can call the whole scope of spiritual life.

If, on the one hand, economic life has been incorporated into modern state life, then, on the other hand, the entire spiritual life has been incorporated into this state life. We have also seen in this that which is precisely in the spirit of modern human progress. The ideal was to gradually make all spiritual life a part of the political life of the state. How much has remained free today? Individual branches of the arts and individual branches of science, which are carried on by those who may not be employed by a state, and the like. Today there is still no sense of the fact that spiritual life can only integrate its reality into the social organism in the right way if this spiritual life is completely emancipated from all other life, if it can give itself its own administration, its own structure. While in recent times more and more efforts have been made to nationalize the entire school system, it is within the developmental powers of modern man to bring about a complete reversal in this area. Just imagine: If the lowest teacher is not the servant of the state, but if the lowest teacher knows how to place himself in a freely organized spiritual life, knows how to place himself in a spiritual organism, how differently he can then integrate what he is able to achieve into the unity of the human social organism, how differently than if the state demands of him what he must or must not do, what he must teach the developing human being!

Those who judge these things perhaps believe, from many a bad experience that has been made, that the people who have to deal with science, for example, on which so much depends, are employed according to certain considerations. But science itself and its teaching are free. Such laws can be found in the most diverse states. And many people claim that this is the case. Anyone who really knows things knows that these transgressions occur not only with regard to employment, not only with regard to the administration of intellectual offices, but also in the work itself. Free spiritual life, which can powerfully place itself with its own reality in the healthy social organism, must also be able to develop freely and separately from state and economic life, as being on its own.

I know the cheap objections that can be raised: “When schools are freed from state compulsion, when everyone can send their children to school out of the zeal they have for intellectual education, then we will return to illiteracy.” People who speak like this are reckoning with old sentiments in modern circumstances. We shall see in a moment how these modern conditions have quite a different effect from what these people with the old sentiments suppose. But the result - it must be said in advance - is that the real truth can only live in the social organism if the necessary division is also present and comprises the following: the spiritual organism, which is built on the individual physical and mental faculties of human beings - what we could also call spiritual life in its full extent; the legal organism, which comprises the area of the actual political state; and the cycle of economic processes, in which only the production, circulation and consumption of goods are concerned.

It is not believed that the unity of life is thereby destroyed. On the contrary, each of these members of the healthy social organism will become healthy again precisely because it receives its strength from itself and each member can give the other the appropriate contribution. And so those who aim at the recovery of our social conditions must demand the independence of these three links, which have been fused together by confused thinking and confused action in the last century, i.e. the independence of these three links: spiritual life, legal life and the life that comprises the cycle of the economic process.

The state cannot be an economist. Economic life must necessarily be placed on its own basis according to its own conditions. In economic life this has also developed to a certain extent in cooperative and trade union life. But this cooperative and trade union life has repeatedly become inappropriately intertwined with legal relationships. That which is necessary in economic life is the system of association, that is, the association of certain circles of people according to the needs of consumption and the production necessary for this, the association of people according to professional interests and the administration of that which circulates within these circles according to corresponding human needs, as can only result from an expert judgment of economic life itself.

The effects of human labor now play into this life, the effects of capital play into it. I can only indicate in a few lines how these effects are formed. The use of human labor power in the social organism consists in the relationship of the person who works manually to some spiritual leader who must make use of capital by managing some economic enterprise or anything at all that is useful to the social organism. This relationship can only be a legal relationship. The relationship that the worker has with the entrepreneur must be based on a right. It must be founded on a different ground than the ground of economic life itself. This will bring about a radically different situation from the one we have today. But today we must also come to radical judgments in the face of radical facts. Economic life today is, on the one hand, dependent on the natural basis. Man must face this with expert judgment. He can, to a certain extent, make one piece of land or another fertile through his diligence and technology, but only within certain limits. He is to a large extent dependent on his natural basis. Just as economic life is dependent on the natural basis on the one hand, it must also become dependent on what must be established on the basis of the rule of law, in the cooperation of all people, no matter what kind of work they do. Whether they are intellectual or manual laborers, they enter into a relationship on the basis of the rule of law in which the equality of men among themselves comes into consideration. And it is established, now not in an associative way, as it must be in economic life, but in a purely democratic way, in a way that makes the effects in the political field of the state equal for all people before the law. There is determined what relates to the utilization of human labor power, what relates to the relationship of the worker to the leader. Only a maximum or minimum working day and the type of work a person can perform can be determined. What is fixed - this must be taken into account - will have an effect on the prosperity of the people. If any branch of production should not prosper because too much legally impossible work is demanded of it, it should not be done; then a remedy should be found in other ways. Economic life should reach its limits on both sides: on the one hand, the limits of its scientific basis, and on the other, the limits of law. In short, we move from one part of the social organism to the other, the political state, in which everything legal and everything related to law is regulated to the greatest extent possible.

And then we come to the third member, which again must regulate itself out of its own conditions and needs and give laws: this is the organization of the spiritual. The spiritual must be based on the free initiative of man on the one hand, so that man is able to offer his powers individually to humanity in a free spiritual life. On the other side must be the free understanding and the free acceptance of these spiritual powers. How can this be? It can only be by the fact that the spiritual life, which is free in school life, in all spiritual branches, is administered solely by the spiritual organization right up to the use of the spiritual life, which expresses itself in the utilization of capital. How is this possible? It is only possible if that socialization really takes place which cannot come about by making human society into a uniform cooperative society in which perhaps only economic interests assert themselves and everything is to be organized on the basis of economic interests. If the spiritual organism is structured in a healthy way, free from the two other branches, the state and the economic organism, which have been mentioned, and if one is in a position to provide from that spiritual organism also that administration which relates to the use of capital and the whole economic life, that is: if all the places which are necessary in economic life are filled by the administration of the spiritual organization, if man with his individual abilities is placed in economic life from the spiritual organization, then alone one arrives at a healthy, fruitful socialization. For only in this way is it possible to separate what is the possession of private capital from the administration of this capital in favour of the healthy social organism.

What will happen? Well, many things will happen. I will only cite a few examples. It is quite natural that in the economic process man acquires private capital, property. But as little as it will be possible to separate the utilization of this private capital from the utilization of individual abilities as long as these individual abilities can be active, it will be necessary to separate private property from the individual when their activity ceases. For all private property is after all acquired through that which plays in the social forces, and it must in turn flow back into the social organism from which it is taken. That is to say, there will have to be a law from within the legal organism - for property is a right, the right to use some object or something exclusively - there will have to be a law that what one has acquired as private property from economic life must - through the free disposal of the one who has acquired it - after a certain time fall back to the spiritual organism, which in turn has to look for another individuality that can utilize it in a corresponding way.

Something similar will occur for all possessions that exist today, as for the possession of certain spiritual things that one produces, which belong to general humanity thirty years after death. One cannot say that one has more right to any other possession than to this spiritual possession. However long it may take to be allowed to keep what one has acquired, the time will have to come, be it for inherited property or otherwise acquired property, when, through the free disposal of the private owner, that which has passed into his possession through individual labor will return to the spiritual organism. In addition, the other will develop, that those who acquire private property from the economic process will be able to choose freely, out of free understanding, those whom they consider individually capable of operating something. But this will be made impossible by the power of the rule of law, of the actual political state, that a considerable part of private property will revert to pure interest, by means of which someone will be able to use private labor and other people's labor for himself without using individual abilities that enter into the economic process of life as a whole. It is possible, and it is made possible by these three links, that human productivity always remains connected with the individual abilities of man, with which it must be properly connected.

This tripartite structure of the social organism still appears to be a radical idea today. And yet, whoever will not be comfortable with this idea, whoever will not want to take the first step in this direction towards the summit that we must climb in the social order, whoever does not realize that the most immediate, most everyday, most immediate actions must be developed with the knowledge of this direction, will not be acting in the spirit of human development, but will be acting against this spirit of human development. Today we are faced with facts that have demanded the primal feelings of human beings. We must counter these with the original ideas of human social order. And one such original idea is this threefold structure.

This idea will now initially be regarded as something quite practical even by those who do not consider it to be a pure utopia, but who can perhaps bring themselves to regard it as something quite practical, it will only be regarded as something that relates to the interior of states.

And now you will ask: What does this have to do with the League of Nations? - That is what can at the same time be the most realistic foreign policy! For if we work towards answering the question: What should the state refrain from doing? - the answer that emerges from this consideration is that it should refrain from interfering in the functions of spiritual and economic life. It should confine itself to the purely political, the purely legal sphere. This, however, will also have the necessary consequence in non-political life that the economic interests of one area will come directly into negotiation, into exchange, into intercourse with the economic interests of the other area, and likewise the legal relationships and the spiritual relationships. If the spiritual conditions in one area are liberated, then no cause can ever arise from this spiritual area which could result in any warlike event. This can be observed on the smallest scale. Spiritual interests can only come into a relationship with warlike conflicts through the interposition of state life.

Even here one can really only judge from experience; but even small experiences can be eloquent. One could observe, if one has an eye for such things, how in Hungary, for example, in the times when state life in Hungary had not yet interfered with everything in the German-speaking parts, the people who had German children in the numerous German areas sent them to German-speaking schools, the Magyars living in German areas sent them to Magyar schools, and vice versa: the Germans who lived in areas with Magyar schools sent their children to such areas where there were German schools. This exchange of children was maintained in a free manner.

It was a free exchange of the spiritual goods of languages, just as one can cultivate other spiritual goods in free exchange, from country to country, from town to town. This free exchange of the spiritual goods of languages meant deep peace for the country of Hungary in all areas in which it was cultivated. The inner instinct of the people was imprinted in this free exchange. When the state became involved, things changed. That which happened in the inner political life, happened in the course of modern times in the outer political life. Anyone with an eye for such things could see how deeply peaceful the German intellectuals actually were. The mood of these German intellectuals would never have given rise to the mood of war! But the relationship they had with the state was what gave rise to this impression of the state. This is not meant to be an objection or anything else, but merely an understanding of the facts.

The economic life of a tripartite social organism will be able to live itself out within international economic life precisely because the economic relations are not made by state relations, but by people who grow out of territories in which there is not one parliament, but three parliaments, a spiritual, an economic and a state parliament, in which there is not one administration, but three administrations that work together. Only from such territories will people be able to grow up and play the right role in an intergovernmental organization. And it is not the state and the economy that matter, but the human being, the whole, full human being.

The role of the spiritual leaders will be different if it develops out of the emancipated spiritual organization, different from the theatrical play that takes place, for example, between the Middle States and America in the exchange of professors, which could only develop out of that which was spiritually improperly connected with the state. All these relationships will also be placed on a sound basis in the international sphere when the sound basis has been established in the individual social territory. From these individual social territories will then emerge the man who can also contribute in the right way to international life.

That seems to me to be the answer which can be given in such a way that it takes into consideration not only the coordination of the various peoples, but that the contribution of each people can be considered for the real future ideals of the human League of Nations. A German can also speak in this way; for even if the Central European countries or Germany are excluded from the next League of Nations, they can work in such a way that, through the recovery of their own territory, they work ahead for the healthy League of Nations of the future; they can contribute their share to it.

This is an answer that everyone can give for themselves. It is an answer that each state can also develop as its own policy towards the outside world. For just as the states that enter into peace negotiations with the German Empire, for example, elect their own peace delegates, it will not be possible to prevent the chaotic former German Empire from electing special delegates from the three members - from the economic, the state and the spiritual organism - who can then represent the healthy social organism to the outside world in a corresponding manner. That is real, possible, that is true real politics.

In the last few years I have often presented these ideas to people; I have also, as perhaps some of you have seen, summarized them in an appeal which is now appearing in the newspapers, signed by a very satisfactory number of people, among whom are those who cannot doubt that they have a right to judge these things, and I have often had to hear: such a division would bring back the old, which is precisely contrary to the feelings of a large part of modern mankind, that mankind would be divided again into the old three classes: Nourishing, military and teaching. The opposite is the case! Nothing is so different from these old estates of nourishment, defense and apprenticeship as what is wanted here; for it is not people who are divided into classes, into estates, as earlier times were divided, but that which is separated from man, in which man lives: the social organism is divided. And the human being is precisely that which, as a whole, complete, self-contained being, will only be able to develop as a human being within this structure that is self-contained. This liberated human being, he alone will be able to form the basis of the thoughts, the feelings, the acts of will that must play out in the modern League of Nations.

In thinking about these things, one does not want to become one-sided. And it is easy to become one-sided if you only take your own feelings as a basis. That is why I would like to refer to someone else now, at the end, after I have so radically presented what I have said as necessary for the recovery of the social organism and want to distinguish it from what has developed so far and what has led to this terrible catastrophe. I would like to refer to another, to a man to whom I often refer when I look for a highly respected spiritual observer of those things that have occurred within the development of humanity up to the present day: Herman Grimm. He once said in a passage that emerged from his thoughts on the modern social development of mankind: If one looks at Europe today, one sees on the one hand how people have come into connections with one another of which former times could not have dreamed; but one sees at the same time projecting into this, what is called modern civilization, that which expresses itself in our warlike armament - so he says as a German - in our own militarism and in the armament of the other states, which after all can only amount to invading one another one fine day. And when you see what could come of it - the words sound truly prophetic, they were written in the nineties, Herman Grimm died in 1901 - when you look at it, Herman Grimm says, it is as if a future consisting of nothing but human conflicts could develop, so that you would like to set aside a day for the general suicide of humanity so that it does not have to experience the terrible things that follow from these conditions.

Since then, people have seen many things that result from these conditions. What they have seen could well lead to thoughts that are then no longer regarded as utopian, especially when one has seen how many things that have really come into being should look like utopia to the eyes of practitioners compared to what they believed to be impossible just a short time ago.

This is what should make people today not only change their actions, but also change their thoughts and rethink. In the future, we will not only need different institutions, we will ultimately need new ideas, new people, which can only grow out of a new organization of the social organism. International alliances, we have basically experienced them after all! Whether what we are striving for is on firmer ground, offers a firmer foothold than the old conditions, can only be decided if we really go back to the basic conditions of human social coexistence. Have we not also seen something like an international life develop in the way people used to marry among the members of various royal houses? There would be nothing wrong with that if the princely houses had developed in a promising way! Something could then have arisen in terms of this “international alliance” that would have been very useful even under the monarchical principle! - We have seen other international alliances, for example the very real international alliance of capital. We have experienced international social democracy. We have experienced various international alliances. That which was based on the international of family instincts has disintegrated. That which is based on the economic power of unspiritual capitalism, it is clear to the unbiased eye: it will disintegrate. But what international socialism is aiming at is basically the longing for power. In the future, this power will have to give way to the right, because what man can seize through his striving for power in social life can only lead to the salvation of mankind if it is integrated into legal life, illuminated by legal life.

And so perhaps the feeling may arise in contemporary man in the face of many an internationalism that a truly fruitful alliance of nations of mankind must be founded on something other than these old relationships. It must be founded on entirely new human ideas, entirely new human impulses, and not on princely blood, not on the power of capital or labor. It must be founded on the right, on the truly liberated whole man. For only this truly liberated, whole human being, awake to international feeling, will also have the right understanding for what can then shine for him as the light of international law.

Discussion

1st speaker: Explained that the solution proposed by Dr. Steiner was not clear to him. Nor was it possible to dismiss socialism as a great spiritual concept in the way that Dr. Steiner had done, because, after all, a new right does not come into being by wiping away the healthy core of socialism. The idea of the threefold structure may seem to be a solution, but it is an arbitrary solution. According to this speaker, land reform is something that is in the nature of the times. Finally, reference was made to the progressive spread of socialism as a testimony to the fact that it is not an imaginary system but corresponds to a reality.

Rudolf Steiner: It is, of course, difficult to discuss whether or not what was indicated in a lecture that was, after all, not very short, must be clear to each individual in an absolute sense; after all, that is an individual matter, and each listener will, of course, have his or her own opinion about it. I will therefore not touch on this question in particular. I would just like to make a few very brief comments on the other thoughts expressed by the previous speaker, above all on matters of principle. Anyone who has followed my perhaps radical and therefore seemingly unprovable train of thought today has perhaps been able to see, from the way the matter was formulated, that what I said did not come from a mere flash of inspiration one fine morning, or from other ideas, but that they are built on what I believe has been proven by others. It is not necessary to prove to you again everything that socialism, for example, has proved! I have expressed one thought, the thought that the theory of surplus value and its relation to human labor power is particularly plausible to the proletarian soul. I then expressed the thought that this view must be taken one step further. In doing so, however, I believe I have also shown that I do not want to wipe away what the honorable previous speaker has just pointed out: modern socialism. Anyone who has listened to me more closely will perhaps also be able to tell that I have made sufficient allusions to the significance of modern socialism in my speech.

I could not understand what I said in any other way than in the sense of the example I mentioned. I meant that if one did not get involved in modern socialism, then one would live like the inhabitants of a house that was threatening to collapse and who did not decide to build a new one, but instead discussed how to connect all the rooms so that they could help each other through these doors.

Thus, with some good will, you could see the weight I actually attach to modern socialism. And it was basically not so difficult to derive from this the idea, which could of course be developed further in forty or fifty lectures, that you can't get by with what is already in modern socialism. I would like to point out one more thing. Of course, I will again only be able to be brief enough for those who wish to do so to be able to say that I am not giving the audience anything to take home with them. I would just like to say that I have the greatest respect for what Marxism and everything that has been built on Marxism has produced, especially in modern proletarian thought. I myself was a teacher for many years at a workers' education school founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht, and I was involved, so to speak, in helping to establish socialist ideas within the working class. And I may perhaps point out that it would not exactly be incorrect if I said: I believe that a number of corresponding older editors of German socialist newspapers, even orators, who at least have a not insignificant say in Germany today, are perhaps my pupils. So I not only know modern socialism as such - one could have seen that from the way I put forward my points of view - but I also know the weight that this socialism has in the life of the modern proletariat. If you have been involved in it for years, I might say decades, then you don't really need to wait for a nice, special idea to develop a system, because you want to have one, but then you continue to build on what is there. And those who respond to things see from what they continue to build that they are respecting what is already there.

But there is one thing we must not lose sight of. Certainly, thoughts as such, if they are kept within the theoretical, are basically nothing more than symptoms of what is moving in real life. Therefore do not think that I want to suggest to you how the modern labor movement or anything else is actually carried only by the driving force of thought, but on the contrary I want to express that the thoughts that come to light - and I am not only thinking of economic forces - express deeper inner forces symptomatically. In general, I believe that in the future we will move towards a symptomatological view of history, not the causal one that is popular today.

But now we must see how certain thoughts, which are all to be regarded as symptoms of certain underlying facts, how these thought-symptoms present themselves. Today you are familiar with very radical forms of socialism. Do not believe how this could arise in the subconscious of some people who misinterpret this - which perhaps the previous speaker did not mean in this way - do not believe that I feel as frightened as some people in leading circles about what is emerging in the present - although I must regard it with the same weight as I did in my lecture. I can already look with a certain objectivity at the consequences of the social way of thinking and social development that are emerging today, for example. I would like to point out something that might seem significant to you. You see, Lenin and Trotsky are also socialists. And anyone who is not, I would say, intimidated by what is now being said about Eastern Europe and ascribes it all to the “wicked Bolsheviks”, but who knows that everything that is now tended to be attributed to the Russian socialists is still largely due to Tsarism and what preceded it, will perhaps take a somewhat more objective view of what is happening! And those who look objectively will then have to say to themselves above all: In a certain direction, Lenin in particular is a kind of final consequence of Marx, including the way he sees himself. And Lenin draws attention to two things in Marx. First, he draws attention to the fact that the modern social movement must strive to proletarianize the state itself through the dictatorship of the proletariat. But the state is only - I must briefly indicate this - taken up by the dictatorship of the proletariat because it thereby draws its ultimate consequences. The ultimate consequences of what is germinating in the state are drawn by social-democratism: namely, the state kills itself, it dissolves itself.

Now, the various dark sides of this socialist state must come to light. Lenin, for example, is under no illusions about this. That is also better than indulging in illusions, as so many people do. But he is working towards creating a state that carries within it the seeds of death, that will dissolve. Then comes the really new stage, where work is not paid equally, but where the motto is: each according to his abilities, each according to his needs. - And at that moment, when this appears: each according to his abilities, each according to his needs - which must not only be a socialist ideal, but a very general one - at that moment Lenin, like Marx, makes a strange remark that allows us to look much deeper than we usually do. He makes the remark: this social order, which can only come about in such a way that everyone is placed in the social order according to his needs and his abilities, cannot, of course, be achieved with today's people; it requires a completely new breed of people, which must first come into being.

Yes, you see, those who do not want to wait and cannot wait for a “new breed of man”, because otherwise the time might come when it would be better to establish the general suicide of which I have spoken, will turn their thoughts to the present life, and will try to gain from this present life an idea of what the mistakes were. And in this respect I do believe that it might already be evident from my, albeit brief and sketchy, train of thought, in which I have referred to the question: What should the state do, and what should it not do? How the entanglement of economic life with the state, the entanglement of intellectual life with the state, has caused damage to the social order - I have tried to indicate this; the examples I have given could be multiplied a hundredfold.

Does it not stand to reason that we should think about how these damages can be remedied? It can be remedied by not merging further, but by reversing what has just occurred.

You could call it naïve, of course, but I believe that my lecture today showed how deeply what I have said actually penetrates the very foundations of modern life. How far this is the case, however, must be left to the judgment of each individual. The ideas that are currently realized and recognized are indeed not new ideas; and nothing new can be built with these ideas.

I have presented the idea of the threefold structure to many a person who would have been in a position to realize it, especially during the difficult time of war. I have also found understanding in some circles. But today there is still no bridge between understanding and the courageous will to do something. This bridge has not been built.

I have had a strange experience in the last few days, which could perhaps point out to you how what I have said is deeply rooted in real life and is not a wiping away, but rather a taking up or rather a continuation of socialist thinking: I spoke - which is not exactly easy today - to a workers' meeting that was simply invited from the street. As I experienced many times during my work in Berlin, it was precisely the socialist leaders who opposed my remarks in many ways. And after many objections had been raised, a Russian woman appeared who - I'm just telling you! - said, among many other things, that we may have heard many things today against which we could object to this or that, but it would be impossible today to remain merely with the old ideas or even with the old socialist ideas, but it was necessary to move forward to new ideas.

We will not come to a real, thorough rebuilding of the house, but only to new doors and so on, which cannot help if the whole thing collapses, if we do not really engage in new thoughts. And that is why I have said to many people in these difficult times that many of the misfortunes that have happened in recent years could have been avoided if many people had thought like the Russian woman I spoke of. I am convinced that it would have been understood if the Central European negotiators at the time had made the ideas I have expressed here - which were very well known to a few of them - the content of foreign policy, the content of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk. If these ideas had been presented to the outside world, they would have been understood.

Of course, one cannot explain such things in detail in a lecture; but one has the feeling that real life must live in the human soul in the present, as it is simply rooted in reality. I do not consider myself so clever that I know better than others what has to happen in detail!

Because I am not a program person, because I do not give programs and utopias, but because I am someone who wants reality to be grasped as reality, I am not at all interested in having all my suggestions carried out in detail. If at any point one begins to work in the spirit of what I have said today, then let not one stone of the content I have conveyed be left upon another; something quite different may result, but it will be something that is justified in the face of real life.

With programmes, whether socialist or other programmes, the aim is always to ensure that the individual ideas that have been devised are realized in accordance with the programme; here it is a matter of tackling reality at one point. Then the result may be something quite different! And so what I have said is only apparently so incomprehensible because the matter is not to be understood in the same way as other programs. You could say that today it is easy not only to introduce a program with a few thoughts, but even to prove it. But it is difficult to appeal to human souls, and to appeal in the way I wanted to do, namely to point these souls back to themselves, to give them suggestions. Then perhaps they will think something completely different. But it is basically the most necessary thing today for people to know: you have to start from one reality, then the other will follow.

There is therefore no need to despise what the land reformers are striving for. In a conversation I once had with Damaschke in Berlin many years ago, I pointed out to him that his ideas certainly have a great deal of power, but that they cannot fully intervene in real life and understand it thoroughly because the soil is not elastic. It is not; and therefore, I told him, it is not possible to translate them directly into reality.

Well, there is no other way of coming to terms with it than by looking at the tendency of the times, which results from the fact that people have come to a dead end through the confusion of legal life, economic life and spiritual life. Then something arises which is not at all difficult to prove, namely that one should not continue to confound them, but should start on the way back!

What I have said is intended to continue thoughts about how socialization should actually be carried out, how we can get into a situation where human labour may not legitimately be used in the sense of someone else's power. And as I said, as incomplete as this must remain, because it cannot be dealt with exhaustively in one lecture, I believe that today it is necessary to approach things with a little good will, because the facts speak too loudly! And even in the face of what might well appear to be different in the socialist field than four years ago, the facts speak too loudly today. I will soon explain all this comprehensively and in detail in a brochure, because I consider this to be extremely necessary for the present, which will then prove in detail what has now only appeared in a truly suggestive way.

I believe there is one thing we must not lose sight of today. I had a special experience yesterday. When I was a little boy, I used to learn the following in my religion books: I learned that you have to realize that Christ must either be a fool or a hypocrite, or that he must be what he pretended to be. And that's what it says in these religious books: And since he can be considered neither a fool nor a hypocrite, he must be the Son of the living God. - I also heard that answered yesterday as the solution to the social questions here in Bern! I read it in my school books more than fifty years ago, and I hear it repeated again today - as the right solution to the social question. Between the time when I read it in my religion books at school and this almost word-for-word repetition, which one could hear again and again during the difficult times, I would like to say: word-for-word exactly, but between the two points in time lies the experience that mankind should have had through the great catastrophe that we have lived through. We should learn something from this great catastrophe! Above all, I believe, we should have become more willing to accept thoughts that may seem somewhat sketchy today, but which, by the way in which they refer to things, perhaps show that they are at least making an attempt to delve into the depths of things.

2nd speaker (Baron von Wrangell): Sees in the threefold structure of the social organism proposed by Dr. Steiner the right solution. How the idea can be realized seems to him to be a different question. The fundamental error of socialism lies in the fact that it leads to an overvaluation of the state.

3rd and 4th speakers: Objected essentially that a realization of the idea of tripartism would unnecessarily complicate the situation, which speaks against this solution. The threefold structure would lead to fragmentation, whereas human life should form a unity.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, I think I should perhaps say something very briefly. I can understand quite well what the honorable previous speaker wants; but I have the feeling that he does not understand himself very well! I think he should assess the whole situation we are in from a somewhat broader perspective. We humans really don't just have the task of making our lives comfortable. There are many other things in life than making ourselves comfortable! And I believe that a large part of the damage we suffer today comes precisely from the fact that a large part of humanity only strives to make life comfortable, in its own way. But it seems to me that what matters is something else.

You see, I would not bother you with any ideas about a tripartite division if these three parts were not inherent in the reality of the social organism. The fact that this threefold division wants to happen is something that does not depend on us, we cannot change it, it makes itself. I really did have the opportunity, I must come back to this again, during this difficult time, to talk to many a person who I thought should do something from the positions that are so authoritative today - it was two and a half years ago, there would still have been the possibility of doing something - and I said to some people: “You see, what is being said here is not a simple matter. It is the result of decades of observation of what will happen in Europe over the next ten, twenty or thirty years. For anyone who observes the course of events - and there is no other way to understand the social threefold structure than to recognize the possibilities for future development from the whole of the present - will see that, whether we like it or not, this threefold structure is taking place. In earlier times it arose instinctively; more and more in recent times there has been a confusion, a fusion of the three parts. Now these three parts want to separate again in the way that suits them, to become independent. - And I have said this to some people with the drastic words: “You see, those who are now at the helm could still do many things in this direction with reason; people have the choice - Goethe also said with reference to the revolution: either evolution or revolution - they have the choice of either doing this now through reason, or they will experience revolutions and cataclysms. Not only those who have been at the helm up to now will experience cataclysms, but also those who merely want to hold on to the dogmas of socialism will experience cataclysms. It is a matter of this threefold organization of the social organism taking place by itself. And you can also see that: That which is natural always occurs under certain extraordinary conditions in certain one-sidednesses of development; these three members want to become more and more independent. And they become independent in an unnatural way if they are not given their natural independence, if they are confounded, if they are thrown together; they develop in a way that hinders humanity. The spiritual power, the spiritual organization develops, be it as a church state or state church or whatever, becomes independent, and even if it cannot encompass the whole of spiritual life, it nevertheless seeks to catch as much as it can. The other, legal life, is taken up by the state, and in its turn makes serviceable to the state that which will seek to become independent. What wants to realize itself in political life in an unnatural way is everything that is today the much frowned upon militarism. For you see, many a healthy opinion was expressed during the war about this militarism and its one-sided relationship to state life. But if one gets to the bottom of these opinions with common sense, then one also realizes that militarism is nothing other than the one-sided realization of what one does not want to give its natural independence, political life in turn. And Clausewitz said: War is the continuation of politics by other means; Clausewitz puts it in a certain context; one can still go into these things, not as in recent years, when one has heard many such one-sided statements. One can also say that marital strife and divorce are the continuation of marriage by other means! There have been a lot of one-sided statements like that in recent years; people just mix everything up. But what everything is based on, if one wants to develop fruitful views in life, which then also turn into real institutions, is that one sees these relationships as healthy. And so these things really want to take on a life of their own, to develop independently. In recent times, the economic organism has flooded the whole of public life to such an extent that today many people no longer see anything but an economic organism. And then they see in what can otherwise be there only an administration of the economic organism.

That is what you can prove. But above all, if I have achieved nothing more than to stimulate some people, that is quite enough for me. That is all I want! For I do not believe that one can say anything right about what should happen socially. I would like to add the following: You know that there are two Bolsheviks in the present day: one is Lenin, the other Trotsky. I know of a third, who, however, does not live in the present day and whom few people think of when they talk about the Bolsheviks: Johann Gottlieb Fichte! Read his “Closed Commercial State” and you have, theoretically speaking, exactly what you can read in Lenin and Trotsky! Why? Because Fichte spins a state system out of his own soul! From the forces with which you can reach the highest heights in philosophy, he develops a state system, a political, or rather a social system. Why did this happen? Because it is not at all possible to gain a view of what is socially fruitful from the individual! That can only be found from person to person. Just as language cannot be developed if a person lives alone on an island, but just as language can only develop as a social phenomenon, only when people live together properly, so that which is social at all cannot be gained by spinning it out of an individual person! One cannot draw up a program out of oneself. But we can think about the social order in which people must be placed so that they relate to each other so naturally that they find the right social order of their own accord.

The social question will not disappear from the agenda! It is there and must continue to be solved more and more. But the task at hand is to answer the question: How should people relate to each other in the tripartite social organism? Then you will always more or less find the solution. People must relate to each other in the social organism in such a way that the solutions arise from their living together. To do this preliminary work is the task of truly social thinking, the preliminary work that shows how people can solve social issues in real social life.

I have already said that I do not believe I could be so clever as to draw up a social program. But I drew attention to the fact that if people live in this natural threefold division, and if they really allow what corresponds to their impulses as institutions in this natural threefold division to arise in the world, then it is only through people, in this cooperation of people appropriate to the healthy social organism, that the social order arises! One can cooperate in this! You can't do it the way modern Marxists say: first we make a big mess, then comes the dictatorship of the proletariat, then the right thing will happen. - No, at the very least it is necessary to do this preliminary work, to ask oneself: How must people stand in the social organism so that, through their cooperation, what is demanded of us today by the facts that truly speak loudly will happen?

Do not think that I wish to take the floor this evening for the purpose of speaking of an understanding between the various classes of the present population, in the same way that the ruling classes, the hitherto ruling classes in particular, so often speak of reconciliation and understanding. I would like to speak to you this evening about a quite different kind of understanding, about the understanding that is being challenged by the social facts that are speaking loudly today and by the great historical forces that are currently entering the course of human development. I would like to speak of what seems to me to be demanded of the proletarian movement in particular, of these historical forces that are today, one might say, revolutionizing the world.

To speak of a different understanding is forbidden by almost the whole of modern life, the life that certain people call modern civilization. What voices have we heard within this modern civilization over the last few decades! Let us remember how the hitherto ruling classes have perceived this modern civilization, one might say, right up to the terrible catastrophe of war which has come as a horror to mankind in recent years. How often has it been said how far we humans have come in creating, in producing! How we have brought it about that thought can be sent far across the earth in a short time, how connections have been created between the most distant countries, how spiritual life in all its forms has gained a tremendous expansion. Well, I could go on singing the praises of modern civilization for a long time, not the way I want to sing them, but the way they have been sung by this ruling class. But let us now look at things from the other side. How was this modern civilization, to which so many songs of praise have been sung, actually possible? It was only possible because it was, so to speak, undermined by those who, from the innermost essence of their humanity, could not agree with what the bearers of this modern civilization were doing. And so, alongside all this, which one could also call a kind of luxury culture, one could hear the voices coming from the other side, which essentially always ended with the words: It can't go on like this! As wonderful as your civilization may be for you, it is impossible for it to go on any other way than for the vast majority of the earth's population to have no direct share in it. They have to feel excluded from this civilization, they have to watch from the outside, so to speak, but on the other hand they have to work hard for this civilization!

Has anyone on the other side shown any understanding in recent decades for the reasons and background from which such a call has emerged? You can't say that. In general, certain people today speak a very strange language. Over the last few days, I have witnessed some of what has taken place here in Bern at the League of Nations Conference. You could hear all kinds of beautiful speeches, that is, speeches that the gentlemen thought were very beautiful. But anyone who is able to look a little deeper into what is being expressed in the world-changing deeds that are going through Europe today could hear, above all, in what was said there, that the most important question of the present, the question that is of ever-increasing concern to a large part of humanity, was being talked and thought past. The actual nerve of the social question was talked and thought past! This conference showed extraordinarily little understanding for this question, and one was reminded of something else, namely the weeks of the spring and early summer of 1914, when one could hear many a strange speech from the hitherto ruling circles and their leaders. One could cite many similar speeches, such as the one made by a leading statesman in a Central European country to a parliament in 1914, in which he said: “Thanks to the energetic efforts of the European cabinets, we can hope that peace among the great powers of Europe will be secured for the foreseeable future. - This was still being said, with all possible modifications, in May and June 1914.

And then? Then came what killed millions of people, what crippled millions of people. So well foreseen was that which also asserted itself alongside that to which one sang such hymns of praise as modern civilization!

I myself, if I may make this personal remark, had to speak differently from these statesmen at the time. Before a meeting in Vienna in the spring of 1914, I had to say: Anyone who looks at the life of contemporary European humanity sees in it something like a creeping cancer that must break out. - Well, we can leave it to the judgment of mankind today as to who was a better prophet: the one who spoke of a cancerous disease that broke out so terribly in the so-called world war, or those who thought that, thanks to the efforts of the cabinets, a longer peace was in prospect. Just as in those days these gentlemen talked past what was gathering as a black cloud in the political sky of Europe, so today certain people talk past what is most important: the social powers and forces entering the life of the nations of the earth. Since things are like this, there is really very little prospect of bringing about an understanding through reason, so to speak. But an understanding on the other side, as I have already said, can be sought. And this understanding seems to me to arise if we take the following starting point.

Until our time, the proletarian population was basically in a completely different situation than it will be from now on. Anyone who has not only thought about the proletarian movement from a certain theoretical point of view, but who has experienced this proletarian movement in such a way that he has lived with it, knows that what the modern proletariat experienced was the great, penetrating criticism of what the institutions and maxims of the hitherto leading circles have done for centuries, for three to four centuries. What the modern proletarian experienced was the living, world-historical critique of everything they believed they had to impose on humanity. And basically, what was going on within the proletariat was a great, powerful critique. While the hitherto leading circles lingered within their bourgeois culture, to which they sang such hymns of praise, while they could hear in their lecture halls that which served their state, while they heard in their theaters the illusory world of their affairs, while they did many other things, what they perceived as such a salutary modern civilization, the proletarian masses came together in the hours they could spare from the heavy, arduous work of the day to reflect on the serious questions of human development, the serious questions of world history. After all, modern technical development and the capitalist development connected with it had taken the modern proletarian away from all other human contexts, which, for example, the old craft had provided, had placed him next to the machine, harnessed into the capitalist world order and thus excluded from the immediate feeling of what the leading, leading circles were doing. Then the proletarian's spiritual gaze turned to the general and, from a certain point of view, the highest interest of humanity. And in the proletarian assemblies that was driven which then always had to sound out again in the cry: It can't go on like this!

But what developed there was also a powerful, magnificent criticism of the previous policy, the previous economic management of the leading circles. This has now entered a new stage. And to really follow this entry into a new stage with attention seems to me to be one of the most necessary social tasks today.

How has the modern proletarian felt about the social order that has developed over the last three to four centuries, since the time when modern capitalism and modern technology entered the development of mankind? How did the modern proletarian feel about all this, which he had to look at as if he were standing on his feet, which he, as far as he could use it, wanted to absorb with his intimate share, so that he would also have something for his soul? The old leading circles spoke to him of various powers and forces at work in the historical development of mankind; they spoke to him of all kinds of moral world orders and the like. But he, the modern proletarian, who looked up to what these ruling classes were doing, felt little of the power, of the inner originality of such moral world orders; He felt that the actions, the thoughts, the feelings of the leading, governing circles are essentially shaped by the way they can live by virtue of their economic forms, their economic order, through which they are able to establish their civilization as a kind of superstructure on the misery, on the oppression of larger masses of humanity who had to work for them.

And so there arose in the modern proletariat what was the truth in relation to the reality of these newer thoughts about the development of mankind. The modern proletarian felt a truth about what the others fantasized about in a certain lying way; they spoke of a moral, of a divine world order, through which people are brought into mutual social relations on earth. The proletarian felt this to be a profound lie. And he felt that the truth in all this is that people live as they can by exploiting economic life for their own convenience, for their own benefit. And so the materialistic conception of history arose - and one must now say, as the proper inheritance of what was bourgeois science - the conception which did not admit that the actually effective forces in the historical development of mankind were anything other than economic forces. And that became the belief that everything that is human religion, human science, human spirituality, rises above the economic forces like a kind of “superstructure”, and that below it the economic forces reign as the only reality on which at most the superstructure acts back. The modern proletariat was right in the face of what the bourgeois world order has made of social life - a mere economy.

The second thing that emanated from Karl Marx's power of thought and spread into the proletarian assemblies, into the proletarian souls, is not the intellectual question, as I have just characterized it in the materialist view of history, but the legal question. This culminates in the one word that you all know, but which had an electrifying effect within the modern proletarian movements, which evoked understanding in the innermost feelings of the modern proletarian souls when it was presented to these proletarian souls by Marx and his successors: it is the word of surplus value. And behind much of what has been said around this word of surplus value, what the modern proletarian actually feels to be his most important human question, lies the question which is more or less consciously or unconsciously, more or less merely felt or posed with the intellect, but which is deeply felt. What sense does my work actually have within the modern social order? And it must be said that Karl Marx's various answers are brilliant. - But today we live in a time in which we must go further than even Marx went, especially if we understand Marx in the right way, not in the direction of the opportunist politicians, but in a completely different direction, as we shall see in a moment.

When the modern proletarian raised the question of the meaning of his labor and this became for him the question of his position within modern society, of his human dignity, he was repeatedly confronted with the problem that his labor was, as it were, absorbed by the capitalist economic process. He experienced that his labor had become something that it could only appear to be, namely: a commodity. The modern proletarian, who can only acquire his labor power anew as his only “possession”, experienced that he must also carry his labor power to the market, must have his labor power treated according to the rules of supply and demand, as otherwise objective commodities separated from man are treated on the commodity market.

Now the peculiarity of human life is that things can occur in this human life which are real, but which are not truths, which are lies of life. And one such lie is that human labor can ever become a commodity. For human labor power can never enter into any comparisons, any price comparisons with commodities. It is something fundamentally different from commodities. It is therefore a lie if that which can never become a commodity is nevertheless made into a commodity. Even if this is not expressed in such a clear manner, it is nevertheless something that is perceived as, I would say, the center of the proletarian question of modern times. Because human labor power has become a commodity, the legal relationship that should exist between the entrepreneur and the worker over work has become a purchasing relationship. And modern bourgeois national economists do indeed talk as if it were possible within economic life to exchange commodity for commodity on the one hand, and commodity for labor on the other.

The fact that a so-called labor contract exists in the modern sense of the word does not change the matter; for a legal contract can only be concluded about the relationship between entrepreneur and worker in the sense that we shall see later. Human labor could only be liberated from its commodity character - and it must be liberated - if the only contract possible between the employee and the employer were not the contract for the work performed, but the contract for the distribution of the jointly produced goods or services in a way that serves the healthy organism in the right sense. This is the demand that lies behind the Marxist theory of surplus value. At the same time, this is the way in which one must go beyond the merely Marxist conception. And the question must be asked: How does the wage relationship end? How does a commodity distribution contract take the place of the labor contract?

But with this we have indicated the second thing that repeatedly ran through the soul of the modern proletarian and which was hurled at the leading circles as a powerful criticism.

And the third, that was the conviction that everything that takes place in modern life and which has led to these conditions into which we have now got, does not consist in a harmony, not in a work of modern men arising from a common purpose, but in a struggle between groups of men in which one of them has the advantage at first; that is the class struggle of the modern proletariat with the leading classes.

Truly, these three points: the materialist conception of history, the theory of surplus-value and labor-power, and the theory of class struggle have been studied with more contemporary force than anything that has been written within bourgeois society in recent times. For it was recognized that what human development has come to in the last centuries is merely a result of economic forms. All other interpretations are basically a great lie of humanity.

And so the whole intellectual life, as it had become a kind of cultural luxury for the ruling class, became an “ideology” for the modern proletariat, a word that was heard again and again. It became a mere fabric of thoughts and feelings and sentiments, which were expressed as smoke emanating from the true reality of economic life.

But one does not understand the matter if one only understands it in this way. One only understands the matter correctly if one knows that in the face of this desolating ideology, this soul-killing ideology, which is essentially a legacy of the thinking of the hitherto ruling class, in the modern proletarian soul, which had time to think about human dignity and about truly becoming a human being on the machine and in the enclosure of the capitalist economic process, a real longing for a true spiritual life, not for a spiritual luxury, not for abundance, awoke. One can still often hear in bourgeois circles today how the modern proletarian question, viewed from this or that side, is actually a bread-and-butter question. Certainly, it is a bread-and-butter question; but there is really no need to talk about the fact that it is a bread-and-butter question in an assembly where proletarian understanding prevails. For it is not a question of thinking in the same way as a bourgeois sociologist and pedagogue, for instance, who now travels about a great deal in many regions, and who, among other things, recently coined the words: You only have to really know modern poverty once, then you will already come to the longing for a humanization of human society. - Behind such words there is usually nothing more than the question: How can one continue in the delusion of the old life of the ruling circles and how can one in the best way let chunks fall off for those who should not participate in this life of the ruling class? How can labor be dealt with while maintaining the existing social order? - It is not a question of bread. If it is a question of bread, then it is above all a question of how bread is fought for, out of which soul motives.

This has to do with much deeper historical forces than those who often talk about history from this perspective even suspect. And today the three questions which I have just characterized have reached a new stage in that there is much in them which one is not yet able to express clearly, but which can be heard by those who have an ear for the workings of historical forces, for the sounds which herald the great world-historical upheavals. Today the proletarian movement is no longer a mere criticism, today it is that which is called upon by the world-historical powers themselves to take action, to raise the great question: What must be done? - And here it seems to me that what I characterized earlier must be transformed somewhat, transformed in such a way that, in contrast to the purely material life as it has developed up to now, another life should develop that allows the oppressed part of humanity to have an existence that is truly humane in soul as well. That is the first question, the question of spiritual life: How can we transform the luxury ideology, the affluent spiritual life, into that which, from the innermost nature of man, man must really experience for an existence worthy of man?

The other thing that has developed, apart from this spiritual life, is precisely that which has turned the proletarian's human labor power into a commodity in the field of legal life. This could only develop because in the social order that emerged under capitalism and modern technology, law became a prerogative in many respects. How can the prerogative be replaced by law, within whose order the human labor power of the proletarian is stripped of the character of a mere commodity?

And the third question is: how can what has developed as class struggle continue to develop in other forms? The proletarian has felt very well that what must happen in life can only develop in this mutual struggle. But he perceives the struggles that have taken place in the course of modern history as those that must be overcome. And so the question of the necessity of class struggles will now, at the present stage of development, be transformed into the question: How do we overcome class struggles? - The question of surplus value, which has moved into the realm of privileges within the social order as it has developed over the last few centuries, this question of surplus value gives rise to the other question: How to find in human society, in the true sense of the word, a state of law satisfactory to all men?

With regard to the first question, the spiritual side of the social question, one only has to see how deep the abyss is between the hitherto ruling classes and those on the other side who are striving for a new world and social order. And here it must be said that what fills the modern proletarian with spiritual life has basically been inherited from the bourgeois class, which has been able to cultivate science, art and so on. - But this spiritual life had a different effect within the proletariat, for the proletarian was in a different position in relation to what he had inherited in the way of science and the like than in relation to what arose as modern spiritual life among those who were bourgeois, the leading circles. One could be a very convinced follower of modern intellectual life, one could consider oneself very enlightened, but one stood as a member of the ruling class within such a social order, which was not at all organized according to this modern intellectual life. One could be a natural scientist like Vogt, a scientific popularizer like Büchner, one could believe oneself to be completely enlightened - that was perhaps good for the head, for the intellectual conviction; but it was not suitable for understanding the position of man in real life. For the way these people stood in life could only be justified by the fact that the social order derived from quite different powers, from religious, from outdated moral world views, or at any rate from other powers than those which had presented themselves as scientifically certified powers to these ruling, leading classes. Therefore, that which is the modern scientific spirit and to which the proletarian simply brought himself from the culture of modern times had a completely different effect on the proletarian soul.

I may recall a small scene that illustrates this particularly well, this different effect of modern spiritual life on the proletarian, who was compelled to grasp this modern spiritual life not just for the head, but for the whole person, for his entire position within humanity.

Many years ago, I once stood on the same podium in Spandau with Rosa Luxemburg, who has now come to such a tragic end. At that time she spoke about science and the workers, and as a teacher at the workers' education school I had a few things to add to her words on the same subject. This topic, “Science and the workers”, gave her the opportunity to express precisely that which is so characteristic of the intellectual life of the modern proletariat. She said: “The sentiments - despite the conviction of the head - the sentiments of the modern leading class of humanity are still rooted in views as if man came from angelic beings who were originally good; and from this origin, in terms of feeling and sentiment, these ruling classes justify the differences in rank and class that have emerged in the course of development. But the modern proletarian is driven in a quite different way to take bourgeois science seriously. He must take seriously when he is taught how man was not originally an angelic being, but climbed about on trees like an animal and behaved most indecently. Looking back to this origin of man in the sense of the modern world view does not justify differences in life, class and status in the same way that others believe it to be justified, it justifies a completely different idea of the equality of all people.

You see, that's the difference! The proletarian was compelled to take what the others took as a head conviction, which did not go very deep, no matter how enlightened they were, he was compelled to take it up with his whole person, to take the matter with the bitterest seriousness of life. As a result, however, it wove itself into his soul in a completely different way. One must simply become attentive to such things, then one will already recognize in what sense the modern social question is above all a question of spiritual life and strives for the development of a spiritual life that satisfies all people.

Then, if you look into the causes of everything that I have only been able to describe today, I would like to say, in a stammering manner, because if you really wanted to describe it in detail, it would require too much elaboration, if you research the causes and then ask yourself: what development must be striven for? - then we can say the following: today it is really not a question of whether materialistic culture is the real foundation of spiritual life, but of how we can arrive at a spiritual life that can truly satisfy the human soul, the soul of all human beings. Today it can no longer be about a critical interpretation of what surplus value is, what human labor power represents itself as within the capitalist world order, but today the question arises: How can human labor power be freed from the character of a commodity and how can we ensure that “surplus value” does not remain a prerogative but becomes a right? And if there must be struggles within the human social order, can they be class struggles, can they be the struggles that have gradually emerged over the course of recent centuries?

Today we are at a stage of development where criticism alone is no longer decisive, but where the question is decisive: What is to be done? - For those who look at the foundations of life, the answer is, I would say, very radical. It may look less radical to some than it is, but it is a radical answer. Because proletarian thinking is in many respects only the legacy of bourgeois thinking, because proletarian habits of thought are the legacy of bourgeois habits of thought, the first questions to be considered are: How can the damage caused by capitalism be eliminated? How can the oppressive nature of the commodification of human labor power be eliminated? How can the class struggle be overcome in a humane way?

These questions must be asked from a much deeper perspective today. And great demands are made today by the historical facts themselves on the habits of thought, on the thoughts of the proletarian. For it is up to him to be equal to the times, to ask himself: How can we get beyond the unhealthy foundations of today's material historical life? How can we get beyond the devastation that the cycle of surplus-value production has wreaked on life, on legal life? How do we get beyond the devastation of modern class struggles? The three most important modern social questions are transformed from the negative into the positive.

If we look at the causes of current living conditions, we find that there is actually a tendency to continue what the bourgeois world order has brought about. Many people are asking themselves today: How can we overcome capitalism? How can we overcome private ownership of the means of production? - And they then come to the ancient order of human social institutions, that of the cooperative and the like, that is, they come to regard a common ownership of the means of production as an ideal.

This is understandable, and truly, it is not out of any bourgeois prejudice that these things should be discussed here, but solely from the point of view of: Is it possible to achieve what the modern proletarian wants in the way that some socialist thinkers believe they can achieve it today? Is it possible, by resorting to the framework of the old state and inserting into this old state what is the economic order, only in a different form, to bring about a redemption from the oppression brought about by the past?

Let us look at the modern state. It came into being because at a time - in the 16th and 17th centuries - when modern technology and modern capitalism were also developing, the leading circles, who then had to call the proletariat more and more to the machine, found that their interests were best satisfied within the framework of the state. And so they began to allow economic life to run into the state in those branches where it was convenient for them. And especially when modern achievements came along, large parts of economic life, such as the postal, telegraph and railroad systems, were taken over into the economy of the state, which had been handed down from time immemorial. At that time, intellectual life was also incorporated into the modern state structure!

And more and more this fusion of economic life, the legal life of the state and intellectual life took place. This fusion not only led to all the unnatural conditions associated with the oppressive conditions of modern times, but this fusion also ultimately led to the devastating effects of the world war catastrophe.

Those who think today from the historical facts will not ask: What should the states do? - on the contrary, they may be forced to ask: What should states refrain from doing? - For what they do and thereby bring about, we have indeed experienced in the killing of ten million people and in what crippled eighteen million people.

And so perhaps the question does come to mind: What should states refrain from doing? - This is what I can only hint at here, but what can truly be asked from the deep foundations of a true social science. If you look at certain political and social conditions as they have, I would say, typically developed, but also as they have typically led to their well-deserved end, then you need only look at Austria, for example, which in the 1960s turned towards a common constitutional system in the Austrian Reichsrat.

What had emerged at that time - I spent three decades of my life in Austria, got to know the conditions thoroughly, got to know what developed as constitutional life in the Austrian state at that time - truly fitted the mishmash of different nations like a glove. And for anyone who can really follow historical facts, it is clear that it was precisely what was founded in Austrian constitutional life at that time, what became Austria's policy in the sixties and seventies, that contributed to the end to which the present years have led.

Why? Well, at that time an Austrian Imperial Council was founded. Initially, the purely economic curia, the curia of the large landowners, the curia of the markets, the cities and industrial towns, the curia of the rural communities were elected to this Austrian Imperial Council. They had to represent their economic interests in the state parliament. And they made rights, they made laws out of their economic life. Only rights that were a transformation of economic interests were created. With regard to the law, however, we are not dealing with the same thing that we are dealing with on the ground of economic life. On the ground of economic life one has to do with human needs, with the production of goods, the circulation of goods, the consumption of goods. In the field of legal life, however, one has to do with that which, apart from all other interests, concerns man, in so far as he is purely only man, in so far as he as man is equal to all other men. Judgment must be based on quite different grounds when the question is asked: What is right? - than: What must be done in order to introduce any product into the cycle of economic life? - The unnatural coupling of the economic curia with legal life is what is eating away at the so-called Austrian state as a cancer.

These things could be illustrated by many examples throughout the modern states. It is not a question of merely studying these things, but of finding the right point of view from which one can gain an insight into true reality, into that which lives and weaves, not into that which people imagine to be the right thing politically or economically.

And again, look at the German Reichstag, of blessed memory, at this democratic parliament with equal voting rights, in which there could be a representation of interests like the Farmers' Union, but in which there could also be a representation of a mere spiritual community, like the Center! There we see something welded, melted into purely political life that belongs only to intellectual life. And to what unnatural conditions has this led! Again, one could cite many examples in addition to this one. If one wants to get to know the life of modern mankind, one must be able to approach it radically from this point of view. One must really have the courage to look such things in the face, then one will come to something that modern people do not yet want to admit, I would even like to say that people of all parties do not want to admit it. But what alone can be the impulse for a recovery of our social organism is the recognition that from now on there can no longer be a welding together, a coupling together of the three areas of life - spiritual life, legal life and economic life - but that each of these areas has its own laws of life, that each of these areas must therefore also give itself its social formation from its own sources.

In economic life only the interests of commodity production, commodity consumption and commodity circulation can prevail. The fundamental laws of this economic life must be decisive for administration and legislation. In the field of legal life that must prevail which springs directly from the human consciousness of law, that in which all men are really equal as men. In the field of spiritual life, that which can flow from the natural human endowment in full free initiative must prevail.

Modern Social Democracy has made inroads - I would like to say, from a completely different point of view, but that cannot affect us here today - in a single area, in that it has the proposition in its views: Religion must be a private matter. - The proposition must be extended to all branches of spiritual life. All spiritual life must be a private matter in relation to the rule of law and to the cycle of economic life. That spiritual life alone which is directed to its own powers, that spiritual life alone which always proves its reality out of its own impulse, that will not be a spiritual luxury, that will not be a spiritual abundance, that will be a spiritual life which must be longed for by all men in the same way. In looking at medieval spiritual life, for example science in relation to religion and theology, the following sentence has often been uttered: Philosophy, the wisdom of the world, is trailing behind theology. - Well, it was also believed that this had changed in more recent times. It has changed, but how has it changed? The secular sciences have become the servants of secular powers, of states, of economic cycles. And they really haven't gotten any better as a result. And why have they not become better? When one sees that there is basically a unified current, a unified force, from the highest branches of spiritual life down to the utilization of man's individual abilities, as they are carried by capital and capitalism, then one sees to the bottom of the question that arises here. Anyone who does not separate the functions and activities of capital in the modern social order from the rest of spiritual life is not looking at the bottom of the matter. Working on the basis of capital is only possible in a society in which there is a healthy, emancipated intellectual life, from which the development of such abilities based on capital can also grow.

What has happened in more recent times need not always be as grotesque as it once was when a modern, very important researcher, a physiologist, wanted to characterize what the Berlin Academy of Sciences, that is, the learned gentlemen of this Berlin Academy of Sciences, actually were: he called them, these learned gentlemen, “the scientific protection force of the Hohenzollerns”. You see, things had changed. Science was no longer the servant of theology; but whether it had risen to a higher dignity by becoming the servant of the state is another matter.

I would have to speak a great deal if I wanted to offer you the well-founded, well-reasoned truth in all its parts that only the reversal of that movement which has occurred in recent times, namely the liberation of spiritual life in all branches from state life, can lead to the recovery of our social organism. How differently will the lowest teacher feel if, in all that he has to represent, he knows himself to be dependent only on administration and legislation, which is built on the basis of spiritual life itself, than if he has to carry out the maxims, the impulses of political life! The teaching profession was once supposed to develop. It is precisely in this area that the servant class has developed. And this servant state in this field truly corresponds to what has developed in the field of economic life. In antiquity it was called the “nourishing state”. The exploitative and exploited classes have developed in more recent times. However, the two went hand in hand. One is not possible without the other.

All that which relates to the personal relationship between man and man - and this personal relationship from man to man also relates to what employees and employers agree with each other - all this can only be administered by that part of the social organism which is organized independently on the basis of spiritual life. Everything connected with rights, and with rights above all the labor relationship, must remain the domain of the political, the constitutional state. But that which is connected with commodity production, commodity circulation and consumption must become a separate member of the social order, in which only the laws of life of this organism are active.

Thus, by entering into the foundations of these things, one arrives at the radical view, which for some will prove uncomfortable, that for the health of our social relations three independent social organizations must develop side by side, which will work together in the right way precisely because they do not have a uniform centralization, but are centralized in themselves: a parliament which administers spiritual affairs, an administration which serves only these spiritual affairs; a parliament and an administration of the constitutional state, the political state in the narrower sense; a parliament and an independent administration of the economic cycle for itself; like sovereign states side by side, so to speak. Through their coexistence, they will be able to realize what the modern proletarian soul wants, but which cannot be achieved by a mere centralist nationalization of the social order.

Just take economic life for example. Today it is attached on the one hand to the natural foundations. One can also improve these natural bases by improving the soil and the like, then the working conditions can become more favorable by improving the working bases; but there is a limit beyond which one cannot go. Such a limit must also be reached on the other side. Just as economic life is attached to nature, which is outside, so on the other side must stand the rule of law. From this constitutional state, rights and laws are determined in such a way that they are separate from economic life. Just as the judge has to judge separately from his family or human relations when he judges according to the law, just as he allows his human will to function from a different source than in everyday life, so, even if it is the same people - for it will be the same people who rule through all three areas of social organization - when they judge from the modern constitutional state, they will judge according to quite different principles. For example, to cite just one, the measure of work that a person can perform, the time in which a person can work, will result precisely from the human demands of life. All this must be independent of the price formation that prevails in economic life. And just as, on the one hand, nature imposes pricing on economic life, so, on the other hand, free, independent humanity must always first decide on labor out of a sense of justice. And from the political state, which stands outside economic life, labor must be placed within economic life. Then labor is price-forming; then the character of a commodity will not be imposed on labor, then labor participates in the formation of the price, is not dependent on the price formation of the commodity. Just as nature acts on economic life from without, so must law, which is embodied in human labor, act from without.

It may be - for this may be objected - that the prosperity of a social organism becomes in a certain way dependent upon it, when labor first asserts its right; but this dependence is a healthy dependence, and it will lead to a healthy improvement in the same way as, for example, the improvement of the soil by technical means, when it is necessary or expedient or proves possible. But labor will never be able to set prices in the same way that it must set prices in accordance with human dignity if economic life is placed within the framework of the modern state as in a large cooperative. Economic life must be removed and left to its own devices. Legal life, political life, security life must be taken out and placed on its own. People have to speak from the most democratic basis about that which affects all people. Then this will have the right effect on economic life and what must come from it. This will never be able to happen from a cooperative or state institution of any kind. We will see that, if things remain the same as the present oppressors have developed from other, historical foundations, the new oppressors will also develop in the same way if real democratic foundations are not created outside of economic life.

Just as the legal life of the state must stand outside economic life, so must the entire intellectual life from the lowest school up to the university. Then that which develops out of this spiritual life will be able to be a real spiritual administration of the other two branches of life. Then it will be possible for that which is formed as profit in economic life to be genuinely supplied to the community from which it is taken. Then it will be possible for something similar to take place for the material goods, as today only for the beautiful spiritual goods. For the spiritual goods of modern society are actually the most precious of all. It is so: with regard to this spiritual good, it is true that what is produced is given to the general public at least thirty years after death, becomes free property, can be administered by everyone. People today truly do not put up with this with regard to material goods

Possession in social life is not what these or those social economists so often dream of in a strange way; it can only be understood in this way for social life: Possession is the exclusive right of disposal over a thing; possession in the productive sense, in the sense of land, is a right. And this right can only be made into a right, instead of a privilege, which corresponds to the legal consciousness of all men, if the formation of judgement takes place on a ground where only the right is determined, if it becomes possible that that which has resulted as profit can be transferred through the rule of law into the disposal of the spiritual organization, so that the spiritual organization has to find the right individual abilities for that which is no longer used for production, that is, for human service, but becomes mere profit. In this way it will become possible to bring ever new individual abilities to mankind.

But in order that there may really be a power which leads in the right way, not into bureaucratism, but into the free administration of the individual mental faculties of men, that which must be taken as property from one side, it is necessary that the constitutional state should supervise property, that is, the right of property, and that it should not itself become the owner, but that it should be able to hand over free property to that intellectual circle from which it can best be administered. From this you can see that from such backgrounds one arrives today at radical views which will surprise even you; but for my part I am convinced that the facts of world history demand such things of men today. I am convinced that what the modern proletarian wants cannot be achieved in any other way than by extending his hand to the separation of powers. That is the only possible “foreign policy” today. And strangely enough, each individual territory can carry it out for itself. If Germany were to take up this idea for itself today, as I recently expressed in an “Appeal to the Germans and the Cultural World”, which has attracted many signatures, if the Germans were to take up this tripartite division today, then perhaps they could negotiate with the others in a different way than they can today, when they stand there as a unified state that has been completely overcome, completely overcome precisely by its former centralization, and is basically incapable of doing anything.

I do not mean to take sides, but only to say that what I am saying can become the basis not only of all domestic policy, but also of true foreign policy, for the reason that each individual country, each individual people can carry it out for itself alone. Today, if one considers the enormously telling facts, one is led to the conviction that it is no longer merely a matter of changing some of the conditions according to the old ideas, but that it is necessary to base them on new ideas, new facts. In recent years we have heard quite often that there have never been such terrible events as those of the last four and a half years as long as mankind has had a history. You can hear that more often today. But what should be the echo to this assertion is not heard so often today, namely: Never before have people had such a need to rethink, to relearn as they do today, when the social question points to what most needs to be relearned, points to what is most talked and thought past.

Today it is clear that it is the people who have to act. You don't have to come up with ready-made programs! What I have developed here is not a program, is not a social theory. What I have developed here is a realistic theory of humanity. I do not imagine that I can draw up a program for all the conditions that are to arise; the individual cannot do that on his own. For just as individuals cannot form language, which is a social phenomenon, on their own, but just as language is formed in the coexistence of people, all social life must develop in the coexistence of people.

For this, however, people must first be in the right relationship to one another. [The same person can be in the economic parliament, in the democratic parliament, in the spiritual parliament at the same time; he will only have to see how he always has to find the judgment from the objectivity of the circumstances from the different sources.

How people will administer legal, economic and spiritual life when they are properly related to each other, what people will say about the social, that is what one should fathom; not put forward an abstract, theoretical program about what is right in all cases! To bring people into such a relationship that they work together in the right way - one might think - is something the modern proletariat in particular would understand, and this for the simple reason that the modern proletariat has seen how the various interests, the legal, the economic and the spiritual interests work against each other. In this way they are brought into such mutual action that they produce, out of their own forces, a humane existence for each, a viable organism for the whole. Even if it is radical, I believe that nothing else is needed than good will and insight to translate this social program, which is not a program in the common sense - it has to be called that because there are no other words - into life. However, this will make the social question appear to be what it really is. There are certain people who believe that the social question that has arisen will be solved if we do this or that, [...] no, the social question has arisen because people have reached a certain stage of development. And now it is there and will always be there and will always have to be solved anew. And if people are not prepared to accept ever new solutions, the forces will ultimately lead to such disharmonies that they must increasingly lead to revolutionary upheavals of the social order. Revolutions must be defeated step by step on a small scale; then they will not occur on a large scale. But if one does not defeat that which enters into life day by day as legitimate revolutionary forces, then one need not be surprised if that which one does not want to be aware of discharges itself in great upheavals. Rather, in a certain sense, this must be seen as something understandable.

So I believe that it is precisely in the proletariat that an understanding could develop for a truly far-reaching overview of the social question as it arises in this tripartite organization of the social organism. And I am convinced that if some understanding develops, the proletarian will only then realize how he is the true modern man in the true sense of the word. He, who has been torn out of the old legalities, placed next to the barren machine, harnessed into the soulless economic process, has the opportunity to think about what is worthy of man, about what makes human life truly worthy of man, alongside this killing and destroying of man; he has the opportunity to think about it from the fundamental bases and to consider man as a pure human being. That is why one can also believe that if what is hidden in the modern proletarian class consciousness, what lies behind it, develops out of it: the consciousness of human dignity - “an existence worthy of man must be granted to all men” - then with the solution of the proletarian question, with the liberation of the proletariat, the solution of a great world-historical question of humanity will take place. Then the proletarian will not only redeem himself, then the proletarian will become the redeemer of all humanity in humanity. Then, with proletarian liberation, the whole of humanity, that which is worth liberating in this humanity, can be liberated at the same time.

Do not think that I wish to speak to you today about understanding between the different classes of people of the present day, as is so often the case now from certain quarters, where it is said that it is necessary to talk about understanding. I would like to speak of a quite different kind of understanding, as we shall see shortly. To speak of that understanding is out of the question when we look at how this life has developed over the last decades, perhaps even longer and right up to our own day, how it has now run its course into loudly speaking facts, which are, however, quite frightening for some people who would not have dreamed of these facts a short time ago. What good would it do to speak of understanding in this way compared to what can be heard on the site where this understanding is so often longed for today?

A few days ago you could hear all sorts of things from one such side, in Bern, at the so-called League of Nations Conference. What was said there about the desirable and, as people believe, possible international life of the near future truly reminded one of the speeches of certain statesmen, speeches that were always made from the same basic tone in the spring and early summer of 1914. Let us quote a few words from one such speech by a former statesman of the later belligerent powers. They went something like this - he said this to his Reichstag -: “Thanks to the efforts of the cabinets of the governments of the major European powers, we can assume that European peace will be secured for a long time to come. - In May 1914! That was the peace that was spoken of, that then came, and that caused at least ten million deaths and crippled eighteen million people! That is how people knew what lay dormant at the time.

I myself, if I may make this personal remark, in the spring of 1914, in the face of what one could see approaching, if one was not blind and deaf to the realities, had to speak the words in a meeting that I was able to hold in Vienna: We are suffering from a creeping cancer in the social organism of the present, which must break out as a mighty ulcer in a very short time. - You could talk like that back then.

Now, I think the facts have shown that one was more right when one spoke of the creeping cancerous disease in the social order of the present than when one spoke as the statesmen of that time spoke to anesthetize, to awaken illusion in the people. And so now, again, very, very many people are talking about what is to come between the peoples in terms of international life. And they are talking past and thinking past what is and will be the most important and essential thing and what is already being announced today by loudly speaking facts; they are talking past the actual true social demands of the present.

How did some people describe the life of so-called modern civilization until the terrible years that began in 1914? One could hear again and again how enormously mankind had progressed, how compared to earlier times it was possible to travel quickly over long distances of the earth to do business, how thought flew across the earth at lightning speed, how science and art - what is called science and art in certain circles - were spreading and so on. Song after song of praise was sung for this modern civilization. And the last four and a half years? What has become of this modern civilization in Europe in the course of it? How could it come about? Only because this modern civilization, to which such songs of praise were sung, rested on a foundation that was undermined, not by anything hostile to humanity as such, but by the most justified demands of a large part of the present population of the earth in the most diverse directions. They did not perceive what this civilization has brought us as an existence worthy of humanity.

But this civilization was only possible because it rose like a superstructure on the substructure, which consists in the fact that countless people did not have an existence worthy of a human being. And the thing that must be regarded as the worst is that a deep gulf had opened up in terms of understanding, a gulf between those who, on the one hand, sang the praises and those who, on the other hand, had to call out again and again from the meetings that they had taken from their hard work: it can't go on like this!

There was little inclination in the leading, leading circles to reach the kind of real understanding that should have been sought for decades, indeed for perhaps more than half a century. For this half century, the proletarian movement has been growing more and more. And it is growing in such a way that one can say: Up to now the life of the proletarian population has stood there like a powerful world-historical critique of what the ruling and leading classes had done in world history, in the development of mankind. Today the facts speak this language of criticism, which has been held up to these ruling classes so and so often. How have the hitherto ruling classes very often responded to the cry: “Things cannot go on like this”? It was only necessary - I would like to cite examples - not to go so far as, for example, a characteristic personality who stood out from the ruling classes of the immediate past, such as the German Emperor, who said with reference to the proletarian masses, insofar as they acted as socialists: “These animals that undermine the soil of the German Empire must be exterminated. Or another time he said - these are his own words: These people are the enemies of the divine world order. - They are not merely the enemies of other people, but the enemies of the divine world order. - As I said, there was no need to go that far, but people did have strange ideas. In the German Reich, for example, for certain reasons which I do not wish to criticize here, the Social Democrats had voted in favour of war credits, at least a large proportion of the Social Democrats had voted in favour of war credits, and had also - again for reasons which I do not wish to discuss - done their military duty, had generally behaved in a certain way towards the so-called world war. Do not believe that the opinion of people from bourgeois intellectual circles was so rare that, when they saw how patriotic the Social Democrats behaved, they seriously believed - that is a fact - that the soldiers of the future would actually be all men who would dutifully allow themselves to be used for what they would have been quite gladly used for, especially in the previous empire, if things had turned out differently, but very differently, than they did. They would have been very gladly used to approve taxes in the Reichstag of blessed memory.

Now, even some socialists did not dream of the loudly spoken facts that have now come to pass. Even on the socialist side it has often and repeatedly been emphasized: After this world war, the government will not be able to deal with the proletarian population in the same way as before; it will have to take their will into consideration. Well, the facts have changed quite a bit, haven't they? This government, at least a large part of it, cannot take much account of the will of the proletarian population today.

If you look at both sides, you can see on the one hand what the Austrian socialist Pernerstorfer characterized the attitude of certain bourgeois circles during the World War as saying: These millions, in so far as they belonged to the belligerent states, would gladly make their peace with Social-Democracy; but they would like a peace on the condition, for instance, which would correspond to that to which the other, to whom one offers lifelong friendship, accepts it, but that the person concerned hangs himself afterwards. - But if we look at the other side, there was also no possibility of evoking much understanding. I may well speak from personal experience here, for I worked for years as a teacher at the workers' educational school founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht, helping to develop the world view that had formed in proletarian souls. Anyone who knows what developed in the proletarian soul also knows what proletarian demands were contained in what resounded through the souls of the proletarians again and again in those meetings, which they often took away from their working hours and from their physical health. This was expressed again and again in three different ways. Some, however, did not speak with a full and broad understanding of what was revealed in these three things, but there was a deep feeling in the proletarian souls about what was interwoven in these three demands, even if they did not seem to be expressed as demands. The first was clothed in the words: materialist conception of history; the second was clothed in the word, in the word of surplus value, which is of great importance to the proletarian; and the third was what the proletarian has meant for decades, even if he spoke from his understanding, from his conception, by the class struggle, which indicated how in recent times the proletarian has become within the class struggle what one can call the class-conscious proletarian.

What is actually clothed in these three words? At first it looks quite theoretical, quite scholastic, when one says: one is committed to the materialist science of history; but today we want to speak in practical terms and not theoretically. What was actually meant by what the proletarian wanted and wants to express in relation to his world view when he speaks of a materialist view of history? Since that time, since modern capitalism has developed simultaneously with modern technology in the course of modern history, he has been able to hear an old song from the leading, leading circles. But the proletarian, when he looked at the leading circles, noticed very little of what is claimed today to be stimulated in the human soul by this old song. Then the people of the leading circles spoke: Man lives in a certain social order from generation to generation. Just as historical life develops, so lives mankind; and it lives according to laws which correspond to a divine world order. It was called a moral world order, it was perhaps also called the ideas, if one wanted to be enlightened, which govern the historical life of mankind.

The proletarian looked at those circles who spoke as if their lives were conditioned by spiritual and moral powers that walk and weave through the world. But he, for his part, had nothing of these moral powers; he probably saw even less of a divine world order working itself out in the facts. One spoke of a divine world order, but one did not see it, this divine world order. Above all, he did not see it in the actions of people, in the behavior of people towards each other. After all, he had been - and this had been developing for centuries - locked into the capitalist economic order, the soulless, desolate capitalist economic order. It had come up at the same time as modern technology, which had called many people away from the old craft, which was said to have a golden bottom - it had a golden bottom in a certain way - but it had no golden bottom, which the modern proletarian experienced at the machine in the factory. For him, this social order was expressed in his standing at the machine, in his being harnessed into the capitalist economic order. And he saw, as this newer technical and capitalist life emerged, how the leading circles had set up as a modern state according to their interests what they had taken over from a certain social organism from ancient times. Above all, he saw how the leading circles, from what they had as income through the modern economic order, through the modern state, how they employed their so-called spiritual leaders, how they employed their teachers, their lawyers, their physicians and so on. And, as I said, he noticed little of the fact that a divine, moral world order was at work in this spiritual leadership. Rather, because he was used to looking at the dependence of man on the economic order, he noticed how these leading circles were also dependent on the economic order. Capitalism, modern technology, the system of exploitation, he saw that they placed the spiritual leaders in the places where they stood. When this modern spiritual life emerged in the modern state, it was often said in certain circles of this spiritual life: “Oh, this distant Middle Ages, philosophy, worldly wisdom - and by that they meant science in general - was in a certain sense the handmaiden of theology. However, it was less emphasized from this side that in more recent times science had truly not become something that was a free science on its own, but that it was a faithful servant of the modern state system. Again, there was no need to go as far as a famous modern physiologist who once said of a learned body, the Berlin Academy of Sciences: those scholars who belong to this Berlin Academy of Sciences are the intellectual protection troops of the Hohenzollerns. As I said, there was no need to go that far; but one could see, for example - and it all came to a certain height during the World War - one could see strange things during this World War. Certainly, the mathematicians, the chemists, one cannot immediately prove how they obey orders from above; on the other hand, their science shines less brightly, is less conspicuously connected with what pulsates through life. History is more closely related to that which pulsates through life. Anyone who has followed what has been produced as history, especially by those who have worked and ruled as civil servants in this area, could probably form a more unbiased judgment than many others, for example, if he looked at everything that was said about the historical significance of the Hohenzollerns during this world war and even before, truly long before. Truly, the history of the Hohenzollerns will look different when it is written in the future! It can be said that what these gentlemen produced in this field was a faithful reflection of what those in power actually wanted; it was really not a free intellectual life, it was nothing more than a spiritual superstructure over the economic order of the last centuries and especially of more recent times. What wonder, however, if the proletarian, looking at all these conditions, said to himself: Oh what, all moral world order, all ideas in history! What has divine world order to say! Every human being is dependent on the economic foundations. As these economic foundations are, so he spreads out his thoughts, so he lives out his feelings, so he ultimately thinks in relation to his religious ideas: all an ideological superstructure! What is truly real is the economic order!

As I said, one can understand that which arose as an impression from the immediate life in the soul of the proletarian. This proletarian was compelled - the ruling class itself had to call him to a certain education, it could no longer use the old uneducated, the old illiteracy in its economic order - this proletarian was compelled within the education he wanted to receive, which he longed for, to accept what had come up as science, as the whole scientific thinking about the world in the newer times.

But this proletarian was also compelled to do something else than absorb science in the same way that the ruling circles, for example, absorbed this newer science, which arose at the same time as modern technology and capitalism. I would like to cite again and again an example that I already brought here the other day to illustrate this question. I have just spoken about this area. One could be such a daring natural scientist as Karl Vogt, the fat Vogt, one could be a scientific popularizer like Büchner, one could be quite free-thinking, quite enlightened in the manner of both; one could say to oneself: away from me all the old prejudices. But the effect that this modern scientific attitude had on these classes was quite different from the effect it had on the soul of the modern proletarian. The leading circles spoke of the fact that human beings are descended from animal creatures. I don't want to say now whether this doctrine is nonsensical or in any way justified, but they did say so, I just want to state the facts. But this doctrine was conceived by the ruling classes in such a way that it only got into people's heads. It was possible to gain a head superiority. But in social life, in the social order of life in which one stood, laws prevailed that were truly not derived from the basic view that all men descended in the same way from some animal or other. And people found it convenient not to set up the social order, not even to think about it in terms of this modern scientific view.

I once stood, as I said, I mention this fact once again here in this city, on a joint podium with Rosa Luxemburg, who recently met her tragic end. She and I were speaking about science and the workers to a large working-class audience near Berlin. In her particularly unique way, in her calm and composed manner, she spoke at that time above all from the spirit of modern science; but she was speaking to modern proletarians. She spoke to these modern proletarians like this: Just look at science today. It is said that man does not have his origin in some primordial spiritual state, for, she said - and I quote her words almost verbatim - man was originally a quite indecent being who climbed trees, and from such beings we are all descended. Of course - she then said - there is no reason to make distinctions of rank between people, as we do in today's social order. - Yes, you see, one could be an enlightened person and be in the circle of the leading, ruling class, one could have a head conviction, but that which was spoken in this way had a different effect on the modern proletarian. The modern proletarian approached this - it must be said - bourgeois science with great, with enormous confidence, for he believed that it contained the absolute truth. And because he had been called away to the machine, into the factory, into the capitalist economic order, because he had been torn out of everything that had gone before, because he no longer had any traditions, because he could not remain in a completely new relationship to life, he was compelled to take what this bourgeois science gave him as directed at the whole person and to ask himself: Is this the way the world is in the eyes of this modern science?

This is the main direction of the spiritual life of the modern proletarian. That is what compels him again and again to feel in his soul that things cannot go on like this. And behind this lies one of the demands.

The second of the demands, one could hear it again and again and again if one did not merely belong to the leading circles and thus thought in a certain way about the proletariat, but if one, living among the proletariat, could think and speak with the proletariat - one could feel and sense it again and again and again. Anyone who lived within these circles knows that Karl Marx and his successors threw something into the working class in a theoretical way with the concept of “surplus value” and everything connected with it, which had an igniting effect. For in this modern working class there was something that understood, deeply and painfully understood, from the living conditions of modern times, what surplus value is.

This is the point where one must say: Today we stand at a turning point in historical development. That which lived in the modern proletariat was a criticism of what the leading circles have done so far in the historical development of mankind. Today the modern proletariat is called upon to act. This action will only be possible if, precisely on this point, which follows on from the word surplus value, we have the courage to go beyond what Karl Marx meant when he spoke of surplus value and what is connected with it, wherever we want to make progress in human life itself.

What was it, then, that evoked such a deep, sensitive understanding in the soul of the modern proletarian in connection with this surplus value? It was that which touched the basic nerve of the whole modern economic system. What is economy? Economy, on the basis of which we all live materially? What is commodity, production, circulation, consumption? Into this cycle of economic life, in which only commodities should circulate, there has entered, in a certain form since ancient times, that which can only be characterized by saying: within the modern capitalist economic order, the labour-power of the modern proletarian continues to live in the same way as a commodity. It is bought, it is exchanged like a commodity for other commodities. - This is what the modern proletarian feels. Whatever has happened in small chunks to divert his attention from this fundamental fact, so to speak, we are deep in a context in which proletarian labor is nothing more than a commodity. Here the modern proletarian feels much more than one has actually been compelled to express in theoretical words, even in socialist science; here the modern proletarian feels the whole inhumanity of his existence. He sees in his existence only the continuation of the old slave existence, of the medieval system of serfdom. The slave is sold as a whole person; the modern proletarian, because he owns nothing himself, must carry his labor power onto the labor market, which is bought from him. But can one carry one's labor power to the labor market without carrying oneself? Are we not so bound up with it as human beings that we suffer the fate that our own labor power suffers? That is what matters: Not only a different form of remuneration, which is nothing more than a purchase of labor power as a commodity, but the disrobing of labor power from the commodity character in modern economic life must be striven for. This is precisely the more or less clearly expressed question of the modern proletariat: how can it happen that man, even if he has nothing else to contribute to the social organism but his labor power, can be given an existence worthy of a human being? What does it actually mean that his labor power, which can in no way be compared to any commodity, is no longer a commodity? What is that actually? That is the great lie of life: that which can never in reality become a commodity, labor power, is turned into a commodity in modern life. This makes it an experimental lie, a lie of fact thrown into reality; it must be transformed into truth - this is how one could radically formulate the demand on this point.

And the third thing is what the modern proletarian sees: It is struggle. He looks at modern economic life; he has a feeling in the depths of his soul that in economic life salutary things can only blossom out of public spirit. How would this public spirit express itself in a particular case, for example? Well, one can say in a special case: the entrepreneur, the employer and the worker, they produce together. The commonality, the public spirit, should therefore consist in the fact that they have the same interest towards the social organism. Instead, the entrepreneur buys the worker's labor power like a commodity, while they produce the product together. He gives him nothing more from the product than the purchase price for this commodity. The employment contract, however more or less disguised it may appear, does not help to overcome this. As long as this labor contract is concluded for the use of the proletarian's labor, this contract must always turn labor power into a commodity. The only thing that must be possible is that the contract between what is now called the worker and what is now called the entrepreneur need not be concluded, must not be concluded about labor, but must be concluded about the division of the product between the worker and the manager of labor. There is no other justice in this field. There is no other real expression of what is called public spirit in this field. But what does the modern proletarian see instead of such a public spirit? Well, he sees the class struggle. He sees his class producing out of physical labor-power in struggle with the entrepreneurial class, and he sees surplus-value flowing into the entrepreneurial class without his having any share in the “destinies” which this surplus-value has within the social organism.

The proletarian is really not so stupid as to believe that surplus-value need not be produced. If everything produced by manual labor were eaten up, then there would be no schools, no spiritual culture at all, then no state system could exist; there would be no taxes and so on; for all that is in these things, which the proletarian also knows to be necessary for the development of mankind, flows from surplus value. But the proletarian wants something else. And those who regard the modern proletarian question merely as a question of bread conceal the facts. Certainly, it is a bread question; but it depends on how this bread question is felt. The modern proletarian today feels it from a completely different background, from the feeling of an inhuman existence. That is what matters. And instead of a sense of community, he feels the class struggle between himself and the one with whom he jointly produces for the social organism.

What, then, is the experience of this modern proletarian in modern life? By posing this question, appropriately enough, one can already arrive at the practical measures by which the proletarian demands of modern times can be satisfied in the future. One can say: Yes, so far it has proved to be in a certain way a truth, a truth of the last centuries, that spiritual life is only something like a superstructure, like an ideology, like a smoke that comes out of what the mere economic system is. But deep down the proletarian feels a longing for a real spiritual life, for a spiritual life that is there to satisfy every human existence. Even if he says that all spiritual life comes out of the economic order, in his unconscious he wants precisely a spiritual life that does not come out of the economic order, he wants a free, self-sufficient spiritual life, he wants a true spiritual life. That is one thing.

The second is that he looks at the modern state. What does he see in this modern state? He sees the class struggle in this modern state, and he has the feeling that where the class struggle prevails, something does not prevail that arises from every human consciousness as a necessary demand of life. In a social order in which the class struggle can prevail, privilege prevails; for whence would the struggle of the leading circles against the propertyless circles come if not from privilege? But privilege must not prevail - so says the soul - justice must prevail. That is the second demand. It is the one that can be expressed in something like this: The modern proletarian sees in the modern state the embodiment of the class struggle. But he demands justice on the ground where the class struggle prevails. And on the ground of the modern economic order he sees the development of that which turns his labor power into a commodity. He sees himself caught up in this economic process. Certainly, theoretically the proletariat has hitherto established as a science that everything is dependent on national economic life. But in the depths of the soul, there it rummages: I want to become independent of the economic life that now prevails; I want a completely different life from that which is dependent on this economic life.

If we look from this point of view at the great, widely spoken facts of the present, which are troubling Europe and will continue to do so more and more, they speak like this: A spiritual life has arisen out of the purely material interests of the leading, leading circles. That is not what gives all human beings an existence worthy of a human being. What the leading circles have made of the modern state through the development of technology and capitalism has resulted in a community of privilege, not of right. And class struggle must cease; legal life must take its place. In economic life it has resulted that labor power has been harnessed to the circulation of commodities; human labor power is brought to the commodity market. Human labor power must be taken out of the pure economic cycle. That is what is expressed in the present world-historical facts. How did all this come about?

Well, you need only look at a few facts, which could be multiplied a hundredfold, from the point of view of a particular question. It will perhaps surprise you that we are talking here about the very point of view I am now suggesting. However, today we are at a decisive turning point in the social movement. In recent times we have often heard the phrase, more or less wittily expressed, but it is certainly not, not merely a phrase: that which brought about this world war catastrophe has not been there since mankind has had a historical memory. This has been repeated often and often. But the sentiment is less often emphasized: Well, if this is the case, if people have managed to kill ten million people and cripple eighteen million in a relatively short time, if this has happened in an incomparable way, why do people not perhaps feel comfortable asking themselves: in order to make such things impossible, must we not resort to new thoughts, to thoughts that are just as impossible compared to the previous habits of thought as this world war is compared to the previous experiences of human history? You will have to excuse me if I express the thoughts meant here somewhat radically to one side or the other. Let us look at individual facts which, as I said, could be multiplied a hundredfold. Austria is a very characteristic example of how a state lived under the conditions of the past era. I can talk about it right now because I have spent three decades, half of my life so far, in Austria. It is precisely in this Austrian state that one can study what actually lies at the heart of what can, indeed must, destroy a social organism in our time. When, in the sixties, a so-called bourgeois constitutional life began to develop out of the old Austrian patriarchalism and despotism, deputies were elected to the Austrian Imperial Council according to four curiae: firstly, the curia of the large landowners; secondly, the curia of the Chamber of Commerce; thirdly, the curia of the towns, markets and industrial towns; fourthly, the curia of the rural communities. The latter were not elected directly, but indirectly, because the rural communities were not considered so secure. The representatives of these four curiae were now in the Austrian Imperial Council and made laws, made rights. But what does that mean? It means that they were purely economic representatives, representatives of pure economic life in the parliament, and they made laws. What must come out of that? The interests of economic life must simply be transformed into laws, into rights, into rights over labor, into rights over property. Strange as it may seem, many a bourgeois national economic speech has been made about property: Ownership is a right, ownership of the means of production, ownership of land is a legal relationship. Because everything else that you will define about property has no meaning in the economic process. Only that which establishes ownership, the right to make exclusive use of an object to the exclusion of others, is significant. Having the right to dispose of it is what constitutes the basis of the national economy. In the existing state, we are dealing with a privilege rather than a right.

There is one example that could be multiplied indefinitely. Where this was not determined by an electoral law in the old order, it could do so by itself. The association that called itself the Association of Farmers was, for example, a purely economic representation of interests in the German Reichstag. Let's take another example. In the German Reichstag there was also the so-called Center, a purely religious community. Spiritual life was carried into legal life. Spiritual interests were expressed in legal life. All this is connected with what the interests of the hitherto leading circles gradually became in the modern state. When modern times came along with their technology, with capitalism, this state, as it had emerged from the Middle Ages, was found as a framework. First of all, the intellectual life was incorporated into this state, theology was trained, theologians, as they wanted them in the state, lawyers, physicians, especially schoolmen; all this was trained. The entire intellectual life was incorporated into the state. People were hypnotized by the idea that the state would serve our interests, so let's teach in it, let's administer intellectual life in a way that suits our interests, in a way that can emerge from the state itself.

And on the other hand, it was believed that progress would be served by incorporating certain branches of the economy, the postal system, the telegraph system and the railroad system into this modern state. That is the tendency: to merge everything into the modern state. That is a bourgeois tendency. Socialism, too, is basically nothing other than the inheritance of the bourgeoisie, which it has inherited by taking up again the ideas of the old cooperative system, thereby taking up the capitalist economic order, which must rightly be overcome on the basis of its demands. But the fact that he now wants to turn the social organism into a large cooperative, using the framework of the state, is the bourgeois legacy. A healing, a real recovery of the social organism can only come about if one has an eye for how the damage under which we live has arisen precisely because three areas that have nothing to do with each other have been merged together, and that the modern state had to absorb everything because more and more was being asked: What should the state do? - We have seen what it can do in the devastation and destruction of Europe over the last four and a half years! Today it is more appropriate to ask: What should the state actually refrain from doing? What is better if it does not do it? - This is the question we should be asking today. If you look at the whole circle of debates as we have conducted them so far, you will not be surprised when I tell you that on the basis of the most conscientious consideration of social life, really with equally good science, which only cannot be presented in all details in the course of a single lecture, one comes to the demand to make the most necessary practical demand today for the satisfaction of proletarian needs, namely: To take the road back with regard to nationalization, with regard to welding together three things that are quite different from each other in life.

To help us understand each other better, let me remind you of those three fundamental ideas of modern times that emerged at the end of the 18th century from the innermost needs of humanity, from the French Revolution, like a motto of modern times: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. - Well, it was by no means stupid people in the 19th century and right up to the present day who have shown again and again that these three ideas are not compatible with each other, that freedom is not compatible with equality and so on. Nevertheless, anyone who can feel that, feels that these ideas themselves are healthy stages of human life, even if they contradict each other. And why do they contradict each other? They only contradict each other because they have been raised as a demand more and more within what can never be a single centralization in itself, but which must divide into three independent members developing side by side. In the future the social organism, if it is to work healthily, must first of all divide itself into a spiritual organism, where all spiritual life has its own legislation and its own administration, where from the lowest teacher onwards man does not listen to the orders of a state, is not forced into the power of economic life, but lives solely and exclusively in an organization founded on spiritual laws themselves, where he knows himself to be completely within a spiritual world, a purely spiritual world. It is not a question of our being tied more and more into an official organization, into a bureaucracy; for spiritual life can only develop if the heart and mind develop for individual initiative, for that which lies in the personal, in the individual abilities of man. If they are cultivated in a free spiritual life, then such a spiritual life will develop which can offer every human being an existence worthy of a human being. For then that which develops as spiritual life will not be based on economic compulsion, not on state compulsion, but will spring solely from the impulses that underlie free humanity. He who produces spiritually will speak to all men and the spiritual organization will have the sole interest of cultivating spiritual individualities. Individual human abilities are a unity, a unity in schools, secondary schools, universities, a unity in art and science. These more purely spiritual branches, however, work in unity with those individual faculties which flow into capital in the social organism.

Capitalism can only be placed on a sound basis by becoming the bearer of a free spiritual life. That alone would make it possible to fulfil the demand that is usually made today for the socialization of the means of production. For only a free spiritual life can give rise to social understanding, and only in a free spiritual life is it possible to constantly transfer to the general public that which comes about with the help of the means of production and the land. This first of all with regard to the free spiritual life.

What is the constitutional state, the actual political state, must also develop as an independent organization in the healthy social organism. It has to do, for example, with the regulation of the administration of leadership relations. But above all it has to do with the regulation of human labor, which must be lifted out of the mere economic process, not by abstract laws, but by people themselves.

How must the economic process proceed? On the one hand, the economic process is dependent on what is at its limit, on the natural basis, on the available raw materials of an area, on the yields of the soil and so on. One can improve the yield of the soil to a certain extent through technology; but there is a limit to this, a limit which is erected for prosperity, a limit on which prices depend. That is one limit. In a healthy social organism there must be a second limit. This second limit is the legal and political organism, which develops independently alongside the economic organism. In the political organism, that which affects all men equally, that which democratically concerns every man, where every man must come to an understanding with every man, is at work. This is the ground on which the measure and nature of human labor must be decided on the basis of the interests of this humanity. Only then, when the measure and nature of human labor is decided on the legal ground independent of the economic ground, then this labor flows into the economic process, then the labor power of man is price-forming. Then no one dictates the price to labor power, then it is as price-forming as the land with its yields and so on is price-forming itself. That will be the great economic law of the future, that economic life will be caught between two boundaries, so that the measure and price of human labor will not be determined by the economic forces themselves.

And the third independent area will be economic life itself. For the sake of brevity, I can only hint at the significance of this transformation of economic life. I will give you a concrete example so that you can see that I am not presenting you with complicated theories here, but with what can be read from practical life and can be incorporated into practical life. You only have to name one word, and then every man and his thoughts are immediately involved in this word in economic life - well, one in a different way than the other - you only have to name the word “money”. But you see, most people know money; some know it from the abundant quantities in which they have it, some from the small quantities in which they have it; but they believe they know it. But what money actually is in the social organism, not only do everyday people have no real idea, but our learned economists of today have very little idea of what money actually is. Some are of the opinion that money is based on the metal value of the gold or silver on which it is based; others are of the opinion that it is a mere stamp, depending on whether the state stamps more or less thin instructions on goods and so on. One speaks of a metaphysical process of money and so on, as all things are; one always has the need in science to choose quite learned words. But none of this matters; on the contrary, the most learned gentlemen today agree that there must be something for money as a means of exchange. That which must be there is the treasure of gold, to which one must always return in order for money to have value.

Now, of course, since England is the world power and insists on gold, the gold currency cannot be overcome overnight in international trade. But the question must be raised precisely with regard to the recovery of economic life: What about the fact that people say that circulating money, regardless of its form, must always be related back to the amount of gold that is available in any state, because, they say, gold is a popular commodity, a commodity that does not change its value for a long time. - You can read up on all these theories. They refer to the excellent properties that gold has in order to be represented by money.

Now, what is it that money actually refers to, as national economists believe that money refers to gold? Here a greater advance in science is necessary. An answer is needed which people will not believe in today. I will speak of this in more detail in my forthcoming booklet on the social question. People today still claim not to believe in this answer. But if you take an unbiased look at economic life, you will get the answer when you ask: What is the real, actual equivalent value of circulating money? - He receives the answer, however strange it may sound to people today: gold is only an illusory value, wherever it may be. - That which in truth corresponds to money is the sum of all the means of production existing in a social territory, including land. Everything that is only expressed by money refers to this. All the beautiful qualities which the national economists ascribe to gold, so that it can give the currency, all these qualities, they are in truth to be ascribed to the means of production. Hence the question must arise precisely from the circulation of commodities with the aid of money: How can that which, though in ever-continuing transformation, in ever-continuing reorganization, but as a best value, underlies all national economy, how can it become such a uniform basis of economic life as money itself, which is only the representative? All that lives in the means of production, as common as money is in its nature, so common must the means of production be. That is to say, their circulation must be such as corresponds to the fact that no one can work on the means of production except by the cooperation of the whole social organism.

There are two things to be considered. First, that the social organism would lose an infinite amount if individual abilities were excluded. Man should work for the social organism through his individual abilities as long as he has them and as long as he wants to use them. But the moment he ceases to work for the social organism, the means of production which he administers must be transferred by the rule of law to the generality of the social organism.

I need only point to one branch of our modern life, and the matter is settled. It is that branch which modern man must regard as the most insignificant, the most insignificant, the most insignificant, because it is so treated in modern capitalism: that is spiritual life. What one produces spiritually is certainly connected with one's individual capacity; but thirty years after death it passes into the public domain and no longer belongs to one. - This most insignificant good, this most insignificant good, is treated in this way today. People are looking for a way to transfer what the individual produces into society. It is about this transition. It is also quite fair in the spiritual field. For what one has on the basis of one's individual abilities is nevertheless owed to the social organism, and one must give back to the social organism what one has gained on the basis of one's individual abilities.

So in the future, through the rule of law, what is produced with the help of material means of production must also be transferred to the general public. It is not necessary to think about how the means of production can be socialized bureaucratically, as in the previous social order. Those who oppress have grown out of capitalism. Thus, in the future social order, the oppressor will be recruited from within bureaucratism, from the ranks of those who today call themselves socialists, if one would only work towards a cooperative socialization of the means of production. But a just development of what the individual produces out of his individual abilities, a just transition is that into socialization. That is what we have to strive for. Then, if you think this through, you will realize: Many have said from an old economic organization and state order, spiritual order: if we want to keep humanity together, then we need what supports each other, throne and altar. Well, in modern times the throne is often a presidential chair and the altar a Wertheim cash register. But the attitude is often very similar in both cases.

The only question is whether things would be much better if the throne and the altar were merely transformed into an office and a machine and a factory, and if everything became mere bookkeeping instead of the previous administration. What is demanded as a social demand is deeply justified; however, we are living in a historical turning point. We need ideas that thoroughly transform the old. And just as intellectual life, economic life and political state life have striven towards each other under the influence of the bourgeois circles of modern times, so the modern proletarian should understand that the way back must be taken. After all, has this modern proletarian acquired an understanding of the organization by studying how the individual economic and life circles must interact with one another, has he studied the class struggle, has he really become acquainted with the economic circles in their relationship to one another? He would have to understand that the unity of the social organism is not disturbed, but on the contrary promoted, if not a mere uniform centralization, in which everything is muddled up, is sought, but if the three branches, spiritual organization, legal or state organization, economic organization, are separated from one another with their own administrations, with their own laws.

Don't tell me it's complicated, how sovereign states should interact! It will all happen in a much more intensive way, in a much more harmonious way than now, where everything is chaotic and confused. If the modern proletarian, looking and feeling his demands, strives for really practical solutions to his life's questions, for the fulfillment of his hopes, then he will turn to this organization, which may still sound strange today. And I do not believe that in other circles there could ever be so much understanding for the newer historical things as in proletarian circles. Oh, I have seen it, because in the last four and a half years I have often and repeatedly made suggestions to people in this direction, I have told them: what is demanded by this threefold structure is not an abstract program, not a figment of the imagination that arose in one night, it is based on life, it is what will be realized in the next ten, twenty, thirty years, especially in Europe. And it will be realized whether you like it or not; you only have the choice of either accepting reason now and realizing some things out of free choice, or you will be faced with revolutions of the most monstrous kind. - Well, the revolutions are coming soon!

Therefore I believe that he who has been placed by the external conditions of life in that which at first says nothing humanly, in the lifeless machine, has been harnessed into the desolate capitalism, I believe he must have an understanding for such ideas which differ from the old, but which are intimately related to the new, the emerging, the becoming. And I have the conviction and believe that they will gradually sink into the hearts and souls of the newer man, the modern proletarian in particular, I have the conviction: If the proletarian understands these demands and the possibility of their solution in the right sense, then, by becoming a class-conscious proletarian who works towards his liberation, he will liberate his class, and thus at the same time liberate man, then he will put something else in the place of the class: the tripartite healthy social organism. He will then not only become the liberator of his class, but the liberator of all humanity, that is, of everything that deserves to be and should be liberated as truly human in humanity.

Discussion

The organizer expresses his astonishment in deeply felt words that the workers' movement is being met with understanding from a hitherto unknown side. He expresses his thanks not only for the lecture, but also for the intellectual work that preceded it.

1st speaker (Dr. Schmidt): Agrees with Steiner's objective, asks about the path to realization. This had been mapped out by the socialist movement to date: Party, trade union, cooperative movement. As today, the three areas of life will remain interlinked in the future, but will be shaped by the supporters of the socialist movement. The first goal must be to change the economic order in the sense of equality.

2nd speaker: It will be easy to agree on the content of the objective. Threefolding is a utopia (reference to Fourier). The path to it is predetermined by the development trend of the time: the class struggle.

3rd speaker: The intellectual movement must also be taken into account. Every revolution has been prepared by ideas.

4, Speaker: The experience of war has confirmed the materialist view of history. Contradicts the statement that socialism adopts the bourgeois belief in the state. The dictatorship of the proletariat has no other purpose than to prepare for the abolition of the state. Spiritual freedom will only be possible in a community of freely producing people. Only the proletarian mass movement has a chance of success.

Rudolf Steiner: What the honorable speakers have said will not actually offer much opportunity to go into detail on one or the other, for the reason that it is quite natural that the objections made are based on the common views. I would like to say that I have been able to anticipate in every detail the things that have been said. I would just like to take up a little more of your time with regard to a few points that seem important to me.

First of all, I would like to draw your attention to the following. When something like what I have said this evening is said, one can always hear a kind of objection, which consists in the fact that it is said: I can't really imagine how things will turn out in reality. And on the other hand, it is almost demanded that one should not give utopia. I do believe that it will take some time before people realize that what I have said this evening really relates to a utopia in the same way that black relates to white: it is the opposite of a utopia. Things are a little bit connected. What I wanted to say really cannot be characterized in any other way than as I have already said to some people: That lies in the development trend of the next ten, twenty, thirty years. And whether we like it or not, we will have to implement it, either through reason or through revolution. There is simply no choice not to carry it out, because time itself wants it. And the development of mankind has already at times really followed guidelines which it has taken, and has apparently taken them back again, and of course it is not a question of a real return to earlier conditions, but of course the way back is then a way to a completely new form. It is true, of course, that we know that trade union life, cooperative life and political party life have achieved tremendous things in recent times and that we owe a great deal to them. But on the other hand, it must be said that in all the things that have been achieved there must be something unsatisfactory, something not yet finished. Today we are not convinced that there are new facts. But there is indeed something there that finally demands a different kind of orientation than we have had up to now! When people say that I have overestimated the power of the idea - I was not talking about ideas at all! I have just said the opposite of what could be described as the power of the idea. What did I actually put forward as a demand? I put forward a possible social organization. I pointed out how people should relate to each other so that they can find the right thing. A utopian always starts from the idea that this is how the social order should be organized. Basically, he thinks he is smarter than everyone else; you have to wait for him, and once he has spoken, you have nothing more to say. If he can't make contact, he sits in his attic and waits. It never occurs to me, not in the least, to wait for a millionaire, nor to believe in any way that I know better about this or that than another person.

You see, there is a very general social phenomenon that man as an individual cannot achieve, that is human language itself. It has been said countless times that if a person lives on a desert island, grows up alone, without hearing other people speak, he himself will not be able to speak. Language develops from a social phenomenon in people, through other people. It is the same with all social impulses. We cannot arrive at anything social except by people interacting in the right way; that is why I had to develop an idea. It does not occur to me to believe that one can reform anything with an idea. I tried to answer the question: How will people develop if they relate to each other in the right way, if they manage economic life on the one hand, legal life on the other, and spiritual life on the third? Associations will preferably be set up in the economic state, composed of producers and consumers, of professions and so on; if they live in the democratic constitutional state, the ideas, the impulse of the equality of all men before reality will grow out of quite different conditions. When they are inside the spiritual organization: How will they interact there? You see, you only have to look at reality. A judge can have aunts, uncles, grandfathers, grandchildren and so on, he can love them very much, love them tenderly, and that is good. But if someone steals, and he is supposed to judge as a judge, he will have to condemn it in exactly the same way, from the other source, as he would have to condemn a complete stranger.

I have often been told by professors that I want to divide humanity into three classes. I want the opposite! In the past, people were divided into the nurturing class, the teaching class and the military class. But today's doctrine teaches nothing. The nurturing class is nothing more than a class of force, and the military class is given the task of telling the dispossessed what the haves want! Yes, you see, that is precisely what is to be overcome: the estates, the classes are to be overcome precisely by dividing the organism as such, separately from man. Man is the unifying factor. On the one hand, he will be part of the economic organism, and on the other hand, by being part of the economic organism, he can also be a member of the representation of the political state; he can also belong to spiritual life. This creates unity. I want to liberate man precisely by dividing the social organism into three parts. One only has to understand what this is about: It is the opposite of a utopia, it is a real reality. It is about calling on people not to believe that some tricky utopia is being thought up, but to ask: How should people be organized so that they can find the right thing on their own by working together? That is the radical contrast to everything else. All the others start from the idea; here we start from the real social division of people, here we really point out that all differences are wiped away by the fact that man himself, as a mere human being, forms the unity. And therefore I would be sorry if precisely that view made an impression which declares the opposite of all utopianism to be a utopia! That is what I am actually sorry about, because it has not hit the nerve of my arguments. That is the important thing, and I would like to draw particular attention to that.

So it's not about overestimating any power of the idea. There is no emphasis here on the power of utopia, but on what people will say and think and feel and want when they are placed in the social organism in a humane way. Precisely because the thinking here is real, it is of course difficult to point out details. It is possible; but anyone who gets into the habit of thinking in real terms knows that if you really let people judge, let them judge from within themselves, they may even judge a concrete case differently, and both ways can be right. Let me give you the following example:

You see, one will naturally have to make use of the means of production in the future through one's individual abilities; for he who can manage any business will not have to manage production for his own sake, but because those who work for him enter into a free contract with him, because they realize that their work will prosper better if it is well managed. This is something that absolutely must be taken as a basis in the future, something that will arise of its own accord. Then you have to say: something new will actually emerge under the conditions that are being created here; there will no longer be any ownership, but only administration. We will then only know one administration. For I have pointed out that material property can be treated in a similar way to what is regarded today as the most precious thing, spiritual property. This means that after a certain period of time - and we don't mean “after death”, but when the business is no longer working productively with the means of production - the means of production are transferred to another management. This is very complicated in detail, but precisely because the thinking is realistic and not utopian, it can only be pointed out: People will find the right relationship with each other if they are in the right position. That is what matters.

You see, after such decisive facts have occurred, after the world war has just happened, one can have the opinion that new ideas really must come, but one cannot always emphasize again: We must stand still with our demands! That is what has been proclaimed for decades. We won't get anywhere by saying: we want a society that develops freely, we want a free social society for people - but how? - I have said that up to now it has been a kind of policy, now it is a matter of fact. The previous speaker quite rightly referred to Russia. That is quite right. At the moment when such decisive facts really emerge, we can no longer just grope around in uncertainty. Yes, it is a matter of being able to imagine something quite definite. And that, I believe, is what can be seen from what I have presented: it is not a program, but a direction. You can continue the present conditions from their present starting point wherever you want, if you only want to. Just take the reconstruction of the former conditions as it is in Russia. You can at any time in any field, when state administration has begun, throw off this spiritual life by first establishing free schools, by establishing free cooperatives in economic life, and so on. You can continue to work on any point, whatever the starting point may be. You must not imagine all this according to Swiss conditions. Life is becoming more and more international. In Germany, for example, something completely different is needed today than a few years ago. You can continue to work from any starting point; it will just be a matter of continuing to build. And I am counting on it, whether in a cooperative, in a trade union, in any party, there is already the possibility that something will emerge; wherever you sit, you can organize things in such a way that these three parts emerge in all areas. Then we will arrive at an organization that is truly appropriate and demanded by a healthy social organism, and not at a utopian or utopian socialization.

Avoiding any utopia is what we should strive for above all else, to eradicate any belief that we can do anything with abstract ideas. You can only do something in social life with people who know what they want in the very specific situation in which they find themselves. It is not a question today of a struggle between those who are still to be called the dispossessed and the haves. If they work, as is the direction of movement that I have outlined today, if the haves and the have-nots work in the right way, things will turn out in their favor. If the haves resist, they will soon have lost their property. But the point is that the masses have a knowledge of what is to happen. And you see, in this respect, one might say, it is even worse with social impulses than with medical and technical materials. If someone knows nothing about building bridges and yet wanted to build one, it would collapse. If someone cures someone, well, you usually can't prove whether the patient died despite the cure or perhaps even as a result of the cure; that's where things get tricky. And when it comes to the social organism, that's where things get the most tangled, because you usually can't prove what's a cure and what's a cure, which is why people usually talk in vague terms. You see, I heard a speaker who also talked about social things; he mainly wanted to prove that you don't really need anything else, just Christ, then everything will be fine in social life. Well, you shouldn't think that a debate about this is being started now. But I have experienced the following. I had to remind myself of something I read in my schoolboy days, I think almost forty-five years ago. It said that Christ was either a hypocrite or a fool, or he was what he described himself as: the Son of the living God. - As I said, I am not criticizing, neither in one direction nor in the other; I only remark: I was in Berne the other day, and a gentleman made a speech there after the League of Nations Conference, in which he said that the whole League of Nations is wrongly organized - I believe myself that it is wrongly organized - but he said that it will be wrongly organized if it is not dealt with: Christ was either a fool, or a hypocrite, or he was the Son of the living God, as whom he described himself. - In short, everything that was in my textbook forty-five years ago was presented by the Lord to his faithful congregation. And that is the most important thing to note: In between lies the world war! The people, after having had two millennia to bring their things to the world, have come so far that the world war has nevertheless come. Doesn't all this indicate that something has to be learned from the world war? Is it not socially better and healing for the social organism if something new is really learned in the socialist field, in the field of socialist knowledge, as a result of the world war? Do we have to say that we are conservatively sticking to the old ideas, which have also been shipwrecked in many respects by the world war? That is what I particularly want to emphasize: it really was foreseeable and it is very important to me - I say this without any rejection - and I am very glad that things have been said as they have been said. But I would like to emphasize that much damage has been done in the world by the conservative standstill, by the rigid emphasis on what has been said over the centuries and what has now been said for decades, by this rigid emphasis, by this standstill in this conservatism! May socialism not cause damage to itself through this conservative standstill! For this damage would be very, very great, perhaps much greater than that which has already been done elsewhere.

You may have heard from what I said at the end of my lecture that it is precisely out of socialism, and even more so out of the proletariat, that the liberation of that which is to be liberated in man can take place. So it is not a question of an idea, it is not a question of overestimating an idea, and I have also said nothing about socialism having to unite with the state enterprise and the like; rather it is a question of solving a problem of humanity!

And because I believe that the individual is quite indifferent to what he demands of himself, he should demand something in common with other people. One cannot help but fail with socialist demands if one wants to make them as an individual. You have to make them in the human community.

So what I demand is not some idea, not some utopia, but what people will be able to say of their own accord when they are inside the social organism.

Don't think that I want to take the floor here today to talk about that cheap understanding with regard to the social question that so many people would like to talk about today and who would like to be heard by name. I would like to speak of a completely different kind of understanding, the kind of understanding that seems to me to be called for by the loud, loudly speaking facts that are spreading across a large part of Europe today: understanding with the historical forces at work in the present and in the future, which call for a very specific, clear and energetic approach to what has been called the social question for more than half a century. How can we speak today of that other understanding mentioned at the beginning? Has not too much been lost for this understanding? Has not a certain part of modern humanity taken a long time to seek such an understanding? Today, a deep chasm is opening up between those who have been the leading classes of humanity up to now and those who are pressing forward with newer demands that have necessarily arisen from the times, i.e. between the leading classes of humanity up to now and the proletariat with its justified demands.

Let us take a look at recent life in order first of all to gain a judgment on the impossibility of easy understanding today. Much has been said for decades about this modern civilization, about this civilization which is supposed to have brought about such great and mighty things for mankind. How we have heard it again and again, the praise for modern technology, for modern transportation! Have we not heard them, all the phrases about how it is possible for people today - yes, which people are possible! - to traverse vast distances of land in a relatively short time, how it has become possible for thoughts to cover almost any distance, how it has become possible to expand so-called intellectual life? Well, I don't need to go into detail about the whole song of praise that has been heard so and so often. But what has all this, to which such a song of praise is sung, risen above? Without what would it not have been possible? It would not have been possible without the work of the greater part of mankind, that part which was not allowed to participate in all that has been so praised, that part which had to provide for these comforts of life under physical and mental privations, without being able to participate in any way in all the achievements of modern civilization.

Let's take a closer look at how, for more than half a century, we have come to the point where we still have to say that the abyss exists today. And if there is much talk of understanding today, it is precisely because people are afraid, because they are afraid of the facts that are looming so threateningly for some people. What, for example, has the moral world view of these leading classes been particularly preoccupied with - to start with a favorite subject of the leading classes since then? The world-view, the moral world-view of these leading classes has been particularly fond of dealing with, in endless speeches, in unctuous expositions, in words that seemed to overflow with feeling, with how men must develop love for one another, how men must see to it that brotherhood spreads, how men can only conquer the spiritual world by entering into such brotherhood. Such speeches, seemingly dripping with deep feeling, have indeed been made quite often by the leading spiritual circles of the hitherto leading class of mankind. Let us put ourselves in the place of such speeches in halls of mirrors or the like, and think how they preached about love of man, about charity, about religiosity, preached over a furnace heating provided by coal - I would like to draw attention to this in order to characterize a little the course of the present facts - which was extracted from those coal mines about which an English inquiry at the beginning of the newer labour movement brought quite strange things to light. Down there in the shafts of the earth, nine-, eleven-, thirteen-year-old children worked all day long in the shafts, children who never saw the sunlight except on Sunday, for the simple reason that they went down into the pits when it was still dark, and were only brought up again when it was no longer light. Men stood down there, completely naked, next to women who were pregnant and who also stood half-naked down there and had to work.

That was the first time that a government inquiry was held to draw attention to what was actually going on among the people, that such experiences were made, about which thoughtlessness had never wanted to enlighten itself, despite all the preaching of humanity, charity and religiosity. Admittedly, that was at the beginning of the modern proletarian movement. But it cannot be said that what has at least to some extent improved the situation of wide circles of people stems from the understanding that would have been gained in the hitherto leading classes of mankind. A large part of these leading classes of mankind are today just as uncomprehending of the true demands of the time, which follow from such facts, as they were fifty or more years ago.

There is no need to go as far as a hitherto leading, or at least seemingly leading, personality of humanity has gone: the former German Emperor, who called the socialist-minded people: Animals that gnaw at the foundations of the German empire and are worth exterminating. These are his own words. As I said, there is no need to go that far, but the judgments that are still made in certain circles today are not so very different from this particularly characteristic judgment just mentioned.

If we now look at what has taken place in the course of the last five to six decades, since what is now called the social question came into existence, we see on the one hand the thoughtless lack of understanding with regard to everything that has come up in the development of humanity, and on the other hand we see the onslaught, the justified onslaught of the broad proletarian masses, which has always been crowding into the words: It cannot go on like this. But today the facts speak a completely different language than they have in recent decades. And how do the judgments that some people make compare with the facts? The terrible catastrophe we have lived through in the last four to five years is a good lesson in this.

Please allow me to make the following personal comment. That which I have had to form for decades as a judgment on European political conditions, I had to summarize it in a lecture which I gave in the spring of 1914 in Vienna to a small circle - a larger one would probably have laughed at me at the time - I had to summarize that which was then woven among the people of Europe, among those people of whom one could say that they had something to do with the shaping of political destiny in Europe. At that time one had to say, if one looked at the times with an unbiased eye: With regard to the political and state relations of Europe, we are suffering from a creeping ulcer, a cancerous disease that will have to break out in a terrible way in the very near future. The time when this cancer broke out came very soon. But what did the “practitioners” say? What did the “statesmen” say? Today, when we talk about statesmen, we are always tempted to put quotation marks around the word. What did the “statesmen” say? What the leading foreign secretary of state in the German Reichstag said back then was the following. He said: “Thanks to the efforts of the cabinets, we can say that European peace will be secured for the foreseeable future. - That was said by a leading statesman in May 1914. This peace was so secure that since then twelve to fifteen million people have been shot dead, three times as many have been crippled. Just as in those days these statesmen spoke about what was in the political sky, so today many people speak about what is being said by the whole educated world through facts of the most significant and energetic kind. This is how people often speak about the social question. There is no idea in many circles of what must come and what will certainly come, and of what every reasonable person must be able to judge.

What I have to say on this matter is truly not based on any theoretical view. For many years I was a teacher at the workers' educational school founded in Berlin by Wilhelm Liebknecht, the old Liebknecht, I taught in the most diverse branches, and from there I also worked within the educational system of the modern proletariat in trade unions, in cooperatives and also within the political party. It is precisely when one has lived among and worked with those who have endeavored to carry the modern workers' movement forward from real thoughts, from real intellectual foundations, that one can perhaps say that one can form a judgment, not as one who thinks about the proletariat. Such judgment has no value today. Today, only a judgment formed with the proletariat, formed from the midst of the proletariat itself, can have any value.

In the hours that the workers spent after the hard work of the day, in which they went to the theater or played skat while other classes - I don't want to list all the nice things - in the hours in which the proletarian tried to enlighten himself about his situation, in those hours one could learn how the modern proletarian question has become and will become something quite different from a mere wage or bread question, as many still believe today, namely a question of human dignity. A question of a humane existence, that is what lies behind all proletarian demands, and has done for a long time.

Today's proletarian demands can be said to rest on three foundations. The one foundation is very often described by the proletarians themselves by referring to the great teacher of the proletariat, Karl Marx, as the existence of so-called surplus value. Surplus value, it was always a word that penetrated deep into the soul of the modern proletarian; it was a word that had an incendiary effect on the feelings of this modern proletarian. What word did the hitherto leading classes oppose to this surplus value? One will perhaps be surprised if I contrast the following two things.

The leading classes opposed this surplus value with the word of the great, important spiritual life which the civilization of mankind has brought forth. What did the proletarian know of this spiritual life? What was the great question of humanity for him? He knew that the surplus value he produced was used to make this spiritual life possible and to exclude him from this spiritual life. For him, surplus value was the very abstract basis of spiritual life. What kind of spiritual life was that? It was the intellectual life that arose in the dawn of the modern bourgeois economic order. It is often said, certainly not unjustly, that the modern proletariat was created by modern technology, by modern industrialism, by modern capitalism, and we shall speak of these things in a moment. But at the same time as this modern technology, with this capitalism, something else arose which we can call the modern scientific orientation. There it was - it was quite a long time ago - that the proletariat placed the last great trust in the bourgeoisie in the face of what the modern bourgeoisie brought up as the modern scientific orientation. And this last great trust, world-historical trust, has been disappointed.

What was the actual situation? Well, out of old worldviews, the justification of which we really don't want to examine today, what is today an enlightened, scientific worldview was formed. The proletarian, who has been called away from the medieval craft to the soul-killing machine, has been harnessed into modern capitalism, could not accept what the old classes had absorbed in their spiritual life. He could only accept, so to speak, the most modern product, the most modern outflow of this spiritual life. But for him this spiritual life became something quite, quite different from that of the leading classes. One need only visualize this with reference to all the depths of the proletarian soul. One must imagine how people from the hitherto leading classes, even if they were such enlightened people as the naturalist Vogt or the scientific popularizer Büchner, how they could be enlightened people with their heads, with their minds, in the sense of today's science; but they were such enlightened people only because they lived with their whole human being inside a social order that still came from the old religious and other world views in which the old still lived on. Their life was different from the one they professed, however honest they were in theory. The modern proletarian was compelled to take what remained to him as the legacy of the bourgeoisie in the fullest human seriousness. One need only have seen what it meant to the modern proletarian when he was told, as Lassalle once was, about science and the workers.

I stood - if I may also make this personal remark - more than eighteen years ago in Spandau, near Berlin, on the same speaker's platform with Rosa Luxemburg, who recently met her tragic end. We were both speaking to a proletarian assembly about science and the workers. At the time, Rosa Luxemburg said words that you could see had a powerful effect on the souls of these proletarian people who had come on a Sunday afternoon and had brought their wives and children with them; it was a heart-warming meeting. She said that, under the influence of modern science, people can no longer imagine that they have come up from conditions that were like angels, from which the modern differences of rank and class would be justified. No, she said almost literally: man, the physical man of today, was once highly indecent, climbing around on trees, and if one remembers this origin, then one really finds no reason to speak of today's class differences.

This was understood, but differently than by the leading circles. It was understood in such a way that the whole man wanted to be placed in this world view, which was to answer the question of the proletarian languishing in the barren machine: What am I as a human being? What is man in the world at all?

Now, however, the modern proletarian could gain nothing from this whole science other than what he could call a mirror image of what has emerged as the modern capitalist economic order. He felt that people speak as they must according to their economic circumstances, according to their economic situation. They had placed him in this economic situation; he could only judge from it. The leading circles said: the way people live now is a result of the divine world order, or a result of the moral world order, or a result of historical ideas and so on. The modern proletarian could only feel all this by saying to himself: “But you have put me into this economic life, and what have you made of me? Does that show what you have made of me, this divine world order, this moral world order, these historical ideas?

And so the concept of surplus value - the surplus value that he produced, that was extracted from him, that made this life of the leading classes possible - ignited in his emotional world and the opinion arose in him that everything that is produced by the leading circles in terms of spiritual life is only the reflection of their economic order.

Finally, for the last few centuries the proletarian theoretician was undoubtedly right in this view. The last few years have amply demonstrated this in the most diverse areas. Or can one believe that the people who taught history, for example, or wrote about history in the various schools - I don't want to say mathematics and physics, there's not much you can do in world views - can one say that they ultimately expressed anything other than a reflection of what the state-economic order was? Just look at the history of the states that entered the world war. The history of the Hohenzollerns will certainly look different in the future than the German professors have written in recent years and decades. It will, however, be made, this history, by people who have been told - yes, it is also a word of the German emperor - that they are not only enemies of the ruling class, but enemies of the divine world order.

So what was the spiritual life of the ruling classes became for the proletarian a dull ideology, a luxury of humanity, something for which he could muster no understanding. Nevertheless, his deepest longing was to find something that told him what human dignity, what human worth was. That is why the first proletarian demand is a spiritual demand. And one may say what one likes here or there, the first proletarian demand is a spiritual demand, the demand for such a spiritual life in which one can feel what one is as a human being, in which every human being can feel what human life on earth is worth. That is the first proletarian demand in the spiritual sphere.

The second proletarian demand arises in the field of legal life, of the actual political state. It is difficult to talk theoretically about what the law actually is. In any case, law is something that concerns all men, and one need only say the following about law: just as one cannot talk to a blind man about what a blue color is, but one does not need to theorize much about the blue color with one who sees, so one cannot talk about law with those who are blind to law. For the law rests on an original human awareness of the law. On the commandments of the political state, which the ruling classes have so finely carved out for themselves in recent centuries, the proletarian sought his right, his right above all in relation to his field of labor. What did he find? At first he did not find himself harnessed to the constitutional state, he found himself harnessed to the economic state. And there he saw that in contrast to all ideas of humanity, in contrast to all ideas of pure humanity, there remained for him a remnant of old inhumanity, a terrible remnant of old inhumanity. That, in turn, is something that Karl Marx so passionately impressed on the souls of the proletariat. There were slaves in ancient times. The whole human being was bought and sold like a commodity. Later there were serfs. There was less buying and selling of people than in the old days of slavery. Even now, people are still bought and sold like commodities. What Karl Marx and his successors have repeatedly and again so understandably expressed for the proletarian soul is that human labor power is sold. In the modern commodity market, where there should only be commodities, labor power itself is treated like a commodity. This rests in the depths, albeit often unconsciously, of the proletarian soul, so that it says to itself: the time has come when my labor power may no longer be a commodity.

This is the second proletarian demand. It springs from the legal ground. In drawing attention to this relationship, Karl Marx was once again speaking one of his most incendiary words. But we must be even more radical in this area than Karl Marx himself was in his approach. It must become clear: a world order, a social order must emerge in which man's labor power is no longer a commodity, in which it is completely stripped of the character of a commodity. For if I have to sell my labor power, I can also sell my entire human being. How can I retain my human being if I have to sell my labor power to someone else? He becomes master of my whole person. Thus the last remnant of the old slavery, but truly not in a lesser form, is still there today in this “humane” age.

So the proletarian, with his labor power and its sale, found himself thrust out of legal life into economic life. And when it is said, well, the labor contract exists, it must be countered that as long as a contract can be concluded between the employer and the worker about the labor relationship, the slave relationship with regard to labor power exists. Only then, when the relationship with regard to labor between labor manager and physical workers is transferred to the mere legal ground, only then is there that which the modern proletarian soul must demand.

However, this can only be the case when a relationship is no longer concluded only about wages, but only about what is produced jointly by the physical and the intellectual worker. There can only be contracts about goods, not about pieces of people. Instead of knowing that his labor relationship is protected on the basis of law, what did the modern proletarian find on this legal basis? Did he find rights? When he looked at himself, he really did not find any rights. Certain people had gradually become accustomed to perceiving this modern state as a kind of deity, as an idol. Almost as Faust spoke to Gretchen about God in the first part, so certain people spoke about the modern state. One could well imagine a modern labor entrepreneur instructing his workers about the divinity of the modern state and saying of this state: “The all-preserver, the all-embracer, does he not grasp and sustain you, me and himself?” He will probably always think: especially me. - Rights awaited the consciousness of humanity on the soil of the state. The modern proletarian found the privileges of those who had gained them from economic life, especially in recent times. Instead of that which must be demanded in regard to all rights - the equality of all men - what did the modern proletarian find? If one looks at what he found there on the ground of the constitutional state, one comes to his third demand; for he found on the ground on which he was to find the right, namely the right of his labor and the opposite right, the right of the so-called owner, he found the class struggle. For the modern proletarian, the modern state is nothing more than the class-struggle state.

Thus we designate the third proletarian demand as that which aims at overcoming the class state and replacing it with the constitutional state. Labor and labor management are objects of law. What, after all, is property? In the course of modern times it will have to become something that belongs to the old rusty things; for what is it in reality? In the social organism we need only the concept which says: possession is the right of any man to make use of any thing. Possession is always based on a right. Only when rights are regulated on the basis of a true democratic social order will workers' rights stand in opposition to so-called property rights. Only then, however, can that which is the legitimate demand of the modern proletarian be fulfilled.

If you look at the facts of today, which speak so loudly, then you come to the conclusion that what has gradually emerged as a social organism under the influence of modern technology, under the influence of modern capitalism, must be looked at more closely. - And one need only look at the three demands of the modern proletariat just characterized, then one will also see what is necessary for the recovery of the social organism. A spiritual, a legal and an economic aspect - these are the three aspects that must be looked at. But how have these three aspects been treated in the modern historical order, which is currently under the influence of technology and capitalism?

This is where we come from the critique of what has been formed by the ruling classes of the present, to what emerges today as a historical demand. I can imagine that some people will not fully agree with me in what I am about to say. But do not the facts that have developed show that people's thoughts have often lagged behind these facts? That is why it is perhaps justified to listen when someone says: “We not only need all kinds of talk about the transformation of conditions, no, today we need to move forward to completely new thoughts. New thoughts must enter the human brain, because the old thoughts have shown what they have made the human social order into. Rethinking and relearning, not just trying things out, is necessary today. And if what I have to say differs in some respects from the usual thoughts, I ask you to take it in such a way that it is taken from the observation of the facts of life and is just as honestly meant as many other things that are honestly put forward for the recovery of the newer social conditions.

I see, for example, how in recent times, precisely under the influence of the bourgeois social and economic order, economic life has increasingly grown together with legal life, how the political state and the economic state have become one. Let us take a very characteristic example of the present. Let us take the example of Austria, which has just succumbed to its fate. When, in the sixties of the 19th century, this Austria finally decided to establish a so-called constitutional life, how was the Imperial Council, this old blessed Imperial Council - because they wanted to have such a clear and short name, they called this Austrian state, apart from Hungary and the lands of the so-called Holy Crown of St. Stephen, “the kingdoms and lands represented in the Imperial Council”, - short name for Austria! - was elected? Elections were held for this Imperial Council according to four curiae, firstly the large landowners, secondly the chambers of commerce, thirdly the cities, markets and industrial towns, fourthly the rural communities. The latter were only allowed to vote indirectly. But what are all these curiae? They were economic curiae. They had to represent purely economic interests, and they elected their deputies to the Austrian Imperial Council. What was to be done there? Rights were to be established, political rights. What ideas did they have about political rights by basing the Austrian Imperial Council on these four curiae? Well, they had the idea that in the Imperial Council, where the law was to be decided, economic interests were merely transformed into rights. And so it was, and still is, that basically the state representations include, mostly openly or covertly, the mere economic interests. Look at the Farmers' Union in the German Reichstag; you can refrain from giving me closer examples. Everywhere we see how the tendency of modern times has been to merge economic life with the political life of the state proper. This was called progress. They began with those branches which were particularly convenient to the ruling classes, the postal, telegraph and railroad systems and the like, and extended them more and more. That is one thing that was welded together. The other thing that was merged, that was welded together, was intellectual life and the political state.

I know that I am to a certain extent treading on ice when I speak of this fusion of intellectual life with the political state, when I speak today of the fact that this fusion has led to the disadvantage, to the harm, to the illness of the social organism. Certainly, it was necessary for the ruling classes in the last centuries, and especially in the 19th century. But one must not merely believe that the administration, the operation of science and other branches of intellectual life has been corrupted, impaired by the state administration, but the content of science itself. Here, too, there is no need to go as far as the famous physiologist Du Bois-Reymond, who once called the members of the Berlin Academy of Sciences “the Hohenzollern's scientific protection force” in a beautiful speech - gentlemen always speak very, very beautifully when they talk about such things.

In an enlightened age, there was a lot of mockery about how in the Middle Ages external science and worldview, the handmaiden, was the servant of theology. Certainly, we will never want to return to those times. Anyone who looks at things today with unbiased judgment knows that a later time will judge ours in a similar way. In many cases, scholars no longer carry the train of theology, well, I don't want to say that they clean the boots of the states concerned, but in many respects the bearers of the train of the states concerned have already become the bearers of the train. That is what one must keep in mind again and again if one wants to talk about what it has actually brought about that in recent times, on the one hand, economic life has merged with political state life, and on the other hand, intellectual life has merged with precisely this political state life. Anyone who looks into these things does not now ask, as so many people ask: What should the League of Nations do, which is now to be founded from one point of view or the other? The other day in Berne I heard a gentleman who considers himself particularly clever say: The League of Nations must establish a supranational state, it must create a supra-parliament. Yes, you see, anyone who looks with an unbiased eye at what the previous states have achieved in these four terrible years really does not want to ask with regard to the League of Nations: How should the various measures and institutions of the previous states be transferred to this League of Nations? What should be done to make this League of Nations as similar as possible to the state? - He will probably ask differently. He will perhaps ask: What should this state refrain from doing? - After all, what it has done in the last four years has not really borne much fruit. Gradually, if you really look into the workings of modern social life with a healthy mind, you come to say what the historical powers and forces really demand in modern times.

While the world war was raging, I spoke to many people about what I am also saying here. I preached to deaf ears. I said to quite a few people: You still have time now; as long as the cannons are thundering, it is advisable that those states that want to end this war sensibly speak words into the thunder of the cannons, words that are demanded by the times, words that will definitely be realized in the next ten or twenty years. Today you have the choice of either accepting reason and realizing it through reason, or, if you don't want that, you will face cataclysms and revolutions. Like sound and smoke, that went past our ears.

What the times demand of us is that we really make up our minds to create independent social entities: a free, self-reliant intellectual life, a political state to which we leave only legal life, and an economic life that we place on its own foundation. - How dreadful it is for some who, in the sense of the old habits of thought, consider themselves practitioners, that one should now approach the complicated, three juxtaposed social organisms, a special spiritual organization, a special legal organization and a special economic organization! Just think what effect this will have on economic life, for example. On the one hand, economic life is limited by the natural basis, climate and soil conditions. On the one hand, nature can be dealt with by making all kinds of technical improvements, but there is a limit beyond which we cannot go. The natural basis forms one limit of economic life. One need only recall extreme examples. Think of a country where many people can feed themselves from bananas. It takes a hundred times less work to bring the banana from its place of origin to consumption than it does to bring our wheat in our regions from sowing to consumption. Well, such extreme examples clear things up. But even if things are not so extreme in a closed social territory, the natural basis is there. It is one limit of economic life. There must be another boundary. This is the one formed by the state, which stands independently alongside economic life. Within this state, which must stand on a purely democratic basis, because it deals with what applies equally to all men, what all men must agree upon, because it must emerge from the consciousness of right which is rooted in the soul of every man, in this constitutional state, measure, time and many other things relating to human labor will also be determined quite independently of economic life. Just as the seed is not already part of economic life in relation to the forces that grasp it under the earth, but just as these natural forces determine economic life itself, so labor law must also form the basis of economic life on the part of the independent state. The price of the commodity must be determined, as by the natural basis on the one hand, so on the other hand by the labor law independent of economic life. Commodity prices must be dependent on labor law, not, as is the case today, labor prices on commodity prices.

That is what every real worker secretly, in the depths of his soul, basically expects, that the regulation of labor power and also the regulation of so-called property, which will thus no longer be property at all, will be separated from economic life, so that in the economic field there can no longer be a compulsory relationship between employer and employee, but merely a legal relationship. Then there will be in economic life only that which belongs solely to economic life: the production of goods, the movement of goods, the consumption of goods. And what can be realized is precisely what socialist thought strives to realize, that from now on production will no longer be in order to profit, but that production will be in order to consume. This can only happen if the rules are made about labor and work performance just as independently as the rules themselves are made by nature for the economic order independently of this economic order. Only then will that come into its own in the field of economic life which is today developing as the cooperative system, the associative system; this must find a proper administration on the ground of economic life. Production life must be regulated in associations, in cooperatives, according to the needs of consumption. Above all, the entire regulation of currency must be taken away from the political state. Currency, money can no longer be something that is subject to the political state, but something that belongs to the economic body. What will then be that which is the representative of money? No longer some other commodity, which is really only a luxury good and whose value is based on human imagination, gold, but what will correspond to money - I can only hint at this, you will find it explained in my book on the social question, which will appear in a few days' time - what will correspond to money will be everything that is available in the way of useful means of production. And these useful means of production, they will be able to be treated as they should actually be treated in the sense of modern social thought, they will be able to be treated in the same way as today only that which is regarded in our time as the most abominable property is treated.

What is considered to be the worst property in our time? Well, of course the intellectual, the spiritual property. In our time we know that we have it from the social order. Yes, no matter how clever a person is, no matter how much he can achieve, no matter how beautiful things he produces, it certainly corresponds to his talents, and to some other things as well, but insofar as it is utilized in the social organism, insofar as one has it from the social organism. It is therefore just that this intellectual property should not remain with the heirs, but should, at least after a number of years, pass into the social organism, become common property, to be used by those who are suited to it by their individual abilities. This most precious property, intellectual property, is treated in this way today. This is how all so-called property will be treated in the future. Only it will have to be transformed much earlier into common property, so that those who have the abilities for it can in turn contribute these abilities to this property for the benefit and purpose of the social organism. Therefore, in the book that will be published in a few days, I have shown how it is necessary that the means of production remain under the management of one person only as long as the individual abilities of this person justify the management of these means of production, that everything that is profited on the basis of the means of production, if it is not again put into the production itself, must be transferred to the community. Through the spiritual organism, we can seek out those who, in terms of their individual abilities, can pass this on to the social community.

If one has really come to know this social organism from life, it is not so easy to fulfill this modern demand that the means of production no longer be transferred to private ownership so that they remain in this private ownership. But the means must be found by which this private property loses all meaning, so that the so-called private owner is then only the temporary leader, because he has the ability to manage the means of production best for the good of the community through his skills.

When, on the one hand, workers' rights are regulated in the political state, when, on the other hand, property thus becomes a property cycle in the true sense of the word, only then will a free contractual relationship between worker and labor leader concerning communal production be possible. There will be workers and labor leaders, entrepreneurs and employees no longer.

I can only briefly outline all these things. Therefore, please allow me to point out that, in addition to the independent economic area, which on the other side will have the independent political state, the constitutional state, which will stand independently and sovereignly next to the economic area, like nature itself, there will be spiritual life. This spiritual life can only develop according to its own, true, real forces when it is placed on its own ground in the future, when the lowest teacher up to the highest leader of any branch of teaching or education is no longer dependent on any capital group or on the political state, but when the lowest teacher and all those who are involved in spiritual life know: what I do is only dependent on the spiritual organization itself. Out of a good instinct, even if not exactly out of a special appreciation of religion, out of a good instinct, modern social democracy has coined the word with regard to religion: religion must be a private matter. In the same sense, as strange as it may still sound to people today, all spiritual life must be a private matter and must be based on the trust that those who wish to receive it have in those who are to provide it. Of course, I know that many people today fear that we will all, or rather our descendants, become illiterate if we can choose our own school. We won't become illiterate. It is perhaps precisely members of leading circles, hitherto leading circles, who today have quite a lot of cause to think this way about education; they remember how much trouble it has been for them to acquire the little bit of education that secures their social position. But that which the tripartite social organism demands of people will certainly not lead to illiteracy in a free intellectual life, especially under the influence of the modern proletariat.

I am completely convinced that if one is able to realize in this way the completely democratic constitutional state, which secures workers' rights, in which every person has a say in what is the same for all people, then the modern proletariat in particular will not be preoccupied with preaching illiteracy, then it will demand of its own accord, even in a free intellectual life, that people should not be led to the ballot box in the way that can now sometimes be heard from individual regions of a neighboring state, where the monks and country priests have cleared out the asylums for idiots and lunatics in order to lead those people who did not even know what their names were to the ballot box.

Whoever wants to believe in these things and hope for these things must, however, have faith in real human power and real human dignity. Anyone who, like me, has been independent of any kind of state order all his life, who has never submitted to any kind of state order, has also been able to preserve his impartiality for that which can be built up as a spiritual life that is independent of the state and stands on its own. This spiritual life will not cultivate the individual human faculties in the way that the luxury spiritual life, the ideology of the previous spiritual life, has done. The spiritual life that is built on itself will also not be a philistine, bourgeois spiritual life, it will be a humanity spiritual life, a spiritual life that will reach down from the highest, very highest members of spiritual creation into the individual details of human work and its management; the leaders of the individual economic areas will be pupils of the free spiritual life and will not develop out of this free spiritual life what has today become the entrepreneurial spirit, the spirit of capitalism.

There are labor contracts, but no real contract can actually be made about labor. What is today a labor contract is a lie, because in reality labor is not comparable to any commodity. Therefore one must say: if any contract is to be concluded in the future, it will be concluded about the jointly performed product, and then one will feel all the more: What was this previous employment contract actually about? What was it based on? - It was not based on any right, but on an abuse of personal, individual abilities. Basically, it was an overreaching. But overreaching, where does it come from? From the cleverness that today's intellectual life has often displayed. The spiritual life that I imagine, which is left to its own devices, will not produce this cleverness, it will not produce the lie of life, it will produce the truths of life. There will no longer be protective troops for any thrones and altars, but the spirit itself will administer the individual abilities of man right down to the individual branches of mankind. Capitalism is only possible if the spiritual life on the other side can be enslaved. If the spiritual life is liberated, then capitalism in its present form will disappear. I wanted to think about how capitalism can disappear. You can read in my book on the social question in a few days' time that this capitalism will disappear when spiritual life is truly emancipated and the truths of life are put in the place of the lies of life.

In essence, what I have outlined to you today in a brief sketch has been resounding through humanity for a long time. At the end of the 18th century, the words “liberty, equality, fraternity” rang out like a mighty motto in France. - In the course of the 19th century, very clever people repeatedly proved that these three ideas contradict each other in the social organism. Liberty, on the one hand, demands that individuality can move freely. Equality excludes this freedom. Fraternity, on the other hand, contradicts the other two.

As long as one was under the hypnosis of the dogma: The All-holder, All-embracer, does he not embrace you and me, himself? As long as one was under the hypnosis of this idol of the unitary state, these three ideas were contradictions. At the moment when mankind will find understanding for the threefold healthy social organism, these three ideas will no longer contradict each other, for then freedom will prevail in the field of the independent, sovereign spiritual organism, and equality of all in the field of the state organism, the legal organism, the equality of all men, and in the field of the economic organism, fraternity, that fraternity on a large scale which will be based on the cooperatives of production and consumption, which will be based on the associations of the individual professions, which will administer economic life in an appropriately fraternal manner. The three great ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity will no longer contradict each other when the three areas - spiritual, legal and economic - have come into their own in the world. Take this today as something that is still little thought of, but it is not a utopia, it is not something that has somehow been thought up, but something that has been gained from decades of observation of modern political, economic and spiritual conditions, something that can be believed to rest in the womb of human development itself like a seed that wants to be realized in the near future. And one can perceive in the loudly speaking facts of today, one can perceive in the demands of the proletariat, even if much is still expressed differently, that the longing for such realization is already present today.

Many people call what I am saying a utopia. It is taken from a reality-friendly, reality-appropriate way of thinking. This idea of a tripartite division is not a utopia. It can be tackled immediately everywhere from any social condition if one only has the good will, which is unfortunately so often lacking today. If you believe that what I am saying is a utopia, then I would like to remind you that what I am saying here about the healthy social organism is not what is usually said. People who otherwise speak of social ideas are setting up programs. I am not thinking of a program, I am not thinking of wanting to be cleverer than other people and to know the best about everything, how to do it and so on, but I am only thinking of structuring humanity, which should decide for itself what is true, what is good, what is expedient, in the right way. And it seems to me that if it is organized in such a way that people stand within it firstly in a free spiritual life, secondly in a free political legal life, thirdly in an economic life properly administered by economic forces, then people will find the best for themselves; I am not thinking of legislation about the best, but of the way in which people must be called upon to find through themselves that which is pious for them. Nor am I thinking, as some have believed, of a rebirth of the old estates and classes: The teaching class, the military class, the nurturing class - no, the opposite is what I am talking about here. People should not be divided into classes. Classes, estates, they are to disappear by dividing up life outside man, objective life. Man, however, is the unity that belongs in all three organisms. In the spiritual organism his talents and abilities are cultivated. In the state organism he finds his rights. In the economic organism he finds the satisfaction of his needs.

I believe, however, that the modern proletarian will develop a true consciousness of humanity out of his class consciousness, that he will find more and more understanding for what has been pointed out here: for the true liberation of humanity. And I hope that once the modern proletarian's soul will clearly realize how he is called to strive for the true goal of humanity, that he will then become, this modern proletarian, not only the liberator of the modern proletariat - he must certainly become that - but that he will become the liberator of everything human, everything that is truly worth liberating in human life. That is what we want to hope for, that is what we want to work towards. When it is said: Words are now spoken enough, let us see deeds - I wanted to speak today in such words that can really turn directly into deeds.

Discussion

1st speaker (Mr. Handschin): Spoke very spiritedly of the oppression of the worker by the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie imposes violence on the proletariat. The private property of the propertied classes has been created by the workers. Only communism would bring peace.

2nd speaker (Mr. Studer). Points to the ideas of free money and free land, which should enable the liberation of economic life.

3rd speaker (Mr. Mühlestein): Shows how in Germany the old powers are re-emerging and nothing has changed. Criticism of Social Democracy and the Center. Criticism of the threefold structure: it removes the law from economic and intellectual life; but justice must prevail in all three areas, not just in the constitutional state.

4th speaker: Wants to report on a “Swiss Federation for Transitional Reforms”; but is interrupted and the discussion is closed.

Rudolf Steiner: You will have noticed that the first two speakers in the discussion have basically not put forward anything against which I would need to argue, since, at least in my opinion, what has been put forward by the two gentlemen essentially shows - at least to me - how very necessary it is to take seriously what I have tried to do in a perhaps weak but honest way to contribute to the solution of the social question in the present serious times, as far as it is humanly possible. And that this is necessary, that today is the time to do so, you will at any rate have been able to gather from what the first speaker in the debate has just said to you from a soul that is certainly warmly felt.

Since the time is already well advanced, I would like to address just a few points here. The word “free land, free money” was used by the honorable second speaker. You see, this hints at something that is like a lot of things in the present day, if you want to approach the social question in precisely those ways, as I said, in real ways, as I tried to do in my presentation. On such occasions I have very often been in the situation of having to say: I am in complete agreement with you; the other person just usually, or at least very often, doesn't say it to me! The thing is, if I believed that my ideas were simply plucked out of the air from somewhere, then I wouldn't bore you with them, I would believe that they had long since not matured. That is precisely what I believe, that there is something essential about the ideas presented to you today. You will find the material, the building blocks everywhere. I gave a similar lecture in Bern the other day. A gentleman came to me then, not only in the discussion, but the next day for a conversation, and also spoke about “free land, free money”. After an hour, however, we were able to agree that what is actually wanted in the regulation of the currency question, in the creation of an absolute currency, will simply be achieved if this tripartite division that I have spoken of today is carried out properly - properly indeed - if the administration of values, the administration of money, is simply taken away from the political state and transferred to economic life. As I have said, I will show in my book “Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft” that the basis of the currency will then be quite different from what it is today, and that it will also become international. As long, of course, as the leading state, England, clings to the gold currency, the gold currency will have to apply in foreign policy; but internally, those who now really have the one true currency will no longer need gold in the social organism; for the only real true currency will consist in the means of production, which will then be there to be the currency for money. Money is completely misunderstood today. Money is only understood if it can be grasped as the complete opposite of the old natural economy.

What is money for today's social organism? It is the means of conducting a common economy. Just imagine the whole function of money. It consists simply in the fact that for what I work myself I have an instruction for something else that someone else works. And as soon as money is something other than this instruction, it is unauthorized in the social organism.

I could go on at length to confirm this, but I will only say briefly that this is what money must become! It will become so when all other machinations that play a part in the circulation of money cease. For only money is the common index which is there for the common comparison of the mutual values of commodities. That is what can also be achieved through the nature of this tripartite division, and what is partially, individually sought by the free-money movement; that is why I have said in such a case: I am in complete agreement with this movement - because I always try to see the individual movements in their justification, and I would like to lead them into a common great stream, precisely because I do not believe that one person, or even a group of people, can find what is right, but because I believe democratically that people together in reality, working together, properly organized alone, will only find what is right.

This is what I have described as a view of reality, not as some objective development. But I believe that the real human being will find what is right for the social organism out of his healthy human experience in association with other people.

We have one thing that everyone knows is only possible in social life - today's egoists would probably also like to have it for themselves - and that is language for a closed organism. Again and again it is preached in schools: If man had grown up on a lonely island, in solitude, he would not be able to speak; for speech can only be formed in social life. One must recognize [...] that all those things which are hidden behind private capital, property, which are hidden behind the mastery of some kind of work and the like, that all these things, including human talents, individual gifts, just like language, have social functions, that they belong to social life and are only possible within it. There must come a time when it becomes clear to people in schools what they are through the social organism and what they are therefore obliged to give back to the social organism. So what I am counting on is social understanding, which must come, just as the multiplication tables are taught in schools today. We will also have to relearn this. There were times when people learned something completely different in schools than they do today; just think of the Roman schools. There will come a time when children will be taught social understanding in schools. Because this has been neglected under the influence of modern technology and capitalism, we have ended up in today's conditions, in the pathological conditions of the social organism.

As far as Mr. Mühlestein is concerned, I must say that I am also in a position to have nothing against what he has put forward; I only believe that if his ideas continue to develop, they will then lead to what I have said.

For example, he has not at all considered that I am not - of course not! - want to take law out of economic life and intellectual life. No, on the contrary, I want to keep it in. And because I want it inside, I want to have developed an independent social science in which it can really be developed, created. When it has been generated, then it can have an effect on the other areas. Comprehensive thinking will show you this. If you consider the following, for example: Today, even scientific thinking does not yet really think logically and appropriately in relation to the natural human organism. People today think: the lungs - a piece of meat; the brain - also a piece of meat, and so on. Science says otherwise, but it does not say much else; for it regards these individual members of the human organism as parts of a great centralization. In truth, they see nothing else. The human being as a natural organism is a tripartite system: we have a nervous-sensory organism. The one is centralized and has its own outlets at the sensory organs. - We have a rhythmic organism, the lung-heart organism; it has its own outlets in the respiratory tract. - We have the metabolic organism, which in turn has its own outlet to the outside world. And we are this natural human being precisely because we have these three limbs, these three centralized limbs of the organism.

Can anyone now come along and say - if I say, as I have now done in my last book, “Of Riddles of the Soul”, that simply the proper scientific observation results in these three members of the human natural organism - can anyone come along and say that nature should not have developed these three members, because what matters is that all three members have air? - Of course all three limbs have air! - When the air is first inhaled through the lungs and processed accordingly, the metabolic members and the brain have their air, so that this air is drawn in and processed, and can therefore also be treated with all natural care in a specially separated member of the human natural organism. I do not want, like Schäffle, or like Meray or others, to play this analogy game between physiological and social concepts, that does not even occur to me; I only want to draw attention to the fact that a thoroughly formed thinking does not understand man as a natural organism if one only thinks: everything is centralized into one - but one understands man if one understands his three organ systems centralized in themselves.

It is precisely because man is perfect that he has these three centralized organ systems. This will be a great advance in natural science when we realize this! And the thinking that thinks so healthily about the human being also thinks healthily about the social organism, and feels healthily about the social organism. Spiritual life will be freest and best organized when it is emancipated. For in the field of emancipated spiritual life the people are already to be found who will provide for this free spiritual life. There will arise those who will actually bring the necessary dominion to this spiritual life. Those who do not bring it are those who are servilely dependent on capitalism or other things. Those who will be free as spiritual administrators will also be able to bring the blessings of spiritual life to the other two members.

And so, if justice is really produced in a state of law existing for itself, really centralized in itself, one will not have to worry that the other two members will not have justice, certainly in favorable distribution; in all the things that have been touched upon by Mr. Mühlestein, there must be justice; that will come in when it is first produced.

So it is not in order to have justice in one separate organ and not in the other that I take these three parts, but precisely in order to have justice in all three, I see the necessity that it should first be produced.

I would like to know if anyone can say: In a house, there are father, mother, children, the maidservants; but now you divide this house into father, mother, maidservants, and two cows that give milk, but all need the milk, so all must produce milk, not just the two cows? - No, I say: the cows must produce the milk so that everyone in the house can be properly supplied with milk. And so the constitutional state must have the law according to plan, produce the law, then the rights will be where they are needed. And that is precisely when they will be - forgive the somewhat trivial comparison - when they can be milked by the rule of law!

That is what I would like to emphasize; that what is important today is not to somehow pursue favourite ideas, but precisely to summarize that which pulsates in many hearts as a demand, that which is already present in many minds, even if more or less unconsciously, out of the forces of the times, and to really grasp that in the impulses that are there as the great forces of the times, which want to be realized, which we should now realize through reason. But if we do not want to realize them through reason, this will not prevent them from entering into reality.

Dear readers, we either have the choice to be reasonable or to wait in some other way for the realization of that which must be realized because it wants to realize itself out of the forces of history.

In this sense, however, I believe that proletarian consciousness is capable of grasping these demands, which lie in history itself, and thus of really striving for and achieving what I said at the end, insofar as it is possible for human beings: the liberation of everything in humanity that is worth liberating.

A powerful movement is developing out of the catastrophe of the world war, a movement borne by proletarian demands, and which speaks to people today through significant facts, through facts that have already seized a large part of Europe, through facts that undoubtedly have to be overcome by certain new social institutions of humanity. The question may arise, especially when one considers the initial course of these loudly speaking facts: Is there already a reasonably sufficient social will emerging somewhere, a social will that arises from a deeper understanding of our current historical world situation? For it seems that it depends on such social will.

Therefore, it filled me with great satisfaction that today, at the invitation of local students, I was able to express the relationship between the proletarian demands and the necessary social will from a certain point of view, which I, wanting to serve the present, have explained in my soon-to-be-published work: “The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Present and Future Life

That we are dealing with a profound world-historical phenomenon in the movement mentioned, seems to follow from the fact that what is happening today shows something like a realization of that program that went around the world seventy years ago and is known as the Marxist Communist Manifesto. Whether one understands what is expressed by these two milestones of our more recent historical development, by the statements of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 and by what is now sweeping across Europe, whether one understands it in one way or another, according to one's circumstances, one's views on life, that is of little importance today. What is important is that we are faced with loud facts, facts that must be taken into account. And we will have to take a stand on what may arise in the coming years, in the coming decades, precisely from that transformation of scientific and ideological thinking that will become necessary, like many other things, under the influence of this loudly spoken fact of the present.

That is why I am particularly keen to address this question to students who want to be supporters of what can develop out of our current scientific and ideological thinking into thinking, into recognizing the future.

Just as what is usually referred to as the social question appears today, so it can be said that it initially arises in two significant demands. Both demands, as they arise, actually point to phenomena in our economic life. One can say: the first demand culminates in the rejection of the management of the economic life of the civilized world, which has emerged in the course of modern times through private capital. And secondly, it can be said that a new attitude to human labor in social life is demanded by the proletariat.

Now, even if it is initially these two significant economic phenomena in which the social movement is playing out today, it is not yet said that only economic impulses can provide what is necessary to overcome the social question today and in the near future. However, the way in which the life of civilized humanity has developed in recent times shows how human energies and all human endeavor have been primarily absorbed by what has resulted from economic development. And so it is not surprising that the most significant thinker of the proletarian world – for that is what it still is today – Karl Marx, directed his attention above all to economic life.

We may devote a few minutes of our attention to him, Karl Marx, not because I believe that the modern proletarian demands have arisen from what the proletariat has learned from Karl Marx, but because that which has slowly emerged in the innermost feelings, in the basic impulses of the soul life of the modern proletariat over the course of the more recent centuries, then quickly over the course of the 19th century, because that has found the most intense expression to date in the views of Karl Marx, because he is the interpreter of that which, more or more or less consciously lives in millions of people today.

Now, precisely because in the last seventy years those impulses that Karl Marx prophetically expressed in the first half of the 19th century and then later have matured more and more in the souls of these millions of people, precisely for this reason his view seems so plausible to the leading personalities of the proletarian masses. It appeared to him, Karl Marx, that what must happen in modern times is emerging – this is well known in the broadest circles from the development that economic life has taken in recent centuries, through the development of modern technology and industry, and through the management of these industrial and technical operations, activities by private capital. To him, the whole process of human development appeared to be such that, in the course of historical epochs, economic forms always replace each other. The economic form that has developed on the basis of capitalist ideas in modern times thinks itself, as Karl Marx sees it, pressing towards its own dissolution; so that this economic order, which has more and more need to proletarianize large masses of humanity, will call this proletariat against itself, because the forms of economic life that have emerged must find their resolution through the productive forces that are formed within these economic forms. The productive forces are constantly changing. The economic forms strive to remain conservative. Eventually the point is reached when the productive forces are no longer able to fit into the old economic forms.

Marx believes he sees such a point in time approaching, having recognized how the proletariat will tear apart the economic order in which this proletariat itself has been harnessed, with its productive forces.

What is characteristic here is that Karl Marx sees in economic development itself, so to speak, the driving forces that will bring the proletariat forward to those points which will then bring about a new economic order, but for him this means a new world order.

Now, of course, the transformation of everything that makes up the scope of state life and the transformation of everything that makes up intellectual life is also connected with what Karl Marx imagines the transformation of modern economic life to be. Karl Marx thinks about the development of humanity entirely in the sense of modern scientific thinking. He has completely abandoned the view of older socialist thinkers, who at the time believed that the most important thing is the human will, which intervenes in the structure of human social life. Karl Marx believes that people basically have to want what is determined for them by the necessity of the economic order. And from the economic order itself, from the way in which people produce, from the way in which people manage their economic affairs, the state orders are formed, as are the law, morality and so on. And today, knowing what goes on in the minds of proletarian people, we can say that this view is widespread. Man is harnessed to economic life, and economic life, the way he feeds himself, how he can lead the rest of his life, determines how he is satisfied with the legal order, which legal order can form at all. Economic life also determines how he thinks, how he feels, what he produces in art and what he produces in science.

This is how it has become for broad circles; in the broadest leading circles of the proletariat, in particular, what is considered intellectual life is regarded as an ideology. This word ideology is heard again and again and again when the proletarian wants to describe precisely what he regards as intellectual life. On the one hand.

On the other hand, the proletarian turns his attention to state life. But in this state life he finds what he calls – again according to the approach of Karl Marx – the all-dominant class struggles. And finally he turns his attention to economic life, which is closest to him because he is directly involved in it. And because he finds his whole life completely absorbed by this economic life, he develops what he calls the “Marxist conception of history”. He develops this out of his conviction that basically the whole historical development of mankind consists of economic struggles, is shaped by forms of economic life, and that everything else depends on this material life. And this, in turn, is connected with his perception of the culture of the leading and guiding circles, into which he cannot penetrate with his soul, and which often seems to him to be a kind of luxury culture, even in its scientific rigor, and which he perceives as an ideology.

Today we stand at a turning point in European culture, where we must ask deeper questions than have been asked in socialist and non-socialist circles for the last seventy years. We must ask deeper questions such as: What is actually the basis of this view of the proletariat, this view that all intellectual life is an ideology, that all state life is a class struggle, that all real history is only a result of material development? It was precisely the thinking of modern humanity that was led into materialism in its most diverse forms, into which Karl Marx was also led with his ideas, with all his impulses.

Now one can ask: Why is it precisely the direction of ideas of these important, these incisive thinkers that has been steered in the direction of looking solely at economic life as the decisive factor for all human development? How then has the thinking of the modern proletarian himself been pushed onto the same path?

Anyone who studies the development of modern times not according to conventional history, but according to what a deeper historical view can already provide today, will indeed find a very, very strange phenomenon that can bring him close to the solution of the question just raised.

One could say that economic life in modern times has taken a course that can be understood if one tries to understand it in the same way as one understands scientific facts. It cannot be said of this economic life that it has not been subject to a certain scientific necessity, as it has developed; one cannot even say, when one examines things properly, that this economic life as such could be different. But then, if one wanted to stop at that, one would come to an extraordinarily pessimistic view of life.

But other questions arise. I would say that people's gaze and energies were restricted, as if hypnotized, to economic life.

Other areas of life have developed in a way that must be viewed very differently today from mere economic development. It was part of the whole way of looking at things in modern times to regard the economy, so to speak, as the source of the other two main branches of human life: political and intellectual life.

One might say that, influenced by natural science prejudices, it became clear to Karl Marx and his followers that economic life contains the causes. Out of these causes, the shaping of state or legal life develops, as does intellectual life. But is that so? This is the big question. Today we have already reached the turning point where it is necessary to recognize that this whole fundamental view is radically wrong, that it is impossible to understand the other two branches of human life as arising from economic life, just as it is impossible to understand state or legal life as arising from economic life, and it is impossible to understand intellectual life as arising from economic life.

This is precisely the peculiarity of modern times, that in its world and life view, this newer time has had nothing that would have made it possible for it to go beyond this prejudice that economic life underlies all other human life.

Three sides of a deeper, more fundamentally human nature present themselves as spiritual life, legal life and economic life. They stand side by side. This is what we must begin to understand. We must do away with the error, resulting only from natural science and from natural-scientific prejudices, that the economic order is the basis for the other two spheres of life, for the sphere of law and for the sphere of the spirit.

Anyone who wants to understand this must, above all, focus on one thing. Look at the way in which modern thinking, the modern way of looking at the world, has developed. This thinking, this way of looking at the world, is more connected with scientific knowledge than one might think. If I were of the opinion that practical life, the outer practice of life, were somehow dependent on theories, on views, on concepts and ideas, as can be imagined from a one-sided philosophy, then I would not make the remark I just made. But that is not how I view the historical process. What is expressed in the whole sphere of life, shaping this life, impelling this life, seems to me to be expressed more or less only symptomatically in the way of thinking of a time; so that I would never want to deduce practical life from the way of thinking, but I would like to assert that the way of thinking , the way of looking at things, is a clear symptomatic expression of what is going on in the depths of the human soul and ultimately shapes the outer, including the practical and economic, life.

What could be called scientific thinking has been incorporated into this way of thinking in all walks of life. But what is the sole focus of scientific thinking? There are still many prejudices regarding this question today, and I believe that those who live in this way of thinking today will be very surprised at the changes in today's way of thinking that they will grow into. What is today considered to be axiomatic, absolutely valid, will most certainly be challenged; it will most certainly undergo significant, powerful metamorphoses. What do rationally thinking natural scientists think today in a broad area? How do they think in a particular area? They think: We do not really understand life or the soul today; basically, we only understand everything that is inanimate in the order of time, well, let us say, what is dead. But it is seen as an ideal that something like the understanding of the living will also develop from the ever-increasing understanding of the dead.

But one must realize that the whole way of looking at things, as we have developed it in the last three to four centuries, as it is the nerve of scientific thinking, that this whole way of looking at things is only suitable for understanding the dead. The reason why natural science has become so great is precisely because this way of thinking is suitable for grasping the dead, all the dead that is embedded in plants, animals, humans, in all living things. Through natural science we understand only the dead that is present in everything.

This way of thinking, which has made natural science so great, ruins and corrupts everything that is social thinking and must be the basis of the social will, for the simple reason that the social will must be directed towards the viable social organism. But if we do not even understand the living forces in nature, how can this thinking be suitable for bringing about the viability of the social organism in any way? It is connected with the innermost structure of modern thinking that man must admit his helplessness, his awkwardness, in relation to social life. Above all, a metamorphosis of the innermost human outlook, of the innermost human thinking, must take place so that man no longer faces things so helplessly and awkwardly.

Those who today look without prejudice at all that that is asserting itself here or there as something socially new, actually has the feeling that in another area what Goethe so dramatically embodied as medieval superstition in the second part of “Faust” in his homunculus scene is coming to life. In the Middle Ages, people believed that the human organism itself could be created by combining dead substances and dead forces according to a human intellect, which itself actually only rules over the dead.

We have moved away from this as a superstition; but it is as if a human superstition wanted to be transplanted from one area to another. And what is often asserted today as a social view seems to us to be a homunculus theory, as if one had no concepts of what should take shape as a living social organism, as if one only wanted to put this social organism together in the way that the medieval alchemist wanted to put the homunculus together from what one had penetrated with the scientific way of thinking, which only deals with the dead. Above all, this is what must be overcome.

Alongside the economic development of humanity, there is the development of the state, which, among other things, consists primarily in the development of the law, and there is the spiritual life. As I said, economic development can be understood in scientific terms. But can the other two branches of human life also be understood in scientific terms? Can it be the legal life? Can it be the spiritual life? This question can be answered by taking a brief look at the development of these two branches of life in modern times. When, three to four centuries ago, at the same time as the technical and capitalist development, the newer world view also emerged, the whole thinking of the circles that were the leaders was such that it pushed to include more and more of the spiritual life in the life of the state, on the one hand, and the economic life, on the other.

The spiritual life has, in fact, already been incorporated into the life of the state to a high degree. One can see the actual progress of the newer development of humanity in the fact that the branches of spiritual life, which used to be more or less independent, have been harnessed into the state legal order. How proud one is of this, to mention just one example, that one has managed to squeeze the entire school system into the state legal system.

It did not happen so quickly with economic life; but it was still seen as a significant step forward that the major transport institutions, the post office, the telegraph and railways; and in accordance with the interests of the ruling and leading circles, they have increasingly forced more and more of economic life into state life.

Because the gaze has been hypnotized on this economic life in modern times, and because the proletariat is primarily involved in this economic life , the ideal arose for the proletariat to take over the state for itself in the same way as the leading circles took over the state in their interest in the past, and to use the state, as it has developed out of all possible old forms, as a framework to squeeze the entire economic life like a huge cooperative into this modern state.

One can show how more and more of the modern proletarian question has also developed under this economic hypnotism. One only has to look back to the 1880s, to the 1870s of the 19th century! What was the situation in the classes of social democracy in Germany, what was the ideal of this social democracy?

Well, the two main points of this social-democratic ideal were, until well into the 1890s, firstly: the abolition of all social and political inequality; secondly: the abolition of the actual wage relationship, of wage labor. These were two demands that emerged, I would say, from a general consciousness of humanity. These two demands are not yet fully imbued with the nuance that is oriented only towards economic life. In the 1890s, these two ideals, which I have just mentioned, are replaced by two essentially different ones: firstly, the transformation of all private ownership of the means of production into common ownership; secondly, the transformation of commodity production into socialist production, guided and led by and for society. The social-democratic demands have been completely reduced to a purely economic program.

Thus, I would say, in its present economic program, social democracy shows itself to be the ultimate executor of what the bourgeois world view has developed over the last few centuries.

Only those who realize that the demands of the proletariat are nothing more than the logical consequence of the bourgeois world order and the bourgeois economic order that has been developed to date can see what is at stake in the right way.

But it went even further.

What I just characterized as the newer world view, which is completely permeated by the impulses of science, is also what

But it went even further.

What I have just characterized to you as the newer world view, which is completely permeated by the impulses of science, is also what has repeatedly formed within bourgeois circles over the last few centuries as the underlying world and life view. Where did the leading spirits of the proletarians get what they think today, what they have brought into everything that is their social will? They have it from the heritage of the bourgeois scientific way of thinking.

It may well be said that up to now the acceptance of the bourgeois scientific orientation was the last great trust that proletarian circles placed in this bourgeoisie, basically up to today. For they have adopted the bourgeois world outlook. And with this bourgeois world outlook they were put to the machines, were harnessed into the desolate life, into the life of capitalism that was becoming desolate for them, were torn away from all those occupations that answer the question: What am I actually in the world? Next to the machine, with its soullessness, and within the capitalist order, in which one is a wheel, the question is not answered: What am I actually as a human being within human development?

Above all, the proletarian demanded to receive the answer to this question from science, from a scientific orientation. The images of the newer world view became quite different for the proletarian than for the bourgeoisie. The member of the bourgeoisie still stands within an economic and social order that basically contains tradition and the teachings of the past everywhere. No matter how convinced he may be of what has emerged under the sole influence of the scientific way of thinking in modern times, it does not conquer the whole person in him; he has religious, spiritual, artistic or other impulses from somewhere else that stand alongside this modern scientific orientation. For the proletarian, this modern scientific orientation is the one that should answer the question: What am I as a human being?

Oh, if one has looked into the souls of numerous proletarians, into those souls that have retained their human feeling and their longing for human dignity, then one knows how they long to have the question answered from the modern scientific orientation side: What do I mean in the world as a human being? - Then what is already present in the expression 'ideology' presents itself to these souls: a spiritual life that does not guarantee man his connection with the spiritual world, a spiritual life that is supposed to consist only of unreal ideas, only of an ideology; it cannot sustain the souls. The individual may not know this, but the effect of it is in the soul! What desolates the souls is that the proletariat has adopted a way of thinking and a world view from the bourgeoisie and the ruling circles that cannot fulfill man, that the proletarian, who has been torn away from the old orders of life, cannot believe, cannot be connected with the old traditions to which the others still cling, and that this scientific way of thinking, which is only what the dead can grasp, cannot give him any answers to the question of the highest things, for which he nevertheless feels more or less unconsciously yearning, for the life of his own soul within the world order. This is basically in every proletarian soul; no matter how badly what comes from it may express itself, it rests at the bottom of the proletarian soul. And even what is visible in the excesses of today's social movement is only visible because that spiritual poverty exists, which has come about under the influence of what has just been described.

Let us take a look at how the ways of life have developed in recent times, ways of life to which man also owes something alongside the scientific order that brought the proletarian the aforementioned, how have these developed? Certainly, the belief in the state, as it has emerged in the course of modern times, is firmly anchored in the minds of many people who are absolutely unwilling to change their minds. This is the belief in the state, which would best take everything under its wing, including the economy and intellectual life! Because this belief is so deeply rooted, so little is learned from the facts. Do not the last four and a half years speak all too clearly of what the states and their missions have achieved over a large part of the world? The time will come when it will be seen that what has been experienced as the most terrible world catastrophe is a consequence of the structure of the entire organization of modern states. And if we examine how it came about that the states, through their own actions, were driven into this world catastrophe, we must ask: How have the states tried to and been able to cope with this combination of the three spheres of life: the spiritual, the state or legal life and the economic life? As states, they were driven into the world war! And anyone who observes the starting points of this world war in particular will see strong arguments against the existence, the composition and the inner structure of the states that have emerged in the last three to four centuries of human development.

But another thing that emerges is how spiritual life actually developed during the very period in which it was most claimed by all that belongs to the state, in the time when one was so proud of extending the power of the state over everything spiritual more and more.

This is basically a chapter of modern historical development that can only be drawn with strong pessimistic strokes! Let us take a look at this intellectual life of the last three to four centuries: many songs of praise have been sung to it. But the characteristic features have basically been little emphasized. The voices of our time will be obliged to say something different about this intellectual life of the last three to four centuries than was said in the songs of praise that were sung to it. Let me emphasize a characteristic feature of this intellectual life.

If we really want to see with an open mind, do we not see how great and significant people have emerged over the last three to four centuries? Even if they have not worked in the field that was directly necessary for the life that one was leading, have the most outstanding minds had some kind of impact? We should have no illusions about this.

Let us turn our attention to a very, very important personality of modern times: to Goethe. Do people really know Goethe? On the contrary! We basically know nothing about this Goethe! Has that which lives as a gigantic, great, powerful spiritual life in this Goethe somehow entered into the souls of men? No, nowhere! In Germany itself, after Goethe had been more or less a favorite of distinguished circles, a “Goethe Society” was founded in the 1880s. Is this “Goethe Society” a matter for the nation, as Goethe's intellectual heritage should make it necessary? No, esteemed attendees! Someone who himself worked within this “Goethe Society” for a long time, but was always in opposition, especially with the leading circles of this Goethe Society, is allowed to tell you: This “Goethe Society” is a pedantic, scholarly elaboration of that which has something to do with this Goethe on the outside, but not on the inside! The spiritual life of modern times, not only in Goethe but in all the other greats, has not been absorbed into general human life. It is a spiritual life that, to a certain extent, modern humanity has been unable to accept. When it has accepted it, it has done so only by absorbing this or that sensation, by informing itself about this or that, by making this or that acceptable, so to speak. For example, when the Goethe Society experimented with its leadership for a long time, they finally ended up making a former Prussian finance minister, who never had any kind of inner relationship to Goethe, the chairman of the Goethe Society! This is only one of the characteristic phenomena; it could be multiplied not only tenfold, but a hundredfold, a thousandfold, a millionfold, if one were to enter into this modern spiritual life. This spiritual life is characterized precisely by the fact that the broadest circles of humanity have not been able to absorb the significant achievements, that these significant achievements have had to live in the most tragic way, as parasites on the development of humanity. In a deeper sense than is usually believed, this is part of the development of social consciousness and of social life in general in modern times. And if we do not want to see in such phenomena of spiritual life something significant for modern social development, we will never find the transition to real, meaningful social will.

In a sense, this newer spiritual life has become a sterile theory. Why? Those who know what the conditions of a real spiritual life are know that if it is to flourish, the spiritual life must never be harnessed to the power of any external force. Natural science, which is directed only towards the dead, and all those branches of the spirit that have approached natural science under the compulsion of newer conditions, they could be harnessed into the structures of the states. But those branches of spiritual life that are based on the most individual abilities of human beings, that were to develop the momentum in the human being to the soul's will, were driven out of these state structures. That is why our newer spiritual life lacks the momentum that the old religious ideas had, because in the broadest circles people are not in a position, are unable, to take in that which runs counter to the development of humanity, and which unfortunately, in a tragic way, must live like parasites.

An explanation will be found for these phenomena. It lies in the fact that in recent times a particular progress has been seen in the intermingling of spiritual life with state life. Until it is realized that a radical change is needed in this respect, social recovery cannot come from this quarter. Intellectual life, school life, and all the other branches of spiritual life must form a special, independent link in the healthy social organism; they must be detached from the structure of the state, which should only really be responsible for the legal life, for the actual political life.

One could point to many phenomena if one wanted to discuss how not only the administration of science, the administration of intellectual life, has become dependent on state power and constraints, but also how the content of science itself has become dependent, how the inner workings of science have become dependent. Hence it appears how unsuitable the natural scientist is when it comes to social thinking and social will. A characteristic example of this is the following: Oscar Hertwig, an important naturalist in the biological field, could recently be cited as an unprejudiced mind who, in his excellent book 'The Development of Organisms - a Refutation of Darwin's Theory of Chance', has achieved something unspeakably important for the development of modern scientific thought. The same Oscar Hertwig made the unfortunate attempt to express his scientific way of thinking in a small booklet for social and legal and state life. One cannot imagine a more nonsensical, unhealthy concoction than this childish little book about social, legal and other similar questions, questions of science in modern times, alongside Oscar Hertwig's great work in the field of natural science! This is a perfect example of how, under the nationalization of intellectual life, a way of thinking has developed that simply cannot penetrate into what lies within social demands.

In general, this intellectual activity has become strangely dependent on something else; so that, after all, scholars like the historian Heinrich Friedjung are really no rarity at all. I am not speaking out of animosity towards Heinrich Friedjung; he was a dear friend of mine in my youth, but today the times are so serious that only objective interests come into consideration. That Heinrich Friedjung, the historian, who, as they say, has written an epoch-making work about modern Austria, he has applied the historical document method, the method of examining historical documents; he has put himself at the disposal of the Austrian Foreign Minister, Baron Ährenthal, with his story; he proved, or so he believes, according to the true historical method, that certain anti-Austrian machinations must have originated with seven conspirators. It came to a court case. Heinrich Friedjung was able to point out that he is not an historian to be taken lightly, that the University of Heidelberg gave him an honorary doctorate. In spite of the fact that Friedjung had proved, using strict historical methods, that the documents with which Baron Ährenthal wanted to condemn the Serbs were genuine, the court had to acknowledge that they were crude forgeries.

At that time, the historical method itself was condemned. Unfortunately, we live in a time when such things are not taken seriously enough, and above all, not deeply enough. Despite the seriousness with which it is pursued, intellectual life in general runs parallel to the rest of life as a secondary current. For me, the way in which the deepest intellectual life can be taken today has always been characterized by what I would like to call the count with the two trouser pockets. I experienced this count with the two trouser pockets, a witty man, I experienced him during one of my visits to the Nietzsche Archive. He was a familiar figure at the Nietzsche Archive. He had two trouser pockets, from one of which he pulled out a Bible for me at the time when we were just leaving the Nietzsche Archive; a complete Bible in pearl print; he was able to put it in his trouser pocket. He said: “You see, I always carry this with me.” But I have another one; and he took out the “Zarathustra”, also published in pearl print, from the other trouser pocket for me to see. So the count had carried with him, or at least wanted to carry with him, the two most important books for him! I would like to say that this is a purely symbolic expression of some of the modern man's affairs, to stand by spiritual things at all. The count with the two trouser pockets was quite symbolic: one pocket was filled with the Bible, the other with Nietzsche's “Zarathustra”. So we see how the newer spiritual life has become sterile and barren, despite all the praise.

Thus we see that political life, as it has developed in modern times until today, has, as it were, reduced itself to absurdity through the world catastrophe. Should we not ask ourselves whether it is not precisely in the interweaving of the three most important branches of life, the life of the legal, spiritual and economic order, that we find the cause of our being driven into the world catastrophe, and which prevents us from coming to terms with the social facts of today?

Anyone who studies the way in which these three branches of human life have gradually been absorbed into the life of the state, cannot but recognize that the recovery of the social organism lies in the re-dissolution, in the re-separation with regard to the three limbs mentioned. We shall not arrive at a living, vital social organism, in the sense of a real human organism, merely by considering the conditions of the spirit life, on the one hand, and the conditions of the legal or political life in the State, on the other. But then one will also realize that these three branches of life have completely different foundations, that they develop best when each of these branches of life is strictly left to its own devices.

In more recent times, this could not be understood only because people's gaze was hypnotized and directed only towards economic life. And so, above all, the human being was seen as harnessed with his labor, if he was a proletarian, into economic life. In this economic life, in the economic cycle, only that which is a commodity or a service similar to a commodity should actually move. The modern proletarian also feels this. This is expressed in his demands, even if he formulates it differently in what he literally says. He feels that it contradicts his human dignity that he is harnessed into the economic process like the commodity itself. Just as commodities have their mutually determinable price, so within this pricing, there is also a price for human labor. On the one hand, the most striking thing about Karl Marx's teaching was that he expressed the deepest feelings of the proletariat with regard to labor, drawing people's attention to the fact that Just as goods are bought and sold on the commodities market according to supply and demand, so your labor power is bought and sold on the labor market. In this respect, we must become even more radical than Karl Marx himself if the social organism is to be cured. We must be clear about the fact that human labor power is something that cannot be compared with any other commodity, and therefore cannot have a price like any other commodity. This is felt by the person who has to take his labor to the market. He feels that we have now arrived at the point in human development where the third must follow, in addition to the two other things that have fallen away in the course of human development. The old slavery has fallen away within human life, where the whole person could be bought and sold; property has fallen away, where less of the person could be bought and sold; the third, which the capitalist economic order has still preserved, must also fall away, the fact that human labor can be bought and sold on the labor market. For when a person sells his labor, he must go along with his labor. By having to go along himself, he still sells himself, so to speak. That is what is felt: we have arrived at the point in human development where nothing more may be bought and sold by man, where only that which, separate from man, can have an objective value for itself, may remain in economic life. That is to say, in the future, economic life and the economic cycle must be limited to the production, circulation and consumption of commodities.

What was human in economic life, and what is still partly human in it today, namely human labor, must be excluded. It cannot be released from economic life in any other way than by being administered independently in a healthy social organism, when labor becomes a legal rather than an economic matter, that is, when the legal state, the political state, develops alongside the economic organism. In economic life, fraternity will prevail, that fraternity which is, as it were, fraternity on a large scale, where an associative life arises from professional communities, from the regulation of production according to consumption, and so on. In the political state, which in turn will develop quite independently, like a sovereign state alongside another state, alongside economic life, democratic equality of all people will prevail. All institutions will have to be such that what makes all people equal among themselves, what concerns all people, is given full expression. Above all, it will be necessary to determine what relates to labor law, among many other things. But labor law is the first issue for the social movement in the present. Quite apart from the economic sphere, equality will prevail among people in the independent state under the rule of law, whether they work spiritually or physically; labor law will be regulated there.

What will happen as a result? The result will be that economic life, as a self-contained area, borders on the natural order on the one hand and on the legal system on the other. Economic life is dependent on the natural order. Whether the fields are fertile in any given year or not, what forces are actually present underground, much in economic life depends on this. One can bring about a different natural condition through technical means, or one can preserve the natural condition through different economic conditions, but a limit is set with regard to what is present through these natural conditions. This is expressed in the formation of prices in the economy and in all economic institutions. It would never occur to anyone to somehow make nature dependent on economic institutions. Just as independent as nature itself, just as independent as the germs of the grain fruits come from below, which are independent of economic life, the labor laws regulated within the legal system must be just as independent. The worker enters the economic cycle with rights that are formed outside of this economic cycle, just as the forces of nature lie outside of the economic cycle. All pricing, everything that develops in economic life, develops on the basis of labor law that has arisen outside of economic life. Labor law sets prices, but the price of human labor is not determined by the economic cycle.

That can only be determined by the healthy relationship between the physical worker and the spiritual leader. Then the laborer will no longer need to conclude today's illusory contract for his labor; then he will be able to conclude the only possible contract that refers to the corresponding division of what is produced jointly by the physical laborer and the spiritual leader. Nothing can be achieved in this area except through the strict separation of state and economic life.

On the other hand, however, an independent and free spiritual life is just as necessary. That which can develop in the state is only healthy if the state regulates only that which applies equally to all people. The spiritual life is simply stifled if it is to be formed on the same basis as the rights and political life. The spiritual life must develop out of the self-sufficient provision and administration of the individual abilities of human beings. This will then be a spiritual life that is emancipated from the life of the state, which in turn the human soul will be able to sustain. This will not be an ideology, this will not be a spiritual life that only provides abstract concepts; this will be a spiritual life that will fully prove its own reality, that will sustain man with his soul, that will place man back into a spiritual order. This is what the modern proletarian still rejects. In the depths of his soul he longs for such a spiritual life, because he feels that otherwise the soul is desolate.

This call for a free organization of spiritual life is a terribly serious matter. The reason it is so serious is that all human instincts, everything that has developed according to the current views of modern times, according to habits of thought, runs counter to this recovery of the social organism. That is why we should like to speak about this demand for a free spiritual life, a free spiritual life that is independent, to those who represent the youth of today. If science and worldview, spiritual life in general, are to be sustainable in the future, then we need a spiritual life that is something other than that which can be placed on the basis of the state. They should feel that it will be different when the teacher at the lowest level knows that what he has to do is administered by those who only administer within a self-contained spiritual organism, when a teacher knows that he is not dependent on any state regulations. When the state no longer has an educational role to a large extent, when those who want to become theologians, lawyers, doctors and so on are no longer dependent on the state, and when it is felt that what is needed, the needs of the spiritual life itself will develop, that it will be needed precisely for what the spirit needs for humanity, then a spiritual life will develop that can have an effect on the other branches of human life.

If we have just discussed what form the proletarian demands for the abolition of the wage relationship must actually take, we can now point out what the true form of the capital question is.

Many people today talk about the spirit, about that spirit that has become a shadow, an ideology, under the development of the last few centuries. From this spirit nothing can be drawn that will sustain the soul. This spirit, this intellectual life, has largely become something that has no impact on, and cannot be realized in, practical life. That is why Karl Marx found nothing in the economic life that still guaranteed him any realities. He said: “In practice, man must experience that his thinking really has a meaning, that the truth of his thinking can really develop.” But this practice was found only in economic life. The spiritual life must be able to give itself the practice of life from foundations that are realities. That is what makes these matters so tremendously serious. But then this spiritual life will not have those abstractions which are our great social, inwardly social evil today; then this spiritual life will take shape as something very concrete.

Oh, let us look at this spiritual life again from a certain point of view. We see how, within this spiritual life, ethical demands have been constructed. We see how, within this spiritual life, ethics of feeling, ethics of neighbourly love, ethics of the divine or moral world order have been founded on certain philosophical bases. What do these ethics speak of? They speak a great deal about the necessary love of one's neighbour, about human goodwill, about brotherhood. But their concepts and ideas remain at an abstract, shadowy level and do not penetrate down into the immediate reality of everyday life. Our intellectual life has become philistine – that is the word, even if it expresses something that does not appear so radical to man. It has become untrue. It moves on abstract heights and cannot descend into the immediate practical reality of everyday life. But it must immerse itself in it. It must become anti-philistine. When it immerses itself in the most mundane needs of everyday life, when the spirit proves itself by being able to intervene in the most immediate, I would say most mundane, actions of man, only then will the power of the spirit be able to show itself in social life. But then it will become clear that the question of capitalism will be resolved at the same time as the question of spiritual life. Certainly, in abstract terms, there is much to be said for the idea that private capital has delivered modern human life to decay and economic war and that a change must occur. At first, one knows nothing else but to say: So private property must end. One can be as honest as anyone can be with this demand, but one can still have the view, precisely from a deeper knowledge of social impulses, that nothing special will be achieved by converting private property into common property. On the contrary, the desolate capitalism would be replaced by the no less desolate bureaucracy. The throne and altar would be replaced by the factory and office. Now, whether the conditions would be better is still open to doubt.

The real issue is that what is actually meant, what actually lives in the subconscious of the proletarians, should actually come about: that capital, which is present in the administration of capital through the connection with individual human abilities, should in a certain way intervene in the economic process. It is precisely not the egoism of the individual, but the general public that is to be served. For it is in this area that the proletarian perceives an enormously significant economic principle, which has perhaps never been emphasized by modern economists precisely because it is so truly borrowed from life, because it is so truly significant. In the ethical and moral spheres, altruism and egoism are regarded as opposites; altruism is beautiful, egoism is extremely ugly. People do not consider the following: as soon as one looks into ordinary economic life, into that social organism in which, in the modern sense, the old primitive economy has been replaced by an economy based on the division of labor, the fact is that the more the division of labor has progressed, the less the individual can work for himself, at least in economic terms.

I am stating an economic principle that I have been trying to make popular since 1904; but humanity does not want to understand this economic principle. Whether one likes it or not, in a social organism in which there is a division of labor - and this is the case with every social organism in the modern civilized world - one cannot work and act selfishly in economic terms. Everything that the individual works must benefit the whole. And everything that belongs to the individual comes to him from social capital. After the replacement of the natural economy by money, and the further division of labor that came about through money, it has become a fundamental economic principle that in a social organism in which there is a division of labor, man cannot work for himself, but only for others.

In fact, in a social organism you cannot work for yourself any more than you can eat yourself. You will say: If someone is a tailor and he makes a suit for himself, then he is working for himself. It is not true if this happens in a social organism in which there is a division of labor; because the relationship that he thereby establishes between the skirt and himself by making this skirt for himself in a social organism with a division of labor is quite different from that in a primitive economy. It is certainly not possible in these brief discussions to present you with full and valid evidence today, but such evidence can be provided, and I will refer to these things in my book on “The Crucial Points of the Social Question”. It can be shown that when a tailor sews a coat today, he sews it for the purpose of serving his fellow man, so that he can work for other people. The tailor no longer has to make the coat just for himself; it is no longer made for selfish purposes, it is a means of production. This change in character has come about simply because the tailor lives in a social organism based on the principle of the division of labor.

This economic altruism is the active force behind everything that happens. If you sin against it, that is, if you place that superstructure over this self-realizing substructure, through which you selfishly acquire the fruits that actually flow to the general public in the true social process, then you place what I would call a real lie into the world. The egoism of today's economic system is nothing more than a sum of real lies, of sins against what actually happens beneath the surface, and what is beneath the law of social, economic altruism.

And it is the reaction of the human proletarian soul, which feels that in the modern social organism, which is based on the division of labor, economically, it is the reaction to the unhealthy, hypocritical egoism that lives itself out in the fight against capitalism.

What is today simply social ignorance in the broadest circles of the leading classes of humanity must give way to social understanding. Then social understanding will also advocate that what happens through capital must become a cycle, that care must be taken to ensure that the steward of capital is always the one who justifies this stewardship through his individual abilities. The moment he no longer justifies this administration through his individual abilities, ways and means must be found to ensure that the capital flows to someone else who, through his individual abilities, can in turn manage this capital profitably for the human community.

This is what will be found through the free cultivation of individual human abilities in the spiritual organism: that the circulation of capital will work. Today, something exists that is similar to what I mean here, but only for the most shabby property that the modern economy has, for the very shabbiest, namely for intellectual property. Intellectual property is said to come from the social order; even if it is based on individual abilities, a spiritual achievement cannot come from mere individuality of the human being. We always owe it to social impulses. We are obliged to give it back to the social impulses. It is therefore fair that what someone produces intellectually should become common intellectual property after his death. In a similar way, although the time periods must be different, material property is only justified for the individual person as long as he can claim the right of disposal over it through his individual ability. That which may remain with an individual as long as his individual abilities are active must find the means and ways, through the indirect administration of the spiritual organization, to reach other personalities who are again placed in the service of the general public. A cycle in the ownership of the means of production will take the place of today's private ownership. That will be the great solution of the capital question. We are only getting started in this area, as can be seen from the fact that people are now talking about the socialization of the means of production. This socialization of the means of production would only lead to a bureaucratic order, which in turn would give rise to the same tyranny from the ranks of those making demands today, never to one that can truly represent the healthy social organism. This healthy social organism must be established by circulating capital among the spiritually capable. The circulation of capital means that over time that which must be managed capitalistically can actually be managed for the common good.

I can only hint at this. It will be further developed in my book “The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Present and Future Life”.

But you can see from this that not only intellectual life itself is sought in its more intellectual branches when it is placed on its own, but also that what is dependent in economic life on the spiritual capacities, the spiritual abilities of people, that this would take the right path for the recovery of the future by making the spiritual organism independent. Above all, it is this that will not only produce shadowy thinking, shadowy spiritual life, luxury spiritual life, but a spiritual life that becomes aware of the spirit in that this spirit can penetrate everywhere into material life.

This is something that comes to mind when one looks into the very foundation of humanity basis of humanity, as it is developed by man today, at the present time; the old catchwords regarding whether spirit or matter is justified should be pointed out today.

I am speaking to you from the point of view of a spiritual science, but a spiritual science for which the old dispute between spirit and matter has become nonsense. For it is a third thing that is at issue, of which spirit and matter are the outer expressions. When we enter into this third realm, where neither spirit nor matter is seen, but the primal living spirituality of the world itself, then we arrive at that which no longer presents one link of the whole of human life as the cause, but expresses all three links: economic life, legal or political life and spiritual life as the three revelations of a primal depth. Then we shall overcome the great error that has become a practical error in life today, namely, that we want to base everything on economic life. Then that will come about which is not an abstract unity incorporated in the organism of the State, but then economic life, legal or state life, spiritual life will develop out of their own vitality. And as they develop, they will grow together into one unity.

I am not thinking of some kind of revival of the old estates: the estate of teachers, the estate of farmers, the estate of the armed. All class-like thinking is overcome by the fact that the social organism itself is divided into its three limbs. But man stands in these three limbs as the unifying element. Man is placed in any occupation, in any grouping, for my sake. He stands in a living relationship with the other members. Out of free trust, he sends his children to the schools of the spiritual organization. In economic life, everyone is involved in it anyway; in the life of the state and of the law, the fact that this state life has to administer, above all, that before which all people are equal.

Weak souls and thinkers, they tend to imagine, based on what I have just said, that basically the unity of state life would be endangered by it. Indeed, what has most endangered the unity of state life in the last few centuries? Precisely the fact that an abstract unity has been sought, precisely that these three members of the social organism, which should develop independently, have been chaotically mixed up and fused. I have shown you how intellectual life would flourish under this unity. But economic life, despite the existence of the state, has developed in such a way that today it is fiercely opposed in numerous areas of the civilized world to what state life is.

A recovery will only occur when one works one's way up from the usual way of thinking in this area to the lively view of the healthy social organism. And this can only consist of the following: the economic organism, the legal or political organism and the spiritual organism, structured alongside one another, like sovereign states that only attend to their common affairs through their delegates. Many still dispute this today. But he who, like the one speaking to you, will soon have reached his sixth decade of life and throughout his entire conscious life has always kept an eye on the development of the proletarian movement, but not in such a way that he only thought about the proletariat, but rather that he always learned to think with the proletariat through the vicissitudes of his life, knows how many prejudices are still piling up today against what the times demand, against what basically lies in the subconscious of the proletarian soul: the threefold social order. I am not one of those who, even though I have seen how decade after decade prejudices pile up against this, in my opinion, unique contribution to the health of the social organism, I am not one of those who I am not one of those who stand frightened when events take on a frightening form for some, even today. I am not one of those who, at the twilight of their days, would say: how much, how much has been gone through in vain! No, I am one of those, and I would like to mention this only as a personal comment at the end, so that you also understand the whole tenor of my talk this evening, I am one of those who would not say when they look back on their lives: if you could be young again, would you want to live through life again? - I would never say: no - but I would always say: yes!

Because of this positive outlook on life, I feel distant from some of those who have lived through this life with me up to my age and who, as unfortunately has to be said for the present time, have not been able to come to terms with what the loud facts of the present are able to cope with; but I have the faith that those to whom I feel close, feel close, even when I am three times their age, that those who are young today and to whom I am mainly addressing my speech today, that they will be the ones who will grow into a time in which there will be a lot of suffering, a lot of pain, a lot of tragedy to go through, but in which there will also be the opportunity to rethink and relearn very intensely. Therefore, I am not afraid that there will be many in this circle who will call what I have discussed today a utopia.

Something quite different could be called a utopia today, and it was also recently Basel as utopian by Kurt Eisner, who only recently met a tragic end, who said in his lecture: the world with its economic management and other social order in which we live, the most daring utopian two thousand years ago could not have imagined. Reality today is the strongest utopia. No wonder that when one speaks of a reality that is demanded by the human soul, that is demanded by human reason, when one speaks of such a reality, it seems like a utopia.

But those who are young today will grow out of today's real utopia into real realities. Strong power, strong courage and a certain good will for spirituality, the three will compose the true social will. And from this synthesis of true social life with proletarian demands, what must come about for the recovery of our conditions will develop.

That today's youth may find that path of the spirit to knowledge, which today from the social horizon, is what I presuppose, and it is what has filled me with great satisfaction and great love in response to the request that came to me from students in particular. If we find vitality, courage to face life and strong spirituality in those who look ahead to an afterlife, and a social will that is composed of these, then, despite all that is pressing and devastating today, the development of humanity will continue. Then we can hope for this again.

But today we can already hope for something that will prove that human life is always worth living if it is based on freedom of spirit, on the equality of all people before that which can truly establish human dignity can truly be established, and on an economic life that is equal in its brotherhood, in its brotherly work, to the freedom of spiritual life, to the equality of the democratic order of state life.

Discussion

Rudolf Steiner: I will take the liberty of responding to individual respond to the remarks of the honorable speakers.

First of all, I would like to point out that I understand that the things I said about the social order, the social organism, cannot, I would like to say, lead to conviction in the twinkling of an eye. In this lecture, which has been long enough as it is, I only wanted to provide some suggestions that can be pursued in some way.

I know how extraordinarily well established what the first esteemed speaker said in reference to private property, in reference to the demand for socialization of the means of production, has become. I would like to draw your attention to just one thing: it is not true that people today have usually accepted the idea, or are usually of the opinion, that external facts are extremely solid; but much more solid within us are our habits of thought. And what we have long become accustomed to in our thinking, above all as a human society, not only over decades but even over centuries, cannot leave us indifferent. Therefore, it will not be easily noticed that in all that is taking the form of the transition from private property to common property today, there is actually something in it that is quite justified as a demand, but which cannot so directly become the object of social will, because something ultimate is not overcome in the process, which is overcome when you really, in the deepest seriousness, go into what I have presented today. What all socialists today have not overcome in their thinking habits, and thus also not in the impulses of their will, is the concept of property. One would like to abolish private property; but because one has become so accustomed to the concept of property, one cannot get beyond the concept of property. Property must be; so, since it cannot be private property, one demands common property, social property, nationalization, and so on.

If you just think about what I have said today, the old concept of property disappears altogether. The objects that are owned today – capital, the means of production – will circulate. That is, there is a living organism there. The person who has the most ability to manage certain means of production will always be the one to do so. That this is not utopian, some may be convinced of when they read what I have put forward in my book on the social question, which will be published in a few days and which is not yet exhaustive. But it is precisely a matter of breaking out of certain habits of thought that are all too much alive in everything that people do today. This is what I meant when I pointed out that the means of production can only be found in connection with a human being for as long as that human being's ability justifies it. You see, today, under the influence of the scientific way of thinking, all the social and historical sciences, among other fields of study, are also influenced by the natural sciences; we even have a national economy within such sciences. One thing in particular is not noticed. And in this circle, perhaps, this one in particular may be discussed. People today suffer all too much from an illness that Marx very correctly called “mors immortalis”, the undying death. In life, everything is in motion; only the abstractions that man makes in his mind are actually something fixed. That is what remains. And so, in the period in which the capacity for comprehension has developed in relation to the earlier capacity for intuition, especially since the mid-15th century, in this newer age, which is fundamentally different from all earlier ones, people have often become the victims of concepts. If we look at our most elementary sciences, we see real errors in the methodological, in the theoretical [. . .]. It does not lead to any useful, living social impulses, but rather develops into a hopeless way of thinking in the social sphere. That is why it is difficult to understand the vitalization of concepts that is being sought in my presentations today. One would like to hold on to something that upholds the old concept of ownership. One must go beyond the concept of ownership altogether! And the first speaker in the discussion, if he thinks through what I have stated today to its conclusion, will see that in the demand for nationalization or socialization and so on of the means of production, there lies nothing else than the demand to bring that which is produced by the means of production to the benefit of the community. But perhaps – the current experiments show this precisely where they are conducted, but I do not want to discuss these current experiments at all – perhaps to a certain extent this will be achieved through such experiments. It will be achieved when the means of production really do circulate, when not the totality, which is only an abstraction and can only execute something based on some majority decision, when not the totality owns the means of production, but when the means of production can circulate freely, as, for example, intellectual property intellectual property thirty years after a person's death is something that is freely circulating, but something that is of course then administered by the intellectual organism.

What is to be achieved by demanding the socialization of the means of production will still be able to encroach upon the freedom of the individual without any fallow laying of human individual abilities. This will be achieved precisely in the way I have spoken of today.

My aim – now truly, I may say, after thirty-five years in the field of the social question – is to think things through to the end everywhere, not to seek theories everywhere but to seek out what is possible in life, based on direct experience.

If you think through what I have presented today, you will see that at every point in today's social order, we can simply continue in the direction I have indicated. Therefore, what I have stated is the opposite of any utopia: it is something immediately practical. Whether you start in Russia, where things have progressed to the point of certain destruction, or here in Switzerland, where the old order still stands, and continues to some extent today, you can achieve what I am calling for from a wide range of very specific institutions: the separation of spiritual, economic and legal life. One has only to turn back the machine, which has been running in the wrong direction in recent times, and in the last decades. What should be the result if the relationship of the individual to the individual is regulated in the one link of the social organism, in the constitutional state? A monopoly cannot arise, because, as I will also show in my book, what a person draws as a director can be determined from the outset, while what arises from the social situation must either be put into the business or, to balance it out, must go to the general public, that is, to someone else, who then administers it if he has the ability to do so. All the harm that results from the present position of private property will thus be eliminated. This is what should be noted about my arguments: that what is really achieved is what others want to achieve, but want to achieve with inadequate means. This is what I would like to say in particular with reference to the first honored speaker.

Of course, he did make a very valid point. You see, he described people who today talk about the individual state as an organism in the sense that an organism is in science. In doing so, he refers to a false way of thinking. The truth is that if one wants to make comparisons, one must make them correctly; then the individual state can at most be a cell, the entire organism can be the earth as an economic entity. This is what, I would say, detracts from this truth when people think of what is spatially limited as a whole. This way of thinking would immediately cease if one were to see that this organization, which we call the state, if it cannot be the case with real organisms [.. .], can certainly be the case with cells that come together. So, without going into this gimmick in great detail, I would just like to say something that is true: that the whole earth has already become a kind of unified work today. But this is based on a different sense than the one I have discussed. And as I said, I have not dealt with the relevant issues theoretically, but from the perspective of direct experience.

Of course, the second speaker must be agreed when he says that love for one's fellow human beings must become the fundamental idea of humanity. I would just like to draw attention to one thing in such matters. I will put myself in the position of this second speaker. I always find it more fruitful to talk to someone than to go directly to the points that can be put forward as opposing arguments. You see, as the honorable speaker said, people have been talking about love for two thousand years. Nevertheless, despite all this talk of love for one's neighbor, I ask you to consider the last four to five years! So perhaps it is not just a matter of talking about love for one's neighbor, but rather of how one talks about this love for one's neighbor, whether one talks about it in the abstract or whether one looks in concrete terms at how this love for one's neighbor can be put into practice. And here I would like to take the position of the honorable speaker. You see, one of the most significant and beautiful sayings of the Gospels, of Christ Jesus, is: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” That is more or less how it would be translated correctly. It is time to recognize that in the truest Christian sense, this is a true saying. We do not have to look for Christ only in the Gospels, we do not have to look only for the Christ who was, as it were, buried in the Gospels, we have to look for the Christ who is alive, who walks among us. We have to listen to what the Christ proclaims anew every day. I believe that one hears the Christ correctly when one is able, in each new era, to hear what the Christ says for each era in a new way from the place where the signs of the time appear. And I believe that today he speaks to us through the ages in such a way that we must not stand still, not even with the words, as was preached in the past, such as charity, but that we must progress to new forms, also in our outlook on life, as we clearly progress to new forms of life itself. That is what I would like to consider.

Not long ago, I heard a speaker in Bern, a Catholic priest, who spoke very effectively. The man spoke very similarly to our second speaker. He also said that love for one's neighbor must prevail; above all, Jesus Christ must lead the modern social movement. - I would like to say: nothing could be more self-evident than this. But then this gentleman made further statements - in Bern, I think - yes, he said what he said very effectively, but I myself remembered that I had read these statements in my schoolbook as long as forty-five years ago - they remain words. The gentleman used the same words. I had to think: Nevertheless, between the writing in my schoolbook and what the Lord said today lies the terrible catastrophe of the world war! So it will be necessary today, after all, to rethink, to approach things differently than they were approached before. Are we not to learn anything? Should we continue in the same old rut, always repeating, as our ancestors said, “love for one's fellow creatures,” when in spite of their preaching love for one's fellow creatures these terrible days have come about? It is not a matter of preaching love for one's fellow creatures! I have often said in the most diverse circles: If there is a stove in the room and I speak, as is now customary in the bourgeois world view, of all kinds of ethical demands, of which love of neighbor is one, then I would have to say: The stove has the duty to warm the room. But even if I try to say, Dear stove, it is your duty as a stove to warm the room, it is your sacred duty – and I repeat this over and over again, the room will just stay cold! But I can save myself the speech if I put wood in and light it. Then I am doing something concrete, and it will get warm in the room. Sometimes people talk about the way in which associations should form in economic life, how, as I said, fraternity should prevail on a large scale and come about in concrete life; when they talk about how the social organism should be structured, then they are talking about something concrete. That already includes everything, including what charity wants to be! But mere talk of love of neighbor is not enough either, at least not in our complicated circumstances. And when it is said, “Jesus Christ should be our leader,” then of course He should be our leader. But it is not talk that counts, but what one does. That is what matters, not merely saying, “Lord, Lord,” for He is Lord anyway! but on actually following him.

When it is said here that the great spheres of life must form a unity, and it is difficult to imagine how these three spheres of life can be separated, then I would like to point out that it is necessary to take this step forward in the field of social thinking, which unfortunately science for its part has not

In my penultimate book, “Riddles of the Soul”, I pointed out how, by using everything that modern science could already use, I was able to find out in the course of thirty years of spiritual research how the human organism is a threefold being , how the human organism really breaks down into the nerve-sense organism, which is centered in itself, and which also naturally stands in a relationship with the outside world through the sense organs; how, as the second, stands beside it the so-called rhythmic organism, the respiratory-heart organism, and as the third, the metabolic organism. All the activities of the human organism are contained in these three members, which are centered in themselves, and work together to form the most powerful unity precisely because each member has its center in itself, and it is precisely through being centered that the living unity comes about. One should not think in a scientific way in this field; I do not want to play with analogies like Schäffle or Meray, that is far from my mind; but I would like to point out that healthy thinking with reference to the social organism has difficulty in making this threefold division. With regard to the social organism, we must not only make this threefold division in theory, but also implement it in reality. I cannot understand why it should be difficult to imagine that a spiritual organization administers itself, to a certain extent sovereignly within itself; the constitutional state, in turn, sovereignly within itself; and the economic state, sovereignly within itself. The higher unity comes about only through living interaction; whereas if one imposes unity from the outset, whether it be unity directed towards economic life, or unity in legal life, as in this old constitutional state, or spiritual life, as in the old theocratic institutions, these three elements interfere with each other; whereas they not disturb each other when they work together in the living unity, when one is truly centered in oneself; only must the centering be done in the right way.

Recently, a listener in Basel replied to me that he could not imagine what it was like either, there must be justice in all three links, for example. Yes, of course, right and justice must be present in all three members, just as air, in its materiality, must be present in all three members of the human organism; but that is why it must be processed by the respiratory and cardiac systems, and specially prepared in one member. In this way it is particularly effective for the other members. The fact that one limb produces and develops in the right way that which is necessary for the others brings about just the right unity. The living organization is based on this. This is what man will have to go into; for that is what matters.

This is what I have to say in response to the objections that have been raised regarding these divisions. What matters is that what can be achieved through this organization is precisely what lies unconsciously in the proletarian demands, but what can only be realized through conscious social will. And of these different possibilities I wanted to speak to you today, as far as possible in this short time.

When it comes to ideas that are intended to be realized in practical life, complete fallacies are basically less harmful than half-truths and three-quarters truths. For complete fallacies can be refuted relatively easily and are unlikely to last long in public life. Half-truths and three-quarters truths are extraordinarily strong temptations in view of the complexity of life. They are carried through life by various passions, by the emotions of the mind, until perhaps, after severe struggles or perhaps after severe suffering, one comes to the conclusion that such half-truths and quarter-truths are just that and cannot be applied to life as they are conceived.

Anyone who looks at modern life with an unbiased eye, especially after the hard years of trial that civilized humanity has now gone through, will have to make such a confession, as I have just made, especially to what has long been called the social question in the present day. For basically, a whole bunch of half-truths and quarter-truths are being bundled together in this social question from all sides.

Now, the attempt has been made in my book “The Key Points of the social question in the necessities of life of the present and the future”, to look at what this modern social work, this modern social question, actually contains, apart from the half-truths and quarter-truths of the programs, and what it can realistically steer towards. What is set out in these “key issues” should then be further developed for Switzerland, for example in the “Social Future” published by Dr. Boos.

Before I go into my actual task for this evening, please allow me to make a very brief personal comment that is, however, related to the topic. What I have attempted is a conscious attempt that is aware of its imperfections. What I have attempted in my book “The Crux of the Social Question” did not arise from any given political direction, does not want to take any given political position, and does not want to directly interfere in the given political life of the present. It has arisen out of a very long observation of life and does not want to be any kind of program, any kind of abstract social idea, but wants to be a result of practical life itself, as it has presented itself to me since I had the opportunity - through the fate of my life it has come about that I have had the opportunity to really get to know, I may say, all, may I say, classes and categories of people in the contemporary world, to get to know them in their mutual demands, in their mutual misunderstandings, in their cooperation and non-cooperation. And since in my earlier years, whenever I had the opportunity to touch on subjects such as today's, I basically had to deal mainly with spiritual science as such, I may say that nothing whatever is influenced by any party affiliation in what I will have to express before you. My life has led me through many things, but in any case never through any party. And what has been the result of decades of social observation, always undertaken from the point of view of spiritual science, will, ladies and gentlemen, also prevent me from ever being able to participate in any given party program.

So it is suggestions for real practical implementation that are at issue. It is only natural that such proposals, when discussed, must be couched in more or less seemingly abstract sentences; but these abstract sentences are only intended to express what is life experience, which can certainly serve as a basis for practical life organization.

If we look at social life from such a non-programmatic but practical point of view, as it has developed for more for more than half a century, especially in the civilized world as it concerns us, we look at this social life, we will find that the perception of this social life is fundamentally different, and has been fundamentally different for decades, for more than half a century, between the leading classes of humanity on the one hand and the broad, broad masses of the proletarian people on the other.

From living together – I was a teacher at a Berlin workers' education school for many years – I was able to get to know the way of thinking of the broad proletarian masses, and not only the way of thinking, but also the way of feeling and emotion, as it expresses itself in what then crystallizes into the social demands of the present and also of the near future.

What then emerged in my “Key Points of the Social Question” is a condensation of what is based on the insights that I believed I always had to gain from observation and from the insights that showed me that, with what underlies the demands of the broad proletarian masses as a conscious idea, as a conscious party program, we cannot make any progress in the social question, , that this proletarian mass has surrendered itself to half-truths and quarter-truths in a fateful sense, and that precisely the one who is serious and honest in the social question cannot stop at what is formulated under the influence of the work of Karl Marx and his followers, more than half a century ago – the beginning was more than half a century ago. As I said, my “Key Points of the Social Question” were written under the impression of this realization, at a moment when one might believe that such truths, such insights, can be understood through the confirmation they have received from the world of facts. They were written when the disaster that had been brought about by the war, the so-called World War, had been raging for years. I do not mean the outcome of the war, I mean the fact that this disaster, this terrible killing, could happen to modern civilized humanity at all.

In the early spring of 1914, I had to express in Vienna that who, from the spiritual-scientific point of view, looks at the development of modern humanity, has the idea that modern social development resembles an illness, a kind of ulcer formation, which could break out in a terrible way in the near future. This book was written at a time when a current that had developed out of programmatic Marxism should have led to a practical result in Russia. What must be called the terrible failure of Marxism in Russia, which is obvious to anyone who is not biased, could have been the first confirmation of the ideas expressed in The Essential Points of the Social Question. Since then, further confirmations have occurred. I need only point to the failure of the Hungarian Revolution, which had to crush so many hopes. And finally, I need only point out that the German Revolution of November 9, 1918, has not yet been completed, but is certainly in prospect.

Those who are familiar with the circumstances can know today that this German Revolution is a terribly loudly proclaimed experiment in world history, an experiment which shows, as never before, how incapable the ideas are, which the 19th century produced in many circles in the social field, of bringing about any practical organization of life. Let us look at these ideas from one side. Let us look at them as they are felt by the modern proletariat under the influence of those impulses that stem from so-called Marxism, as founded by Karl Marx and Engels, which is truly not a mere theory, but is alive in the feelings and perceptions of the broad masses.

This Marxism was the first to create in wide circles of the proletarian population what might be called disbelief in a spiritual world. To the discerning, this disbelief in the spiritual world on the part of the proletariat appears more important than anything else. Ideology is the word that one encounters when one is accustomed not to think about the proletariat, but to feel and live with it. Ideology means, or at least should mean, the whole spiritual life. Law, custom, morality, art, science, religion, all this is basically only like a smoke that rises as something merely imagined from the economy, imagined, that rises from the only true reality, which consists in the economic relations of production, in the economic processes.

Under the influence of the personalities mentioned, this proletariat saw the true reality in what the economic system is. The way people organize their economic lives, the way they participate in economic life, and the way they relate to the means of production in economic life – as they are taught – comes from mere material labor. What arises in them as ideas, what arises in them as moral ideals, what is ultimately religion, what is science, what is art: none of this has any inner spiritual reality, so they say, but all of it is like a mirror image of pure economic reality.

And if you look at what this view has been formed from, you have to say: This view is the legacy of the world view that has emerged over the last three to four centuries under the influence of the leading, guiding circles of humanity. It is not true that modern social life has come about solely through capitalism and through what has been associated with this capitalism in modern times through modern technology. No, it is the case that, at the same time as modern capitalism and modern technology emerged, a certain world view emerged that only wants to deal with chemical, mechanical, and physical facts and does not want to rise to an independent understanding of spiritual life. The technical complexity of modern economic life has succeeded in flooding everything, as it were, with the influences and impulses of this economic life. Just as economic life was separated from technology, and technology from modern science, so a purely scientific worldview emerged, a worldview that consisted only of ideas, concepts, and thoughts related to the external mechanical, chemical, and physical life. This modern life had no power to grasp any other ideas, other world-view thoughts, than those that broadly relate to the inauguration of economic life, to the inauguration of modern technical operations. This scientific direction, this whole modern thinking, was incapable of other ideas. Through this modern thinking one could answer the question of how external mechanical processes take place and how to set them in motion in practical life; one could communicate chemically and physically through this science, but one thing remained absent from these ideas, from these thoughts of science, that which is closest to man: man himself. Rather, it was better said, one only understood the human being insofar as he was composed of material substances, mechanical, physical and chemical forces. But since the human being is also spirit and soul, one did not really understand the human being in this way. And one had a world view from which thoughts about the human being were actually excluded. No one answered in this modern way the question of how physical processes arise, as this modern science answered in an incomparably perfect way. No one answered this modern man in a modern way the question so perfectly: How do mental processes arise? What is man in his innermost being?

And you see, the leading and guiding circles kept as heirlooms, as traditions, what had been handed down from religion, from art, from old worldviews, from old customs. This filled the soul of the modern ruling circles. They cultivated this as something that meant something to them alongside the scientific world view, alongside what was incorporated into technology and economics as science. And so a dual trend arose in the inner life of the leading and guiding circles: one trend, which, so to speak, far removed from life, posed religious questions, formulated moral principles, and formed art and certain world views. Ask yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, how far removed from the practical side of life, for example, the modern merchant, or the modern industrialist or the modern civil servant, is from what he feels and experiences as a religious person, from what he his sense of goodness as a human being, his aesthetic feelings, how far removed that is from what happens in his life and is expressed in his office and in his bookkeeping. There are two very different currents of life. And the one, the spiritual current of life, which is basically an heirloom from ancient times, has no power to penetrate into the outer life. In what is the outer practice of life, the contingencies of the day live, that which, I might say, lives in the practice of life by itself. Then one likes to withdraw from life and regards the religious, the spiritual-moral, the artistic life as something that floats above life. But it was only by cultivating this inner spiritual life, separate from the practical outer life, that the leading and governing circles of modern civilization were able to give their souls any content at all.

The proletarian, who was removed from the old crafts and put at the machine, at the abstract machine, which has so little in common with in the human soul, the proletarian could not, because his feelings, which he could only develop while standing at the machine, did not correspond to them, he could not take over the old traditions, customs, law, art, religion, the world view that had been handed down from older times and in which the leading classes lived despite the modern soulless and spiritless technical economy. What emerged from this economy itself remained for him. And so he formed a world view, so his leaders formed a world view for him, which is spiritless and soulless, an ideology.

An ideology can be theoretically represented. An ideology can be thought up. With an ideology, one can even appear very clever. But you cannot live with an ideology, because it hollows out the soul. The human soul can only truly live when it does not believe that its thoughts are mere unreal thoughts; but when it can be aware that what lives in it connects to a living, real, spiritual world.

And so much is talked about in the socialist program; one does not even need to look at what is being said, because what happens in people's minds in this way is very different from what really lives in their souls. But what really lives in the souls of the broad masses of the intellectual population today is spiritual desolation. This is proof that one can think with what is modern world view, but one cannot live with it. That is the first part of the social question.

I know very well how many people, from their point of view, from their conscious point of view, rightly say: You are talking about the social question as a spiritual question. For us, it is about balancing social differences, social differentiations. For us, it is about ensuring that bread is distributed equally among people. Yes, that is a superficial view which only those can hold who do not penetrate beneath the surface of things. For the social question is present in the feelings, in the subconscious life of the modern proletariat. Try as much as you like to satisfy the purely material needs of this proletariat, if you could - you will not be able to - you would see: the social question will have to arise in a new form. It will not go away as long as intellectual life has the same relationship to the proletarian soul as I have just described. For people only believe that it comes from material interests. In truth, it comes from the hollowed-out souls, from the meaningless lives.

This must be recognized as the true basis of those social sentiments and of that widespread yearning which are found among the proletariat.

The second aspect is revealed to those who, as I said before, have not only learned to think and feel like the proletariat, but can actually think and feel with the proletariat. He comes to realize what it means for the modern proletarian when it is repeatedly made clear to him, with reference to Marxism, that he stands at the machine, he works, but he receives only wages for his work. You pay for his labor with his wages, just as you pay for goods on the market.

The modern proletarian feels that human labor cannot be a commodity, that it should not be sold and bought on the market like a commodity! From this arises what the modern proletarian calls his class consciousness. Out of this class consciousness he wants to create the possibility that human labor power will no longer be a commodity; for he has the feeling that what he works at not only produces the values that play a role in economic life as justified values, but that it produces surplus value, which is taken from him by those who are the leading, leading circles, as he believes, the capitalist circles.

And so the connection between surplus value and the inhumane buying and selling of human labor as a commodity is what moves the proletarian as a second point.

And the third point, what is it? You get to know it when you observe how, basically, the leading and guiding circles have developed a significantly different inclination for social issues than those that were imposed on them by the proletariat making demands. It must be said that few people in the leading and ruling circles are inclined, of their own accord, to really engage with the core issues of the social question, simply because those who are in a position are always much less inclined to think about the development of that position than those who are just trying to gain a position. But as a result, more in the subconscious, in the instinctive, than in the clear consciousness, in the broad circles of the proletariat, the view had to arise that it could expect nothing at all from the leading, guiding circles, that it had to rely on itself alone for a solution to the social question. And so something arose that is one of the most disastrous things in recent historical development. What I am about to say is based on a word that is often spoken and often heard, but whose deeper meaning is little understood. You probably know that the Communist Manifesto, which in 1848 initiated the Marxist social movement, concludes with the words: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” It is understandable for those who get to know the modern proletarian movement that this word has come. And the effect of this word is fateful in the most terrible sense, for it points from the outset to what is to happen, to struggle. And this struggle is still to be relied upon today. It relies on struggle. It does not rely on the fact that people come together under the momentum and thrust of an idea that is to be realized in practical life; it does not rely on faith in the power of the spirit. This word, it relies on the external material connection of a class of people, on the unspiritual. And it expresses itself in this word clearly and unmistakably the disbelief in the spiritual in the most disastrous way, the more this word inculcates the souls. And it may also be said that the more thoughtlessly it is listened to, without grasping its fateful significance in world history, the more humanity must sail into unbelief in the spiritual, and cannot, because material interests unite, as they belong to a class, to what life must move in its inmost depths: to belief in the power of spiritual impulses.

This is how the so-called modern social question presents itself from the point of view of the proletariat. And this proletariat has seen that certain social ills, which it feels in its own body, have developed under the influence of capital and modern technology. What does it mean? It means that these damages will cease when private property is converted into common property, when what is now managed and administered by individuals is managed and administered by the community.

And so we see how the proletarian demand repeatedly sounds in the call that is already taking on a catastrophic form today: conversion of the means of production, conversion of private ownership of the means of production into common ownership and common administration of the means of production. Only then, the proletarian believes, will salvation come to him, when no longer the individual administers the means of production according to the profit interest, but when the human community, in which everyone can participate in a democratic way, administers these means of production. And because the proletariat believes itself betrayed by the people who belong to the leading, guiding circles, because it believes that these leading, guiding circles are not at all interested in what a shaping of social life is from their interests, so what has developed over the course of many decades is heard together in the call for a kind of dictatorship of the proletariat itself in the replacement of old administrative and social conditions with new ones.

But these things must be seen clearly, not from a party point of view, these things must be seen completely impartially. Perhaps one can only see clearly if one also considers the opposite point of view. Whether the proletarian demands, as they are formulated today in a large number of newspapers and books, and how they consciously live in the souls of the proletarians, whether they are right or not, that is the question. For real movements are not about ideas, but about what lives in the will of men. It must be borne in mind that millions of people believe these things, and that it is not a matter of refuting these things in the abstract, be it in this way or that, but rather of getting to the point where their practical application is really understood in terms of life and reality. Precisely because the leading and guiding circles, I might say, had as a by-product of their economic activity the fact that they did not have to struggle with life, or at least did not have to struggle in such a way as the proletariat, precisely for this reason, the social question has not developed to the same extent as it did for the proletariat, where all the questions I have mentioned now, I would say, merge into a kind of stomach or bread or money question. The social question has not developed in such a way as to become an immediate question of practical life, of the personal interest of each individual, because personal interests are promoted like a by-product under the influence of modern life. Therefore, the leading, guiding circles have not experienced in the same field what the proletarian world has had. You can take it however you like, the great tempter or seducer Karl Marx or the ingenious, pioneering Karl Marx, it depends on your point of view, but there was no similar Karl Marx for the leading, guiding circles. Therefore, it seems today that basically the right light is not falling on the proletarian demands. They can be proved, they can be refuted; but other views are also possible, which can be proved or refuted just as well, and which represent the opposite view.

You see, the proletarian interprets everything that develops as a human world of ideas in art, custom, science and so on as a kind of mirror image of the purely economic conditions, which only he can see. For him, human thoughts are only that which is triggered in man like a mirror image of economic interests, of the conditions of production. Everything that people think and feel arises from the economic conditions of production – so says the proletarian.

The opposite could easily be proven by the other side with exactly the same right to prove it. And let us take just one example: it is child's play, I might say, to prove that this whole modern economic life, as we have it especially in the civilization of the Occident and its offshoot, America, that this whole human economic life, as it dominates the modern world, is a result of human thoughts, which in turn are born out of the spiritual world. This can be proven quite concretely. There is no need to get stuck in abstract ideas. Take the following.

If we consider the conditions before the war, it can be said that in the Western world about four to five hundred million tons of coal are produced annually. For the mechanical work among people, through industry and other things, these four hundred to five hundred million tons of coal are processed in modern economic life. I am calculating by putting this number, four to five hundred million tons, in front of you, everything that is necessary for private property and so on. That which flows into modern life through these millions of tons of coal, which are processed in the machines, in the form of power and technology that then becomes economic power, can be calculated, one can calculate what it does for humanity. What matters is that the comparison must be made with horsepower and with human power. If we now assume that a person works about eight hours a day, a simple calculation shows how many people would have to apply how much manpower if they were to achieve the same thing by applying human power that is achieved in a technical way in the further technical processing by these millions of tons of coal. The strange thing is that the calculation shows that seven to eight hundred million people would have to work, would have to give their labor, if they wanted to achieve the same thing through human labor that is achieved with the energy derived from these coals.

You see, this possibility of incorporating coal energy into economic life comes solely from the thoughts that have developed under the influence of the spiritual development of the West. A comparison with the economic conditions of the Orient shows this. There are, let us say, 250 million people who have the strength to carry out the ideas that have arisen from their minds, and who have provided everything needed to set this modern economic life in motion; there remain about 1,250 million people who have not participated in this life. If we calculate what these people achieve in the same daily working hours, we get a figure that is far lower than that which indicates how much is achieved through coal mining and coal processing in the mechanical field. But that means nothing other than that what is specifically modern economic life is a result of human thoughts. And these human thoughts truly did not arise out of matter; they are the result of the development of Western culture. And it can be proved that through these thoughts, through this way of working, human forces of a further 700 to 800 million are added to our 1500 million people on earth. So that in reality we are working on the earth today as if not only 1500 million were working, but as if well over 2000 million people were working. It can easily be proved that all this, which is the actual structure, the actual character of this modern economic life, from which the social questions have arisen, that this is a result of the development of the mind, that this mind is by no means an ideology, but that this spirit is the creator of economic life.

That is, on the one hand, there is the proletarian view, and on the other hand, the usual opposing view, which can be proven just as well as the other view. And just as one can calculate in a Marxist way how people work to create added value, which is the value that prevails in legitimate economic life, one can prove, just as scientifically and rigorously as Marxism does, that all of modern economic life stems from the ideas of the leading, guiding circles of people, and that what is paid out as wages is worked out of what the guiding, leading circles achieve for humanity socially. Just as one can calculate the surplus value that accrues from labor on the one hand, one can just as easily calculate the total of all wages as that which accrues from what the leading, guiding circles, from the bearers of human thought, achieve .

But that has not happened, and I am convinced that it has not happened for the sole reason that, on the other side, out of carelessness, a “Karl Marx” did not work who would have proved this just as well as the real Karl Marx proved his theory for the proletariat. What I am going to tell you now is truly not some abstract invention. Just as I have demonstrated it from the extraction of coal, so you can demonstrate it from the facts of economic life that the opposite of what Marx demonstrated is true, only to a limited extent for surplus value.

If we consider the structure that modern technology has economic life, it should be borne in mind that this modern technology arises from human thought and that this in turn arises from intellectual life, and that a certain concentration of the means of production is necessary for special times, which, simply because of advanced technology, must be concentrated and managed by individuals. If you put forward the abstract demand for surplus value, which can be gained from means of production that are to be managed communally, in opposition to what modern economic life and modern production conditions have developed – concentrations of the means of production that are now in the hands of individuals – then you will see what happens! Of course, one can raise the abstract demand that what has been achieved so far by the leading and guiding circles, who have provided the ideas for the structure of the modern economy, be taken from them and managed by the community. But to those who do not look into the workings of life from the point of view of human feeling and emotion, but observe them impartially, this appears as a threatening thought for the near future of humanity: If it could really happen that the takeover of what has been achieved so far by individuals [...] - even if it has caused damage in its wake - if that were to be achieved by the community, then it would probably happen to this community as it happened to the Japanese in the mid-seventies of the last century, who, out of a certain national pride, took over the first warships from the English. The English also offered them instructors for these warships, but they sent the English instructors away and wanted to do it themselves. And now one could see from the shore the beautiful spectacle of how the gunboats continually turned in circles; they could not move forward because the Japanese had not learned how to do it. It had been forgotten to show how to close and open the valve that releases the excess steam. And so they could do nothing but wait until the steam power was completely used up.

Thus, if we look at how things are really going in social life today, we fear that what the individuals in the leading and guiding circles achieve, albeit with damage, out of expertise and skill, could be taken over by the abstract community, which judges democratically, how what is to be produced, with the technical administrations and so on, is to be arranged.

These are all things that do not depend on party programs, that do not result from a party template, but that do result for the person who in a practical and unbiased way, and really has the will to respond to this life in a practical and unbiased way.

And the first thing that will result from this is also the first thing I had to conclude in my “Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future”. What is needed above all for humanity is, in addition to knowledge of nature, which is truly the creator of modern technology and thus of modern economic life, a true knowledge of the human being, in addition to this natural knowledge.

You see, you are also told from many other sides about that complicated world view that is supposed to be incorporated into what is now being built in Dornach as a monumental building, a kind of “School of Spiritual Science, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science” is what the thing calls itself. You would do well to assume from the outset, as it were, as an axiom, that what I call anthroposophical spiritual science is the very opposite of what is usually said by those who do not know it in the world. For this spiritual science is about finding our way to natural science as the spiritual foundation of modern economic life, about finding our way to a real knowledge of human nature. That is why this spiritual science is called anthroposophy, human wisdom, a real knowledge of the human being. Modern natural science is quite right not to concern itself with the knowledge of nature and everything that is connected with mechanical, chemical, physical, technical life and economics, and not to concern itself with the human being, but to leave the human being in the background, so to speak, like a spectator. But that is the disastrous thing, that in recent times everything that is in the way of ideas in natural science is also applied to social thinking, that one believes that one can permeate social life with those thoughts that are extraordinarily useful for natural science, that have raised natural science to a pure height; but in social thinking, one must live in them. There must prevail a consciousness that truly penetrates to the human being.

This consciousness is what spiritual science wants to add to what in modern times is merely natural science thinking and, depending on it, social thinking. And this spiritual science wants to penetrate deeper into the human being than one can with anatomy, with physiology, with biology, through which one only gets to know the outer human being. This spiritual science wants to penetrate into the depths of human nature, where something takes place that is not mere thoughts, where realities take place that are the same as the realities of outer life, and the same as the realities of outer nature.

On the one hand, this spiritual science wants to truly rise to the knowledge of the spiritual. But on the other hand, it does not stop at the facts of the most practical everyday life. For this spiritual science, it is inconceivable that such a duality should exist in human consciousness as I have described for the modern merchant, for the modern astronomer, for the modern civil servant, who have their separate religious and aesthetic lives, far removed from everyday life, and also far removed from what everyday life is. This life, which develops as a spiritual life, appears to be very spiritual. In truth, however, it is alien to life. Therefore, it has also created a certain disbelief in life.

This is why it has never been possible for the broad masses of the people to develop a belief in this spiritual life, to look at this spiritual life as if something socially beneficial could come from it. Here serious and honest personalities have been at work. Those who are seriously concerned with social life look upon the spiritual life as utopian. Here Fourier and similar spirits have lived who have worked out such beautiful programs for themselves as to how they want to shape their lives. But from what kind of thinking, from what kind of soul-disposition have all these social and socialist ideas arisen? They have arisen out of a mental life which sets itself up as something alien to life, just as the religious life is to the merchant in his account book. It is natural that beautiful ideas, genuinely meant, well-meant ideas, can arise out of such a mental state, but not ideas that intervene in real practical life.

Spiritual science aims to reach the highest heights of the spirit. But by descending into the deepest inner being of the human being, where there are not thoughts that are alien to life, but thoughts that penetrate into the realities of the external world, these should be able, when they reach up to the highest spiritual heights on the one hand, to grasp at the same time what we encounter in the account book in the relationship between employer and employee, what lives everywhere in direct life. The thoughts of that intellectual life that has dominated human souls in the last three to four centuries were weak and impotent; for these thoughts were beautiful aesthetic, religious, scientific and secular thoughts, but they were not thoughts that reached down into reality and

Take something that works like a modern moral code, let's say, like an ethic. You see what it says about humanity, goodness, benevolence, charity, human brotherhood. This is foreign to life, it does not intervenes in this immediate life, any more than modern philosophy, which lives in abstract ideas, does so, nor does modern spiritual life in general.

Only spiritual science can actually reach down into what philosophy, what real, external real science, brings to light. Read about this subject in my numerous books. You will find that spiritual science has nothing to do with those abstractions, with what is handed down today as a philosophical worldview and the like, but you will see that this spiritual science relies on really delving into the spirit in which the human being his soul lives, in order to gain real insights into the human being; because the human being is most spiritual, a knowledge can be established that ascends to the highest level of the spirit and at the same time descends into the directly practical life. For if one only penetrates deeply enough into the knowledge, this life in knowledge proves to be a unity, not a duality.

This spiritual life will also be able to penetrate into the life that we call social. The abstract intellectualism and scientific method that the modern proletarian perceives as ideology is incapable of penetrating into the real social structure of life. Their thoughts and ideas are too weak to penetrate and descend; they are abstractions and remain in the unreal realm of thought. They are truly ideologies. But the spirit need not stop at ideology. The spirit can penetrate so deeply into ideas that these ideas are at the same time forces contained in reality. With such ideas alone is it possible to delve into social life.

But for that a certain social structure is necessary. And this social structure I have tried to indicate, to sketch out at least, in my “Gist of the Social Question.” I have tried to show how it is necessary that the administration of spiritual life should be separated from economic life and from the life of the state, to which the administration of justice must be left; from everything political and economic the spiritual must be separated. As long as economic life develops out of spiritual life, in that the economically powerful are also best able to advance with regard to their spiritual education, as long as there is any connection at all, an inner connection between spiritual life and economic life, it is impossible for spiritual life to develop completely freely.

But anyone who is familiar with the spiritual life I have just spoken of knows that it can only develop on completely free soil. For the spiritual life of which I have spoken is a product of the human soul. This human soul must be cultivated in complete freedom. Schools and education must be administered independently in their own administration, independently of economic life and of the rest of state life, of political and legal life.

It is quite a different matter when the teacher of the lowest school class does not have to conform to what is supplied to him by economic life, does not have to be guided by the demands that a state makes in order to fill its positions; but when it follows what is taking place in the spiritual life, in the most important part, in the educational and teaching system, when it follows purely from what people should experience in the spiritual realm. If I were to characterize it in concrete terms, I would have to say: in the future, the entire spiritual life, including the life of teaching and schooling, must be shaped in such a way that those who teach and educate, from the lowest to the highest levels, are only so burdened with teaching and education that they still have the possibility of administering this spiritual life in which they work and in which they are active. Spiritual life forms an independent link in the social organism. It is self-governing and placed in its own administration.

If this is the case, then one will not experience what comes so strongly before the soul's eye when one is in the following situation. We have tried to establish a school in Stuttgart that is at least so shaped in its inner spiritual constitution that it is taken from the spirit just characterized. First of all, the teachers were prepared in such a way that they could at least work in the spirit of a completely free spiritual life. This was the starting point, because many paths are blocked today and because what is meant here is truly meant in a very practical way and is only really understood when it is approached with an instinct for practical life, not with some kind of theoretical ideas and the like. It is an eight-class elementary school that, in a free educational setting, is intended to achieve the same in terms of teaching as ordinary elementary schools and as ordinary secondary modern schools and grammar schools do for boys and girls up to the age of fourteen or fifteen, but which at the same time at the same time develop human individuality in a completely free way, so that individuality is placed in social life and will shape it, in which social life, from its economic and state points of view, does not provide the templates according to which individualities must develop. But then you see that you get your hands on the decrees on how teaching should be carried out from class to class, and today the decrees already contain prescriptions as to what should be done. But for those who can think straight and look at life independently, it seems the only possibility that what underlies education, the teaching system, and what determines what happens day after day, hour after hour in school, is that the decisive factor is not some kind of democratic will - that would be tantamount to pedagogical short-sightedness - but the specialized and factual knowledge of those who work from within the spiritual life itself and are also able to administer the spiritual.

These things must be approached practically. Only in this way can much of what is called practical today, and which cannot be imagined in any other way, be transformed into something other than what it has become for today. Only in this way can we look at it with complete impartiality and see it as it should be, and then follow the real inner laws of human development.

The other thing that must be added to this free spiritual life, which has its own administration - I can only sketch this today - is the independent constitutional state, the independent state political element, which, on the one hand, has separated out the independence of all spiritual life, but on the other hand, has also separated out economic life. In the last few centuries, there has only really been a legal life to the extent that this legal life has developed out of the economic life. And this was most clearly evident in those states that were drawn into this terrible war by their state economies. It became most evident that their entire political constitution was a consequence of their economic life, that, so to speak, the state was also an economic community to such a high degree. It would be an act of supreme folly to develop a large cooperative out of the state, according to the Marxist program, where the means of production would be administered and worked in common. Nothing new would be created; only that which has already caused great damage would be exaggerated to an enormous extent. But in an independent legal life, legal creation can only arise from an independent sense of right and wrong. That is to say, an independent state or legal element of the social organism must develop alongside economic life. This link will embrace everything in which all mature people have become capable of judgment.

One will never be able to administer intellectual life democratically; intellectual life must be administered by individuals with expert knowledge and expertise. But that which economic life is as such cannot be administered democratically either. It must be administered in such a way that what corresponds to the economic sphere is the underlying basis. This economic life must be administered in such a way that the person who manages in a particular sphere is spiritually mature and firmly grounded in that economic sphere. This sense of belonging, of being grounded, of being firmly grounded, of being able to act independently within an economic area, is undermined when decisions about how work should be organized in individual companies, what should be produced in individual companies, and so on, are made in a democratic way.

If the forces that are there are to be made fruitful for the social community, this can only be achieved if the individual representative, on the basis of their expertise and professional ability, stands in their rightful position and produces for the community what they can produce according to their abilities. But there still remains that over which he is not the sole arbiter, but over which every mature person who represents the democratic element has the ability to judge, whereby every person is equal, stands equally, and in which every person should develop a relationship from person to person.

On socialist soil, the following is constantly emphasized today: the worker is separated from the product of his labor, he works for the product, which he hardly gets to know, or only gets to know part of it. That is certainly all true. The product goes to the market, he is separated from it, he is separated from his field of labor, he simply performs his work, his human labor, on something he does not even know. But this is only the case as long as we do not have an independent link, an independent life, alongside the economic life in which the individual is involved, where one develops from person to person because one is the same as another person. This independent life, in which decisions are made only on the basis of what is right, this actual political life, is the content of state life. This is where democracy can truly develop. But it must be cultivated in the concrete. You cannot say: those who have excelled in a particular area of economic life will also excel in the field of law, so that this field of law can best be cultivated by them. No, that is not the case, because a person can only cultivate and develop judgment in that which actually develops in life. The life of the law must not be linked in a chaotic way with economic life, but the life of the law must stand alongside economic life. And the human being must enter into a relationship, a concrete relationship on the basis of the law, with the other human being. Interests must develop in him for the other people with whom he lives together in economic life, when economic life develops needs that have to be satisfied. On the basis of the law, every person will know: you are a member of the rest of humanity, you take part in something that determines your relationship and no other thing your relationship among others. You stand in all of humanity, you now learn to recognize yourself as a member of the state built on the equality of people, on democracy. This state becomes a reality for you. Because it becomes a reality by dealing with your labor law before all things. Labor law will no longer be established in economic life; the worker will no longer be dependent on the economic power of the person with whom he can work and undertake work together, but rather what applies is that in which every person is equal. In the separate legal sphere, it will be necessary to decide what makes every person equal. And other relationships will have to be regulated in the corresponding sphere. Today I can only characterize all this in very general terms; you will find more details in my “Key Points of the Social Question”.

Then there remains economic life, the actual, unified economic life. And then, in this economic life, we will not have what is in it today, but we will have associations in this economic life that are formed from consumers and producers together. And these associations will have to deal with matters closely connected with the ascertainment of economic needs, with the determination of prices, the value of goods, with everything that depends only on the human labor that goes into the goods. Economic life will not have to decide on the raising of human labor; the legal life decides on that. In the sphere of economic life, the corporations will have to deal only with fair prices. Such that, based on real expertise and professional skill, such prices will result from being in the economic life that the individual actually receives on average, for what he contributes, so many corresponding goods that serve his needs, until he has produced something has produced the same as that which he exchanges.

I will soon arrive at the primal cell of economic life; when it is presented as I must now present it, it looks somewhat paradoxical, yet in the last analysis everything is based on it. Above all, it is the basis for the emergence of fair prices; for it is not through some kind of joint administration, not through some kind of transfer of the areas into the administration of the whole, or into the ownership of the whole, that social balance can be achieved , but only through the value of the goods, which is determined not by the accident of the market, but by the value of the goods, which is determined by human reason, so that it flows from the actual management of economic life as such.

To put it dryly and paradoxically, and actually trivially: if I have made a pair of boots today, then in the social organism this pair of boots must be worth so much that I can exchange goods for it until I have again fabricated a pair of boots, including everything that has to be provided for the unemployed, the sick, the disabled, and so on. This is the original cell of economic life.

This can actually be achieved if economic life is completely detached from the other two elements of social life: from independent spiritual life and independent legal life

As I said, I could only sketch these things for you, but they have been developed from a real life practice, from a conception of life as it is, as it wants to shape itself. That was also the reason why I said to many a person during the raging of that terrible world war: The only way to cope with this raging is through ideas that have grown on spiritual soil. You have the choice, I said to many, either to speak now of such ideas to humanity that this humanity can take as a starting point for a real improvement on earth, or you will experience social cataclysms and revolutions.

People did not agree to accept reason. So the revolution came. But these revolutions have their peculiarities. Revolutions have been taking place in the world since the emergence of Christianity. What kind of revolution was that? It was a spiritual revolution. What was transformed was the conditions in spiritual life. What can truly arise in humanity in this way, through a metamorphosis in development, can only be spiritual impulses in the first instance.

The Christian revolution was a spiritual one. And the legal and economic life that it brought in its wake was a consequence of the spiritual revolution that took place through Christianity. That is why it was a great upheaval, and anyone who is familiar with the development of Christianity knows how profoundly Christianity has affected the world as a spiritual upheaval.

But if we now consider a revolution in legal and political relations, We find such upheavals in the French Revolution or in the continental revolution of 1848. Study these revolutions and you will find that They have achieved something, they have replaced something of the old order; but much has been left behind that was not at all a solution to previously raised demands, but a solution to previously raised demands, leftovers that were left behind by these political revolutions, by the three elements of human life. One can trace them, the upheavals in the spiritual realm, in the political-legal realm; an upheaval in the spiritual realm, that brought Christianity; an upheaval in the political-legal realm, the upheaval of the French Revolution and the revolution of 1848. Now they want an upheaval in the economic realm. Economic life cannot mechanize or transform itself out of itself. Those who are familiar with world-historical interrelations know that there can be intellectual revolutions because everything else in life can be fertilized by the spirit. But if the external itself, formed purely out of itself, is to be transformed, then this is an illusion. It is simply a law of world-historical development that where a purely economic revolution is to be carried out, as in present-day Russia, this economic revolution must be the gravedigger of modern civilization before it does not take up something truly spiritual.

It is true that Lenin and Trotsky are the last consistent educators of what has been living in the Darwinism of the masses for decades. But in trying to realize what could be developed in the ideas as mere economic ideas, and in what one could believe as long as it did not become practical, one becomes the gravedigger of civilization at the same moment as one wants to introduce it into life. And death could only spread in the European East under the influence of such ideas if it were not realized that we need something completely different in our time: a renewal of spiritual life.

That is what I wanted to emphasize particularly strongly today, that we need to develop a free spiritual life in an independent spiritual part of the social organism, which in turn is based on real spirit. From this spirit a real social future will arise. One must not hope for a new revolution. This new revolution should be an economic one. An economic revolution can only destroy, it cannot build up. Today the world is ripe for a new spirituality, so that it can be rebuilt.

That is what must be said by someone who does not base their views on party demands or party programs, but who looks at life impartially and honestly, and is serious and sincere about what is usually, but poorly understood, called the social question. This is what must be done first in the course of human development: to spread enlightenment about it, to educate the broad masses, on the part of those who have been able to develop this enlightenment through their previous education, which they have inherited, to educate the broad masses about what is necessary. Otherwise, the broad masses know what they demand out of their passions, but they cannot see through what can really be demanded in the interest of humanity and in the interest of a social future.

What has been attempted in my “Key Points of the Social Question” does not follow some party line, it follows what has been attempted to be recognized from the world-historical development of humanity itself, what has been attempted to be recognized from the world-historical moment. Anyone who assumes a commonality of the means of production is already unaware of development. Because even if it were possible for the common ownership of the means of production to occur today, to be introduced today, which cannot be, because it is of course impossible, because it would destroy all initiative of the individual, but even if it were possible to assume the common ownership of the means of production, then the current generation would have these means of production at a certain age, and the next generation would not have them again until later. And the protest of the next generation would once again result in what is to be made good today.

Only a thought like this, which is taken from full reality, not from one-sided reality, only such a thought is really from the outset today. And the thought that I have presented to you about the threefold social organism also takes into account the development over time, not just the coexistence of people in space. This thought can therefore much more likely shape spiritual life in its most important parts, in its most essential areas, in the school and educational system, and also with regard to the social organism, so that it can supply the social organism with forces in an appropriate way. Today, the Socialist side keeps telling us: if we introduce a common distribution of the means of production, if we introduce compulsory labor and so on, then we will educate people through these social structures so that they will work by themselves and so on. Yes, that is to say, humanity will achieve nothing, it will achieve nothing, and will only be willing and eager to work if a spiritual life really kindles the individual abilities of the human being, as they can only be kindled if we educate the human being during his upbringing in such a way that we take full account of his individuality.

Just as in this field, so in all fields the social idea of the threefold social organism is that which most comprehensively underlies the practical; it can only underlie the practical because it is built on the ground of a real spiritual science, where not only nature must be recognized, but where man must be recognized, but thereby also man man into consciousness.

I would just like to emphasize in conclusion that what you can read in detail about capital formation, labor organization, economic organization and so on in the future, is explained in more detail in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, as already mentioned, is still a weak attempt today. It is only a weak attempt because it is not some kind of contrived program, but because it is derived from practical life. Those people who today say that they cannot understand what is written in the “Key Points of the Social Question” lack the instinct for reality that is necessary today if one is to really understand practical matters in their fundamentals. It is not merely a matter of professing one's faith in a sociological doctrine; it is a matter of professing one's faith in those doctrines that can be supported by an instinct for the things to be realized. In attempting to present such thoughts, one will not claim that they should be perfect from the outset. One will emphasize again and again that they are an attempt. And so everything that is presented on the basis of the threefold social order should be seen as an experiment. For what it should ultimately be will become clear as it is transformed and introduced into practice.

I have often said to people: It is possible that not a single one of the details that I have given will be carried out, but the ideas that I have put forward are conceived in such a way that they can be applied to reality at one of its many points of contact. If you take hold of it there, then something completely different may result, but you will really be working. That is what matters, not programs, not preconceived ideas, no matter how clever they are, not to work from them, no matter how old they are, but to work from the reality of practical life! But not working from the randomness of everyday life, but from the great, overarching ideas from which all great, including social, designs have actually emerged. I believe that everyone who talks about such questions in this way thinks that way. I would like to express how I mean it by means of a comparison. Recently, in a studio where they usually work only with three-dimensional objects, a chair model was developed. The idea was that this chair should, on the one hand, satisfy our sense of beauty, which we apply to the Dornach building; on the other hand, however, it should be as inexpensive as possible. The most economical price is necessary in addition to the appropriate design in the overall treatment. Now we had made a model. When we handed this model over to the worker, we said to ourselves: There is the model, but now the practical design begins, and possibly what comes out as a chair at the end will look quite different from the model. But what comes out will be practical because the model was thought of practically.

This is how I would like to see the matter of the 'key points of the social question' understood. Everything that you will find as suggestions for the social question, for example in “Social Future” here for Switzerland, this book and our other ideas are only meant to be a kind of model, so to speak; but it should be a practically conceived model. If you take up the work with this in mind, the result will be practice. Perhaps it will look quite different, but it will only be truly practical if it is approached on the basis of a practical impulse.

Such a threefold social organism could, I think, most easily - pardon me for saying all these things, especially for those who are not completely familiar with these things, but I would still like to express it - it could be realized particularly strongly here in this country, which is justly proud of its old democracy. Because the democratic element has been developed here, it is easiest to see here how the path should be found to replace the spiritual and economic life on both sides in a corresponding way. In a further development, the idea of threefold social order emerged. If one is serious about these ideas, then I believe that, especially if one lives in a democratic community, one will understand and find it easier to understand what can necessarily be done for the threefold social order. Otherwise, this threefold social order will be attacked from left and right, from all sides. And while it is precisely the intention to be serious and honest about the social question, it has come about that I, for example, am personally attacked in the most obscene way by the leaders of socialist parties of all shades. But the point at issue is precisely that three great ideas, which should only be meant seriously and honestly, have emerged in the development of humanity. One is that of liberalism, the other that of democracy, and the third is that of socialism. If one is sincere about these three ideas, one will not be able to mix all three up or have one eliminate the other. Rather, one will have to say: something must radiate from the independent intellectual life, flowing into capitalism and into the whole organism. That is the free human development, that is the liberal element. In the political state, in the legal life, something must live in which all people are equal. That is the democratic element. And in economic life, the fraternal element must prevail. That must provide the true basis for a social structure. That is what it is about. We should not fight one-sidedly against and also not represent one-sidedly that which has emerged beneficially in the course of the newer development of humanity as the consequence of liberalism, democracy, socialism; we should see how in the independent spiritual life, liberalism grows, illuminating all the rest of social life ; how in the actual state under the rule of law democracy is growing, again overshadowing all other areas of life; how in that economic life, which is concerned only with the production, circulation, and consumption of goods and the determination of fair prices, socialism is again prevailing, permeating everything. Then, when one sees through this, one will correctly penetrate one's view of life today with the realization that complete errors in external life are less harmful because they can be more easily seen through than half or quarter truths.

But what exists today in many people as a social movement is flooded with quarter and third truths. And by adhering to a partial truth, people believe that they have grasped life in its entirety. But one should only want to embrace life in its entirety with a living interaction of truths. The whole full truth cannot be revealed in an abstract idea or in an abstract reality. It can only be grasped in the living interaction of ideas. Then, from half-truths and quarter-truths, the whole truth of life will be able to emerge, including in the social sphere, and the necessary social order will be established. And it will be recognized that it is less necessary to fight against complete errors than to correct half-truths and quarter-truths.

This is what I wanted to emphasize today with regard to the ideas of the necessities of life in the social question in the present of humanity and its immediate future.

Dr. Dr. Roman Boos points out that here in Switzerland, too, the danger is enormous in the economic field, and that we should therefore be able to extract something creative, which will be absolutely necessary, and that what Dr. Steiner could only hint at in his remarks today must be fully understood. (No discussion seems to have taken place.)

Rudolf Steiner: Regarding the closing remarks, I will be able to be very brief. I would like to emphasize that someone might say that in this lecture a great deal has been said about every link of the social organism: the spiritual, the legal and the economic life. But all this is not at all what matters to a large proportion of those who speak of the social question today , but that the social question is above all an economic question.

Now consider the whole attitude of both the lecture and what is meant by the impulse for the threefold order of the social organism. You can see this at least to some extent from the lecture: it does not present a finished program, but rather it starts from the premise that the social organism itself, that is, human social life, should be structured in a certain way, structured in such a way that separate administrations exist for economic life , for democratic, political or legal life and an independent administration for spiritual life.

Now, of course, it is easy to say: You are actually separating what must be a unity, the whole of human society, the human social organization into three areas. But it is precisely through the independent administration of the three areas that it becomes possible to achieve the proper unity of these areas. It is not a matter of renewing, as some have believed, what was demanded in the pre-Christian, in the Platonic world view, as the teaching, military and nutritional estates. No, in those days humanity as such was divided into three estates; so that one belonged to one, the other to the second, the third to the third estate. It is precisely this that is to be avoided, that people cannot be people as a whole, but are divided into estates. It is not humanity as such that is divided, but human life. And the person who is in life, in a certain way, stands on all three grounds: in the spiritual life, insofar as he has a living part in the spiritual life in one way or another; he stands in it in the legal life, in the entire legal issues, because he is a mature person in this part, either directly through some referendum or indirectly through representation and the like and he stands in that, in which he has credit through his person, or has factual and specialized knowledge in a certain economic area, in which he is incorporated through an association; the whole economic life is incorporated in itself.

And now it is precisely the various objections that have been raised that show how little the basic idea has been understood today. For example, a long review of this threefold social order appeared in a magazine, and it was said: Yes, he wants to replace the one parliament with three parliaments - a spiritual parliament, a legal parliament and an economic parliament. What matters, however, is that in a democratic parliament only that can be decided on which every human being has become capable of judging, which does not require any knowledge of the subject or field, and that precisely that should be eliminated which requires knowledge of the subject and field. Therefore, if there must be no parliament in the realm of intellectual life and in the realm of economic life, it is because the situation is precisely the opposite there. It is therefore a matter of honestly applying parliamentarianism by limiting it to the area in which it can truly flourish.

From this, however, it can be seen that the nerve has actually been little understood to date. But if one understands the nerve of the matter, then one will see how this idea is actually conceived out of the fundamentals. Anyone who believes that they can organize economic life, for example, according to a certain structure by means of some program, no matter how beautifully conceived, may think very cleverly of themselves, but they are not thinking from reality. But the person who says: Humanity must live in a social organism that is administered from three sides; then what is social structure will come. People will shape this through what they will experience through this threefolding of social life. That is what matters, not saying: Now there is a social question that needs to be solved. Today it cannot be solved, tomorrow it will be possible - one says it in one way, the other in another, but very many think that way.

No, he who believes that is thinking unrealistically. The point is this: the social question has come to the surface in humanity, and now a social structure must be brought about in such a way that this social question must be solved continuously. Today the conditions are there, today it will be solved one way or another, not tomorrow will it be solved. And if other questions arise tomorrow, the conditions for tomorrow will have to be solved again; then other things will arise again, and people must be included in the social structure. It will be an ongoing process. The solution is to be tackled anew from day to day. It is not the case that one can say, today it is there and will continue to be there, but one must ask: How must society be shaped so that what is shaped by society can be shaped in a social sense. Those who do not take human matters in this sense, who do not think in real terms, cannot see what is really going on.

Today people think they are thinking, but they think in a highly unrealistic way. For example, they think that social life will acquire a social structure through a certain reorganization of economic life. Well, that would be just as if one wanted to believe that the individual human organism acquires its structure from what it eats and drinks. No, the human organism has an inner lawfulness. It has such a lawfulness that it undergoes a very definite transformation at the age of changing teeth, and another transformation at the age of sexual maturity. The processes in the human organism come from transformations within the human organization; but ideas also arise in the course of historical development. Today this has reached a point where it is necessary to tackle the threefold social order!

Now, in conclusion, I just want to say the following to show you how things are meant. Those who really follow my writings know that when I experience something like this, I am not at all concerned with ridiculing anyone. I know best how worthy of consideration the simplest mind can be. But let us take the following example. In a discussion, I was replied to – actually, the replies are often where one believes today to be particularly revolutionary, according to a certain template, one does not need to go into the reply itself – but such a responder said something that did not directly have to do with the matter, he said: “Look here, esteemed attendees, we certainly do not want – he spoke from the standpoint of the most most radical orator of the Socialist Party – we certainly don't want, he said, to abolish intellectual labor, we want to keep it; because, you see, he said, I'm a cobbler, for example, I know very well that I can't do the work of a registrar; so we have to hire people who can take over this office once we have gained leadership. A glorious thought! The good man believed that he could not do the work of a registrar, but what he did believe was that he could be a minister who then determined the whole structure. That was a matter of course for him.

Such simple errors, in which one lives, are the essence of real life today, they are absolutely fundamental. These are things that show where approaches are that cannot lead to anything fruitful.

On the other hand, I had recently learned the following from a different angle. After writing an article that roundly condemned the entire threefold social order, an American came to me during one of my lectures a few weeks ago and said: I read this article; it is written in such a way that it insults everything. Yes, there must be something in it! And so I got hold of the matter, he said. You see, sometimes the abusive articles also have their good effects. The man was now, when he came to me, completely absorbed in the idea of threefolding. He said to me: Do you believe that with this idea of threefolding there will now be something that can apply to the whole of human future in the most absolute sense? I said, “No.” We have gone through a phase of historical development which has led to the fact that we have concluded everything in this unitary state. In this unitary state, we have concluded, let us say in Austria, economic life, legal life, spiritual life, namely in the form of cultural life. I have often spoken about this. In the 20th century, nothing else was possible than what led to the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was the subject of the negotiations. What emerged from that was linked to the construction of the Thessaloniki railway, which was a purely economic matter. And out of that arose a chaotic mixture, to which was added a purely spiritual element, namely the antagonism between the Slavs and the Magyars. And out of the terrible tangle of nations in the East, something was brewing from the three areas being mixed together. But they were so constituted that they were drawn to the unified state. Now it is ripe to disintegrate into the three elements. And in turn, a completely different necessity will arise in a relatively not too distant time. Life is vibrant, it is not something closed. We want something that applies forever and everywhere!

The inconvenience of such ideas is that they cannot be conceived out of abstract ideas, like programs; you introduce the programs and then that's it. No, it is not like that; but such ideas, spiritual ideas, take into account the spiritual life, the legal life and the economic life in the threefold social organism. And therefore they can only ever find that which is valid for a particular epoch. And they are aware that, in turn, this must be replaced by something else in a certain period of time. They also take evolution seriously by seeking in evolution what they themselves can find for their age.

So, I just wanted to show a practical result in this sense and say that it is not about something something absolute, as in other contemporary programs, but something that is thought out of the present in the most eminent sense.

Thus, that which wants to enter the world today is judged in the most diverse ways. It may meet with the most diverse judgments, if only these judgments, this judging, finally comes to the point of studying things in a way that is full of life. What matters in such matters is not that what is indicated on one side or another is pedantically carried out, but rather that reality is grasped in a practical way. In such a case no stone may be left unturned in the details, but out of such a life-filled approach that which can serve the common good will be effective and will come into being.

In this sense, these things are meant to be said out of reality for reality. The threefold social order is not meant to be a one-sided political development, nor is it meant to be a one-sided development at all. And so it should be taken up without any emotional attitude.

On the other hand, it should be viewed in such a way that it is understood without prejudice, as it is meant without prejudice. From many sides today we hear: Yes, this threefold social order would be all very well, but it must come into being at the very end; before that everything must go haywire, before that there must be dictatorship and so on. If one thinks in this way, then in reality one does not want the practical, but rather that which arises only from abstract demands, which arise directly only from this or that mood of the soul. In that case, one does not want the social threefolding as it is meant here, but rather one wants that which one has fallen in love with.

But if one seriously wants to achieve something in life, one must struggle to the point of view that sees through and overviews this life impartially.

If you board the tram here at Aeschenplatz in Basel and travel to Dornach, then take the small path through Dornach, you will come to a hill on which stands the Goetheanum, which is to become a School of Spiritual Science. Although it has been encouraging to note that an extraordinarily large number of visitors have been coming to see this building day after day, it must be said that, whenever the outside world world, for instance in newspaper articles, answers are given to the question of what is actually to be done inside this building once it is finished, these answers generally present the opposite of the truth, with a few exceptions of course. All sorts of things are said about what is to be done there in the past or present in this Dornach building. In any case, the answers given to the questioners are very far removed from what those involved in the spiritual current on which the Dornach building is based actually set as their goal. For this goal emerges from a careful consideration and observation of what I would call the cultural conditions for humanity in the present and future. And out of all the various presuppositions, which I shall venture to speak about this evening, this spiritual movement, which is to find expression in the Dornach building, is based on the conviction that the longings of wide circles of people today contain the realization that a complete recovery, a healthy further development of our human culture must come from the soul of the human being, from that which the human being can grasp in his soul as his connection with the spiritual world. It is based on the conviction that, in the face of the demands and difficulties that arise in our social life, we must try to find the impulses that correspond to the longings of a large number of people – and this number is growing ever larger and larger – from the spirit and soul.

Now, one can see – I would just like to mention in passing that now on Sundays and other days quite a few people come from Basel and the surrounding area to see what we call our eurythmy performances in the provisional hall of our carpentry workshop, where we have to hold these events for the time being until we can open the Goetheanum itself. , and it is reasonable to believe that a large number of those who have already made the pilgrimage to Dornach for these eurythmy performances have come to the conclusion that, in this particular area, too, an attempt is being made to spiritualize something, to raise something into the sphere of the spirit, which, under the influence of materialism of the last centuries, is still practised today by our culture in a more or less materialistic, physiological and similar way.

In this eurythmy, there is an art of movement of the human organism itself, which is taken from the organizational structures of the whole human being, the whole human being, who encompasses body, soul and spirit. And quite apart from the fact that this eurythmy aspires to a special new art form that cannot really be compared with what are often perceived as neighboring arts, it can also be said that these efforts to the spirit is based on what I would call the inspiration of the human organism's possibilities of movement, which, for example, in gymnastics, are understood only in an external physiological way, in a purely material way. The human being is meant to carry out movements, and that is why this eurythmy will also have a spiritual-educational value at some point. In addition to artistic movements, the human being should carry out movements that are not merely taken from anatomy and physiology, as in gymnastics, but that are taken from what can live in the moving human being: spirit and soul.

Now, it is difficult not to be misunderstood when you go out into the world with a thorough spiritual or soul current today. One would like to say that misunderstandings are coming from all sides. And so it may happen that in some places some misunderstandings regarding spiritual science itself have already been cleared away, to the extent that this spiritual science is even allowed to speak on social issues. But we have committed what we believe to be the right thing to do, but what others have thought of as ineptitude: in some places where I have had to speak about spiritual science and social issues, I have also given eurythmy performances at the same time. And lo and behold, the judgment was immediately made: how can a spiritual endeavor be of any value that also includes dance performances?

Well, I could easily add to the list of misunderstandings that come from all quarters, because the world still judges in many ways today as if everything that is to be done in the Dornach building is something obscure, something dark and mystical. So often today, when spiritual endeavors are mentioned, one hears that all sorts of mystical things are being done here or there, even in many places. The fact that the movement that is to be linked to the Dornach building has nothing to do with such obscure mystical movements could be taught to those who seek to see clearly and truthfully in such matters by the fact that one who stands before you and speaks to you about his cause, the cause of this building at Dornach, this Goetheanum, can point to a book written as early as 1894, The Philosophy of Freedom. And if anyone reads this 'Philosophy of Freedom', I think they will not get the impression that this 'Philosophy of Freedom' is intended to bring anything of obscure mysticism, enthusiasm or the like into the world. And I may say that, after all, everything that is to form the main content, the main impulse of this spiritual scientific movement, of which I am speaking, is permeated by that longing of present-day humanity, which expresses itself in the urge for such a way of life within which the individual human being can, on the one hand, fulfill his social duties, but on the other hand, can still be a free being as an individual human being.

I would like to begin by pointing out a phenomenon that is connected to something that is very familiar to you. And although I take as my starting point in today's reflections a politician, you should not think that I am going to devote myself even remotely to the political culture of the present day. I would like to speak about the cultural conditions of the present and the future in a much broader sense; but I would like to mention a characteristic that can show us how the call for freedom is, so to speak, emerging from the cultural aspirations and ideals of the present, only emerging in such a way that it is truly not taken deeply enough. And to take it deeply enough, to deepen what humanity's longing for freedom is, that is intimately connected with the view that spiritual science has of the cultural conditions of the present and future.

Those who have heard my lectures this year and in previous years, this visitors who remember how I spoke at that time, when Woodrow Wilson was, one might say, seen as a man honored throughout the world, to whom people looked up and to whom they attached great hopes for the future, these honored visitors will not hold it against me if I, who in the days when this man had many supporters freely expressed my opposition from a certain point of view, if I today take as my starting point the special conception of freedom, the special call for freedom, that resounds from the political world view of Woodrow Wilson. One must believe that the strong, otherwise, in my opinion, quite incomprehensible impression that Woodrow Wilson has made on the world so far, where the matter stops, is based precisely on the fact that all the program points, everything that has come from this man into the world, is ultimately based in a certain way on the impulse of human freedom. Let us see what this man did before he became President of the United States, let us see what made him great as President of the United States. We will find that it is his conception of a possible social organization of human coexistence in which man can have his freedom in a democratic way. Woodrow Wilson saw how, in the last decades of the 19th century and the early 20th century, large accumulations of capital had come to be concentrated in the hands of a few people in the course of the life of America. He saw how trusts and the like had been formed. And he saw how a few wealthy people had gained control over other people as a result. This is where he began his reflection and his work. He first of all asserted the impulse of freedom. He demanded a complete democratization of human political life in the face of the accumulation of economic and political power in the hands of a few. He wanted every single person to have the opportunity to make use of their abilities in human coexistence. He did not want those who had established themselves in any branch of industry or trade to be able to have monopolies that the legitimate abilities of the weak could not compete against. He wanted us to look for the causes of what happens in social life in every single human situation, even the simplest. And he often expressed this. And it is characteristic of him that he has based his political aspirations on precisely this goal of freedom.

We need only consider his extraordinarily significant writing “The New Freedom”. One might say that on every page one finds the truth of what I have just said. I will quote just one of his most remarkable sayings. He said: There is only one way to create a free life, and that is to ensure that under every garment beats a free and hopeful heart. I truly believe that what had such a strong effect was this call for freedom.

Now, this call for freedom always resonated in the practical political and social effectiveness. The writing “The New Freedom” is actually just a collection of election speeches. There is no talk of a freedom that is only philosophically speculated, there is no talk of any abstract mere freedom of consciousness, there is talk of a freedom that is to be realized and realized in life .

Now, I also tried to grasp such a freedom, which should be realized and actualized in life, through my book “The Philosophy of Freedom,” which I wrote at the beginning of the 1990s. But now, after much hesitation, I have published a new edition of this book, and I can now openly express the belief that freedom can only be truly and practically lived out if we seek it not only in the outer social and political life, but if we seek it in the depths of the human soul itself. And it is in the depths of the human soul itself that freedom should be sought through my “Philosophy of Freedom.” If one stops at the surface of mere social and political life or of external social life, one will very soon see that the realization of freedom is not at all possible if one grasps it only in that sense. For freedom is something that must arise from the individual human being, something that cannot exist if individuals are not able to realize it, if individuals do not first pour it into the social life that they lead together. But if we wish to appreciate the full significance of what is suggested here for the culture of the present day, then we must overlook much of the mere phraseology of the present, and we must try for once to speak seriously and honestly and truthfully about many things. The call for freedom is, I would say, present throughout the entire educated world. Today it is there for those who want to hear it, for the American, the European, and the Asian world. And the only question is: how can the awareness of freedom be realized in the life of the present?

To answer this question, we must take a closer look at how a man inspired by the impulse of freedom, such as Woodrow Wilson, talks about freedom today, and how others talk about freedom today. It will sound strange to you, and I must confess that I hesitated for a long time about expressing the truth I have to say here as bluntly as I will, because such things still shock many people today, because people still take such things far too much at face value, far too little in terms of what is actually behind them. Read Woodrow Wilson's book 'The New Freedom'. Listen to how he talks about the social conditions in America and, ultimately, about the social conditions of contemporary civilization in general. What do you find in it? Actually, only criticism, criticism of how this freedom is not realized within today's civilization, how one must strive to realize this freedom within today's culture and civilization. There are sharp words in this direction of criticism in Woodrow Wilson's book 'The New Freedom'. And if you stop at the criticism - and there is not much else in this book except criticism - and now really seriously and honestly ask yourself: How does this criticism of freedom or social criticism by Woodrow Wilson relate to the criticism that is asserted from another side? you come to a strange result. For example, I have tried to examine Lenin's and Tyotzki's criticism of freedom in terms of how this criticism of freedom and social conditions relates to Woodrow Wilson's criticism in The New Freedom, and I believe that anyone who makes such a comparison honestly and truthfully can say nothing other than: With regard to the criticism of social conditions and the realization of freedom in them today, Woodrow Wilson agrees with Lenin and Trotsky, however different the conclusions they draw.

One must be able to admit such a truth to oneself, even if one finds it quite understandable that despite this criticism, Woodrow Wilson naturally comes to the opposite conclusions from Lenin and Trotsky. And even if one, like the person standing before you, is convinced that Lenin and Trotsky are the gravediggers, not the founders, of a social life, that hardly anything worse could happen to humanity than if the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky were to be realized - but an important, an important fact is expressed in what must be set apart right now; the fact is expressed that from the most opposing party standpoints, from the most opposing social passions, people today come to similar criticisms of the existing cultural conditions and finally also to the abstract call for freedom. Only they understand this freedom in very, very different senses.

If one penetrates to the fact that ultimately the true impulse of freedom can only come from the depths of the human soul itself, then one may well also ask: Why is it that despite all the politicking and calling for freedom in his book, and in his other books as well, there is so much that one must say are abstract, impractical truths that can never penetrate into reality? I believe that precisely what Woodrow Wilson thinks of as freedom is precisely what prevents him from being a truly practical person for the spiritual life of the present. It is very characteristic how Woodrow Wilson explains freedom. He explains it, one might say, as if he had absorbed the whole sum of his concepts from the art of machines. For example, he says: A ship moves freely when it is so equipped that its apparatus is precisely adapted to the movements of the wind and waves, when it experiences no obstacles or hindrances from the movements of the wind and waves, when it is, as it were, carried along freely, without resisting what carries it. And so a person would be free in the sense of Woodrow Wilson, who would be so adapted to the external social conditions that nothing in him would give rise to obstacles and inhibitions, so that he would feel nowhere, as it were, dependent, constrained, disturbed in any direction. If we take seriously only one sentence, we shall see what significance this statement by Woodrow Wilson has for the concept of freedom. If we compare seriously and honestly the human being who is to act freely from the innermost impulse of his soul in some humane social order with a ship that offers as little resistance as possible to the forces of wind and waves, then we completely ignore the fact that the ship must be held still by another force must be held still against wind and waves, cannot hold itself still, but that if man is to be free, he should certainly not be carried along by social forces, but that under certain circumstances he must be able to stop and also to oppose the forces that affect him. The opposite of this would have been the result for a real idea of freedom, which is found as a kind of definition of freedom in Woodrow Wilson. And we will find that the vague call for freedom sits in many human souls today, but that what they consciously connect with the impulse of freedom is different from what they unconsciously really strive for. This was already before my soul's eye when I conceived my “Philosophy of Freedom” out of the human spirit in the 1880s. I saw how the question, “Can man be inwardly free or unfree at all?” occupied philosophy and worldviews and religious convictions throughout the entire civilized development of mankind. If man is a being, a natural being, that is driven purely by natural causes, then he is not free. Or does a being live in man that possesses and uses what he is as an external physical being only like an apparatus out of his own innermost impulses? If he were that, then it could be said that he, this man, is a truly free being. Is man free or is he not free? Is he one or the other by virtue of his nature and being? These questions were before me. And anyone within today's scientific community who wants to tackle these questions must, however, give an account of how he deals with the various views that have been expressed here and there in the whole of civilized human development on the question of freedom

Now it seemed to me that the main thing was that the question is usually asked quite wrongly: the question is, “Is man by his own nature and essence a free being or is he not?” It is wrongly formulated. And as a wrongly formulated question, it can never be answered with a simple yes or no. And so you will find that my 'Philosophy of Freedom' is based on putting the whole question on a different footing. However, what I am going to explain now lies more than the foundation under what is presented in my 'Philosophy of Freedom' itself. The way modern man is, in whom the true consciousness of freedom has actually only awakened, is the way this modern man has developed out of earlier states of the human being. Today, far too little consideration is given to the fact that one should seriously and honestly apply the principle of development to humanity. Although it is thought that in the very, very distant past, man was once a kind of ape-like creature; then it is said: It is not yet scientifically time to talk about how today's man has become from this ape-like creature, from this animal-like ape that once climbed around in the trees. One leaves a long, wide desert between the ape-like man and today's man. But even if this is not admitted, essentially one does have the idea that once man has become man, his soul and spirit have not changed particularly radically. I know that this is a debatable statement. But anyone who allows the history of the development of humanity, as it is usually viewed, to take effect on them, will find this statement justified. And anyone who delves more deeply into this history of human development will find that, as man has developed, consciousness of freedom has awakened in him, so that from the depths of human souls the call wells up: First of all, you must be able to act freely out of your own passions, emotions, sensations and feelings; you must live in a social condition in which you can be free. But on the other hand, this call actually exists only as such. Today, there is also no human consciousness that would allow this call to come to its full meaning in man himself. That is to say, man does not find enough of his own being within himself, so that he could say of this within himself: yes, there is something in me that is a free being. In the course of human development, we have advanced to a magnificent development of scientific knowledge, and the last one will be the one who represents the spiritual science meant here, who - as I have often discussed here - would somehow like to deny the magnificent scientific progress or would like to object to the justified scientific views. But the way in which we have developed natural science in modern times means that the human being of modern times, of the last three to four centuries, can actually only understand himself as a physical being. From the depths of the human being, from the human consciousness that is given according to nature, it does not rise at all: you are just as much a real soul, you are just as much a real spirit – as it rises from the depths of the human being: there you have your arm, there you have your hand, they are made of flesh and blood and bone.

This is not just, I would say, a carelessness of worldview. One completely misunderstands what is actually at the root of it if one merely criticizes what I have just said and sees only a carelessness of world view in it, if one merely says: People today are so comfortable that they believe that the human being is only a material being, and that nothing of the soul and spirit is expressed in him. No, my dear audience, with such a criticism one does not get anywhere. One must rather recognize that, as man has developed, he is initially forced to see himself only as a material being if he takes in nothing into his soul but what today's external view of nature and external natural science and the consciousness of the times can offer. In other words, if we allow contemporary culture, which particularly loves time, to be what contemporary culture produces as time, as science, as art, as religious conviction, and also allows it to influence schools, if we allow this to influence today's man to such an extent that he is permeated by it, then, if he is honest, he will have to become a materialist. That is a harsh word. But I believe it is a true word. Today, in a certain respect, one can be dishonest, can say out of some prejudice: “I do believe in spirit and soul.” Then one is not serious about what has actually been produced by the consciousness of the times and by scientific convictions. And if you take these convictions seriously, there is no other option than for man to feel like a material being. He once developed in such a way that if he merely abandons himself to the conditions of life he has created for himself today, he can only come to believe that he is a physical being. A physical being, no more than any other natural being, can be a free being. Therefore, one can say: If the present consciousness is taken seriously, then nowhere does something like the impulse of freedom arise from this present consciousness. One can sound the call for freedom out of subconscious instincts, as Woodrow Wilson does. But if you become absorbed in the time consciousness of the present, you will arrive at false concepts of freedom, at a definition of freedom that says nothing about freedom and a free being, as Woodrow Wilson does. You have to have the courage to step outside of this time consciousness, which has taken hold of the widest circles, which has become popular. And one can say that, especially at the time when I wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom,” one could feel quite alone within contemporary culture with such ideas, no matter where one lived on earth. One can understand that Woodrow Wilson's particular views grew out of America's young life in terms of world history. And when I look at my “Philosophy of Freedom” today - I may also speak frankly about it - I know how justified those criticisms are that may strike today's reader of this “Philosophy of Freedom”. I know very well that if anyone reads the first thirty or forty pages of this book today, they will say: Well, this clearly bears the eggshells of German philosophy, professorial concepts, university concepts, school concepts.

Nevertheless, I have to stick to the form of this book and appeal to the present in such a way that I say: Just as one should not take the essence of man from his clothing, so one should not take my philosophy from its clothing in concepts, which had to serve as such a clothing for it for reasons of time and education, for reasons of the intellectual life within which this philosophy originated. Rather, something else seems important to me, which, I would say, has symbolically confronted me during the elaboration of my “Philosophy of Freedom”. At that time, while working on this philosophy, I was also working at the Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar. For some time, an American scholar worked with me there. He was preparing a literary-historical treatise on Goethe's “Faust”. It was very interesting to talk with him, and anyone who can see reality in symptoms had American intellectual life in the midst of Central European intellectual life, so to speak, in the form of the excellent American literary historian Calvin Thomas. But you see, I felt as if I were working in a typical Central European office in the Weimar Goethe and Schiller Archive, with all kinds of scholars, including American scholars. I could only use my leisure time to work on my “Philosophy of Freedom” after office hours. But I often had to ask myself: How close is what is in Calvin Thomas's mind American knowledge, American insight, to what European scholars are writing on the same subject, and how alone one is in the face of this cultural formation, in the face of the whole world, with what can be conceived as a real idea of freedom from an independent intellectual life. To a certain extent, one also felt isolated when it came to what could be derived from the young sense of freedom in America, in terms of world history, in terms of an idea about the impulse of freedom. And at that time it was important to me to put the whole question of freedom, as I said, on a different footing. I had to say to myself: the way man is, if he leaves himself to himself, if he only takes what can first fill his soul out of the consciousness of the time, then he cannot know himself as a free being. Therefore, I put the question differently. And this other way of posing the question permeates what I recognize as the idea of freedom. I cannot ask: Is man free or is he not free? but rather: Can man, in the depths of his soul, after he has gone through what arises from himself, as it were, from nature and from his being, continue to develop his soul by taking his soul's development into his own hands, and can he then awaken something in him that is dormant in such a way that this actually deeper being in him comes into its own, so that only through this awakening of a second man in him does he become a free being? Can man educate himself to freedom, or cannot he? Can man become a free being or not? How does he become a free being? That was the new question that had to be raised.

But this pointed out that the present-day human being, if he wants to come at all to the consciousness of the full human being, must not stop at what arises of its own accord in the human being in his development, but that he must take his development into his own hands. Admittedly, this is a point of view that is highly inconvenient for a great many people today. For in order to make it plausible, one must say the following to people: Take a look at a five-year-old child. Let us imagine that this five-year-old child is standing in front of a volume of Goethe's lyrical poems. This five-year-old child standing in front of the volume of Goethe's lyric poems will do something with this volume of lyric poems; he will tear it up, perhaps bite it, or something else, but one cannot assume that this five-year-old child will do the right thing with the volume of Goethe's lyric poems. But the child can develop, the child can be educated so that later he will learn to do the right thing with this volume of Goethe's lyric poems. Now, what would it be like if we were to say to people today: Just surrender to what time consciousness itself gives you, and then you will relate to the actual secrets of nature, to the actual secrets of the world around you, as the five-year-old child relates to Goethe's lyrisches Band. It has the whole of Goethe's Iyrisches Band before it like a fully understanding human being, but of course it does not penetrate into that which one can penetrate into as a fully understanding human being. It must first be educated. Now the call for freedom actually presupposes that the human being has the great intellectual modesty to say to himself: perhaps I stand before nature, before the essence of the world, as the five-year-old child stands before the first volume of Goethe's lyrische Gedichte. I must first take the development of my soul into my own hands, and then, just as Goethe's volume of lyric poetry will mean something completely different to a five-year-old child after five or seven years, so the world will mean something completely different to me. While before, when I just leave myself to what comes naturally, I am a fettered being, a different person awakens in me when I take my development into my own hands. And as this other man glows through me, warms me, permeates me, I become a free being.

Yes, that was the foundation of a human conception of freedom in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” and it was not intended merely as a philosophical truth, but to show that through what man awakens in himself by advancing himself – as if he only achieves what is given to him of its own accord – by developing himself in this way, he develops, as it were, a previously dormant, hidden reality within himself. He creates something in himself that brings him to freedom. As long as one theorizes, as long as one thinks up abstract ideas, these will be a matter for the human mind. They will not particularly take hold of the whole person. Anyone who has dealt with such things could actually know how shadowy the most beautiful, the most ideal abstract ideas live in people. It is different when not abstract ideas but life itself is to be awakened in the human being, when the human being is to go through something vividly, through which something awakens in him that was not there before. This is something alive that takes hold of the whole human being, that is not just a matter of the head, that is a matter of the soul and spirit of the whole human being. Here all feelings and impulses, the whole human life of will, are brought together; freedom becomes a real force in the human being, freedom becomes something that is experienced. But then, when it becomes something experienced, then the human being also wants to develop it in the external life together, then, by living with other people, he comes from his experience of freedom to an idea of such a social structure of human life together, in which only can be realized.

Therefore, in the second part of my philosophy, I tried to establish a moral teaching for people, to establish a social outlook that, I would say, must then naturally arise from the awakened sense of freedom. If we take the impulse of freedom as something that is vividly grasped in the deepest essence of man, then freedom is not an abstract idea, then the philosophy of freedom is not a mere philosophy, then what is expressed by such a view of freedom is something that merges into all of man's actions, into all of man's objectives. Then it contains something that others long for when they speak of freedom, but that can only be found by those who, if they want to understand freedom, do not stop at the world views of the present, but ascend to what lies dormant in man and can be awakened. What I would call a language of freedom that can be spoken to humanity in such a way that it is intimately connected with the cultural conditions of the present and future human being, still needed another thing in its further development.

And here is the reason why we had to move on from the foundation of a philosophy of freedom to anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Take one of the main books of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. There you will find a detailed description of the paths that a person must take inwardly, in soul and spirit, in order to awaken in him the consciousness of the other person, of the truly free person. There you will find how it is possible for a person to truly come to such an understanding of his own being that the true form of thinking and also of willing appears before his soul. And here I may refer to something I already mentioned in one of the last lectures I gave here: thinking and willing becomes something different for the human being than it is for ordinary consciousness, which, as described in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds', penetrates the human being. By thinking one learns to recognize how the being, which one then grasps as the higher human being, was already there before man entered into physical existence through birth or conception. By thinking one learns to recognize the true form of the human will, how man carries his nature through the gate of death into the spiritual world. One learns to recognize by truly rising, by developing to the truer essence of man, to the eternal in man.

But this only properly sketches out the paths that lead people to, I would like to say, regard the “Philosophy of Freedom” as something self-evident; the paths to finding the truly free human being. But at the same time, this serves the deeper cultural conditions of the present and the future, which express themselves precisely in such calls for freedom as I characterized in the introduction to my lecture today.

What does a human being need when he feels intensely about a dignified existence, what does a human being need for the content of his innermost human consciousness? What I want to say here can perhaps be best illustrated by referring you back to the starting point of spiritual human culture in the last three to four centuries. For it was a great thing when, at the dawn of the newer development of humanity, minds such as Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno and so on appeared. What did they do, basically? They broke with the knowledge and worldviews of the old days and directed human attention to the unbiased observation of the external world. They wanted to dispel prejudices. They wanted to make clear what man can gain by observing the external world. But little by little something else has occurred, something that I have already partially characterized. What has occurred is that an old awareness of what man is in his innermost being has been destroyed by more recent observation. If today, in accordance with our newer natural science, we look at the starry sky, what is this starry sky? Something that we want to understand through mathematics and mechanics, something that we only feel related to – this abstract product of our minds, mathematics and mechanics. And if we compare this with the consciousness that people in older times had when they looked up at the starry sky, He did not have the abstract scientific consciousness: up there the stars revolve according to mathematical-mechanical laws, but you, earthworm, stand here on this earth, are born with birth and perish with death, and that which you are has nothing to do with the course of the stars. If we go back to the earlier stages of human consciousness, we find that this earlier human consciousness held the view that you, human being, as you stand here on this earth, you are not merely attached to this earth; that which lives and works in you is connected with that which circles up there in the stars. And when you perfect your knowledge, when you become aware of yourself as a complete human being, then you know yourself as being related to the animals and plants and stones of the earth, and thus to the entire cosmic space of the stars. We have paid for what we have learned mathematically and mechanically about the stars by cutting ourselves off from the cosmos, from the world. If one now walks the path to higher knowledge in the way I have described, and comes to recognize that human being that did not begin with birth or conception, but that was there in spiritual worlds before birth and conception, and that also lives in us now and which penetrates through the portal of death into the spiritual world, then one does indeed learn anew, with this human being, only in a new form, not in an old, worn-out form, one's kinship with the whole cosmos; then the human being is again imbued with world consciousness. His mere earthly consciousness is transformed into world consciousness. But then man has something that he needs precisely as a cultural condition of the spirit in the present and for the future. Humanity could never experience the moment without the deepest damage to its essence, where reference would be made to new external observations, and the old spiritual life would gradually be extinguished. Man needs faith, the reference to the realization of a permanent, that can withstand, as well as the outer observation of the world expands.

Thus it is anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that shows man himself in such a way that he can in turn tie his world consciousness to the whole cosmos, that he in turn knows himself in connection with the world spirit. This is not just a theoretical idea, but something that comes to life in the whole human being, and what makes him, this human being, a different being. In the present and in the future, there will be much speculation about what social institutions are needed so that people can find a dignified existence within them. In recent times, people have even deluded themselves into believing that such institutions can be invented. We shall only arrive at institutions that give man a dignified existence when man is able to create such institutions from his deepest spiritual and soul life. But for that we do not need to dream of a transformation of the external social conditions; for that we need to seriously tackle a new spiritual culture, to awaken that which slumbers and sleeps in the human soul, and which must first be awakened so that man may know of himself that he is a free being. Today we completely overlook the deep rift in our spiritual culture. For many centuries, certain social powers have ensured that external science does not speak of the spiritual and the soul. That should be the concern of dogmatism. One was to experience it through mere belief, to let mere authorities dictate what one should think about spirit and soul; because certain social powers claimed a monopoly on dictating what should be recognized about spirit and soul, science was pushed aside to the merely material. It makes a very peculiar impression on the one who looks deeper into the development of humanity when he hears today how official science believes that it is pursuing the truths without prejudice and that through this unprejudiced pursuit of the truths it will find something that is today called science and that basically only wants to deal with sensual facts. In truth, it has become a developmental process, in truth, it is human research that has capitulated to the monopoly of certain social circles that alone wanted to deal with what people have to think about spirit and soul. A science such as I have characterized, such as leads to freedom, it leads at the same time to man not only being able to investigate the physical, his bodily nature, it leads to man also learning to investigate the spiritual and the soul. And when he learns to investigate the spiritual and the soul, he absorbs stronger, more realistic concepts than those he absorbs when he has to limit himself to mere external material. And so they have tried to allow only that into social thinking which arises out of the present-day consciousness. And from this point of view they believe that human ideas cannot actually penetrate into social conditions, or they fashion for themselves most perverted social ideas. In my book Von Seelenrätseln (Riddles of the Soul) — one of the last that I wrote and which, like the others, is only a continuation of what you will find in my book The Philosophy of Freedom — in this book Von Seelenrätseln, I have shown how truly anthroposophically oriented spiritual science not only capable of speaking abstractly about all kinds of spiritual and psychological phenomena, but that by grasping the reality of the spirit it is at the same time able to comprehend the human being, which is body, soul and spirit, in its wholeness. And so, for example, in these “Puzzles of the Soul” I was able to point out how it is a great error in present-day scientific physiology to speak of the fact that man has sensitive nerves that go from the sensory organ to the central organ, while the motor nerves go from the central organ to the muscles. An abstract science that speaks only abstractly of spirit and soul will never dare, and will never find the method, to say anything about the senses that cannot be proven merely by the senses. One can prove by stating that there is only one kind of nerve, that there is no difference between sensitive and motor nerves, that such phenomena as tabes dorsalis, which are cited in support of the opinion that motor nerves exist, actually prove the opposite proves the opposite of what is believed to be proven by them.

Thus, in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, something is created that in turn penetrates all of nature, that has enough impact to penetrate all of nature. But this also allows this spiritual science to penetrate into that which must be of particular interest to contemporary culture. This spiritual science is allowed to penetrate into the structure of social life. And it is only through those experiences that people have with the higher human being that truly social concepts can be gained. That is why we live in such a confusing time today, why we live in such confusion and such chaos today, because people who deal with the solutions of various social issues are not able to dig deep enough into the human being itself to find the ideas that can truly govern social life. And so we are at a loss when faced with the most pressing and burning questions of the present day, and we are left standing before these most searing and burning questions in such a way that no answer comes from the depths of human nature as an echo.

We have seen how great transformations have taken place in the course of human history. Or was not one of the greatest transformations that have taken place in the course of human development that through which Christianity arose? Christianity, which has given the evolution of the earth its true meaning, has emerged through a mighty transformation. It left many things behind. Not all people recognized the truths of Christianity; but on the whole, Christianity was the one thing that worked transformatively in the old cultural element, and basically brought forth the whole of European civilization with its American civilization appendix. Later, something like the French Revolution was experienced. While Christianity was a purely spiritual transformation and has achieved its goal to the greatest extent, it can be said of the French Revolution, which was a political one, that it has achieved some of its political goals, but that important and essential things have been left behind, which have not been achieved of the goals that were set. And now in our time we are experiencing the longing of many people for a new transformation, for new revolutions. And we already see these revolutions at work in many ways. Mankind has had sad experiences. If it wants to be unbiased enough, it should also recognize this in proletarian circles. Mankind has had sad experiences with the extreme social revolutions in Eastern Europe, in Hungary, and a great lesson of world history should be the failure of these social revolutions. And an even greater lesson could be learned if people are at all capable of learning from world-historical events, namely the sad fate of the German revolution of November 9, 1918, a revolution that fizzled out. And if we take a comprehensive view of all that follows from such facts, from the failed revolutions in Hungary and Eastern Europe, from the sadly abortive German Revolution, then we see: spiritual transformations, such as those brought about by Christianity, can take place in the course of the development of humanity; political revolutions, such as the French Revolution, only in part; economic revolutions, such as are being attempted now, are doomed to failure, can only destroy, can bring forth nothing new, if they do not transform themselves into spiritual impulses for progress. One of the most important and essential cultural conditions of the present time is that, out of the correctly grasped impulses of freedom, people come to realize that all the questions that are being addressed today must be considered in the context of the whole spiritual development of humanity, with a renewal of the human spiritual life. And mankind must realize this clearly before the sad and terrible lesson of necessity can occur, which would occur if what is happening to the downfall of human culture in the east of Europe, what has happened in Hungary under such sad circumstances, what is happening in Germany, if what is happening in the way it is grasped by those , who have no conception of the real impulse of the spirit, takes its course, which is now regarded by many as appropriate for the times.

Even what is done economically is only done correctly out of the human spirit, and we live in an age where the old concepts no longer suffice, where we must find new concepts that can create a new economic culture for the present and for the future. Woodrow Wilson is right when he says: We have new economic conditions, people could not shut themselves out from the new economic institutions; but we think about this economic life with the old legal concepts, with the old traditional spiritual ideas. But then, nothing will sprout from that which is rooted in the soul that could now master the new economic life.

What is sought here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science in what is communicated here, will on the one hand reach up to the highest heights of human spiritual and soul life, but on the other hand will also be strong enough to reach down to where the most everyday aspects of life need to be grasped. What is the situation today? Intellectual life has gradually taken on a very abstract character. Think about how the religious, aesthetic, artistic, and ideological convictions of, say, a merchant or an industrialist or a civil servant are formed. This is a matter for himself, which he experiences in his soul. It has nothing to do with the account book or with what he does in his office. In the realm where he generates his spiritual ideas, the ideas and impulses that are then expressed in his account book are not created at the same time. At most, it says “With God”; but that is also all that connects the activity that is expressed there with what he carries through the world as an abstract spiritual and soul life. But that is why it was said when people with good social ideas arose in modern times, such as Saint-Simon, Blanc, Fourier: These are good moral ideas, but good ideas alone will not transform social conditions. This can be heard everywhere today where the socialist point of view is discussed. And they are right. With such social ideas as Saint-Simon, Blanc, Fourier and so on had, you do not transform social life, because they arose from the consciousness of people that, when you think and reflect on the spiritual, this spiritual is a thing in itself, that should not grasp the world at the same time. In the end, all spiritual life has become abstract. On the one hand, man takes the upward surge religiously or artistically or ideologically to spiritual heights, if he takes it at all. On the other hand, he abandons himself, I might say, to the hazards of life; in natural science, by working in laboratories, in the observatory and the like, and what he brings out of it, whether in the social or in the scientific field, has no connection with the abstract spiritual life. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to pour out a unity of spiritual and material life over all of human civilization. And from that which is developed in the human being, through beholding the higher human being within himself, ascending to the eternal, the possibility should follow of grasping that which lies beyond birth and death for the human being, but at the same time to make the ideas so strong that they can intervene in everyday life. For it is not the person who speaks of the spirit who is serious and true about the spirit, but the person who is serious and true about the spirit who pursues the spirit to its last involvement in material existence, for whom nothing at all remains of spiritless matter even in the practical conception of life. That is what could be called the cultural conditions of the present and the future, that such spiritual and mental consciousness should be in people.

Then people who are imbued with such consciousness will also create social and political conditions that are desired by people like Woodrow Wilson. Today, however, the situation is such that people only criticize, that productive ideas are not yet there, because they do not want to descend to the spirit or want to ascend. Today we see how, starting from America – we have given the example of Woodrow Wilson himself, certainly a decisive personality – how, starting from America, there is criticism of contemporary social life, and the call for freedom is heard. But one does not want to decide to properly ascend to the real impulse of freedom. And we have seen how truly beautiful, ingenious ideas about freedom and social conditions have emerged in Europe. But it is characteristic of us in European civilization that we are incapable of bringing down from the abstractions, from the philosophical heights, what we conceive and feel so beautifully and introducing it into direct life. And we still do not understand it when there is talk of such an introduction of real, not merely imagined ideas into political life. And when we look across to Asia, we are confronted with a different civilization that criticizes the social and freedom life of the present just as aptly as America and Europe. One only has to read the beautiful arguments of Rabindranath Tagore to see how far the one who stands at the forefront of Asian culture can go in criticism. He does not achieve this in the productive sphere because he is not able to say to himself: if we are to speak of spiritual life again, we must strive for something new. He wants to preserve an old spiritual life, but only to be effective in it.

Now, unfortunately, we have seen in Europe that people have finally lost the direct connection between what they strive for in spirit and what everyday life, so that we now see numerous societies engaged in shaping Europe according to purely external economic aspects and trying to satisfy the needs of the soul, since the Christian religion no longer satisfies one in Europe, from Asia, through all sorts of theories and so on. Such relationships are not suitable for bringing about a new spiritual life; they are the last decadent shadows of an old one.

What is meant here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science takes all this into account. It is pretty much the opposite of what is said about it. And the building in Dornach, which is so often said to be symbolic, does not have a single symbol. Rather, it is said to be built, I would say, purely naturally, in such a way that it is envisaged that one day this and that will be , just as one learns to recognize the nut within its shell, and when one looks at the shell around the nut, one finds that it is naturally shaped to fit the nut. In the same way, we wanted to create a new shell for a new spiritual life, in architectural, artistic and pictorial terms. The building was not constructed out of abstract ideas or out of a complicated aesthetic view. I have often used a rather trivial comparison to try to express what I actually mean by this Dornach building. I am sure many of you know that in Germany, Austria or here, certain cakes are called Gugelhupf, and then the form in which the Gugelhupf is baked is called the Gugelhupf pan. Now, I said, if we imagine that what is to be done in this building is a Gugelhupf, a cake, then, if the cake is to be right, the Gugelhupf pan must be right. In the same way, the spiritual life that is to be cultivated there must have the right shell, just as the nut in the nut shell has the right shell. Except for this basic principle of the building, everything is still fundamentally misunderstood in wide circles today.

Now, as in other numerous lectures that I have already given here at the same place, I wanted to point out once again how the things that are really involved in the Dornach building and what is to be done in it for the civilized development of humanity, in contrast to the numerous misunderstandings that arise, that must arise very naturally. Perhaps it is possible to see from the few suggestions I have been able to make, but which are intimately connected with the most important human longings for the renewal of culture in the present and for the future, what is meant and wanted by this building and its purpose. When the call for freedom rings out from America, as I characterized it with Woodrow Wilson: the goal is to find humanity, a dignified existence, through a spiritual and soulful understanding that can meet this call as its realization, as the right answer to the question that is being asked. Some people today still avoid it. Out of dark, vague feelings, demands are made. The answers must be given out of a clear spiritual insight. I have to think how right Woodrow Wilson is in a certain respect when he points out that secret consortia should not decide on the affairs of the people, of humanity. Woodrow Wilson wants decisions to be made in every family home, be it in the country or in the city, but he wants people to come together in the schoolhouse in particular. It is a beautiful idea that the place of nurturing the spirit should be the place of origin for the formation of contemporary ideas. And it is a beautiful saying of Woodrow Wilson's when he says: Our goal is the reality of freedom. We want to work towards preventing private capital accumulation by law and to make the system by which private capital accumulation was created legally impossible. And another very nice saying is: Inside the country, on the farms, in the shops, in the villages, in the apartments of the big city, in the school buildings, everywhere where people meet and are true to each other , that is where the streams and rivers rise from their source, to form the mighty force of that stream that carries and drives all human endeavors on its journey to the great common sea of humanity. It is a fine idea to call people together in such a way that the stream can form from all the individual sources for the liberation of humanity, and it is a fine idea to let the goals that are to carry humanity forward be set precisely in the places where the spirit is cultivated, in the school buildings.

But if you take what I have tried to explain today, then perhaps Woodrow Wilson's call for schoolhouses will have to be different after all. For I believe that only when a cultural life is cultivated in these school buildings, permeated by a realistic, humane understanding of the free human spirit and the human soul, only then will the right current of human freedom come from the school building. Until we can implant in the human soul a correct understanding of freedom, we may gather in schools, but they will hardly find realistic goals there either. These will only be found when we have the courage to bring into the schools a spiritual, realistic worldview, an artistic outlook, and a religious confession. For what will come out of the schools for the future of humanity will be more important than what people in general decide on the basis of what they have learned at school.

If you travel from here to Basel, take the electric train to Aeschenplatz and then the route to Dornach, you will find there on the neighboring hill a building that is not yet completed but already shows the intentions associated with it, even in its exterior. This building, which is called a free university for spiritual science, is intended to represent externally represent that which is striven for by this spiritual movement, which calls itself: an anthroposophically oriented spiritual-scientific movement.

Now that the building has visibly manifested the existence of such a movement, one can already hear and read many things about the foundations of this spiritual cultural movement. Of course, there are still exceptions to be found, but in general, there are accurate descriptions of these endeavors. On the whole, however, it may still be said today that what is said or written about it in public is quite the opposite of what this movement is really striving for. It is very often described as an unscientific, obscure, and, in the worst sense, mystical movement. It is very often described as if it wanted to oppose this or that, societies, creeds, and the like. In truth, this movement and this Dornach building, the Goetheanum, through which it is represented, wants to serve those longings, those goals, which today often live so unconsciously in the human soul, in the human soul of the broadest masses, which in many respects have not yet found the form to express themselves, but which are connected with all that which should lead present and future humanity out of the cultural chaos, which can be perceived by anyone who is unbiased, and from which everyone who is unbiased must extricate themselves in the present.

If one is to indicate from historical phenomena where, I would say, the main nerve of this movement lies, then perhaps to something that seems quite remote from today's man, that also seems to belong to quite abstract regions of thought and imagination, but which only needs to be developed for the most general and broadest human interests in order to lead us to the very thing that today's culture needs for its renewal, for its rebirth. I would like to point out what Goethe strove for, based on the full breadth and depth of his world view, which is still far from being sufficiently appreciated today. I would like to point out what he strove for as an insight into the living world in contrast to the dead, inanimate, inorganic world.

What Goethe strove for in terms of knowledge was closely connected with his entire spiritual striving, and he drew the best that his world view contains from the contemplation of art, but he extended what he had gained from the contemplation of art to actual scientific knowledge, as he had to view it in the sense of the breadth and scope of his world view. Goethe allowed himself to be influenced, admittedly with regard to the plant world, which was so dear to him, and his contemplation of it, everything that could be available to him in relation to the plant world from the science of his time; but it can be said that nothing that he could find in the science of his time was sufficient to explain the essence of the secrets of this plant world. And so, out of the originality of his nature, he himself turned his comprehensive gaze over the whole plant world, as far as it was accessible to him, over all its forms, and sought a unity out of the diversity, out of the variety of plants. He sought that out of the variety of the plant which he called his primal plant. When you hear the definition of what he meant by his idea, it may seem abstract, but it is not. By his original plant, Goethe meant a unified image, of which every plant, whatever external form it may take, is an image, a unified, ideal, spiritual entity with which one can traverse the plant world and which is revealed, so to speak, in every single plant.

“Such a primal plant - as Goethe wrote from Italy to his friends in Weimar - such a unitary plant, which can only be created in the mind and is nowhere to be seen in the external world, must surely exist - so he said, seemingly abstractly. How else could one know that a single is a plant?

But it matters little what his abstract opinion of these things was. What matters more is that he had the faith, the profound and coherent belief in the essence of things, which is expressed in the following words. He said and wrote about this archetypal plant: “If you have grasped it in spirit, then it must be possible not only to compare and recognize with it the plant forms that are out there in the world, but it must be possible to inwardly and spiritually devise plant forms yourself that, even if they do not exist, could exist.”

This is a weighty and momentous saying. For what does a man, a man of insight, who wishes to grasp such a spiritual idea want? He wants nothing less than to evoke in his soul a thought that can lead him, I might say, to use his own expression, to invent an external reality that can then take shape. He wants to become so inwardly related to what grows in plants, to what grows in living things in general, that he has in his own spirit, in his own thinking, in his own imagination, what is revealed outwardly in growth as power. He wants to immerse himself inwardly with his whole being in the outer world. This striving is much more significant than what Goethe achieved with it in detail. As I said, if we characterize it only in relation to the plant world, which may interest some but not others, and if we characterize it only in relation to the plant world, which Goethe wanted, it may seem abstract to some. But in this kind of spiritual endeavour there is something that can be extended to the whole extent of human knowledge, of the human view of the world.

Then one rises from the contemplation of the individual, insignificant living creature to that of the whole human being, the human being who not only contains, when one ascends to his wholeness, that which today's external natural science observes, which in many ways the materialistic sense of the time regards as the only thing about man, but which encompasses body, soul and spirit.

Goethe started from natural science. What is called anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, on the one hand, starts from Goethe, in that it seeks to develop the kind of world view that processes and allows to be revealed in the spirit that which is as intimately related to reality as Goethe's idea of the Primordial Plant is intimately related to the individual plant; on the other hand, this spiritual movement is in complete harmony with the true scientific attitude of our time, not with some obscure mysticism. And it is in complete harmony with a genuine, honest and contemporary religious endeavor of the human spirit in modern times. In past years, I have often spoken in this place of the fact that anthroposophy, the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, by no means underestimates the importance of this natural science, with its enormous influence on modern culture. Indeed, it appreciates this natural science much better than many of those who want to stand on the ground of this natural science. Anyone who has not just adopted the popular prejudices about science and believes that they are a true scientist, but who has consciously immersed themselves in what science can achieve for the overall education of the human soul and mind, must say: if science, as it has developed over the past three to four centuries, but particularly in the course of the second half of the 19th century, would fully grasp itself in its own essence, would those who pursue it fully understand their own nature, then this natural science would already proclaim today of its own accord what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to proclaim. This natural science would speak of itself as human soul and human spirit, of that which is of eternal value in the human being.

Why does not natural science do this, although it so conscientiously, with such penetrating methods, penetrates into the outer sensual reality of nature? Why does not this natural science, on the other hand, rise in the same way as Goethe did for the plant world, to such an inner processing of the idea of nature that one becomes one with creative nature itself in one's inner being?

To answer this question, one must look back a little on the historical development of humanity in modern times. In natural science itself, great and powerful progress has been made. We need only go back to the work of Copernicus and Galileo, to see how much our understanding of nature has developed up to the present day. But at the same time, we must consider how little this scientific work was actually completely free in terms of its entire rule, in terms of its entire work within the intellectual life of modern civilization. It was not, because not a unified world view emerged in the course of the more recent development of humanity, which, in addition to free, independent natural science, also tried to penetrate into the nature of the external sense world. In the external sense world there were monopolies, monopolies for the knowledge of soul and spirit. The religious world views continued to retain certain ideas about soul and spirit. And they managed to get the public to admit, more or less voluntarily, that only they had anything to say about the human soul, about the human spirit.

Natural scientists, like other people, were influenced by what I would call a monopoly on knowledge about soul and spirit. And they limited themselves, because they did not dare to ascend from the knowledge of the world to the knowledge of the soul world, to the world of the spirit; they limited themselves to saying: Yes, natural science has its limits; it must limit itself to the sense world alone. A mind such as Goethe's, which was certainly imbued with a reverent religious impulse throughout his life, sensing a divine element in all of nature and in the whole world, always felt the necessity to shape his view of the physical, the , the soul and the spiritual.

But we must consider the situation of natural science, which is to some extent under the influence of the monopoly of knowledge just mentioned. We must consider what natural science can give to man through its own efforts. Then one will understand such a unified striving for knowledge and spirit as was present in Goethe. Those who do not allow themselves to be oppressed, I would say, by the commandment, 'Thou shalt not know soul and spirit', will undergo a spiritual education precisely through the way in which the modern spirit tries to penetrate the secrets of natural science. And this education then gives the stimulus to continue the development of the human spirit to higher levels of development than those that one simply has by being born a human being.

But to understand such stages of development, one needs a certain intellectual modesty. This intellectual modesty is very necessary for the present human being. This intellectual modesty must lead the present human being to say to himself: You are not only a being that may have developed from lower organisms in the process of the evolution of the world order to its present perfection, but you are a being that can develop itself further, has developed itself further in this life; so that the forces that you received at birth can experience a higher and ever higher education.

You see, you have to be able to say the following. You have to be able to look impartially at a five-year-old child holding a volume of Goethe's lyric poems. This five-year-old child will truly not be able to do much with Goethe's volume of lyric poems, at least not what the adult human being knows how to do with Goethe's volume of lyric poems. It will perhaps tear the volume apart or do something else with it. It must first grow up, then it will treat the volume of Goethe's lyric poems in the right way. Its development must be taken into account. For although as a five-year-old child everything contained in the volume of lyric poems is before the eyes of this human being, the possibility does not yet exist for this human being to draw out of this volume of lyric poems everything that could be in it for him. Thus the human being of the present must learn to feel his way in relation to the whole expanse of nature and the world. He must be able to say to himself with intellectual modesty: You stand before nature in such a way that, owing to your present development, it cannot give you what it truly contains within itself; one must be able to assume the possibility of taking one's development into one's own hands, so that, by attaining a higher level of development attain a higher level of development than that which one simply acquires by birth, by then being able to treat what one always has before one, what one believes to recognize - like the five-year-old child who does not yet know what to do with it - in such a way that it reveals to one all the secrets it holds. The very effort that one makes when applying the scientific method today, when applying it intensively, the depth that one penetrates, can lead one to feel that, out of the effort of the spirit, a power is awakened that enables one to undergo such a development. It is truly not due to modern natural science that people are so reluctant to admit that man can undergo development! No, it is due to the pressure that I have just characterized, and which one must only look at without prejudice in order to be able to devote oneself freely to what lies in the scientific treatment of the world itself. Then one will feel that the soul is inwardly awakened precisely by looking at nature in the modern sense, that forces arise in it that were not there before. As a rule, it is precisely today's scientists who do not bring themselves to awaken these forces. But if they could bring themselves to do so, they would be in a position to proclaim what is sought in the problem of the immortality of the soul, the eternity of the human spirit. Scientific thinking and a scientific attitude can lead to an inner awakening of the human spirit. And this can then be continued and systematically developed.

How this is possible, I have often outlined from this place and described in detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” and in the second part of my “Occult Science”. One can continue in full self-education that which one notices developing through modern scientific knowledge. One can apply to the spirit that which is called meditation, concentration of thought-life, of feeling, of will. One can develop that inner world of ideas to such an extent, or at least the ideas that one applies by observing stars, by working in a chemical-physical laboratory, by observing plants or people or animals externally; one can further develop the inner spiritual power that you apply by devoting your thoughts to such an extent that you only want to live in these thoughts until at least the thought leads the soul to grasp inner connections. You cannot grasp them if you do not allow your soul to develop such inner self-culture. It is possible to awaken an inner soul culture. You can indeed achieve such an awakening so that your ordinary life, which you live out in ordinary science, seems like a sleep from which you awaken. And from this awakening one can observe anew what surrounds one as the world.

That is one thing that the modern human being can undergo. If he applies natural science in the right, I would say Goethean way, he will come to a religious realization, to a real spiritual realization.

But also from the life of the modern human being itself emerges that leads to such a path and, I would say, to a corresponding goal for the future.

Those who look at history superficially, as it is usually presented superficially today, do not have the real history in front of them. One must look more inwardly at the historical life of men. One must be able to compare, for example, how a person in the 9th or 10th century AD was in his entire state of mind, and how a person of the present day is, even if he is a person living in the simplest, most primitive way; for even the simplest person today differs quite significantly from the person of the 9th or 10th century AD. I do not want to go back any further. People are definitely in a state of development. Today, we have to take the word “development” not only in the limited sense in which natural science usually takes it. It must be possible to use it in a much broader sense if one wants to penetrate into the essence of human development.

It must be possible to say that a number of centuries ago, that is, in the centuries I have just mentioned, people were much closer to each other within certain associations. Before this relatively short time, a person was connected to his neighbor through blood or tribal ties. This closeness, which brought people together into associations relatively recently, no longer exists in modern times. If you are unbiased, you can see this everywhere. Modern man is much more closed in on himself; I would go so far as to say that modern man has become much more of a loner in his soul. People in older times did not pass each other by as people in newer times do. People in newer times have become more estranged from each other. But I would like to say that something else arises from a spiritual conscience than arose for people centuries ago. It arises - again one can see it if one looks into one's own soul without prejudice and has a sense for such things, again one can perceive something like an inner voice - it arises as something like an inner obligation: You should now, since you no longer feel close enough to those immediately closest to you through blood or tribal ties, be able to come close to them through your soul development. You should take up his will in a real human love within you. You should not pass him by so that you can live socially with him, but you should be able to take up his will into yours, to make his thoughts your thoughts. You should be able to think, feel and want with his inner soul state in your inner soul state. You should be able to approach him spiritually and soulfully.

Just as engaging with natural science represents a kind of awakening for the soul, a kind of waking up in the ordinary consciousness that one otherwise has in everyday life and in ordinary science, if one only looks at ordinary science correctly, then this ordinary science gives, I would say, inner social duties that awaken more and more in man. It represents something that can be described in contrast to this awakening – I will have to express it somewhat paradoxically now, but some of the truths that must be incorporated into cultural life today must still sound paradoxical – it can be described as a feeling that overcomes us when we feel inwardly: we must be close to our neighbor in spirit and soul, we must live in his will, his thoughts; it is something that feels like losing ourselves in people. This losing of self in our neighbor in his spiritual and soul life, this devotion to our neighbor, is actually the basis of the much caricatured process of social feeling in the present.

And if one says: natural science can awaken us - this feeling, I would like to say, brings about the opposite state of mind, a strange state of mind, if one can only understand it. But just as little as one becomes aware of the awakening from the natural scientific method, just as little does one become aware of this feeling of empathy for one's neighbor. But modern man will be increasingly seized by it. Then, in contrast to the awakening through science, they will feel this like falling asleep, like resting in the surroundings, like the transition of one's own soul into the soul of the other. And just as the mysterious life of a dream awakens, full of life, out of natural sleep, so can awakening come out of this devotion to what is humanly and soulfully alive, which will increasingly take hold of modern humanity more and more as a duty of conscience. It is a kind of sleep in the human environment; but out of it rises something like a dream from natural sleep. And this dream from natural sleep can be compared to what will emerge more and more from the real, not the caricatured social feeling.

This dream will give rise to that which tells the human being: See, by immersing yourself in the will that is developing alongside your will, by becoming one with the thought that develops alongside your thoughts, you know how you are inwardly connected to this person.

Just as Goethe sensed something that was given to him through his idea of the primal plant, which he had to describe as a way of living into the whole power of the plant world itself, so one lives into the living environment of the human world, precisely through the most modern feeling. And again, something awakens in you from this living into the human world, which now arises like a new realization precisely from social life. You feel connected with the being of the other person. You feel as if something in you, as if a dream, is speaking through the being of the other person, bearing witness to you: you were already connected with this person in times gone by.

From this real experience, from this genuinely modern experience, what has already grown for individual favored spirits, such as Lessing, will grow for newer humanity as a real experience, as a real experience. If you want to be pedantic, even if it is in a higher sense, you can say: Lessing, such a person was certainly great, but in his old age, when he was already half demented, he wrote his 'Education of the Human Race' and came up with the crazy idea that humanity lives in repeated lives on earth. But for those who are not pedants but who can really penetrate the development of a man like Lessing, it is quite clear that such a man was only the forerunner for all those who will come to know this peculiarity, this mighty experience, which will arise out of the rightly understood social feeling, will arise out of it, full of life, like a dream; but it will be a dream full of life, not just like dreaming, the having been connected with people whom one meets again in earthly life, the having been connected in earlier earthly lives, with looking at the fact that one will be together with them again in later earthly lives. The experience of repeated earthly lives will develop out of the right social life and feelings of modern man.

Natural science, in its research, has already come to the conclusion that it no longer wants to be purely materialistic, at least in the case of some minds. But when the ordinary natural scientist wants to prove that something lives in man that is spiritual and soul-like, that is not merely an expression of the body, then he does not turn to such phenomena that he can prove, that he can present as one presents phenomena of the laboratory, the clinic and the like, but he turns precisely to the abnormal phenomena of human life. And I would like to say that it has become fashionable to examine the world of dreams, which awakens so mysteriously from its natural sleep, in order to point out how the human being also has a spiritual and a soul element within him. But that means examining everything that arises from the phenomena of suggestion, hypnosis, somnambulism, mediumship, and so on. Here too, it is tempting to confuse anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which seeks to draw on a sound knowledge of nature and a sound experience of the human world, with that which would like to lean on such phenomena as hypnotism, somnambulism and the like for a real exploration of the human spiritual and soul nature.

We can start from the world of dreams to get a little closer to these phenomena. We can point out how this world of dreams conjures up images before people, into the human soul, in the time between falling asleep and waking up, when the human being is not fully connected to his spiritual and soul life to the resting body. But the one who can properly study this dream world will never answer the question, “What is this dream world?” “This world of dreams is something that takes people beyond their ordinary external daily lives.” – Then, for the unbiased person, it is quite clear that all sorts of things must interfere in this dream world that come only from the lower, animal-like instincts of human nature.

Consider Just consider what a person is capable of doing in a dream, how he tends towards the lower drives, how he often tends towards a life of crime in what he imagines in his dreams. Man must say to himself: he is not transported into some higher spiritual realm when he dreams, but on the contrary, he has descended into the subhuman. Truly, it is a dream itself when people today want to claim, want to claim quite willingly, that in their dreams they are transported into a higher world. No, in a dream we are brought into a lower world than the one we see through our senses. And especially when a person is subjected to the influence of some suitable fellow human being, so that he is placed in the sleep-like state of hypnosis, one can even, I might say, exert irresponsible influences on the person by acting in a kind of sleep-like state. Then he regards a potato as a pear and eats it as a pear, purely because he is being suggested, this idea is being given to him: this potato is a pear. And still completely different things can be given to him! It is only the extreme state, which also otherwise exists as, I would like to say, not a completely permissible state, where one counts on the damping down of consciousness by the other person, and wants to persuade him, I would like to say, to rape ideas. For those who work in the sense of true spiritual science, the question arises: what is the state of mind in which a person is in a dream? What is the state of mind in which a person is when he is in such a hypnotic or mediumistic - which is also similar to a hypnotic state - when he is in such a hypnotic state and can experience such influences from any fellow human being or from other surroundings?

In a hypnotic state, it is indeed possible for thought transfers to occur over long distances; they can be demonstrated and proven experimentally. But the question arises as to what regions a person, with his entire human, physical, mental and spiritual being, is brought when one descends into these regions. One then brings him into a region that is subhuman, that represents the animalistic in man.

In fact, man is being hypnotized down, profaned down into that which plays in him as animalistic. And it is precisely through this that one gets to know the animal in man, which is nevertheless something quite different from the animal in the animal series; but one enters into the region of the subhuman.

In contrast to all that is presented here, the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here would like to lead to the attainment of the soul-spiritual in man, not by dampening what is already in man in order to seemingly feel something spiritual-soul, but that one develops up what is already there in the sense world to a higher insight by educating thought, will, feeling through meditation, concentration, as it is presented in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” Anthroposophical spiritual science aims to lead people beyond themselves, in a healthy way, beyond what is already there in sensory perception and ordinary science.

In this way, it enters into a region that is quite new compared to the external sensory world. This is very important in order to realize that man becomes dependent when he is placed in a hypnotic, a somnambulistic, or a mediumistic state, or even when he merely surrenders himself to the dream-world of fantasy, that he becomes dependent on his outer sensory environment in a way in a way that he is no longer dependent when he surrenders to normal sensory life; when we surrender to sensory life in an awake state, then our will can avert our eyes from something that we do not want to look at, can even pay a little attention to what we hear. In short, we are more powerful through our will when we relate to our surroundings through the senses. What is placed in the freedom of our will, what brings us into a free relationship when we perceive sensually in an awake state, becomes a relationship of compulsion, as it is in animality, when we are subdued in the waking state through hypnosis. In this state we do not discover the soul in man, but that in us which is animalistic and which is otherwise veiled by our free spirituality. What is otherwise veiled comes to the surface and dominates the person. Man is organized down to the animal. Only one does not recognize - since the human being does not behave like the animal, but expresses himself more spiritually - that it is nevertheless a matter of a downward organization to animality. In contrast to this, what anthroposophical spiritual science wants is to raise the human being to a higher level of consciousness, and only through this does one recognize that which presents itself at a lower level of consciousness. For when man develops his spiritual nature as I have described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” then a different relationship to the world also arises. But not the world that presents itself when we are hypnotized or in a mediumistic state, or when we become somnambulant, not the world of our ordinary sensory surroundings presents itself, but a new world, a spiritual world, a world which man has not known before, but which presents itself to him as a real one, just as the outer sense world presents itself to the senses as a real world.

You see, the human being can undergo this development by ascending from the human into a superhuman, just as he descends from hypnosis, from somnambulism, into an inhuman. This development can be undergone, and in this way the human being can ascend to an immediate perception, an immediate experience of the spiritual. In this way, the spirit can enter into human consciousness.

Now one can certainly say that in a book such as this one, “How to Know Higher Worlds,” it is shown which development one must undergo in order to comprehend that the true world, which one gets to know in this way, is the real one, as I have described it. But not everyone can become a spiritual researcher themselves, not everyone can enter this spiritual world themselves so that they can make statements from this spiritual world. However, the one who reaches that development, which, where one knows about the existence of a spiritual, a supersensible world, has always been called the world beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness, who enters this world, in which he has the spiritual around him as one has the sensual around him for ordinary consciousness, he makes his discoveries in the spiritual. He knows, for example, through these discoveries, that through that which appears today in man, by having him in a hypnotic, somnambulant state, by becoming a medium, his ordinary consciousness is subdued. What appears in man as the subhuman, that in truth represents an earlier stage of human development, and that which today develops as his sensory perception, his intellectual perception, that represents a later stage of development. And even that can be recognized - you can read about it in “Occult Science” - that today, when a person is put under hypnosis, it becomes apparent in an abnormal way how he was in his environment in an evolution of the earth world that lies far behind what geological external science presents to us as the evolution of the earth. One can even learn something about a much more spiritual state of the Earth, in which man also already existed and perceived his surroundings as he perceives his surroundings today when his consciousness is dulled. We recognize something of the past of the earth, which was not as the Kant-Laplace theory presents it, but was as a spiritual-soul being itself, in which man was embedded as a being of the senses. And on the other hand, man of the earthly future will recognize where the earth will be more spiritual again, where man, through his natural condition, will recognize as one recognizes today when one develops the soul further, as I have described it.

These knowledge, although it is a need of the newer, the modern man, will initially, I would say, only be attained by individual people. Individual people will enter into that region of life that lies beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness. So much is necessary if one really wants to come to these higher realizations. You see, I will give you a simple higher realization. But in this simple higher realization, the one who comes to it sees, for example, what the attainment of higher realizations, the discovery of higher realizations, is actually based on. In the usual story, it is not known today that basically the development of all humanity is just as internally conditioned as the development of the individual human being. Who would not find it ridiculous today if someone were to say: a person who lives to be seven, fourteen, twenty years old and so on is always the result of what he eats and drinks; what he eats causes the child to develop further and further from childhood on, making it an adult. Everyone knows that this is not the case, that a person goes through certain stages of development that even lead to certain leaps in natural development. We have such a clear leap, for example, around the seventh year, when the teeth change. Those who have an understanding of such things know what powerful revolutions take place in the human organism, for example, when sexual maturity occurs; later on, the changes are no longer as clearly and distinctly perceptible, but they are nevertheless present. Something develops in man that springs from the depths of his being. But it is the same for all of humanity. And so it was around the middle of the 15th century of our era that humanity took a leap in its development. The state of mind of people has become quite different. What I have characterized today as the fact that man feels lonely in relation to other people, that he is closed in on himself, that he no longer feels close to people through mere blood relationship as he used to. This growing independence, this becoming personal, has developed in step with the change of teeth, the onset of sexual maturity, in the individual human being, in the individual human organization. So, out of the whole evolution of mankind, something came in the middle of the 15th century. Such knowledge can only come from the spiritual world. And only when one has gained such knowledge, as an inner fact of experience, can one also have an opinion about the realities of repeated earthly lives, about the path of the spirit in human development, about the life of the spirit in natural existence, and so on.

But everything that can be done to arrive at such knowledge can be prepared for through meditation, concentration, and the devotion of thoughts, feelings, and impulses of the will, as described in “How to Know Higher Worlds.” One can develop and then say to oneself, “You are now ready to receive higher knowledge.” But then one must wait. The nature of spiritual science does not allow one to go out and collect knowledge; one can only prepare one's own soul; then one must wait. Then one must, I might say, wait for the moment, which one feels like a gracious effect from the spiritual world; one must wait until the illumination comes. That illuminations from the spiritual world occur in one person but not in another. That is why the truths arise in some people, who must communicate them to their fellow human beings. Even when such simple realizations arise, such as the turning point in the whole development of humanity in the 15th century, one must have become acquainted with them in one's pure soul life today. One must have learned to renounce the forcible conquest of the spiritual world; one must have worked only on the development of the soul in order to prepare oneself to receive the truths. Then they come, come at the appropriate moment. One must limit oneself to accepting them as such individual truths. One must only be clear about one thing: if one wants to draw consequences from them, as some people do, then one only brings forth caricatures of the spiritual world. Let us suppose that some man has made various inner discoveries; he comes to an idea; then he builds a whole system out of it, a system of nature, a system of history, an economic or a social system, or something. Men are not satisfied with making such individual spiritual experiences, but continue to draw their conclusions, building systems upon them. The one who is experienced in the spiritual world only works on his spiritual development so that he is ready to receive what reveals itself to him. Then he again accepts such an individual experience and waits for another to arise. Just as in the external, sensory reality, one must wait for the new experience to approach, one must always be inwardly filled with resignation, through which one can wait until the individual inner realizations arise. Otherwise one often produces figments of the imagination. And because most people only have such hazy fantasies, they think that the laws that come into play only come from fantasies. But in truth, no figments of the imagination arise when a person makes an effort to move forward. Only when he does not make an effort to gain ideas about the invisible does he arrive at figments of the imagination. But only if he strives to let all thoughts and development, all work in the spirit, aim solely at the spirit becoming more and more perfect in its cognitive faculty, then he can get sufficiently far; when he has learned to wait, then the discoveries in the spiritual world present themselves to him through that which is to be communicated in the spiritual world. Man can, of course, come to discoveries himself if his fate, I might say, is favorable in this respect and he learns to wait. But above all, he can come to recognize as truth what spiritual discoverers tell him, and to acquire the judgments through such an inner development that he can also he receives from the other person as the truth.

This is the secret of life that people will live when the spirit becomes their guide in the world of the senses and in the supersensible world. This will be the peculiarity that human coexistence will become more intimate. Today we see an illusory, a misunderstood socialism, we see how people want to work socially, but actually become more and more socially distant from each other. But then, when people realize that they can develop to the point where they can acknowledge what the other person comes to through the intimacies of his inner life, through which he makes spiritual discoveries, then they will be able to enrich themselves spiritually in their lives together. Then one will realize that it is precisely when the spirit will be the guide in the sensory realm of man that the social life will be able to receive its true meaning through this spirit.

If one really wants to consciously cross the threshold, penetrating into spiritual worlds presupposes that one, in a sense, becomes fearless in the face of the experiences of the spiritual world. The ordinary world of the senses allows us, I would say, to be cradled in a certain sense of security. But the one who crosses over from this world of the senses, over the threshold of the spiritual world, into the real spiritual worlds that underlie our world of the senses, experiences the fact that, as it were, the comfortable, firm ground is no longer under him. The spiritual world does not have the same forces of gravity and the like as this world of the senses. Within the spiritual world, man feels as if he were on a surging sea, and the security that one otherwise has through a fixed point of view in the external world of the senses, through ordinary life, this security must be provided by inner strength, through which one steers through the spiritual world.

Furthermore, you must bear in mind that when you enter this spiritual world, you are not initially adapted to it. You are adapted to a world as a human being between birth and death; you are not adapted to that which reveals itself as eternal to human nature when you enter the spiritual world. You are adapted to this world, to the world here. When one enters the spiritual world after having developed in order to enter it, one feels, as long as one is still in the body and has not yet passed through the portal of death, that one is not yet adapted for the whole process of development. One often feels this as a burning pain, I might say. Many shrink from it. Only if one prepares well to experience one thing or the other, can one rise above oneself, can one venture out onto the open sea of spiritual knowledge, on which one must have the guide, the spiritual guide within oneself.

But it is already possible for every person today, if they observe such things as I have presented in “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds », to see from his own conviction, not through reasoning, that what the spirit-discoverers, the modern seers, can really reveal to the world is based on truth and taken from reality.

Human coexistence will result from the fact that we can learn to see when the other person develops the ability to fully recognize what has been discovered. A spiritual coexistence will arise that will provide the basic power for a life that humanity will need in the future, especially if some structures in the social organism are to be overcome that have emerged from old forces and which can only be overcome by new spiritual forces that develop from soul to soul.

Precisely because the spiritual will become a reality for people, precisely because of this people will come closer together. One only has to consider whether a person discovers this or that in the spiritual world; that depends on the way his life is. Isn't it true that a person's knowledge of the external world of the senses differs depending on whether he was born in Europe or America or Asia. In the same way, every person's knowledge of the spiritual world differs, depending on whether he is a spiritual explorer, a seer. The knowledge of the other person, who in turn has different knowledge, is a supplement to his own knowledge. People will know different things from the spirit. But they will be able to complement each other.

In the face of real spiritual knowledge, as it is meant and presented here today, there is truly no shame or anything degrading if one person, in a truly social existence, simply accepts what is transmitted to him from the spiritual world, while another person is able to discover it. There is no need to fear that some man who becomes a spiritual discoverer will shine through immodesty within his community of fellow human beings. On the contrary, anyone who wants to penetrate into the spiritual world must first acquire what I have called intellectual modesty in the corresponding high power, and he knows very well, especially when he begins to know something of the spiritual world, how little he actually knows. There is no danger of those who recognize spiritual things becoming particularly proud. Those who talk about the spiritual world in empty phrases, who talk about the spirit without knowing anything about it, who talk about it through mere philosophical conclusions, they may become proud. But those who penetrate into the spiritual worlds also know how small they are as human beings in the face of this spiritual world, which wants to realize itself through them, and they truly know that they should neither be arrogant nor dogmatic.

Now I would like to mention something else. On the one hand, it must be said that for the sake of the future of humanity, it is necessary today that those who have not yet discovered certain truths listen to those who have discovered them, and that this is by no means shameful, degrading to freedom, it can also be pointed out that even the one who can perhaps recognize to a high degree, who is a seer, learns tremendous things from his fellow human beings. That is the remarkable thing, that in this direction one gains a completely new relationship to one's fellow human beings precisely through seership, precisely through the development of the soul-spiritual. We must not forget that things can reveal themselves even in a simple, elementary way of life. We experience them, we have the sense to penetrate into what, as mysterious soul-spiritual depths, are also revealed, for example, through a child. This gives us cause, if only we do not interpret it symbolically, if only we do not brood over it, but give ourselves to it in love, to recognize spiritually that afterwards, when the seer has exercised such love for the simple, the blessed moment comes for him to recognize something great. And every great, real spiritual seer will be able to tell you about those moments when, not through the interpretation of what he has just seen, but through the actual experience of this power within him, he has subsequently learned something different from some human being, by choosing the spirit as his guide. You get to know a person. What they share with you from their experiences, from their experiences, perhaps as the simplest, most primitive person, leads you into the depths of the soul, if you are able to recognize correctly, to find the right context. You make the discovery that what people experience, what people learn, can lead to a revelation in every person.

Yes, over the whole wide circumference of human beings, when we choose the spirit as our guide to the world of the senses and the supersensible world, every human being can give us something of what he has gained from the world, and something can be revealed in us that is absolutely necessary for his further development. We often notice that people themselves do not apply to their lives with their inadequate powers what they believe they have in their consciousness, in their conscious soul life; they think it is something highly unimportant because people are inadequate to see through their own judgment to see the supersensible. If one looks into the depths of the human soul, if one has acquired the sense in this way, as I have described it today, then, as a spiritual researcher, one can also gain so much in modern natural science, through the way in which natural science works in clinics, in observatories, in chemical and physical laboratories. If we accept what the researchers, with their power of judgment, often understand from their own very inadequate understanding when they describe their work and their results, which they themselves do not really achieve with what they say about it, cannot reveal in its depths, if we accept what we are told about the work in the scientific workshops, then deep natural secrets are revealed to us. And precisely through what spiritual science does in this field, what medicine so often strives for today, what it cannot achieve with its own means, what is connected with what I have described, that medical science and natural science can be fertilized by spiritual science.

But social life will also be able to be fertilized when the spirit can become a guide through the sensual world and into the supersensible world. And there is no need to believe that the religious element, which should be one of the fundamental forces of every human being, will suffer from the knowledge of spiritual life, from the fact that spiritual life is taking hold among us and that the spirit is becoming a guide for people in the world of people! No, quite the opposite is the case. Precisely what the religious denominations themselves have sought, they could not attain to because of the needs that have arisen from healthy scientific life, in that they have preserved old traditions. As a result, they could only achieve what they wanted to create as a belief in the soul and spirit through dogmatic commandments, while in truth, when people come to make the spirit their guide in the world of the senses, they will be at one with their soul life in the spiritual. But people who recognize the spirit, people who live with their ideas, with their perceptions in the spirit, they will also be able to worship the spirit, they will be able to find the way to truly religious worship. Those people who know nothing of the spirit will not be religious people even if they belong to a “word religion.” Those who have the spirit as their guide do not fear that Christianity could be damaged by the spirit being imbued with modern spiritual science. Oh no, those who say that spiritual knowledge should not come because it will undermine religious sentiment and Christianity show themselves to be small. He who truly recognizes the spirit cannot think so little of the power of the Christ impulse, which has been working in the world since the Mystery of Golgotha. He must think much higher. He must think in such a way that he says to himself: Whatever insights may come, the more one penetrates into the spirit, the better one will learn to worship that which can only be elevated in its significance for people by being recognized ever better and better recognized.

Not spiritual science will hinder the real religious development of mankind, but the desire to remain stuck beyond real knowledge and spiritual progress will have a hindering effect on religious development. And it could be that in the not too distant future, many people will realize where the obstacles to religious development actually come from. They will come from the fact that the denominations no longer want to live with what is present in the innermost human being as a need.

You see, I just wanted to show how the spirit can become man's guide through the world of the senses and into the supersensible world. I can only do this in a sketchy way in such a lecture as I was allowed to give here.

Man comes to know that within him which is eternal and immortal, which passes through birth and the gates of death, precisely by developing the spirit within him to which he belongs. He comes to recognize that through his soul and his spirit he belongs to the spiritual world, just as he belongs to this world through his body.

Today, however, the fact that I have characterized is fully alive in the depths of the subconscious. But the one who sees through things today knows that there are many people who long for such a spiritual fellowship; but in people's consciousness this is often not the case. In the broadest circles, I might say, there is still an aversion, an antipathy to such spiritual leadership. But anyone who is inside such a spiritual movement looks at the way in which spiritual movements or even external cultural movements have been met with in the course of the historical development of humanity! And if today one is wholeheartedly attached to the idea that something like the Dornach building, the School of Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum, as an external representative – it is not yet finished, it is only just being built, but hopefully it will be finished in the not too distant future – that something like this should stand as a visible sign of the spiritual movement that I have characterized in today's lecture, then one has to remember history in the face of various disparaging judgments.

Imagine what today's world would look like if, at the time when Columbus wanted to equip a few ships to steer westward into regions of which he truly knew nothing, and which the others knew nothing about either, if the opinion had triumphed. You can read about it in history that this opinion was very much present – that it regarded Columbus's intention as folly, as madness! But in the end, he won. Imagine what would have happened in modern times if it had not been the cleverness of those who refused Columbus's ships that had won, but the “madness” of Columbus that had won. For many people, this madness of Columbus is what anthroposophical spiritual science wants. Even today, for many people it is madness. But this madness does not just include that which is only a spiritual realization; no, this madness includes such a development of the spirit through which one also becomes a truly practical person, through which one becomes such a person that one can practically attack a voyage of discovery into real life. A real voyage of discovery into life is to be inaugurated through that for which this Dornach building is to be the external representative.

Therefore, many people may see madness in what is to be undertaken with it. Those who, through inner insight, have connected their hearts and minds with what is to be a symbol of the beginning of the spirit's guidance in the development of humanity through the sensual world and into the supersensible world, know that out of this “madness” must develop that which many people, and ultimately all people of the civilized world, must seek, so that we may emerge from some of what is sensed by the unprejudiced as chaotic, as cultural confusion, in order to arrive at that which numerous people and numerous souls long for after all, long for more than the contemporaries of Columbus longed for India in his time, long for the light that is to dawn for humanity, so that it can truly strive towards higher cultural goals in humanity.

It is still considered in many circles today to be a sign of a particularly enlightened mind to reject the possibility of penetrating into the spiritual, into the supersensible world, through human knowledge. It can be said that in some circles, especially in the scientific way of thinking, a front is already being made against this so-called enlightenment. But however much may be said from this side about spirit and the supersensible world from this or that point of view, it cannot be said that a really satisfactory way into the world of spirit is already being tried or striven for in wider circles.

That there is the possibility of penetrating into the supersensible world, not merely through an indefinite, scholastic belief, but through a genuine and true continuation of that way of thinking which has made modern scientific thinking so great, to penetrate into the supersensible world, that is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks, which - as I already said here a few weeks ago - is to find its external representation through the Goetheanum in Dornach, as a proof to be presented to the world, to be fathomed through the experience of the spirit.

If I am to explain the path of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from a different perspective than the one I have already presented in numerous lectures here, I would like to begin today by talking about something that seems rather abstract and perhaps far-fetched to some.

It is no coincidence that the Goetheanum takes its name from Goethe. In a certain respect, Goethe's entire world view, his entire way of thinking, forms the starting point for a more recent spiritual-scientific endeavor. And even if one can say that what one finds in Goethe still presents itself as a beginning, it is perhaps best to illustrate the fundamental principles by starting from certain simple thoughts or ideas of Goethe's. Well known in wider circles, but unfortunately still too little appreciated today, is what Goethe called his metamorphosis doctrine, in which we also find his idea of the primal plant.

By this archetypal plant, Goethe does not mean a simple, tangible plant structure, as a modern natural scientist would say, but rather something that can only be grasped and experienced in the mind. At the same time, however, he means by this archetypal plant something that is not found in any single plant, but that can be found in every single plant in the wide plant kingdom of the earth. He therefore assumes that, I would say, within every plant that can be perceived by the senses there is a primal plant that can be grasped supernaturally and experienced in the spirit.

He also imagines the same, although he has not explained it so clearly, for the others, for the non-plant organisms. And even if Goethe, partly out of his artistic attitude, developed this idea of the primal plant, it must be said that his main aim was to find something scientific in the very best sense through something like the primal plant, something that can be a guide for man as an idea, a spiritual guide through the whole vast world of plants.

When Goethe traveled through Italy to clarify and mature his world view, he once wrote to his friends in Weimar, who were well aware of what he actually wanted with his primal plant, that the image of the primal plant had emerged for him again, particularly in the rich, abundant plant world of Italy. To begin with, in abstract terms – we need not, as we shall see in a moment, adhere to the abstract – to begin with, in abstract terms, he says: such a primal plant must exist, for how else could one find in the whole manifold plant kingdom that each individual being is really a whole plant? – As I said, that is expressed in abstract terms, but Goethe expresses himself about this primal plant in much more definite, much more forceful terms. For example, he says: “When one has grasped this primal plant in one's mind, then one can, from the living image of this primal plant, create images of individual real plants that have the possibility of existing.”

One must only look in the right sense at what is actually being said with such words. Goethe wants to arrive at an idea of the nature of plants in his mind, and he wants to be able to form a spiritual image of a plant from his Primordial Plant. This plant is a single plant, not like a plant that he sees with his senses, but rather, he invents a plant that is added to the plants that exist in the senses. This plant does not exist in the senses, but it would have the possibility of existing in the senses if the conditions were right. What does this actually point to? It points to the fact that man, through his soul, can become so immersed in the sensual reality and, in this immersion in the sensual reality, can experience the spiritual that is within the sensual reality in such a way that he grows completely together with this spirit, which lives and weaves everywhere in nature, creating.

The greatness of Goethe's world view is that it aims at this immersion in reality, and that it is convinced that, to the extent that one immerses in this reality, one comes upon the spiritual reality, so that one spirit of reality, which can then be one's guide through the entire confusing diversity of the sensual world itself.

Now, what Goethe strove for can be extended to the entire world surrounding man and to man himself. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has set itself the task of extending this way of thinking to everything that confronts man from outside and from within. It is thus the opposite of all unclear obscurantism, the opposite of all unclear mysticism. It strives for what Goethe claimed for his world view: to delve into the spiritual world with mathematical clarity and transparency.

This spiritual science now feels completely in harmony with modern science, although it goes far beyond the science of modern times. One has only to have passed through this natural science to realize how this spiritual science must spring from this natural science itself. Let us take a look at what this newer natural science is actually striving for. It sees its real goal as finding a knowledge of the things surrounding man, of the mineral, vegetable and animal world, and even of man himself, in which nothing is said about any subjective feelings or ideas of man himself. This natural science, in particular, from its newer point of view, that of experiment, to which it has rightly placed itself as a natural science, seeks to explore nature in such a way that the individual phenomena and processes of nature themselves reveal their essence, their laws, so that man does not weave anything into what he calls knowledge of nature, from what he finds within himself.

This is how what has been presented as natural science for three to four centuries, but particularly in the 19th century, differs from the knowledge of nature in earlier times. Anyone who has studied the way in which nature was understood in earlier times knows that people took what they formed in their imaginations and projected it onto natural phenomena, and to a certain extent they extracted from natural phenomena what they had first projected into them. That this does not happen, that man allows nature to speak to him quite impartially, that is the endeavor of modern natural science.

But one cannot help but let the spirit do the research when researching nature. One cannot help but apply that which one has within oneself as a life of thoughts and ideas, and which is of a spiritual nature, to the context of natural phenomena. Now one can take one of two paths. The ordinary scientific worldview of recent times has taken one path; but anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would like to take the other.

When science develops its ideas, these ideas, which pure as I have described them, are to be gained from nature, then with these ideas, I might say, science can contemplate itself; then it can ask itself: What is the nature, what is the value of the ideas that we apply to external nature? – This is not done by the newer natural science. Modern natural science is limited to discovering everything about nature that does not answer the question: What is the human being actually? That is the characteristic feature of all, one might say, insightful natural scientists, the emphasized point, that they say: Yes, we can explore much about the physical world outside and within us - but this does not answer the question: What is the human being itself? And again and again we must emphasize: in its efforts to understand nature, natural science sets up a picture of the world in which the human being is not included as soul and spirit. Natural science, honestly based on the present standpoint, has no answer to the question of soul and spirit.

The question as to why this is so must be answered historically. Natural science itself does not know why it does not advance to the knowledge of soul and spirit, why it stops despite its admirable results on the outer nature before soul and spirit, why again and again natural scientists arise who say: Yes, if natural science were to speak of soul and spirit, it would transgress its limits. - One believes to speak about nature without prejudice. One does not speak without prejudice, because what has become established over the centuries as a certain way of thinking weighs heavily on natural science, actually on the way of thinking of modern natural science. And this pressure consists in the fact that certain confessional currents have claimed a monopoly on the truths of soul and spirit.

If we go back a few centuries, we find precisely in the period in which modern science had its early days, how religious denominations claim their monopoly on dictating the truths about soul and spirit. In the face of this claim to monopoly, modern science recoiled. Natural science of modern times has penetrated with magnificence into the outer nature; but not because one would have recognized through this penetration into the outer nature that one could not ascend to soul and spirit, one has refrained from this ascent, but because it was so firmly rooted in the unconscious human views that the monopoly claim of the confessional religions must be taken into account. That is why this belief was transformed into an apparent proof that it is impossible to penetrate the soul and spirit.

Anyone who has seriously studied the scientific research methods of modern times, and who has then inwardly processed that that arises as ideas about external nature with the exception of the actual essence of man, knows that the other path, which is taken by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, must be further pursued into the future of humanity. If natural science understood itself, if it did not live under the pressure hinted at, then, precisely because it strives to be a natural science that disregards the subjective element of the human being, it would come to the Goethean principle of growing together with the spirit that is spread out in the phenomena and facts and beings of nature. And if it understood itself, modern natural science would choose of its own accord precisely that which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as a continuation of the natural science direction, must claim for itself.

Indeed, what must be essentially supported is that which can be cultivated through natural science in terms of inner imagination, of thinking power, through careful inner spiritual methods. And it is on the training of such inner spiritual methods that everything through which the spiritual science referred to here wants to find its way into the supersensible, into the spiritual world at all, is based.

Today, people perhaps imagine far too lightly what is meant here by this path into the supersensible world. One thinks that it means something like an inner spinning, a surrender to all sorts of ideas, through which one weaves out all sorts of things that the nature of things should be. One might imagine that this is easy compared to the difficulty of the experimental method or compared to the methods used in observatories and clinics. But if you read something like I have tried to present in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” or in my “Occult Science”, you will see that it is not just any kind of spinning around in inner ideas, but a strictly lawful, inner soul work of the spirit into the spirit. For true spiritual science can never be the view that one can penetrate into the spirit through external methods of experimentation, but true spiritual science must uphold the view that only the spirit in man can find the spirit of the world.

What man has to accomplish in his inner being, I have often referred to here in these lectures and in my books as meditation, as concentration. Today I would just like to point out that this work of concentration, this meditation work, is a purely inner soul work. But what is the goal of this inner soul work? What is the goal of this work with only the inner soul forces, this devotion to the pure workings of the soul and spirit in the inner being of man?

You know that we perceive the world through our senses as we live in it, and then we process this world. This is also how science works. We then process this world by reflecting on it, by revealing its laws, by forming ideas about it. But you also know that this process of forming ideas leads to something else, to something that is intimately connected with the health of our personal human being. This process of forming ideas about the world is connected with the fact that we can retain impressions of the world, as we say, through our memory, through our power of recollection. People so easily overlook this power of memory, this memory of the human being, because it is something so everyday for them. But that is precisely the peculiar thing about the real pursuit of knowledge: that which is often everyday for people must be understood precisely as that in relation to which the most important, the most significant questions must be raised.

When we perceive the world of the senses, form ideas about it, and after some time seemingly bring these forth from our inner being again, so that we remember events we have experienced, then there is much that is unconscious in these memories, in this memory process. Just think how little you are actually in control of your memory with your will, how little you can command, so to speak, your power of remembrance. Consider above all how little you are able to think of this memory while you are perceiving outwardly. Or is it the case that when a person looks out into the world with his eye, when he hears sounds with his ear, he simultaneously ensures that representations are present that make reminiscence possible? No, for that to happen the human being would have to consciously exercise another power alongside perception and the inner workings of the senses. In reality, this does not happen in ordinary life. I would like to say that memory with its power runs alongside the outer life. But it is the one that works subconsciously, so to speak, that helps determine all life in the outer world of the senses, so that we support this life through our memory through life. This power must be brought up from the unconscious. In other words, we cannot bring up from the depths of our soul what we unconsciously practise in our power of remembrance by merely remembering our experiences, but by trying to bring the power, which we otherwise do not know at all, which, as I said, runs alongside, I have said, to such a conscious clarity as otherwise only the external sensory perception is, by bringing this power up from the subconscious depths and weaving and living in what is otherwise in the subconscious of memory. If we use the power of recollection not for memory, not for remembering, but to make ideas and images that are otherwise only kept alive by the power of recollection consciously present in our mind, we strengthen something in our mind that, when the necessary time comes, allows us to experience a very different awakening from the one we experience every morning. If you consciously work again and again in the way that otherwise only memory works, then you experience something of a new awakening in the soul. One experiences something like the appearance in the soul of a completely different person than the one who otherwise walks through the world of the senses. One cannot reach the spirit through theorizing. Every philosophical argument that wants to reach the spirit through mere reasoning has nothing else in mind than the word or words about the spirit. The spirit wants to be experienced. And it can only be experienced by our raising up what would otherwise remain in the subconscious, in the deeper layers of our human soul, so that it lives in us with the same luminous clarity as what we see through our eyes, what we hear with our ears, and that in this brought-up conscious will lives in such a way as the conscious will lives when I direct the eye from this wall over to that wall, in order to turn the gaze away from what I see here and to look at what I can see there. By availing myself of my senses, the conscious will lives in this availing of the senses. This will must fully penetrate

this inner soul work, then one comes to something that is a continuation of the ordinary soul activity of man, which relates to the ordinary soul activity of man just as the waking day life relates to the life of sleep, from which at most the dream speaks .

That there is something in human nature that can be brought up and becomes a new organ of knowledge, that becomes what Goethe calls the soul eye, the spiritual eye, that is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to demonstrate through gradual familiarization with such inner soul work. In this way it will express what natural science is unable to express because it lives under the pressure I have indicated. But this pressure must, because humanity longs for it - one can notice this longing if one is only unbiased enough to do so - this pressure must fall away from the knowledge of humanity.

So you see that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science does not want to be some kind of false mysticism, some kind of obscurity, but a truly genuine continuation of what is known in natural science. And especially those who have enjoyed a scientific education will find it easier to concentrate and meditate on thoughts, because they are accustomed to methods and ways of research that disregard the subjective side of the human being and enter completely into the objective. If we now apply what we have been trained in to natural science, especially to meditation, then we eliminate all human arbitrariness, then we bring something into meditation, into the inner work of the soul, which is an objective lawfulness, like that of nature itself. It is precisely by taking the way of thinking and imagining of natural science into the human being that the chaotic, unclear self-knowledge, which is striven for with many a complicated and wrong mysticism, where one only wants to brood over one's own inner being, is overcome. Working in one's own inner being, which proceeds in every step of this work in the same way that only the most conscientious natural scientist proceeds, by extending his power of judgment over that which unfolds before his eyes or before his instruments, stands in opposition to this uneducated brooding into one's own inner being.

That is one side of it. I would like to say that it is the side that points to the awakening of special powers of knowledge. The ordinary power of memory will certainly not be there in those moments when one wants to explore the spiritual directly, because this power of memory itself has undergone a metamorphosis. It has become a spiritual eye that can perceive the spirit. With the usual conclusions that today's popular logic has, one cannot penetrate to the real spirit. Whoever wants to speak of a real penetration to the spirit must point to the real existing forces that lead to this spirit. And one such real existing force is the power of remembrance. But this power of remembering must be transformed, it must become something quite different. Every other penetration into the spirit leads at the same time into the dark, because human will is thereby eliminated, and with it the most important part of the human being itself. Just as we regard as fantastic what arises from, I might say, organic foundations of our mind, and as we do not call what we have no control over a true memory, so the true spiritual researcher will accept no soul-content for his spiritual research that he does not completely permeate with the light of his will.

So much for one side, the life of imagination, as used in spiritual research. But something else in man can be used and must be used if one really wants to find the way into the supersensible, into the spiritual world. And just as spiritual science has been challenged by the spirit of natural science through the way of thinking of modern times, so on the other hand spiritual science has been challenged by human life in modern times. Anyone who follows the development of the human soul through the last few centuries without prejudice, not with the preconceptions of today's historian, but just without prejudice, can see that a tremendous change occurred in the state of human souls around the middle of the 15th century, admittedly only within the civilized world, but just within this civilized world. It is a mere prejudice to believe, merely by looking at the external historical facts, that a human soul in the civilized world in the 8th or 9th century A.D. had the same inner makeup as the human souls of today. Of course, there are still backward human souls today who more or less still stand on the standpoint of the 8th or 9th century; but they are instructive precisely because they also lead us outwardly back to that time. But on the whole we can say: One need only look at human life in accordance with experience. A tremendous change has taken place, which has become ever more pronounced since the mid-15th century. If we want to describe it in more detail, we have to say that if we go back to that point in time, we find that people's relationship to one another was very different from what it is today and from what unconscious human forces are striving for in the future of humanity. Whatever may be said against it out of certain prejudices, something is being striven for in relation to the relationship between human beings that has its beginning at the time referred to. In earlier times, people were close to one another through blood ties, through tribal ties, through everything that made them related to other people through their organism, or what made them related to other people through the organic connection that manifests itself, for example, in sexual love. Do we not see, if we only want to see, that in place of the old blood relationship, in place of the old clan relationship, the old family relationship, the old tribe relationship, there is more and more that works from person to person in such a way that it passes from the soul, from the willing soul of one person to the willing soul of another person? Do we not see that the development of modern times makes it more and more necessary for man to approach another human being through something quite different from his mere physical organism? We see that since the time indicated, the sense of personality has grown, that the human being has become more and more inward-looking and inward-looking, and thus also more and more lonely and lonely. Since that time, I would say that the human being lives more and more isolated in himself with his soul life. The soul life closes itself off from the outside world. The blood no longer speaks when we are face to face with our neighbor. We must make our inner life active. We must live ourselves over into the other. We must merge spiritually into the other. What may be called the social principle, the social impulse of modern times, is very much misunderstood, especially in those circles that today rightly believe themselves to be socialist. One sees the social impulse emerging, but even today only a few circles know what it actually consists of.

It consists in the fact that more and more in the lonely human being the impulse awakens to live himself over into other people, spiritually and inwardly through his will, so that the neighbor becomes the one who becomes it through our consciousness, not through our blood, not through our organic connection. There we stand face to face with people and have the necessity to live ourselves into them. What we call goodwill today, what we call love today, is different from what was called by that name in times gone by. But by living ourselves into other people in this way, it is as if everything that pulsates in us, that lives in us as will, would take up the will of the other. We enter completely into the other with our soul. We go out of our body, as it were, and enter into the body of the other. When this feeling increasingly takes over, when this feeling, permeated by love, I would say, as modern love of one's neighbor, spreads among people, then something arises from this shared experience of the will, of the entire soul life of the other person, which is a real life experience. Today, many people could already have this life experience if they did not allow it to be clouded by prejudices. Where it occurs, it is rejected with truly unsound reasons. One need only remember a person like Lessing. At the end of his life, when everything that he could produce in the way of human greatness had passed through his soul, he still wrote his “Education of the Human Race,” which culminates in the acknowledgment of the fact of repeated human lives on earth. There are higher philistines, as there are higher daughters, and they have their judgment ready for such a thing. They say: Yes, Lessing was clever all his life; but then he became decrepit and came up with such complicated ideas as those of repeated lives.

But these repeated lives are not a fanciful not a fanciful idea; they are what we experience when we do not stand before another human being merely by virtue of blood relationship or organic belonging, but when we can truly live our way into what lives in his soul. There, in response to what is approaching us, the spirit of one person meets the spirit of another person, and from this arises, as we know from experience, that which can be said: what is forming a bond here for your soul, for your spirit, with the other person, did not come about through this life. What arises in the blood has come about through this life. But what arises in the spirit as a necessity has come about through something that preceded this life. Anyone who really follows the development of modern human life since the middle of the 15th century – it is still shrouded in mystery for the widest circles of humanity – will come to the idea of repeated earthly lives through living with people. And what comes to light then occurs, I might say, like a dream. I say “like a dream” for the following reason: When we fall asleep, we fall asleep into an unconscious. Then, out of this unconscious, this or that emerges as a dream. One can compare this falling asleep into the unconscious with submerging into the souls of our fellow human beings, as I have just characterized it. Then, out of this immersion, I would like to say, not figuratively, but very literally, out of this sleeping into our fellow human beings, something also emerges at first, like the dream of repeated earthly lives, and draws our attention to the fact that something like this must be sought in order to understand life, in order to find the way through the world of the senses. And what shines out like a dream from our social life becomes a complete certainty when we train the human will in the same way as I have described for memory. But just as memory must become a fully conscious power, so the will must, on the other hand, discard what completely directs it in ordinary life.

What then directs our will, our desires, our longings in ordinary life? If our desires did not arise out of the organic life of our body, the will would, so to speak, have nothing to do with them. He who, through experience, has penetrated to the will, knows that this will is based on desire. But we can also detach that which is the actual power of the will from our desires. To a certain extent we do detach it in our social life. But that only draws our attention to what is actually important. We detach it in social life by loving our neighbor, by being absorbed in our neighbor, not desiring him like a piece of meat. We do not love our neighbor out of our desires, but rather it is an application of a desireless will. But this disinterested will can also be developed through a special training. This happens when we do not merely want what can be achieved in the outer world, what one or the other desire is after, but when we apply the will to our human being and his development itself. We can do that. We all too often abandon ourselves to the way life carries us. But even after we have outgrown school, that is, when others are no longer providing the education, we can still practice continuous self-education and self-discipline. We can take our own spiritual being into our own hands, we can set out to achieve this and that. One can resolve, if life has led one in a certain direction up to a certain point, to become knowledgeable in this or that area of life, to transfer one's judgment to another area of life. In short, one can turn one's will around. While otherwise the will always works from the inside out, as desire dominates the outside, the will can be turned around, turned inward. By practising self-discipline through our will, by trying to make ourselves better and better in one direction or another, we apply the actual dispassionate willpower. And what you find in my book How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds and in the second part of my Occult Science, aims, in addition to the other thing I have already characterized, to show that man applies such a culture of the will to himself, so that he penetrates more and more, I might say, with his will into himself. But then, when these two forces work together, the power of remembrance brought out of the unconscious, which then seizes the human will, then the human being knows himself inwardly as spirit, then he knows that he has seized the spirit inwardly in a purely spiritual way, then he knows that he does not do this through the organs of the body. Then he knows what spiritual action in the spirit is like, then he knows what it means: soul and spirit are independent of the body.

One cannot prove that the soul and the spirit are independent of the body, because in ordinary life they are not. In ordinary life, the spirit and soul are entirely dependent on the body. But there lives in us another human being who is independent, and we can bring him up from his depths. Only then does that which reigns in man as the eternal reveal itself to us.

You see, there is nothing wrong or complicated about mysticism in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is in it thoroughly that which can be expressed in a completely clear way, but which one only comes to when one really explains it inwardly and does not just say: You shall develop your inner being, you shall look into yourself, you shall find the God in your own nature. In anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, reference is made to very specific forces that are to be disciplined in a very specific way. That is what is important here. In this respect, however, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is a continuation of modern scientific and social endeavors. In the field of science, one can no longer completely ignore the spirit. And so it has come about that, because one did not want to eliminate the pressure that I characterized at the beginning, one wants to use the same methods with which one, I might say, ducks under the characterized pressure, to also prove today that there is something in man like a spirit, like a soul. And that is what has occurred in those who do not see the whole situation in the cultural development of the present.

We owe all the hopes that are based on certain justified grounds to this striving for the spirit, but which moves in the wrong direction. that are based on certain legitimate grounds, the hopes that many a naturalist has with regard to hypnotism, with regard to the possibility that one human being may suggest some idea to another when their consciousness is dulled. We owe to this quest the hopes that many place in the study of the dream life and the like, and we owe to this quest, to get to the spirit – because man cannot help but seek the spirit after all – the whole error of spiritualism.

What is actually being sought in this area? Well, take something like what happens in the case of hypnotism or mediumship. What actually happens there? There, that which is normal human consciousness, through which man is firmly grounded in ordinary life, is subdued. When a person is hypnotized, that which is his conscious ability in ordinary life is subdued. In a sense, other forces then take effect on the unconscious or semi-conscious or quarter-conscious person, which may come from the person next to him or from others. There, without doubt, all kinds of interesting things come to light. Of course, all kinds of interesting things also come to light through mediumship; but what comes to light is achieved on the basis of a dimming, a lulling of the ordinary consciousness. This is never the aim of the research methods of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. The research method of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science says: Man has advanced in his development to the consciousness that he has in ordinary life through his senses in the waking state; if one wants to recognize something new about man that is beneficial, one should not paralyze this consciousness, one should not dampen it down, but on the contrary, one should develop it further, as I have indicated. One should increase clarity, guide sensory perceptions into the power of memory by applying the will, which otherwise arises only from dull desire, to self-discipline. Because one does not go this way, because one has not the courage and the perseverance for this way, one belittles the will and believes that in this way one will arrive at a knowledge of the soul, of the spiritual in man.

But what does one arrive at by taking away man's other abilities? By putting people to sleep, one arrives at an external way of looking at people that does not show them as spiritual-soul beings, but shows them precisely in their subhumanity, in that which makes them more like animals than they are in ordinary life. It must be strictly emphasized that through all these sometimes well-intentioned research methods, the human being is led down into the subhuman. If I hypnotize someone and give him a potato, but by the power of suggestion make it clear to him that it is a pear, and he bites into the potato with the consciousness of biting into a pear, then I darken his higher consciousness in such a way, I act on him in such a way as is done to the instinct of the animal. The only difference is that even in his subhuman aspects, man is not entirely an animal, but that his animal nature expresses itself in a different way. That is the essential point. And if one seeks to find any kind of thought-transference in a state of sopor or in a diminished consciousness, then one is dealing with an instinctive activity that has been translated into the human, that is to say with something subhuman. Anyone who lumps together what wants to be anthroposophically oriented spiritual science with these things defames anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For here it is not a matter of leading man down from his ordinary state of consciousness into something subhuman, but of leading him beyond himself, so that the ordinary consciousness continues to have an effect and a higher consciousness is added to this ordinary consciousness.

This is precisely what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science shows through its research method: that the human being we have here in the sense world is based on an animal, subhuman instinct; and this can be evoked and demonstrated by putting ordinary consciousness to sleep. When it expresses itself differently than in ordinary consciousness, the spiritual science just meant here can follow this other expression. It characterizes this other expression, which always takes place in hypnosis, in the mediumistic state, as a subhuman, as a descent into animality. But at the same time it shows that what lives in man as animality is not the same as in the ordinary animal. The method of research of which I have spoken here, as of the spiritual science meant here, knows that what comes to light through such experiments as in hypnotism and mediumship is something that still lives in man today from earlier human conditions. It is precisely because this spiritual science does not arrive at a subjectively colored, but at an objective self-knowledge, that it can gain a judgment about what it actually is that occurs through hypnosis and through mediumship. This is something that does not belong to this earthly world.

If we follow the development of the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms in the earthly world with the means of spiritual science, and follow it in its relation to man, then we find that man, as he is now, is adapted to the earth precisely because he has his present consciousness. The states of consciousness that occur in sleep, in hypnosis, and in mediumship are not states of consciousness, are not human powers that could arise from man being adapted to the earth; that arises from such an adaptation that was peculiar to man before the earth became earth. And it is precisely through such states that research into the conditions of the earth itself is rejected, but these preceded the present state of the earth.

If one now investigates further how the present state of the earth is connected with the animal and plant world, one sees that man carries something within himself that does not make him appear adapted to today's earthly existence, but that the animal and plant world is adapted to today's earthly existence. From this we can see that man certainly existed in primitive conditions, which, if brought about today, would have nothing but a deadening effect on his consciousness, before the present-day animals existed in their present form. So that we have to say: Man did not ascend from the animal world, but man was, albeit with such states of soul and spirit as we bring up, as they occur in animal-like ways in the characterized states, present before the earth came to this present planetary state.

I cannot go into the details for you today, which you can read about in my books. But I wanted to at least hint that precisely by observing certain things on which hopes are pinned today for knowledge of the present nature of man, a way is shown to gain insight into pre-earthly times and into the nature of man in such times. But in the same way, the fact that we can evoke states of consciousness that lie above the present state of consciousness adapted to the earth indicates how we will live in these higher states of consciousness when the earth is no longer our dwelling place.

These things open up to the inner eye. One cannot say: These things cannot be proved, just as little as you can prove that camels exist. You must have seen them, or someone must have seen them, and then you know that camels exist. In this way one cannot prove the supersensible with the ordinary power of judgment, which is valid only for the ordinary world. One must show how one comes to see the supersensible. From this vision of the supersensible, that which indeed has an effect on the sense world but can never be seen in the sense world itself, arises.

So, of course, it could now be said: Yes, you show us how some people succeed in making the spirit their guide through a supersensible vision through the sense world and into the supersensible world. But can all people see into the supersensible world in this way? The situation is as follows: if you allow the inner training and inner development that I have described in the books already mentioned to take effect in you, and which you undertake for your soul, you will inevitably come to recognize, through your own powers of judgment and your own healthy human understanding, which is then developed, what spiritual researchers can discover in the spiritual world. But just as there are individual researchers in the physical world who investigate one thing or another, and we have to accept what they have found, so in the future development of humanity there will be individual spiritual researchers who investigate this or that in the spiritual world. Whether they can research something depends on whether, in certain moments of life, for which they have been waiting, without their having done anything to bring it about (for one can only become a waiting being through the development of the soul), that which presents itself as a spiritual fact becomes recognizable. One could say, using a religious expression, that this must come about through grace. This grace will intervene for the man as a spiritual researcher just as, let us say, this or that experience in the material world intervenes for one person and not for another. It will be so, because certain facts will always bring individual people from the spiritual world.

In order to bring these facts to light, various things are necessary; it is not only necessary to have gone through what is written in the books mentioned, to be able to fully understand what the spiritual researcher expresses, but something is needed that can be described as a quality of the human being as “fearless” to a very high degree in the face of the spiritual world. People are so reluctant to enter the spiritual world because they are actually afraid of the unknown, as a person is always afraid of the unknown. The spiritual researcher must become fearless. And on the other hand, he must acquire the quality of being able to suffer, to feel pain; because a real discovery from the spiritual world cannot be achieved without a certain pain, without a certain suffering. You will understand that this must be so if you simply imagine that the state of spiritual vision is not adapted to ordinary earthly conditions, is basically just as little adapted as our soul is adapted to our diseased organism, which hurts. If one really places oneself with the developed soul in the facts of the spiritual world, then one is in a world for which one is not initially organized. One penetrates into a world that cuts, that burns. This must be experienced. And one only penetrates to the facts if one really approaches them with the attitude that consists in applying everything that the soul can develop, but that one then waits until, in certain, I would like to say once more, gracious moments, the spiritual facts approach

This should not be imagined as something that approaches one like a fantasy idea, but rather as an experience of a profound intensity in relation to the inner being of the human being. I will just take this simple fact, which I have already mentioned, which can actually only arise through spiritual research today before the human soul, the fact that in the middle of the 15th century the whole human race in the civilized world experienced a turnaround – a simple fact. That it may be stated as a scientific fact can only come from the fact that one has worked on one's soul, diligently worked, not wanting to conquer the spirit by arbitrariness, but by working one has put oneself in an expectant state, until that which reveals itself as such an apparently simple truth has come.

Then something else is necessary. There are people, I am just mentioning the philosopher Schelling or others, who, through special moments of grace, received one or the other impression from the spiritual world. What did they do? They could not be quick enough to build up a worldview when they received an impression from the spiritual world. They draw conclusions from some impression they receive from the spiritual world. They have received an impression, then they make a whole system out of it, a whole worldview. This is what the real spiritual researcher must completely refrain from doing. The real spiritual researcher must stop at this single fact that is revealed to him, and he must wait to see if another fact is revealed to him. For example, if one has become acquainted with the fact that the earth was preceded by pre-earthly conditions in which man already lived, one must not derive a whole scientific system from it about the evolution of the Earth, but must accept such a fact as an isolated, individual fact and allow other equally isolated, individual facts to be approached, so that fact after fact presents itself, more or less comprehensive. But one must wait for each individual fact; that is what matters. Even though spiritual revelations are definitely what underlies spiritual research, these spiritual revelations only occur when the destiny of man predestines him to them. Just as one must not draw conclusions from the northern hemisphere of the earth about what is in the southern hemisphere of the earth, but must research separately what is in the southern hemisphere of the earth, so one must not draw conclusions from one corner of the spiritual world to the other, but must learn to wander around in the spiritual world, to grasp the details in their isolation. From this you can see that people will be given what they can research from the spiritual world; they can indeed learn many things.

Now you could say: Yes, but isn't there a danger that those to whom such spiritual facts are revealed will now become haughty among people, that they will consider themselves special creatures that stand out above the rest of humanity? That is already taken care of. The first thing that must precede real spiritual research is absolute modesty, especially intellectual modesty. Without developing this modesty towards all of humanity, one cannot progress in the field of spiritual research. The spiritual researcher may indeed know how to communicate individual facts from the spiritual world to his fellow human beings, but the fact that he has the grace to communicate something that is revealed to him is at the same time due to the way he approaches his fellow human beings. The spiritual researcher is one who treats even the smallest child with true reverence when it babbles something from the spirit and the soul hidden within man, even if it only asserts itself screaming from a child's throat. The spiritual researcher is glad when he hears this or that from the experience of the individual person. The experiences that people share with him are his school. He completely subordinates himself to it. He knows only one thing: he knows that what people experience, even if they are at the most primitive levels of education, is infinitely valuable, that only what is usually man's power of judgment does not follow from it. If people would judge what they have experienced correctly, they would bring forth treasures of soul and spirit from their inner being and from the depths of their being. It is these that the spiritual researcher looks for. For him, every person is an equal being with sacred mysteries in the soul, except that the consciousness, the power of judgment, sometimes does not correspond to what is in the depths of the soul. Thus the spiritual researcher in particular becomes a modest person because he always has the spiritual equality of people in mind in this regard, and because he knows that he only has what he researches in the spiritual world because he is a human being among humans. Thus he is predestined to work in the spirit for other people, who in turn can develop their souls through meditation and concentration to such an extent that they can receive what the spiritual researcher says.

You may reply that it is not very well organized that people should live side by side in such a way that they should learn from individuals what they can understand but cannot discover for themselves. I can answer that in two ways. One is that this is a fact that has to be accepted like many other facts of life, even if some people might wish otherwise. That is the first thing I can say. But the other thing is that anyone who foresees such a future for humanity, a future in which there are people among us who can see into the spiritual world and reveal intimate matters to people from this spiritual world, so that in this way other people can experience from their own understanding what they can gain in the way suggested, also knows that the most intimate relationships will develop from person to person. And he also knows that it is precisely through this that the social impulses pass from soul to soul and that the real social life is brought about in the spirit, which today one believes can only be achieved through external means. Just think how people will be brought together, how they will present a social structure in their living together, when people will face each other in such a way that one person accepts what the other is investigating as a most important, intimate matter for him. It is precisely in this way that people in the future will come close to each other in the desirable way, that spirit will work in the soul of the next person in the way that has been indicated. Those who can explore the spirit will be felt to be a necessity for other people. On the other hand, the spiritual researcher will also feel that the whole of humanity is rooted in it, without which he cannot live, without which he himself would not have the slightest meaning with his spiritual research.

Even if today the social question has been made into something that is merely understood in an outwardly materialistic way, what is anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, when viewed inwardly, shows that when the spirit becomes the guide through the world of the senses and out of the world of the senses into the supersensible world, the structure is thereby also brought about in the social life of people, through which the human being can become for the human being in the future what he is actually meant to become.

In this way, I have tried to characterize to you today, from a different point of view than in the numerous previous lectures, how anthroposophy attempts to penetrate the spirit and how this penetration is based on developing the inherent powers of the human soul. I have been trying to do this for almost two decades in what I call anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is still said in many circles that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science represents something of a striving for Buddhism or something similar. In my last lecture here, I already hinted at how precisely this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which works from the essence of the human being, from the present essence of the human being himself, abhores that weakness of people who do not want to strive from what is there, not from what we have acquired in modern natural science, but who want to go to the Orient, to India, for my sake, and take there that which was adapted for a completely different age and no longer fits into our present. We experience it again and again. A few days ago, here in Switzerland, it could be experienced again that people say: Anthroposophism, as they express themselves, also represents some kind of escape to India. When this is said in particular by people who call themselves 'Christian', then I would like to remind these Christians of something that they may know: 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor'. Because it is nothing less than bearing false witness against one's neighbor when one speaks of what is meant here as anthroposophical spiritual science, as if it were something obscure, as if it were something for humanity that has become purely passive and the like. Because humanity has become passive, because humanity can no longer come to action through what has been traditionally imparted to it through the centuries, a new spirit must be sought as a guide through the world of the senses and into the supersensible world.

Those who always only speak of warming up the old spirit and loathing, as one loathed natural science at the time of Galilei, that which appears as spiritual science, to them should be said above all, especially when they want to speak from the Christian spirit: Those who take Christianity seriously need have no fear that the Christ Impulse in its true significance, the religious worship of man, will suffer any impairment through any discovery, even if it be a spiritual discovery. On the contrary, religious life will be given a higher radiance by the fact that people will once more know what spirit and soul are, that they will not allow themselves to be dictated to about what spirit and soul are, that they will seek within the soul the way to experience the spirit and the soul. But this is what is striven for in the movement that has its external representation outside in Dornach at the Goetheanum.

The movement strives for that which lives unconsciously as a longing in numerous souls without their knowing it. It will not be possible to extract it from these souls by mere decree or dictate, but it will live in the souls as a striving, even if one were to bring about the actual representation of this striving. For just as man would die if he ceased to absorb new life forces at the age of thirty-five, just as he could not continue to live from that point on if he did not supply himself with new material life forces, so humanity cannot continue to live if it only only wants to assimilate what is old and traditional, if a new spirit does not arise in due time, weaving itself into the evolution of mankind.

For that is what this spiritual science wants to make clear and unambiguous, not obscurantism, not complicated mysticism. That is what it wants to make clear and unambiguous: that the spirit is the living element, the true guide through the world of the senses and into the supersensible world. Without the spirit we become directionless in the world of the senses. But if we develop the spirit as a guide through the world of the senses, then it proves not to be an abstract spirit of ideas alone, but to be the living spirit in us. And then we would have to clip its wings, through which it wants to strive into its actual homeland, into the homeland of the spirit, if we, after having chosen it as a guide through the world of the senses, do not want to ascend through it, through its guidance, into the supersensible world. For the spirit is alive. And if the belief can spread that the spirit, in contrast to matter, is not an independent living entity, what is the cause of this? The only cause is that man has deadened the spirit within him through his will, and so the dead spirit cannot grasp the living spirit. But if the spirit in man is quickened, then the living spirit in man grasps the living spirit in the world.

The chairman, Mr. Roser, opens the meeting. He then announces that it is intended to introduce study evenings at which explanations of the idea of the threefold social order are to be given and at which, in particular, the book “The Core Issues of the Social Question” is to be thoroughly discussed. The first study evening is to take place in the coming week. He then reports that the shoe industry has made progress with regard to the works council issue. They have already come so far that the works councils in the leather industry have joined together to form an action committee that intends to become active within the shoe industry in the near future.

Opening words

Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees, As on the previous evenings, I will also give only a brief introduction today, so that we can then discuss one or the other specific question in detail. But in view of the waning interest in the works council issue, it may be advisable to make some more general comments at the beginning of this evening.

You see, on the part of the “Federation for the Tripartite Structure of the Social Organism”, the aim has been to take the first really practical step in the direction that has been outlined by the social movement for more than half a century, by creating a works council. This movement is, after all, like an outcry of the proletariat against its oppression. But this outcry is basically nothing more than a kind of world-historical critique of the capitalist economic order. Due to the world war catastrophe, conditions have now emerged that make it necessary to replace the critique to which the parties of the socialist movement have become accustomed with something else. When people within this movement began to find ways to achieve social renewal, there was hope that, especially among the broad masses of the working class, firstly from their experiences within the capitalist social order, and secondly from the undergrounds that arise because the working class is really much more politically educated than the bourgeoisie as a result of its experiences, an understanding would develop for what should replace the previously merely social criticism of the social order. After the so-called collapse of the German Reich, one could basically only hope for something really decisive from this side, because those who were completely tied to the old state and economic order had nothing to offer that could really lead to a new structure, despite the experiences of the world war catastrophe and its consequences.

One gets quite gloomy thoughts today when, on the one hand, one realizes that the intelligentsia is necessary for a new beginning, and when, on the other hand, one considers the mental and political state of this intelligentsia in today's Central Europe, especially the intelligentsia of those who belong to the leading personalities. From all that has been said here so far, those of you who have been here often will have seen that if we really want to make progress, a new social order must also be found from a new spirit. This applies in particular to the present moment, which clearly shows that Central Europe is in the process of collapse. That nothing can be hoped for from certain circles is illustrated by the following example.

You see, when one speaks of a new spirit with which the future is to be shaped, then one must first ask oneself: where are the manifestations of this new spirit? Now, the political spirit that dominates today, especially the leading classes, I would like to illustrate with an example that could be multiplied a thousandfold. The following words were spoken in Berlin. Please listen carefully, for today it is necessary to familiarize yourself with the spirit of the people. So listen carefully:

"The fact that before the revolution we were generally able to trust in the honest and objective reliability of our government, that in the excellent Prussian civil service we could spare ourselves the need to have a say, is not the least of the reasons for the intellectual superiority that Germany in general, and especially in its scientific and technical development, has demonstrated during the nineteenth century. You cannot serve two masters at the same time. The general politicization is necessarily an enemy of strict concentration and immersion in creative work. May the German mind develop the strength to work its way through the ugly political flood of sin and mud back to that glorious state of trust that Prussia gave us in the form of the Hohenzollerns!"

[Interjection: Is that the Oldenburg Januschau?]

Yes, that's what you think, that it's the Oldenburg Januschau! It would be comforting if it were at least him. But you see, these words were spoken by the leading professor of German language and literature at Berlin University. That is the crucial point! These words, spoken by the representative of German language and literature, the leading representative of this subject at the leading German university, are indeed somewhat indicative of the spirit that prevails among those who today have to inspire our youth for what humanity can expect from the future. Is it any wonder that gloomy thoughts arise when one thinks of this future? Basically, this is mentioned as a characteristic because, after all, those people who are leading the way in journalism today, especially in the journalism of the parties, have learned a great deal from these people in terms of their overall thinking, even if they have adopted individual program points. Above all, they have learned to be short-sighted, not to say dull-witted.

In the face of this, it must be emphasized again and again: Unless people can muster the strength to develop a truly new spirit, a comprehensive spirit, things cannot fundamentally improve. That is why it is so regrettable that the idea of founding a works council was drawn from a truly new spirit, that this idea of a works council, which is a truly practical idea, has found so little favor with the masses. Of course, things can move slowly at first, and that wouldn't even be the worst thing, but the way things have happened must be counted among the worst things.

We started our work here with the threefold social order in mind. At first, as I have already mentioned, the people who are always listened to said: Well, that's just a little folly, we'll let it go. But then this folly turned out to have found a following of thousands in Stuttgart and the surrounding area. That made people extremely uncomfortable. Then the practical idea of workers' councils emerged in a truly practical form. Then people became even more uncomfortable, and then this strange fact arose, which must be recorded again and again: that the parties are now raising objections to the threefold social order in general and to the works council issue in particular. On the one hand, we hear: Yes, the threefold order is all right. When our friends Gönnewein and Roser spoke at a public meeting in the Dinkelacker Hall recently, for example, one of the various speakers, most of whom were opposed to us, said: Yes, the threefold social order is all very well; it must ultimately prevail, but we are fighting against it! — Well, it is good and must ultimately be realized, but it is being fought against. - We want something completely different to start with, and then, when we have realized this completely different thing, then the threefold social order will come about by itself.

Now, there can be no question of the threefold order ever arising by itself; rather, it must be worked hard for. It is, I have to say the word, the biggest swindle when people repeat the old word over and over again: We only need to do this or that, it only needs this or that class to gain power, and then a properly ordered social being will arise by itself. No, the properly ordered social organism must first be recognized and then worked out. And it is characteristic that they keep saying: the threefold social organism is all very well, but that is how a social order must be, as the threefold social organism says, but we are fighting it. But if people are to say what they want, then one hears nothing but slogans and

The only thing I found within the Communist Party with regard to its fight against the threefold order is that they agree – as far as one is confronted with it – that the threefold order is quite good, but that it must be fought. In that they agree. And from the other side it has been shown — do not think that I care about anything, but when it comes to fighting for something, then such things must be looked at — that on the occasion of the publication of the first number of our weekly magazine 'Threefolding of the Social Organism', not a single one of the thoughts contained in this magazine was addressed, but it was all just scathing abuse. This is the result of dullness, of the inability to produce even one real thought of one's own. Therefore one can do nothing but rant. Much has also been said from third and fourth parties that aims in a similar direction. Things were always treated in such a way that it soon became clear that all these critics do not raise any real objections. On the one hand, this reveals an inability, an impotence; on the other hand, it reveals stupidity, in that one says again and again that threefolding is good in itself, but must be fought. Now, if these things are not looked at, if the cancerous damage resulting from party activity is not seen, then nothing healing can come out of the struggle in which we find ourselves.

Dear attendees! Today is truly not the time to get lost in such party squabbling, because today we are close to the point where people with the kind of attitude of Professor Gustav Roethe of the University of Berlin, which I have read to you, are gaining the upper hand again in capitalist circles as well. You don't have to be a friend of these ideas, which are only half or quarter ideas and, on top of that, quite impractical, and you don't have to be a friend of Wissell and Moellendorff, but you have to say that from a certain side they had the power to suppress them. If they had been ousted from another side, it would not have been a particular problem, but the fact that they were ousted from that side proves the current seriousness of the situation in Central Europe. It proves that certain circles feel safe again, circles that felt very unsafe relatively recently.

A few weeks ago, just as I was coming from Switzerland, from Dornach, to Stuttgart and we were beginning our work, it was still the case that the business community, indeed the leading circles in general, felt insecure in a certain sense. There was still a very strange mood prevailing in these circles. And so one could certainly have the impression that something can be achieved if a vigorous movement with content and meaning comes along. At that time, those who abhorred the planned economy and the framework laws of Moellendorff did not yet have the courage to come forward as boldly as they do today. But because it was possible to foresee how things would turn out, one idea was put forward again and again here and in other meetings at which I spoke, probably to the point of tedium for many, namely: Action should be taken on the idea of works councils before it is too late.

In connection with the farewell of Moellendorff and Wissell, it should be noted that the Works Council Constitution Act has now been reintroduced to the National Assembly. You can take all these symptoms together, and you will not find it incredible if today someone who has some insight into these things tells you: all this is the systematic work of the other side, the systematic work of former entrepreneurs who had already felt very close to the abyss and who are now gradually paralyzing the social movement in Central Europe. From this side, no means are spared, including going into partnership with the Entente, if it means paralyzing the social movement in Central Europe. If the ideas of those people who are at work today are fulfilled, and that is no exaggeration, then it is the case that all social striving, as you feel it, is an impossibility for many years. Because then it is not a question of how strong capitalism is in Central Europe, but of how strong Entente capitalism is.

That is how things are on the one hand. On the other hand, we have the most savage party infighting, which would have to be swept away in order to arrive at an objective striving. What does this party infighting reveal? Above all, it reveals the necessity for the threefold social organism. In this threefold order, spiritual life should have an independent administration, on the other hand, state or legal life should have its own administration, and on the third hand, economic life. Within economic life, as a purely economic institution, we want to develop the works councils. This works council system would mark the beginning of a real socialization by separating economic administration from spiritual and political life. What would be the safest way to keep economic life at the mercy of capitalism? By continuing to mix economic life with political life! And what is it that squeals out of the foolish party squabbling? It is the wild mixing and merging of economic points of view and political points of view. These modern parties are so harmful because they are based entirely on what has survived as a fusion of political and economic life. That is why we keep hearing from people who understand absolutely nothing about the structure of the social order that you first have to have political power and then economic power. Then they turn it around and so on. All these things show the most chaotic amateurism. The fact that such views are appearing within the parties shows how necessary the threefold social organism is. And in our day, I would say, we should really, as the twelfth hour approaches, consult with ourselves and ask ourselves: Do we really want to be the fools of the rising reaction by blindly following the party slogans more than ever the seemingly well-meaning Catholics follow them? Don't you want to rely on your own judgment? If you had relied on your own sound judgment, then the works council would have been established already. Just think what it would mean if the works council were already a reality and if the economic demands of the proletariat were taken up by the works councils and were to be heard in all that is now happening within the newly strengthened capitalism and entrepreneurship, in what is being driven on the part of the ore mining industry, which is much more damaging than one might think, and in what is connected with the peace treaty. People have repeatedly emphasized that the main thing is to conquer political power.

Oh, my dear audience, nothing strikes me as more ridiculous than such phrases. Of course, you can say such phrases, that you first have to have political power. But when the first step should be taken to gain power at all, as it could have happened through the election of the works councils, then this first step is not taken. It is not taken because people love to speak in grand words and phrases. But they do not love to approach the issue in a truly appropriate way.

The previous draft of the Works Councils Act has turned out to be impractical and unacceptable. Now a new draft is being presented to the National Assembly, after the timid attempt by Moellendorff and Wissell, which also contained rudiments of a planned economy, was thrown into the underworld, along with the two personalities. All this shows the kind of nonsense being perpetrated by a certain faction, which ultimately will lead nowhere. Imagine if our works councils in Württemberg had been in session for the last fourteen days and had sent tangible proposals for real socialization into the world every day! If that were the case, then one could say: the new spirit necessary for a new beginning arises from this proletariat. If there were a thousand works councils here instead of just a few, then we could say: We laugh at what the big industrialist said after the start of the November Revolution and the outbreak of the strike: “We just have to wait!” Because the time will come when the workers will come whining and begging to our establishment and will be satisfied if they are allowed to work a quarter of what they are asking for now. Well, but today we are not yet in a position to look at things with the necessary seriousness. But it is not enough to express this seriousness only in words; it is important that it is also reflected in actions. If we consider that the Central European industrialists will receive support from the Entente in terms of their power, then we must come to the conclusion that this works council system must be created before it is too late. I am not saying that nothing can be done now. Of course, we must continue to work in the direction we have begun, but it would be playing blind man's bluff to close our eyes to the general world situation. We are in it now, and actually we should not have got into it at all without already having works councils.

You see, in times of such upheaval as the ones we are living through, it is of the utmost importance to recognize and seize the right moment. You can't afford to wait four to six weeks for the right thing to happen. Today, many people know that with the great French Revolution at the end of the 18th century and with the following revolutions in the 19th century, only a kind of emancipation of the human being as a citizen was actually achieved. But the fact that individual people have become freer to a certain extent is meaningless for the broad masses of the proletariat. Why? Because those who rose up against the old feudal order may have seized state power, but they failed to remove the economic straitjacket from the workers, even though they were now personally free. Today it is time to realize that merely seizing state power is not enough. As a result of the revolutions, other people came to power, but nothing really new was created. The old framework of the state was retained. And so they continued to work until the catastrophe of the world wars. They squeezed everything into the framework of the old unitary state. Today the time has come to recognize that the proletariat cannot simply imitate the bourgeoisie, which only wanted to conquer state power. The proletariat must develop something new and not cling to the old unitary state. The proletariat must develop the tripartite social organism. Either we understand this tripartite structure or we will end up with an impossible construct like the state of the 19th and early 20th century. It is not enough to keep saying that we want to overthrow the old institutions and replace capitalism with new social forms! One must also know what these new forms should consist of! That is why an attempt has also been made with my book 'The Crux of the Social Question' to present to people something that really gives the longed-for social community an organic structure. It shows how this social community can become possible and how it can develop. What use is it to always say: things must come from themselves!

Well, I could imagine that such fanatics of self-origin still believe that the social order came by itself, even when it actually had to be fought for hard. You see, if the cockerel on the dung heap crows before sunrise, when it is still dark, and then the sun rises, the cockerel can imagine that it was his crowing that made the sun rise. It is quite certain that a new social order will not come about just by crowing about socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. It will only come about if a sufficiently large number of people think: we have to work to bring about this new social order. We must choose from among ourselves those in whom we have confidence, so that, on the basis of existing economic experience, something beneficial for economic life may come about, which can then eclipse all the bureaucratic proposals for laws and the like that are being sought from other quarters. I ask you: Are you afraid of such work, or why do you refrain from creating such a works council, which would really be a power factor because it would be supported by the trust of the workers? At the moment, you can be sure of that, when such a works council produces new fruitful ideas, in that moment the works council is the greatest power in certain areas. It is not the crowing of a cockerel on the dung heap, who believes that the sun rises because of his crowing. It is a call to action, but to an action that is known to be the right one.

You see, I believe that the new spirit could flourish out of such a feeling alone. But as long as this new spirit does not live in people's minds, nothing good will come of it. And the current economic situation is such that, above all, we have to think about how we can get our economic life in Central Europe back on its feet to some extent. Thus, new sources of raw materials of the most diverse kinds will have to be tapped, especially in the East. There will be many a necessity that Central European entrepreneurship has not yet tackled. However, sources of raw materials in Siberia can no longer be tapped, because the course of the world does not allow this today; the Americans and the Japanese no longer allow it. Where we can be effective is in the entire European East. But there it will be a matter of finding the right tone to go along with the Russian national soul. That was precisely the worst thing about the industrial circles that have been leading up to now, that they never found the tone to enter into a corresponding connection with other national souls. That is another reason why a new spirit must enter into our economic life. Otherwise the East will slam the door on us, especially if we come with the spirit that our leading circles have developed so far. Above all, we are dependent on developing a brotherhood, an economic brotherhood, with the East, otherwise we will never get out of the situation we have gotten into.

A new spirit is needed in a wide variety of directions! This new spirit may flourish in hearts and minds, for we need it. You will not find the new spirit in what I read to you at the beginning, because it says that “before the revolution, we were generally able to trust in the honest and objective reliability of our government, that we excellent Prussian civil service state, we could spare the need to have a say in it, and it is not least in this that the intellectual superiority that Germany in general, especially in its scientific and technical development, has demonstrated during the nineteenth century, is rooted. ... May the German spirit develop the strength to work its way through the ugly political flood of sin and mud back to the glorious state of trust that Prussia's Hohenzollern gave us.

You will understand that one cannot speak in this way today. But, ladies and gentlemen, I will now translate these words into another language and then ask you whether one can speak in this way today: the fact that before the revolution we were able to place our complete trust in the honest and objective reliability of our party leaders, that we the excellent Party bureaucratism we could spare ourselves the need to have a say, and it is not least in this that the intellectual superiority is rooted, which Germany in general, but not in its social-democratic and socialist development, has demonstrated during the nineteenth century. One cannot serve two masters, the Party bureaucrats and the tripartite division. The general politicization is necessarily an enemy of strict concentration and immersion in devotion, in loyalty, in party bonze-hood. May the social spirit develop the strength to work its way through the ugly political flood of sin and mud back to that glorious party system of trust, as the party bigwigs have given it to us Social Democrats. You see, you have applied the same thought forms to something else. Whether you are Professor Roethe and speak about the Hohenzollern in this way or whether you are just an honest party man and speak about the party bigwigs in this way, both are based on the same mental perceptions. It does not make a person freer if he simply worships other idols! One becomes free by relying on one's own judgment, on one's own reason and on one's own perception. It is to this inner perception that we have appealed. I hope that it will yet be shown that we have not appealed in vain, for if we had appealed in vain, then the situation of the proletariat would be dire.

Discussion

Mr. Huch: The speaker fully agrees with Dr. Steiner's remarks and expresses his regret that the idea of the threefold social order is not taken up as it should be. He sees the fault largely with the trade unions. As a member of a workers' committee, he also notes that the business community today is again acting quite differently than it did six to eight weeks ago.

Mr. Fischer: He introduces himself as a trade union leader and defends the work of the trade unions against the previous speaker. He explains that it is the fault of the workers themselves if the union does not proceed correctly. — The poor attendance at today's meeting is probably also due to the fact that the workers are suspicious of everything that comes from philosophers, theosophists and commercial counselors. Regarding the works councils, Mr. Fischer criticizes the fact that the works councils in Germany are also fragmented. If there is now competition between works councils in different cities, independently of each other and based on different industries, then that is a big mistake. The speaker professes himself to be a supporter of the works councils. At the moment when the parties and the trade unions have outlived themselves, they must of course be swept away; the only question is what we put in their place. It must be clear that you can't just throw away the organizations that have had the trust of the masses so far. The speaker cannot imagine how unity can prevail in a works council when people with different economic and political views are represented there. If practical socialization is to be pursued, then one must begin by taking the means of production and land out of the hands of the exploiters and transferring them into the ownership of society, because the power of the capitalists is based on the ownership of these means. The speaker asks Dr. Steiner to indicate how the works councils can accomplish this task. Furthermore, Dr. Steiner is asked to provide information on how, in his opinion, the works councils can be put in a position to determine demand. Because as long as the worker has to ask, “Do I have enough to live on?” he will not concern himself with lofty spiritual problems. The starving masses crave bread, not spiritual ideals. Only when food is available again will there also be mental resilience. The masses will certainly not grovel and beg for work, but will throw society overboard. The proletariat's confrontation with the capitalists will not take the form of fine speeches, but of violence.

Another speaker: Dr. Steiner's idea that we must orient ourselves towards the East coincides with what I also said at a meeting. I also said that the new comes from the East; a new form of society has emerged there, perhaps not yet as it should be, but the new comes from there and we must orient ourselves towards it. What do we experience? Our government has known nothing but to look anxiously to the West and to make sure that nothing happens that the Entente does not like. That is the whole evil we are facing today. German capitalism has simply been replaced by Entente capitalism, and we will have to fight very hard battles if we want to eliminate this Entente capitalism from the world. No one has yet succeeded in pointing the way. If Dr. Steiner succeeds, the workers will follow him.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to make a few remarks before I return to the words of the previous speaker.

First of all, it was said that the working class is strongly opposed to the threefold social order because it is based on philosophers, commercial counsellors and the like. This is not true at all; in fact, the working class was not very prejudiced at the beginning of our work. On the contrary, it turned out that we found thousands and thousands of supporters for what we were spreading, not as a utopian idea, but as something that is directly the germ of action, as I called it at the time. The workers at that time didn't give a damn whether these thoughts came from philosophers or commercial counselors, but they relied on their common sense and listened. And those who were prejudiced whistled from a completely different direction. And they have managed to ensure that this prejudice has only gradually emerged. So the matter is quite different.

Although the previous speaker has correctly characterized the movement of commercial employees, which is showing some better traits and deserves to be studied in more detail by the rest of the working class, his words nevertheless show that he is completely unaware of what threefolding is in general and what it specifically seeks to achieve with the founding of a works council. For this is precisely what must be most vigorously combated by the threefolding of the social organism, namely, that this fragmentation occurs. It has never been our aim merely to create works councils for any industry or to individualize within the works council. How often has it been said: If works councils are created for the individual industries, this is the opposite of what must be aimed for in the context of a real socialization. We have always striven for a works council that extends uniformly over a larger, self-contained economic area. And only from such a works council should everything necessary for individualization then emerge. The fact that the matter has taken on the form that more zeal is shown in individual sectors than in others has nothing to do with the works council as it should have arisen from the idea of threefolding.

Yes, and then the previous speaker brought up the argument that one would have to start by transferring the means of production and land into the ownership of society. Just try to think through what is actually meant by this nebulous sentence to its logical conclusion! Consider what such a demand means in practice! I would like to take this up again. I once spoke about these things in a town, I think it was Göppingen, and after me spoke a man who actually spoke quite well from a certain point of view. He was probably a communist. He said he was a cobbler. At first he spoke very well, but then something strange happened: he said, “Yes, I already know that since I have not learned a trade, I cannot become a registrar, for that you need intelligence.” Well, excuse me, but that doesn't require much understanding. But a great deal of understanding and insight is needed for what this man wanted to know about the conquest of political power and the like. These things must be faced.

Now, the specific question is how to implement the fundamentally correct demand to transfer the means of production and land into the public domain. Of course, there must also be people available who can properly manage the means of production and land. The thing is this: what has been the capitalist form of production up to now has a very specific configuration; a very specific way of handling it was necessary for that. This must be transformed into a different way of handling it, and this must first be created. Today, before you have any concrete ideas about how to manage the means of production and the land, you cannot simply demand that the means of production and so on be transferred into the public domain! That is precisely what the workers' councils are supposed to do in practice. You cannot revolutionize anything with phrases and theories; you can only do it with people, and these people should have been the workers' councils, and I mean the unified workers' councils, not the fragmented ones. That is what it is all about. We shall make no headway if we keep on saying that the proposals of the philosophers and commercial counsellors come from the clouds, and then contrast them with a so-called practice that has arisen from even more nebulous regions, because then it becomes apparent that it is impossible to say how such things can actually be implemented. But it is precisely this “how” that is at issue. This “how” is explained in my book The Essential Points of the Social Question; it is only necessary to understand it, that is what it is about.

Yes, and then it has been said repeatedly that we must first change the economic order. The spiritual will then arise by itself. — It will not. We already need this new spirit to change the economic system. And it is precisely then that one speaks impractically and nebulously when one says again and again: We change the economic system, then the new spirit will come by itself. No, you need the new spirit to change the economic system. That is why I say to you: For my sake, you can chase the whole of society away with the words of the esteemed previous speaker – but then also be clear about what you have to do when you have chased away the old society. Do you know what you want to do then? You can't do the same thing, otherwise you wouldn't need to chase them away. If you centralize the entire economy and put super-bonze above super-bonze, do you think that will improve anything? I would like to see if something would be better for the working masses if you were to put the highest-ranking union bonze in the top positions instead of the capitalists and entrepreneurs. That is what you should think about. That is what emerged from practical considerations, however much I liked the tone of the previous speaker's comments. But it has not yet been understood what it is really about, because everything that is happening in the optical industry, in the automotive industry and the like is the opposite of what is being propagated here. And so it is not enough just to point out ways; there must be a real understanding among the broad masses of workers, and then these ways must be developed in concrete practice. That is why I feel I must say, when I hear it said, “Steiner shows us the ways,” Steiner shows us the way – that it will be of no use if I show these ways, as long as large masses are repeatedly kept from understanding by the fact that people keep coming who have not yet understood this way and then speak of the opposite, as has just happened again, and then say: If we are shown the way, we will follow it; I am happy to be taught. – But when something is shown, the objection is that it is nothing. No, as long as this is the case, we will not make any progress. We will only make progress if we develop an instinct for what is right. And that is what we lack from the “Federation for the Threefold Social Order”. At first we found a certain healthy mass instinct, but then we had to learn that there is still a great deal of obedience to the old leaders. I will not doubt the emergence of a healthy instinct, but it will only emerge when those speakers no longer appear before the masses who, without sufficiently penetrating the matter, simply talk and prevent the masses from from taking further steps, but on the contrary, lead them back to their old obedience and to dubious ideas, by saying again and again: “Go ahead and form works councils; they will only fragment again.

If what we have been striving for had really been achieved, we would not have fragmentation, but a unified organization of economic concerns within the works council into the future, at least for Württemberg. This would then have a motivating effect on others and could have an impact beyond this economic area.

Mr. Fischer: He states that his criticism of the works councils was not directed against Dr. Steiner, but against the remarks made by the chairman at the beginning... I said: I am convinced that the ideas that Dr. Steiner developed and carried to the masses were different. But something different was propagated than was shown in practice. Dr. Steiner said that the socialization of the means of production is a phrase and that afterwards there would be no one left who would know how to manage the means of production. It would be sad if the workers and employees who have done the work since then did not know what to do with the means of production! What I mean is that the shareholders should be eliminated and it should be said: the shares are no longer valid. The property should become the property of the general public and be administered by the general public. Dr. Steiner puts spiritual ideas above everything. But the workers today only want bread because they are physically exhausted and unable to accept spiritual ideas. I ask Dr. Steiner to address this and show how these ideas can be made accessible to the masses with hungry stomachs.

Rudolf Steiner: That is a snake that bites its own tail. Do you think it is said on the one hand: We can transfer the means of production into the general public. Well, a really concrete body that would represent this generality would be the works councils. But such a body must first be created, it is not there! Certainly, the great mass is weakened by hunger. But should we wait for manna to fall from heaven so that bread can be socialized? This is a snake that bites its own tail. We must, of course, strive for both at the same time, and we will achieve nothing if we do not all work together, because the manna will not just fall from the sky. There is work to be done! We will all have to work, but we will only really want to work if we see what comes out of that work. We will work even with weakened muscles, with hungry stomachs, when we know that tomorrow our work will lead to a result. – But if we are always told that it should be socialized, then we will not be able to work even with an empty stomach, because we know that we will not be full tomorrow if we do not work with practical ideas.

So today it is important that we engage with this and also say: Well, the old society was chased away in droves on November 9 [...] The previous speaker, who said very good things in general, then described very well what happened then. I do not want to examine now how much of what happened there can be attributed to incompetence. I attribute more to the incompetence of those in power today than to their ill will. Because of this incompetence, what should actually be overcome keeps coming to the fore. This must be avoided. Whether or not this society, which was discussed today, is chased away with or without violence, is another question. But those who take its place must know what they want. That alone is practical. And that is the aim of the 'Federation for the Threefold Social Organism': to ensure that November 9th is not repeated and that in a few months' time we do not have to say: 'Now you see, now we have a different regime in economic life, but it is doing exactly the same thing as the previous one'. This must be prevented. But it can only be prevented by setting up a works council and then showing that things are done differently under the new regime. Of course, if no people can be found among the working population, among the employees, who really know how to work, then one would indeed have to despair. But that is not the only thing. It is essential that new forms of socialization then become visible. After all, people are all accustomed to working in some way under the old regime. Therefore, now that power has been gained, those who have gained it must really recognize how to deal with that power. So, it's a matter of really taking a practical approach for once. And the sad thing is that there is no understanding of such a practical approach today, and people keep coming up with old phrases. Don't misunderstand me, I am not saying that the transfer of the means of production and the land into the community is a phrase as such. That is not what I said. But a phrase, what is a phrase? Something is a phrase for one person because he cannot see anything special behind the words, while for another it is a deep golden truth because he sees something concrete behind it. When, for example, Bethmann-Hohlkopf, I mean Bethmann-Hollweg, says, “Free rein to the efficient!” it is a mere phrase, because he may understand it to mean that, for example, his nephew or someone else is the most efficient. But when someone who has real social insight and a real sense of humanity says, “Free rein to the efficient!” it is not a mere phrase, it is real. If someone simply repeats the old party line about the socialization of the means of production, then it can be a mere catchphrase. But when someone characterizes it as it is in my book, then it is not a catchphrase, then it is an expression of a reality. Therefore, you do not have to believe that when I call something a phrase, it is meant to be absolute. I mean, it is a phrase when there is not the necessary reality behind what has been said. That is what I wanted to say.

Mr. Roser: The previous speaker is mistaken if he thinks that I welcomed the works councils in the shoe industry because they formed separately. I just wanted to state that the leather industry has grasped the tripartite structure of the social organism. I must note that the works councils in the footwear industry have been firmly established on the basis of the tripartite division; only for this reason did I welcome the matter. A start has to be made at some point.

Mrs. Bühl: I would like to tell Mr. Fischer that the union secretary said: Without a law, there can be no works councils; the law must first be created. The main reason why we still have no workers' councils is the fault of the parties. It's a disgrace that when you go to a meeting and express your convictions, people immediately say, “Ah, one of Dr. Steiner's people.” Why can't we express our convictions? And then they always come to us with the “Kommerzienräte”! Why do you always speak in the plural? I only know of one Kommerzienrat in our family, and it wouldn't be a mistake if we had a couple of dozen of them. Just think of all the things that one Kommerzienrat has achieved! First of all, the free school. It's a shame when you hear how the matter is judged. It's good when Kommerzienrats do it that way. I couldn't open a school. It's the stupid mistrust among the workers and the parties. [Shout: Where does he get the money from?] One opens his wallet, the other doesn't; that's the difference. If a person thinks socially and has a feeling for his workers, that's the main thing!

Mr. Huth: Mr. Fischer's comments call me to the scene. First of all, I would like to confirm to him, because I know him, that he is not one of those union bigwigs who move in the spirit of a Legien, but one of those who are active in the spirit of a truly revolutionary working class. But when he criticizes the fact that works councils have been formed and united in the shoe industry, and when he wants to use this to assert that a fragmentation would take place because other occupational branches also have works councils, then I have to correct him. In the shoe industry, when we elected our works councils, we waited quite a long time for the metal industry here to start electing its works councils as well, so that we could form a works council in the sense of the tripartite division together with them. But as time passed, and this was due to the fault of the proletarian parties, and in the other occupations the matter has not yet progressed as far as in the shoe industry, we had to say to ourselves: There is no point in not getting together and doing practical work ourselves. We have to form a works council, no matter how small, and then spread the idea of the works council to the circles of those workers who have not yet taken any action in this direction.

We cannot wait for some government to bring us socialization. The liberation of the proletariat must come from the proletariat itself, and if it is on a path that a philosopher has shown, if the path is good. It has been pointed out that the old slogan: We must first conquer political power - is repeatedly haunting people's minds. This is hammered into the proletarians again and again. This word is actually a phrase, a dishonest phrase of the parties that call themselves proletarian today, but do not know what to do in the given hour. Because they do not know, they always put off the proletariat to the great Kladderadatsch, until we get reinforcements from the West that will give us political power. We had the power, but what did we do with it? We let it slip out of our hands again because we didn't know what to do with it. We must start by conquering not political power, but economic power through the works councils. Then the power will no longer be able to slip out of our hands. The factory councils, which are to be only economic instruments, will then be supplemented by political councils, by a legal organization. But if we do not also associate the spiritual organization with these two organizations, then we will not arrive at a healthy state, as Russia shows. The leaders of the USP have already risen to a two-fold structure. But the cultural part must not be forgotten either!

When I read Däumig or Müller, I have to say to myself: Put into practice, this will lead to a threefold structure, because they have actually only forgotten the cultural part. — I am a member of the USP, but I am not afraid to tell the parties that they do not know what to do. As proletarians, we have to say: if you don't understand how to lead us, then you have to leave the field. Every movement has the leaders it deserves; so do we. The proletariat as a whole has not yet mustered the courage to tell its leaders who they are. Even if it is already quite late, we must nevertheless take up the question of the works councils with renewed energy. Mr. Molt: The person speaking to you this evening has repeatedly mentioned, if I may say so, the old council system. Mr. Fischer, whom I have the pleasure of meeting again, asked me the specific question of where the money I have actually comes from. This money comes from exactly the same capitalism from which Mr. Fischer also draws his money, that is, from the capitalist economic cycle. And the question is only whether one keeps the money that one acquires on capitalist ground to oneself or whether one gives it back to the general public. By their deeds you shall know them! – In the past, it was said: By their fruits. If you found a school to implement true socialism, if you used the money you had saved through hard work – really through work, not through capitalism – to educate the rising generation in ways other than what we were taught, I would call that the practical fruit of a good idea. If it only came about because I was able to fill my stomach a little better during the war and therefore had a good idea, then it's good that at least that's there. The idea seems to be there for real. And if there aren't good ideas everywhere, then at least we can be glad that there are still people who have ideas, and the main thing is that they are carried out.

You see, the question of the works councils, which Mr. Fischer has so thoroughly misunderstood, has really reached a much more serious stage than has been expressed here tonight. It is truly a matter of life or death! Either we create the works councils, and then we have socialism, or we perish at the hands of Entente capitalism, not only the manual laborers, but also the intellectual workers. And this fact, together with a true idea of socialism, can already warm our hearts for the cause, so that we make the works councils a reality and even put ourselves at the service of this cause as a commercial councilor, and we do so because we really mean it. And the fact that one means it honestly is proved by the wonderful fact that even proletarian assemblies want this strange commercial councillor to give them lectures on works councils, not to the detriment of this assembly. That is why I conscientiously stand on the side of the works councils as well as on the side of the threefold social order. These works councils are different from those in the automotive and optical industries, because they are nothing more than political means to strengthen the parties; they are not there to thoroughly socialize economic life on a large and true scale. That is why we at the “Bund für Dreigliederung” are so strongly opposed to the fact that the works councils that come from the parties are mixed up with the ones we want.

You have probably already read in a daily newspaper that this works council law has again been submitted to the government. We are clear about the fact that the works councils cannot be standardized because every company is different. Economic life cannot be regulated by political power or by laws, but can only regulate itself. Once the law is there, it is difficult to oppose it; you have to be a revolutionary. But if they do not even take a serious stand against the drafts, how much less will it be possible once the law is there? Only a few weeks separate us from this law. This time must be used. If it is not used, it will simply be too late for the works councils and for socialization. That is why one so fervently hopes that the working class will finally wake up. It is not right to think that the workers are prejudiced against 'philosophers and commercial counsellors'. The matter is different. Anyone who has read the newspaper and has read what the “Social Democrat” said about this Waldorf school - he says: “The school is nice, but it comes from factory owners, so it is nothing at all” - must say to himself: These are the people who are hindering true socialism and true progress. The party bigwigs of all stripes are to blame for the fact that our honest efforts and the works councils have so far achieved nothing. But the proletariat itself will soon see how it is driven into misery and hardship if it does not pull itself together in time.

This appeal should be addressed to you again today. There is no time to lose! We only have three to four weeks left. If we lose these, it will be over for good. To show you how serious the situation is, I would like to read you a few lines from a letter that I received just today. This letter was written by a German diplomat who is the first to go abroad, and you should hear how the German situation is characterized from that side: “The situation at home is getting worse and worse, and I fear that the catastrophe that was to be avoided by accepting the peace has only been postponed in order to break over us all the more powerfully. What is now called the government in Germany is really just a caricature of one, wavering between party doctrine and fear of the revolution from left to right. The people's morale is completely collapsing. The speed with which our reputation abroad is declining cannot be described; it is impossible to salvage anything.

This is a letter that arrived today from a German diplomat, who is familiar with the situation and knows how things stand, how we are viewed abroad. But things can truly only change if people in working-class circles do not fall asleep and fail to realize that we are only now approaching real misery, and if they pull themselves together in the last hour to arrive at a state of affairs in which our economic life, which is on the brink of the abyss, can be lifted again. And that can only happen if we ourselves lend a hand, if we ourselves want to see an upward turn in our economy through the introduction of works councils. I wanted to make this appeal to you again, so that we do not have to say in three to four weeks: 'Now it is too late.' There is still time, but it is the twelfth hour. It is up to you, not us.

Mr. Jansen: When Dr. Steiner began his lectures eight to ten weeks ago, there was really great enthusiasm for the idea of the threefold social order. But the moment Dr. Steiner and the Federation for the Tripartite Social Order moved on to the practical, and passed over from thought to reality, the moment work and effort were demanded of those who had previously only been allowed to applaud and clap, some of the enthusiasm already waned. The cool attitude of the workers was also to blame for the fact that the enthusiasm for Dr. Steiner's ideas did not go so far as to be able to fight against the leaders. All of us who were involved in the agitation know what it is to speak out against this apathy. Dr. Steiner also experiences the apathy of the masses. The idea of workers' councils, in the face of capitalism, which was not all that secure a quarter of a year ago, has evoked the last dormant forces within him. He has tried to kill off these workers' councils by denying their validity and feasibility. And the so-called educated caste of our present-day society and the even more vulgar press of all shades have managed to drag the true idea of the threefold social organism and the works councils as it is in the newspapers. |

Half a century has passed since Karl Marx died of starvation, and today people are arguing about how to implement socialization. And it has been more than half a year since the Jena of the German workers, the November Revolution, broke out, and still no one knows how to implement socialization. We should be grateful to a man who has taken the trouble to seek out a practical way, a way by which socialism can be introduced in a relatively short time. The opposite is true! It can be put down to jealousy on the one hand and stupidity on the other. I have already illustrated this a few weeks ago with an example: People talk about killing the lion, capitalism, but they are afraid of the little mouse, the representative of the factories, the director, and of the union and party officials and the like.

Mr. Fischer spoke of commercial counselors, professors, doctors who support the idea of threefolding. Don't we also have professors and doctors in the parties? Do we also say that their ideas are therefore worthless? And if they weren't in the party, the stupidity of the masses would have long since destroyed the parties. One more peculiar little chapter: Mr. Molt, whom I welcome as a colleague and whom we have asked to speak in an informative way at our meeting tomorrow about works councils, this gentleman has money. We have a great many people in the party who also have money, who had it earlier or who have made money through their work in the party. These men, who call themselves party comrades, party leaders, keep their money to themselves. They do not make it available to the party! They buy themselves villas and settle up there nicely. Therefore, let's not be too quick to reproach them: “The man has money.” We have to see what the people below us do with their money. It has been said: “Hunger must be eliminated first so that people are even open to spiritual food.” A communist recently said: Hunger is the worst revolutionary. Once hunger is raging, there is no stopping it, and what has been suppressed for so long breaks through. What are strikes if not hunger revolts? And because hunger is a good incentive, it would not be good to eliminate hunger today. Let us ensure that we abolish mass hunger by abolishing mass exploitation. Socialism is the way to do this! Hunger is an incentive to finally implement socialization.

Mr. Kühn: As managing director of the “Federation for the Tripartite Structure of the Social Organism,” I would like to say a few words about what has been asked. We intend to call the works councils together for their first meeting next week. We will also begin the study evenings next week. Mr. Roser has already spoken about this. Perhaps I may say a few words about the discussion that took place with Mr. Fischer this evening. Unfortunately, Mr. Fischer has already left. I wanted to tell him in front of the meeting that I definitely know that he has never, neither here nor anywhere else, attended lectures by Dr. Steiner. The only time I met him was at a meeting to discuss the question of the works council, which was convened by employees and where he heard something about threefolding from some speakers. Dr. Steiner was not present. That is how people who know nothing about the matter judge it; they imagine all sorts of things and want to dismiss the matter out of hand. However, Mr. Fischer told me this evening that his union or association wants to hold meetings in the near future to discuss works councils and to set up trial works councils in the factories. You see, people come along when they have heard something here and there and make something out of it. That is what we want to avoid and what we must fight against. We must not make common cause with those who do not want to know about the threefold social organism and do not work towards it. Works councils that are not created on the basis of the idea of the threefold social organism will never be able to realize socialism. The works councils we wanted to introduce would have been the first step towards socialization in the sense of the threefold order. We must reject everything else. It is a pity that Mr. Fischer has left and can no longer discuss the threefold order with us.

Time and again, objections to the threefold order come from people who know nothing about it, but also from people who have already heard many lectures on the threefold order. I would like to tell you an example. There is a communist leader who has a fairly great gift as a speaker and captivates large crowds. He appears at almost every meeting. This man has heard a lot about the threefold social order, but has not grasped any of it. For example, he says: Yes, the threefold social order leads to a three-class system, because if you create three parts, then there is a class in each part, and so we get even worse conditions than today; today we only have two classes. If one wanted to draw conclusions about classes from the organizations, then one would have to say: Today we have a unified state, so there is only one class. So today there should only be one class! This man does not understand such things and comes to such a prejudice. We want to put the social organism on a healthy footing precisely in order to eliminate class rule. There is no question of a three-way division of the classes. The same man also asserts the same thing that Mr. Fischer asserted, namely that the threefold order protects employers. Anyone who has read Dr. Steiner's book knows that today's type of entrepreneur will disappear altogether. But the most beautiful objection of this communist leader was that he said: You cannot separate the economy from politics. You see it all the time in the Reichstag or in the National Assembly, how people represent their economic interests; just think of the industrialists in heavy industry! They cannot help but represent their economic interests. So people cling to the old, to this idol of a unified state, because they do not see that this is precisely what we want to fight, what we want to abolish. It is economic policy that has driven us into this disastrous catastrophe. People readily admit this in private, but they are unable to muster the strength to take measures that would no longer make such economic policy possible. There are the party leaders, above all, who have ruined the works council system for us. We must get rid of these people. The proletariat cannot see socialism realized before that.

We have also encountered an incredible prejudice among the employees, whom we have also called upon. I would like to give an example of this: a person whom I respect very much, who is a leading employee in a factory, said to me: I don't yet know whether capitalism is so wrong. In any case, I insist that it is better today than it will be. I will stick to my views and go down with them rather than introduce something new. I know that I am alone in this and that I may soon be out on the street, but I would rather it be so. I will remain honest and consistent. I have been told that this man has a heart for the proletariat, and that is why he speaks in this conservative way. When I told him he was conservative, he got terribly angry. He said it was just honest. I told him: It's just the same as when you take a train. At one station, the train driver comes in and says the train will derail at the next station, and you then say: I'll stay on the train anyway; I'd rather be injured than get off. I said: I would get off as quickly as possible and see if the train could be moved to another track where it would not derail. — So we have to pull ourselves together at the last moment and do everything we can to get the works councils together. We must present and defend the approach that we see as practical, and not be afraid of being too strongly attacked by the party bigwigs. Actually, word of mouth should teach people again and open their eyes to the philistinism of their party leaders.

Rudolf Steiner: The question has been raised: How can what is healthy in syndicalism be related to the threefold social organism? - Well, it would of course be taking us very far if we were to talk about the essence of syndicalism today at this late hour. But I would like to say that there is much that is genuinely healthy in syndicalism, as there is in other contemporary endeavors. Above all, the healthy aspect of syndicalism is that many syndicalists are dominated by the idea that, regardless of the eternal insistence on the rule of law in the state, economic gains for the broad masses of the working population must be achieved in direct competition with entrepreneurship. The idea that something for the future can arise out of economic life itself through a kind of federal structure lives as a healthy thought within syndicalism. Syndicalism has emerged particularly in recent times within the French labor movement, and it is somehow significant that it has emerged most strongly there. The French have a very strong sense of state. But just at the moment when people in France who were well-disposed towards the state wanted to found a particular labor movement, they came to the conclusion that this could only be useful if it operated exclusively on an economic basis. The federative structure of economic life, as envisaged by syndicalism, even shows certain similarities to what is sought through the associations based on the idea of threefolding.

You see, in the threefold social organism we have an independent spiritual life, then an independent state or legal life, and further an independent economic life. This independent economic life, as I have often said, will have to be built on corporate cooperative foundations, that is to say, associations will be formed on the one hand from the various occupational groups and on the other hand from certain connections between production and consumption. One of the objections raised, for example, by Professor Heck in the Tribüne is based on the fact that he says: Yes, but how will it be possible, for example, for craftsmen and small traders to be knowledgeable about the concerns of big industry if economic life is to be structured in the future as Dr. Steiner wants? Well, this shows that Professor Heck has not understood what is meant either. Of course, one cannot be knowledgeable in all fields, nor is it necessary, because if a federal structure is really established and the individual associations work together intensively, something fruitful for economic life will come of it. It is simply not possible for everything that must develop on a purely democratic basis, such as labor law, to be represented or administered in the same way as purely economic matters. This view is also encountered, at least to some extent, in syndicalism. In the Anglo-American labor movement, the principle of Anglo-American parliamentarism still prevails very strongly. Since this is based on a certain system of counterweights, namely power against power, the Anglo-American labor organizations are also aligned according to the same principle, namely, labor power against corporate power is played off against each other, just as the liberal and conservative parties face each other in parliament. We encounter a different form within the labor organizations in Germany. There is a certain centralism, I might even say a certain military system, based on command and obedience. I don't know if you will entirely agree with this, but I can assure you that I have attended several trade union meetings and that I was always unpleasantly affected by the fact that whenever different opinions arose, the chairman of the meeting stood up and said: Children, it's no use! — So, this centralized-military system is the second; and the third is what is meant by the federal structure, by the structure of independent bodies, in which there will be no majorization or centralization, but objective negotiation. In syndicalism, this appears as a good impulse, but here too a further step is necessary, as is aimed at with the idea of the threefold social organism, namely that the progressive factors that have yet to enter into the thinking of contemporary humanity are actually taken into account. And here I believe that an understanding of this may perhaps develop from syndicalism itself. But this should not be understood as if I were only singing the praises of syndicalism. However, I do believe that threefolding can be better understood from this side than from any of the other directions.

Now, I have little to add to what the last speakers have said. I would just like to make one comment, namely that I and the friends of threefolding have recently become very aware of what one speaker said about the apathy of the masses. Yes, in the place of the phlegm, one would need fire, because if we really want to make progress in this day and age, we need not only insight – this, of course, in the first place – but also fire. You see, when it is constantly being said that the spirit is not really needed, that it will come with economic transformation, then I ask you: Yes, the possibility of moving forward was there to a certain extent. On November 9, the National Assembly was elected. But is there any sign of a new spirit in this National Assembly? There was now a whole new group of voters who had not previously been entitled to vote: women. But it is strange that the spirit has obviously not yet descended on these women either, because the National Assembly shows absolutely nothing of what we really need for the future. But for that, enthusiasm and fire will be needed.

In this context, I ask you whether it is not rather short-sighted to refuse to see that a certain socialization has already begun – and this before the official socialization? Do we want socialization only on paper? Is that what it takes to satisfy you? Imagine if the commercial counsellor who devoted himself to the threefold order had done so like the other commercial counsellors. Then it would have come about that at the moment when socialization was to take place, there would have been no commercial counsellor at all! It would have come about that at some point this Kommerzienrat would have been expropriated like other Kommerzienräte, and then there would have been no more money for real socialization or better schools and the like. And now I ask you: Is it a great sin for someone to take money from another before humanity is ready, to give his money for socialization? Is it a sin if someone does not always trumpet the message that the means of production must be handed over to the general public, but does it of his own accord? I fear that those who always trumpet the phrase that the means of production must be put at the service of the general public will not apply it as sensibly as those who do something out of their own insight beforehand. This is socialization before the official socialization. This is worked out from the spirit that we are currently longing for as the social spirit of the future. And to raise the accusation that someone has the social spirit before, that is, before he is in any constitution, means not being able at all to penetrate into the spirit that can only save humanity, but only shows the longing for the written word. The law you give, you can confidently carry home. We need the spirit out of which socialization is done. Therefore, one should not fall into the trap of saying: The Waldorf School is nice, but it is done by a commercial counselor; we don't want to know anything about that! It would be wiser to say: Take him as an example, and as socializers in the future become like him, then it will be good. The things that are constantly being said from this corner against titles and the like only testify that, despite everything, one clings to words and phrases more than to action. And until we can bring ourselves to act and to acknowledge the deed, no matter where it comes from, we will not move forward; we must be convinced of this. And when we are convinced of this, then we will look only at whether someone is a reasonable person inspired by social feelings, and we will not ask about anything else. As long as we ask about something else, we will not move forward. If this does not become clear, all talk is in vain. Because the beginning must be made by those people who understand something of what is to happen, regardless of whether they play this or that role in the present order. All of us who live today, whether capitalists or laborers, naturally have what we live on out of capitalism. And we cannot change anything if we do not look to what lives in the spirit and must come about out of the spirit. We must finally overcome the phrase, we must move on to what can really become action.

Mr. Roser: As chairman, he thanks Dr. Steiner for his presentation and draws attention once again to the next event. He asks those present once again to study the book “The Core Points of the Social Question” so that they are able to talk about the book and the threefold social order in the circles in which they move.