Materialism as Necessary Stage: Humanity's Spiritual Maturation

GA 174b — 13 May 1917, Stuttgart

Tenth Lecture

It is certainly understandable that in the soul of the present man, more than is perhaps otherwise the case, the need arises to understand time in its peculiarity. We are living in a time when events are taking place that not only demand the most tremendous sacrifices from many people, but which truly present human thought with difficult riddles, riddles of the most diverse kinds. Why did these things have to reveal themselves in our age in such a terrible catastrophe as it is now going through the development of mankind? This is certainly a question that touches the souls of today. We see the outer events well; we must only try to prepare ourselves more and more, not only to seek the proximate causes for such momentous events, but to turn our eyes to the deeper forces of the time, and to how these deeper forces are grounded in the overall development of humanity. Then we may perhaps also understand much that otherwise remains incomprehensible to us, that we can only stare at, so to speak.

Let us ask ourselves: What is a serious characteristic of our time in the deepest sense? — Well, we certainly cannot deny from discussions that have often been held here that in recent times, in all fields, what we call materialism, materialism in the broadest sense of the word, has emerged. Materialism! — today, let us not understand it in the sense of only directing our feelings, our sympathy and our antipathy to that which we label with the term materialism; rather, let us try to sense that an age had to come when materialism, so to speak, set the tone in the development of humanity. Humanity needed materialism, the passage through materialism. It must not lose itself within materialism; it must not, as it were, surrender to this materialism to such an extent that it loses the connection with the spiritual world not only out of sight but also out of mind. To ensure that this does not happen, to ensure that the connection with the spiritual world is maintained, is precisely the task of spiritual science. Today I would like to try to bring before you some of the developmental laws of the human race, which, if we understand them in the right way, can help us to understand what is happening around us.

That we live in the age of materialism is by no means due merely to the wickedness and depravity of the human soul at large, but to certain laws of development. Admittedly, the face of materialism in our age is not a beautiful one, especially when we can compare this materialistic face with the cultural face of older periods. Nevertheless, no one should fall back into reactionary thinking and believe that the old cultural developments should be brought back. What is quite significant for us about the nature of materialism in our time is that even outstanding, spiritually significant personalities cannot bring their soul impulses to an understanding of the spiritual world. They simply cannot. We must admit this to ourselves without prejudice. Let us take a typical example from the 19th century, a man who was much talked about in the second half of the 19th century in the international intellectual life of Europe: Ernest Renan, who endeavored to understand the Christ Impulse in a way that was possible for his time. Ernest Renan's 'Life of Jesus' caused a great sensation in the widest circles and had a great influence. But Ernest Renan is, on the one hand, a spirit who was serious about spiritual matters, but on the other hand, he could not form any ideas about the fact that man can find a way to an understanding of spiritual worlds. Let us take a saying that Ernest Renan made at a fairly young age; he said: “The man of the present is aware that he will never know anything about the highest causes of the universe and about his own destiny.” This is a leading spirit of the present day who speaks in this way, who actually presents it as an important insight when man becomes aware that he can never know anything about the causes of the universe and about his destiny. And he was not a superficial man, this Ernest Renan. He lived a life of insight. And it is characteristic that the old Renan, the Renan who had become an old man, made another characteristic statement. This man, who throughout his life immersed himself in the belief that man cannot find his way into the spiritual world, indeed, he had to impress this on himself as a higher realization, said at the end of his life: I wish I knew for sure that there was a hell, because better the hypothesis of hell than that of nothingness. There you see something spoken from the compressed heart of the present. Nothingness stares at man when he has the yearning, the desire to gain a spiritual world, a spiritual world into which man could enter when he passes through the gate of death. And a person who believes that he has achieved the state of being above such things, that he can do without such knowledge, who at the end of his life says: It would be better to know that there is a hell than to look at nothingness. — One must empathize with such things if one wants to feel characteristic of our time.

But we must be clear about one thing: humanity needs leading minds in every age. In ancient times it was the mystery priests, and in our age it is certain philosophers who are increasingly taking on a scientific character. A philosopher whom I knew very well said the following in his last work, “The Tragicomedy of Wisdom”: He says: We have no more philosophy than an animal and differ from the animal only in the frantic attempts to want to come to a knowledge, and by the final surrender to the non-knowledge. — The person concerned, who has thus come to the conclusion from his digging in the spiritual life that man cannot have more philosophy than an animal, has become a professor of philosophy and a university professor. Therefore, it is not surprising that, on the other hand, natures of a more profound bent want to seek some way into the spiritual world, and that, because they cannot bring themselves to do so, they throw themselves into the arms of the nearest thing, so to speak, that is offered to them by the impulses of the age, arising out of materialism. We see this from numerous such examples in our own time, such as Maurice Barrès, the Frenchman who has now also attained a certain fame among the crazed haters of the Germans during the war. Before the war, he was the typical leader of those young Frenchmen who, as far as possible, sought a path to spirituality. Maurice Barrès searched for a long time, and after a long search, he threw himself into the arms of popular Catholicism, the Catholic Church, as many young Frenchmen have done. In the end, it is only one particular example of a widespread trend, as it lives in our time and has come to expression in his becoming Catholic. But let us now try to look into the soul of a man like Maurice Barrès and see how he approaches the search for the spiritual life. I must say that the following is a characteristic saying of this Maurice Barrès. So a modern seeker of the spirit let the following words slip: “It is a futile effort to seek the beyond. It may not even exist!” And then he continues: “And however we approach it, we cannot learn anything about it. Let us leave all occultism to the enlightened and the conjurers. Whatever form mysticism takes, it contradicts reason. But we still give ourselves to the Church, firstly because it is inextricably linked with the tradition of France, and secondly because, with the authority of centuries and great practical experience, it formulates the will of that ethic that must be taught to the people and the Church, and finally because, far from delivering us to mysticism, , it directly defends us against it, silencing the voice of the mysterious groves” - by mysterious groves he means everything that has come out of the mysteries - ‘and interpreting the Gospels, sacrificing the generous anarchism of the Savior to the needs of modern society.’

Why should we surrender to the Catholic Church? Because it has understood, he says, to sacrifice the generous worldview of the Savior to the lukewarm needs of modern humanity, that is, to adapt Christianity quite well to those who want the same thing from Christianity that an average Christian experiences with his or her Christianity today. If one did not understand that there is a certain necessity for arriving at such a view, then one would have to call such a view, in the extreme, frivolous, cynical and frivolous. But that deeper minds in particular arrive at such a view, one should feel, and that is necessary to feel. We can only ask ourselves one question: What is the deeper cause? What is the deeper cause that it is so difficult for people today to find their way into the spiritual world? — Here we must once again turn our soul's gaze to the development of humanity, at least in the time that has elapsed since the great Atlantean catastrophe and in the fifth period of which we are living.

We have so far divided this development of humanity into the first period, which we have called the ancient Indian, the second, which we have called the pre-Persian, the third, which we have called the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian, the fourth, which we have called the Greek-Latin, and finally we have our fifth period; we live in it. In this fifth period, the very things have come about that we have hinted at from a certain point of view. I have tried at various times to characterize the development of humanity in order to place the present in this development of humanity. Today I will do so from a different point of view. This other point of view may again seem quite paradoxical when first considered, but let us at least take it up without prejudice for the time being. Let us try to equip ourselves with the way of looking at things that we can already have after having developed so many years of anthroposophy.

From what we have already absorbed into our souls, we can know that not only does the individual human being undergo a development in the physical world between birth and death, but that humanity itself also undergoes a development. Today, we are considering the fifth period of that development that follows the Atlantic catastrophe, in the manner just characterized. The paradox will arise when we ask ourselves: Can we speak of an evolution in time in a more precise way for humanity, for a part of human development, just as we speak of such a development in time for the individual human being? — We say: A person will first develop in such a way that he lives through the first seven years from the first to the seventh year. Then he lives through the period from the seventh to the fourteenth year – taken approximately, you know what is meant by that – then from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, and so on. In a sense, the human being develops in stages, adding one year from birth to death each time a year has passed.

How can we think now, if we want to reflect on the indicated piece of human development? It will be useful if we also ask ourselves: How old is humanity if we want to compare its age with our own individual human age? At what age is today's humanity? It will not be uninteresting to consider this from a spiritual scientific point of view. And it is precisely this spiritual-scientific consideration that will bring us to many things. -— Years ago I have already characterized the same thing. It is the case in spiritual science that one can know many things and only after years can one formulate them properly or can reformulate them. I would like to give you a new formulation of the enigma hinted at today.

Let us first consider schematically how the development was:

First period, the primeval Indian development;
second period, the primeval Persian development;
third period, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian development;
fourth period, the Greek-Latin development;
the fifth period is ours; then comes the sixth.

If we now compare the age of humanity with the individual ages of man, how old was humanity in the first period after the Atlantic catastrophe? How old was it then? You see, if we knew how old all of humanity was, then we could compare how we have to see ourselves, how we place ourselves in the development of humanity with our life ages. It was not at all easy to investigate this question from a spiritual scientific point of view. One had to look first at the purely spiritual scientific fact, had to connect a meaning with this purely spiritual scientific fact of the first period. And when one had gained an insight into the particular spiritual configuration of humanity as it was at that time, then one had to ask: to which individual, personal age would this configuration of that time be comparable? And there you find out that humanity as humanity – not the individual human being, we will talk about that later – that humanity in this first post-Atlantean period has an age that can be compared to today's human age between the forty-eighth and fifty-sixth year. So you see, if you take the spiritual configuration of what was cultural life at that time, you come to the conclusion that humanity back then had an age that can be compared to today's age of man, and of course woman, from the forty-eighth to the fifty-sixth year. It was not very easy to get this information, but once it was available, it is an actual result of spiritual science.

Now the question is: What about the second, the original Persian period? The same observation had to be made again. It turns out that if you consider the nature of what was culture back then, it can only be compared to the age between forty-two and forty-eight years of age today. And if we now move on to the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian era, which ends around 747 BC, this corresponds to the human age from thirty-five to forty-two years. When we come to the Greco-Latin period, this corresponds to the human age from twenty-eight to thirty-five years. And when we come to our fifth, post-Atlantic age, this corresponds to the individual human age between twenty-one and twenty-eight years. And in the sixth period, we can predict that the sixth age will correspond to the age between the fourteenth and twenty-first year; and in the last period, before a new great catastrophe, the age from the seventh to the fourteenth year.

I may well confess to you, my dear friends, that the result that emerged when it was formulated was truly one of the most surprising things I actually came up with, one of the most surprising things. Because, isn't it true, it is based on a strange fact: while man is ascending in numbers, the development of mankind is descending. Strangely enough, humanity is getting younger and younger! That's right: humanity is getting younger and younger.

Now, of course, one has to ask oneself: what does all this mean on a broader scale? There are many developmental puzzles associated with this matter. I asked myself first: What does it mean for the first cultural period that humanity was between the ages of forty-eight and fifty-six? The following emerges: Of course, the people who were born and lived at that time first became one, two, three years old. That is clear. But then they also reached the age of forty-eight. For each person there came a time when they lived between the forty-eighth and fifty-sixth year of the individual development. And then these people could say to themselves: Now we are personally entering an age where we have the personal characteristics of old age that are contained all around us in the group spirit of all humanity. We grow into what is in our environment. Earlier, before the age of forty-eight, we had, so to speak, completed a development that belonged to us, that was for us; but at the age of forty-eight we grow into what is in our environment. If you then became older than fifty-six, you continued to develop, you just lived on and, in a sense, grew back into what was there before the Atlantic catastrophe. You then went through something that went beyond what was revealed in the group soul of humanity around you. So at the age of forty you found the connection to the group soul of humanity.

In the next, in the second cultural period, this connection was found earlier. Then one became forty-two years old and grew into what was in the environment, grew into what was aurically in all of humanity.

And then, at the age of thirty-five, you grew into it, so that between the ages of thirty-five and forty-two you could say to yourself: Now what is in me is in harmony with what is around me. After the age of forty-two, what was around you could no longer give you anything, so you had to live on out of yourself, so to speak, because the age of humanity had become so much younger. In the period from the age of forty-two onwards, you were no longer in the environment; you grew beyond it, you had to rely on yourself.

Thus the ancient Greeks and Romans were dependent on themselves when they reached the age of thirty-five. Between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five, he lived with his environment, and then humanity had nothing more to add to its age, because that was lived out; humanity could no longer become forty-eight years old if it had reached the age of thirty-five and was going backwards.

And we in the fifth period: just think, we live ourselves into the group spirit of humanity, into what our environment is, between the twenty-first and twenty-eighth year. From then on, our environment no longer provides anything. What comes after that, we have to attain through our own development, we have to draw from our inner selves, because nothing more flows to us from the outside. Mankind has covered the years up to the twenty-eighth year, and when we have reached the age of twenty-eight, then, yes, then we must have a fund, then we must have something within us that we can carry forward; otherwise we will never be older than twenty-eight. And now so much of the fifth period has already passed that mankind has just returned to the twenty-seventh year. So that if nothing is done to develop their inner selves energetically and to advance through themselves, people will only live to be twenty-seven years old. That's a lot, my dear friends! That means that if everything is left as it is, today's humanity will not achieve any intellectual or other soul development than that up to the age of twenty-seven. And if something is not poured into their souls to develop them further, then they remain twenty-seven years old for the rest of their lives.

They remain twenty-seven years old for the rest of their lives: that is a great secret of the present development of humanity. In the sixth post-Atlantic period, people do not get older than twenty-one years at all. If nothing is done to expand their inner life, to strengthen their intellect, initiative and will, then a general outbreak of early dementia would result. People would have to remain within a life development that ends at twenty-one years of age: anything later would be merely an insubstantial addition.

Let us consider this in connection with the individuality of the human being. Just think, we all become more and more mature in accordance with our individual, personal inclinations. A child is essentially always a materialist; a young person then becomes an idealist, but their ideals are abstract, they lack substance. Only in later years does one adapt to making such ideals that are immersed in reality, live with reality, that are truly realistic. Suppose a person today is completely a child of his time. What kind of qualities will he be able to show if he was not offered the opportunity in his youth to absorb something spiritual? That alone advances the soul. If he remains subject to the spirit of the age, then such a person's destiny is to make no progress beyond twenty-eight years of development. Whatever comes later stops at twenty-eight. Of course, if one is stimulated, one can progress beyond the twenty-eighth year, but the other is the rule; what I have described is what follows from the law of development. A person who does not advance beyond the age of twenty-eight, who remains twenty-eight years old even though he reaches fifty, fifty-six, or sixty, may under certain circumstances develop great abstract ideals, but he will have gone through only the years of life with their abstract ideals, but not the years of trial, which, in the spiritual sense, turn those who harbor such ideas into practical people, into people who realize how they can be realized, who not only dazzle people with the power of youth but who can realize themselves.

This naturally raises the question: could an example be given of a true child of our time who has grown old but is not beyond the age of twenty-eight? Of course, if one were to give such an example today in the world, which wants nothing to do with spiritual laws that also work in the development of humanity, one would be laughed at as a fool. But here among us, where we have developed so much spiritually, it may perhaps be helpful to speak quite specifically in order to better understand our time. Why should not the spiritual scientist be allowed to speak specifically to those who are his friends and who would like to hear something about the secrets of the time?

After really careful research into our time, I noticed a very characteristic example of a person who, no matter how old they get, is condemned to be no older than twenty-eight years old, and that is the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. Yes, you laugh, my dear friends, but for me this was a very significant realization that solves an enormous number of puzzles of our time. I always had to ask myself: Why do the ideals of this man, which he has expressed in various notes to humanity, blind so much, and why do they turn into the opposite of what is written in them? Because they are the ideals of youth, and remain as such, although the man who expresses them grows older. Because they are abstract ideals of youth, which do not want to be related to reality, which do not want to be saturated by reality, and which therefore cannot be applied to real practical life, in which not only the external material, but also the spiritual is at work, especially when it comes to the order of the social structure of humanity. As much as one can think today without what can only be established internally, so much can he think, Woodrow Wilson, no more!

A Wilson of the sixth period would only be able to live to the age of twenty-one, even if he lived to be a hundred years old. But you see, after all, the fact of the matter is this: when we consider the fourth period, the individual, personal age of man, so to speak, meets the descending age of humanity up to the thirty-fifth year at the center of this thirty-fifth year. There it coincides in the middle. Hence the peculiarly harmonious life of the Greeks, and the harmony between the individual life of the Greek and the life of Greek humanity. But now humanity has regressed and no longer passes through the years from the age of twenty-eight onwards. And the human being must go through them individually, really individually.

You see, this is connected with things that lie beyond the physical, sensual world. You can find out more about some of these things in my book 'The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and Humanity'. Today I want to present this from a different point of view.

In the first post-Atlantean period, through his individual development, when a person reached the age of forty-eight, he was able to connect with the age of humanity. However, this was connected with the fact that in those days, in this first period, there was still a close contact between certain entities of the higher hierarchies and between humanity here on earth. The entities of the higher hierarchies, which we think of as belonging to the hierarchy of the archai or spirits of personality, still descended to earth at that time, as it were, and united with human development; they inspired, actually intuitized humanity. The fact that humanity was able to develop to the point of only growing into the age of humanity at such a late individual age has resulted in humanity having a special connection with the archai here on earth. In the second post-Atlantic period, there was the same connection with the archangeloi, and in the third with the angeloi. But in the fourth post-Atlantic period, in the Greco-Latin period, people had to rely on themselves. In the third period, it was still the case that the angels, the archangels, descended and inspired people, intuiting them and giving them imaginations. Then came the Greco-Latin period: the spirits of the higher hierarchies no longer descended in the same easy way, so to speak, and people had to start commuting up and down, into the spiritual realm and then back down into the earthly realm. In other words, man had to find himself. But now, in the fifth period, we have entered an epoch in which the opposite must take place. Now we have to strengthen our inner being to such an extent that, during this fifth period, we gradually come close to the angeloi through our own strength, that we encounter them again, but through our own strength, and that the angelos in us sets the impulse for development; that we can find through ourselves what humanity can no longer give us through the higher hierarchies.

There you see why we have materialism in our time. There you see that there have been times when humanity, by being older, by not yet being as young as it is now, reached further up into the spiritual worlds, where it was, so to speak, from the very beginning closer to the spiritual worlds than man is now, when he approaches death, is close to the spiritual worlds. There you see the deeper reason for materialism, but also the necessary impulse to really seek something that can spiritually, individually, stimulate the human being inwardly, that can lead him beyond what he can absorb from his environment.

Even the education that, so to speak, only flows to man by itself cannot possibly give what brings more to man today than a lifespan of twenty-eight years. Therefore, the spiritual conditions must be spiritualized. If things were to continue as they are, if spiritual science were to be thoroughly drilled, if things were to continue as they do naturally, then a general standstill would take hold at the age of twenty-eight. If research were only carried out in natural science laboratories and clinics and only what can be given from the outside were found, if nothing were stimulated in the souls from within, if no science of the spiritual were sunk into the souls, but only what the greatness of modern times, the greatness of materialism, has brought were continued, then progress would finally be such that people would always remain young. But that would only be something if they remained young not only in their inner being but also with their bodies. But with the body they are already growing old. As a result, what lives in them no longer corresponds to the outward physicality.

Today it is still the case that in many respects it is precisely the inadequacy of what we experience with humanity that stimulates certain forces within us. We can only become twenty-eight years old through humanity, but we must live longer in the world in the various incarnations. It is the case that for the time being, when humanity is only twenty-seven years old, there are still forces that are further developed in the time between death and a new birth towards the Angelos. Today it is still like that. But when the sixth period begins, then man on earth will only be able to reach the age of twenty-one through what is around him. What has been developed by the twenty-first year? The physical body by the seventh year, the body of formative forces by the fourteenth year, the sentient body by the twenty-first year: only the bodily nature is developed. The soul, if the person does not develop it from within, the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, the consciousness soul: they are then not developed at all. The physical is developed up to the age of twenty-one. Then the human being would lose too much from his own powers to be able to catch up on what he has missed here, if he has not received any spiritual stimulation, even after death, between death and a new birth.

You can see from this that the point of view that humanity attains does not correspond to chance, but that it is a deep necessity, that it corresponds to a surprising law of human development. We can see this in many individual cases today. Indeed, there has never been a time in the development of humanity when people were so reluctant to recognize experience as something that life gives. Everyone today wants to be clever as early as possible. Why? Because deep down he senses that at twenty-eight he must be a finished product. For many people today, absorbing anything after twenty-eight years is an absurd idea, an absurd fact altogether. Then one lives one's life, but one wants to absorb only up to the twenty-eighth year, or even more precisely — and this is true of the facts — up to the twenty-seventh year.

But when we consider such a secret of human development, we also understand that when we speak of the necessity of spiritual development, it is not seen as an arbitrariness, but it is understood in such a way that this necessity really exists, that, so to speak, a person remains imperfect in our time if he does not take up a spiritual impulse. This is felt everywhere, and wherever life is not viewed in its reality. The strange fact that many people are so incapable of even entering into certain lines of thought is based on the fact that people do not even reach the age of thirty-five, that there are so few who can say something that is connected with the more mature experience of later life.

These things must be faced quite impartially and without prejudice, and from them we must draw the impulse to take in spiritual things. If we do not do this, we join those who actually want to condemn humanity to immature youthfulness.

Yes, certain thoughts and insights that come to us from spiritual science are indeed so profound that they seem deeply, deeply incisive to us when we are fully human, but we really only have to be inclined to feel the incisive at every moment. Because it grows out of the incisive, spiritual science, we need not be surprised if this spiritual science meets with resistance. It meets with resistance not only from the stubbornness of people, but from the nature of human development.

I may have told you a few paradoxes. In any case, it is already paradoxical for today's people that if you go back to the second, third, fourth cultural period, it is as if, in those days, people who had really found their way to humanity were, to put it trivially, on familiar terms with the angels, archangels and archai, had dealings with them. Yes, for someone who does not live to be older than twenty-eight years today, it is of course a crazy thought to claim that people once not only made agreements among themselves, but they communicated with angels, with archangels and with archai, as we communicate with each other today on the physical plane. That this view prevails and the other view seems a madness is only because people have forgotten old knowledge. In Plato you find a remarkable and very important passage, that is, during the period in which humanity offered man twenty-eight to thirty-five years. Plato said: Before the spiritual man sank into sensuality and lost his wings, he lived among the gods in the rational spiritual world, where everything is true and pure. And by this Plato means not only the life before birth, but the life in ancient times, when people still gained their knowledge from their dealings with the gods themselves. — I also hinted at this in the mystery play where an old initiate speaks of the old teachers who draw their knowledge from their dealings with the gods, that is, with the spirits of the higher hierarchies.

But certain things are connected with the development of humanity which, precisely because that is the case, are no longer understood at all. One has strange experiences.

Allow me to cite an experience that is both gratifying and disappointing. A strange word, isn't it, but it is true. It is gratifying because I have to mention the name of a man who was very kind to my writing 'Thoughts During the Time of War', from the northern countries, a person who likes to find his way into the world as far as he can, Kjellén, the state researcher, who is now in Uppsala. I do not want to attack or criticize the man, on the contrary, I have chosen this example because Kjellén is one of our friends. He has recently written an interesting book, 'The State as a Form of Life', in which he attempts to present a deeper understanding of the state. Yes, Kjellén is trying to gain a view of how the state should be an organism. For those who now see through these things and who, from the study of spiritual science, know how political science, if it existed today, should be structured in order to be fruitful in practical state life, reading Kjellén's book, even though one likes the author very much, is almost torture, a real torture. Why? Well, you see, Kjellén does not go any further than to ask: If one now regards the state as a whole organism, then man lives within the state. What then is the human being? It suggests itself: a cell! Thus, for Kjellén, the human being is a cell of the state organism. Kjellén builds much of his book “The State as a Form of Life” on this idea. The human being is a cell, as we have cells within us, and the state is the whole organism, which organizes itself through its various cells.

You see, if you just go out on comparisons – and that's all it is – then you can actually compare everything with everything. You can actually logically support any thought, because if you don't draw any consequences, you can compare an organism with a pocket knife. But it all depends on having a sense of penetrating reality. But if you look at Kjellen's book in particular, you immediately come across some very strange dead ends. In an organism, the cells are next to each other, one adjoins the other, and the fact that they adjoin each other and have the effect that comes from it makes the organism an organism. This can no longer be applied to the interaction of people in the so-called state organism. In short, if you want to remain abstractly logical, you can come up with any number of clever thoughts about it, write a rather thick book about it, and then indulge in the idea that it is also practical. But if you have a sense of reality, then the thought must be developed further. It must really be sunk into reality; that is the first step to understanding. I recommend that you read the book; it is a representative book of the present time. Buy it and read it and feel that agony of which I have spoken. It comes with the fact that the thought pops out: What can be compared to the organism if one wants to apply the thought of the organism to the social life of humanity? - Only the life of humanity on the whole earth. And the individual states can only be compared to cells.

The life of humanity on the whole earth may be called an organism, and the individual states may be called cells, but not a state as an organism and the individual human being as a cell. But in this way the whole thing is only compared to a plant, to the life of the state. Never with anything other than a plant organism. And if one wants to retain the concept of an organism, then one would have to take the organism and the human being would have to stand out. For the human being develops beyond all state life. He cannot be absorbed, like the cell in the individual organism, into this state life, but must stand out. That is to say, there must be spheres in the evolution of mankind that cannot be included in the state. It will be seen that man must reach out into a spiritual realm, that man can only reach into the state life through his lower anchorage, but upwards into the spiritual world. And here it is interesting how some researchers are suddenly confronted with the fact that people in ancient times, when the mysteries still existed, knew something about them. And Kjellen himself points to an interesting book, a book written fifty years ago by Fustel de Coulanges: 'La Cit& antique'. And he comes to the strange, incomprehensible to both the author Fustel de Coulanges and Kjellén: What was the old state? What was that? — Coulanges comes to say to himself: Yes, the old states were all based on worship. Why? The state was a form of worship because it was still felt that man had to reach up into the spiritual world. Someone could only set the tone in the state if he was initiated into the mysteries and received instructions about the social structure from the mysteries. It was still like that in the third and fourth periods. People come to it through external research, but they cannot do anything with it, even though they can even read about it in history.

It is tremendously tragic to read the last page of Kjellén's book “The State as a Form of Life” and see that he now wants to construct something that is political science, but is completely, completely discouraged by the fact that What are we to do with the cell? If one wanted to realize Kjellen's idea, one could actually only decapitate people, because they cannot, with their heads, belong to such a state, which would be constructed as Kjellen's science constructs it, since they must extend beyond the state with their spirituality.

You see, when you look more deeply at life, you come to very strange things. And that is why all that is still called political science today does not yet know what it wants at all. Nowhere is there a real political science by today's standards. All we have is mere talk. For a real political science will only be possible when we are once more oriented towards the way in which man is connected with the spiritual world, when we once more know how much we can organize in our earthly life together and how much must freely transcend the organization. These things must be brought up from certain depths. Here you feel, my dear friends, how things become tragic. Humanity must bear within itself the laws of its development, must have some sense of these laws of development.

In particular – please forgive me for mentioning particulars at the end – one comes up against terrible obstacles when one feels it as a necessity of life to think in a real way. To think in a real way also means to think spiritually, because if one does not think spiritually, one does not think in a real way, but rather one thinks an essence-less abstraction. If you have developed the habit of thinking in real terms, you will often come up against obstacles today. Please forgive me for choosing an obvious example that seems trivial.

For example, I can say that nothing impresses me less than someone coming today within the German-speaking world and writing so-called beautiful verses, perfectly beautiful verses, as most people still like them. Something that has undergone such a development as the German language, and has such developmental possibilities ahead of it as the German language, is where so-called beautiful verses today practically write themselves, especially in the immature youth up to the age of twenty-eight. If one solves artistic verse problems, then one does not arrive at what people today often consider beautiful verses, because these actually belong to what one enjoys when one transports oneself into earlier times. Therefore, many people today are quite successful at making beautiful verses, but the point is to advance in development. It may often happen that someone writes less beautiful verses but tries to create a new art form from an elementary point of view. Naturally many people will think it dreadful when someone attempts to create a new art form that is perhaps still very imperfect in relation to what it should become. You see, I would now like to say something personal. I will not speak of my opinion of the verses in which Mr. von Bernus expounded anthroposophical thoughts in Das Reich. But you can all be quite certain that, however little any one of you may have liked the verses, Mr. von Bernus could have produced verses like them off his cuff if he had wanted to write them. Things are not so simple after all. And today, when there is so much malicious disparaging and defaming of what we want, this magazine, 'Das Reich', emerged with the best of intentions, and it should have been supported precisely because of this very best intention, regardless of one's attitude towards the individual issue. Therefore it was hard for me to hear that Mr. von Bernus Schocke had received letters from our circle of members which slandered what was written in the journal. One would have had much more opportunity to look at what was directly aimed at destroying our movement. And so it happens that someone who has set out to tell untruths about everything in our movement can claim: “The Reich”, which is under the sign of Steiner.” Now, I have no more connection with this journal than I could possibly have with any other; I did not found it, it is the work of Mr. von Bernus, it is not connected with my personality. I write articles for this journal and am not responsible for anything. But anyone who uses the defamatory expression in a hurtful manner in one direction or the other can also know that - in such a case it is a defamatory expression - “this magazine serves Steiner's purposes”. On the contrary, one should be able to be pleased when something comes from a completely outside source. But so far we have often experienced that precisely those who wanted to support our cause were thrown stones in the way by our members, but that it was advised against to support our cause in good will and in a bold way, while one did not care about all the defamation that has happened on the whole.

There would be much more to say. I wanted to mention this because I really want to emphasize that it never occurred to me to talk about this or that in the “Reich” in any other way than to discuss it, that is, to see if perhaps behind the seemingly imperfect there is a striving for development , and I really had no desire to look at what many have looked at, those who have felt called to do so, which would be nonsense anyway, even if it were not distasteful to send their judgment in letters to the poet. That is the most distasteful and harmful way. For one need not approach personally with a defamatory letter the one who has endeavored to write about the matter. Even if the letter were justified, he could not understand it, he lives inside the matter. One may say one's opinion to all the others, only do not send it to the poet's house.

Now, my dear friends, all these things that are said only ever hit one side, the side of a few. But it is the case that, in society, the innocent are imprisoned with the guilty and now have to atone for them. That is what is more painful to me than to those who suffer from today's measures.

But there is one more thing I would like to add: anyone in society who merely communicates the one measure, that I will no longer discuss personal matters in private conversations in the future, would only say one-sided things. The whole thing is part of it: I expressly release everyone from the promise, insofar as they themselves want it, to keep secret something that has been said in private conversations. That is part of it, and that is the important thing. During the defamation campaign, believe it or not, these measures are so necessary that no exceptions can be made. But no one should lose anything. What can be done esoterically will also be possible when it has to be done in full public view. And I shall find ways and means, although I cannot and must not make exceptions in private conversations, so that everyone will be able to satisfy their esoteric needs in the future as well. Please be patient for a short time. Even without private conversations, there will be ways and means to ensure that everything that can legitimately be demanded for esoteric life is satisfied, without the damage that has been caused to our society by the defamation of private conversations.

And now I would like to say that I would like to bring up something that is deeply connected to what can lead us to an understanding of our difficult present, but that I am truly not finished with what I wanted to say to you during this stay. Therefore, for those who want to come, I will speak here again on Tuesday evening.