The Task of Today's Youth

GA 217a — 24 February 1924

IX. Announcement of a Youth Section

The Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum is seeking to establish not only the sections already mentioned but also a further section. This will be possible if the intentions of the Executive Council meet with a corresponding response. In every age, young people have been somewhat at odds with old. This gypsy truth is a consolation to many when it comes to the behavior of today's youth.

But this consolation could easily become a disaster.

One should understand the present youth from the “spirit of the present” both in their questionable aberrations and in their all too justified striving for something different from what the old give them.

First of all, there is the youth that is pushed into the academic career by the circumstances of life. They are offered “science”. Solid, secure, fruitful science for the outer life. It would be nonsense, in the manner of many laymen, to rant about this science. But the soul of youth still freezes to this science before it comes to recognize its solidity, its security, its fertility for the outer life.

Science owes its greatness to the strong opposition it has faced since the mid-19th century. At that time, people realized how easily man can sail into the uncertainty of knowledge when he rises from the lowlands of research to the heights of a world view. It was believed that chilling examples of such a rise had been experienced.

And so they wanted to free “science” from the world view. It should stick to the “facts” in the valleys of nature and avoid the high roads of the mind.

When they opposed the worldview, they derived a certain satisfaction from the act of opposing. The worldview fighters of the mid-19th century were happy in their fighting mood.

Today's youth can no longer share this happiness. They can no longer stir up satisfying feelings in their souls by experiencing the fight against the “uncertainty” and “crush” of the worldview.

For today there is simply nothing left to fight against. It is impossible to advocate freeing “science” from “worldview.” For the worldview is dead by now.

In contrast, however, the feelings of young people have made a discovery. Not at all a discovery of the intellect, but one that comes from the whole, undivided human nature.

The young have discovered that without a worldview, it is impossible to live a dignified human life. Many of the old have heard the “evidence” against the worldview. They have submitted to the power of the evidence. The youth no longer pays any intellectual attention to this power of evidence; but it instinctively senses the powerlessness of all intellectual proof where the human heart speaks from an invincible urge.

Science presents itself to young people in a dignified way; but it owes its dignity to the lack of a world view. Young people long for a world view. But science needs young people.

At the Goetheanum, we would like to understand young people in such a way that we can seek the paths to a worldview with them. And we hope that in the light of the worldview, a true love for science will be generated. We would like to not lose science in world view reverie, but to gain it in the awakening of spiritual experience.

The leadership of the Anthroposophical Society asks young people if they want to understand it too. If they find this understanding, then the “Section for the Spiritual Strivings of Youth” can become something vital.