The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922

GA 251 — 5 June 1917, Berlin

24. The Seriousness of the Task

Now just a few remarks following on from what I said the other day, because I am almost afraid that some things could be misunderstood again. From a variety of symptoms, it is clear that some things could be misunderstood. Just remember that it must not be believed that I disapprove of or somehow complain about or even find it incomprehensible when articles appear that are opposed to spiritual science and take a factual point of view. Such articles cannot, of course, do any harm to the cause. Even what the privy councillor Max Seiling wrote about the alleged contradictions cannot harm the cause of spiritual science; for everyone can see from the literature what it is about. Therefore, when I speak of the damage to society, it cannot be the case that society could now have the task of dealing with what is factual from a social point of view; that is the concern of the individual. The individual who stands up for spiritual science – whether positively or polemically – will be able to do a great service to spiritual science as such. But spiritual science is most certainly not a matter for the Society as such in this context. I have to say this, otherwise it will seem ridiculous to say that meetings or discussions are being held on how to deal with the attacks on Dr. Steiner.

Of course anyone who wants to can write about the matter; that is their business. But it cannot be a matter for the Society. It can be a matter for individuals, but not for the Anthroposophical Society. So, for example, if special meetings have been held in one place and one of the main topics there was what should be done about such attacks, then that is of course completely off the mark. Such attacks, which are factual – even if they are not factual – want to be factual, must also be countered in writing, in the usual way that it generally happens. What is at issue now is that this method of trying to kill spiritual science by drawing people into a web of lies, slander and defamation is not used, but that spiritual science is made impossible because people find it too uncomfortable, or for other reasons, to engage with spiritual science themselves. They have to deal with it themselves. But someone who tells you the most stupid, fantastic orgies - you don't need to get involved in spiritual science for that. But with today's human disposition, it is something through which you can achieve a lot. But this is something that is quite connected - I say this fully consciously - with what has often been played out in the Anthroposophical Society, and also earlier in the Theosophical Society.

You see, after printing an article that is a pack of lies from beginning to end, an editor finds it appropriate to talk about how, I don't know, admirers or female disciples of Dr. Steiner everywhere emphasize that they consider him to be the Christ returned. This is not something that occurs in one place only, it occurs everywhere. Just yesterday it occurred to us again, in the following form: someone claimed that they could find witnesses that I had given a public lecture in a city from which it could be inferred that I had spoken of repeated embodiments of the Christ and pointed out that I myself was claiming such an embodiment.

But, my dear friends, do not believe that this does not already relate to certain murky things in the development of our society. Those friends who observe things with understanding will have found that from a certain point in time, which was very early on, I had begun to assert with complete determination, to emphasize again and again, that the Christ event is a unique one, and I emphasized it because, as I well knew, coteries had formed among us very early on that spread this, well, you can't even call it a fairy tale, but this nonsense, that it has penetrated everywhere, now it is appearing. Do you think I don't know those who in 1905, 1906, 1907 were already toying with all kinds of ideas of incarnation, who were spouting nonsense back then, and had connected with that what - I can't even repeat it because it's such trite stuff. Not only when the Alcyone swindle first appeared did I speak of the impossibility of repeated Christ incarnations, in order to counter what was going on here in this society. It became apparent very early on that a small group, small coteries, were forming, each of which wants to have been this or that, and of course, if one wants to be a Baptist, they need the other complementary piece, because they have to appear together again. Such John the Baptists, Apostles John - they just walked around like that, didn't they.

A lot of it also has to do with the fact that one has a selfish joy, a typically selfish joy, when one can say to someone: This is a secret! I am not allowed to tell you! This is only for the inner circle! - A lot of it has to do with all these things. These things have now been pushed far enough; these things have led to the gossip and scandal that has proliferated. I recently spoke not to counter this, which apparently or really deals with the facts, but about what threatens to let society sink into gossip and rumor, into slander and defamation, because spiritual science can be drawn into gossip and rumor as a result.

And what is a social matter is what has led to the fact that measures had to be taken. Do you think that articles that challenge one or the other sentence have led to such measures having to be taken now? No, they have not! But if you have powers of observation, you can see the intertwined paths everywhere, especially in what has been appearing for some time. As some of you may still remember, it all began with a mean article that appeared in the “Deutsche Tageszeitung” [German Daily Newspaper], which actually contained gossip that had been exaggerated in a very specific way. Since that time, no protest has ever been raised in the Anthroposophical Society against gossip and idle chatter, but it has been thought — as I generally emphasize, that as a rule the opposite of what I mean happens; I have always been misunderstood. As if I believed that this or that, which is apparently or really factually objected to spiritual science, should be dealt with by society. That can certainly be asserted by members, but that is a matter in itself. But we cannot continue the society if such swamp flowers arise as they are now; we cannot possibly do so. All kinds of things are sought after in one direction or another that have nothing to do with spiritual science, that depend on whether one has a society, so it happens that everyone in the society, no matter whether they represent the greatest nonsense, belongs to the society. So people say: This is the society that Dr. Steiner represents! He is responsible for all the nonsense that is carried out. And what a lot of cabbage it is! People go to the doctor and explain to him without any coercion: Yes, Dr. Steiner knows all this better than you do; he knows how to find the illnesses through the spirit.

It is obvious that these things, which accumulate and are always there in one form or another, make it impossible for society to continue in its present form. Apart from many other things that make it impossible, which in particular mean that there is hardly any kind of impudence to which we have not been exposed over time. Above all, everyone understands their membership in such a way that they can scold us according to their needs, preferably in writing or in some other way. We have not been spared any kind of unjustified impudence over time.

Now, these are not really impertinences, there is no need to get annoyed about them, you can accept them objectively, they do not harm you; but the things that then happen are factual. The person who writes an impertinence represents it in every respect; the impertinence becomes a lie, becomes a lie, and then it leads to gossip and slander. That is why it is so important to keep pointing out the factual judgment.

Do we have to overheat everything? Do we always have to put everything in a false light? Things on the physical plane are not so that they can be deified in every single link, in every single small phase. And can we not, when it comes to emphasizing as a social issue what has been said often and for the purpose of being said, so that what our society should be can really learn to distinguish itself from all the ghastly sectarian societies with which it is repeatedly and repeatedly confused. But what is happening?

Please take the whole stack of the Zyklen (a series of lectures) – I don't even want to mention the books – take the Zyklen, the lectures that were given, and please look up how much is in them about the purely physical question of nutrition: what one should eat or drink, what one should not eat or drink; please look up what is in them! Then ask how many members of the Anthroposophical Society are going around saying: Dr. Steiner said you shouldn't eat that, I know what, you shouldn't eat roots, that and that. - All sorts of things that make the Society look ridiculous! But it is arranged so that not only the Society is ridiculed, but I am always ridiculed with it; that is the technique that is followed.

It depends on the spirit in which things are done, because that is the spirit in which they are then driven. And I can observe this spirit from other symptoms. It is almost unbelievable when I see the kind of rubbish that is sent to me from members. If someone comes up with nonsense like cutting potatoes and placing them on warts to heal them, a member will ask whether this is right or not, or what should be done in such a case. This spirit also leads to telling members whether they should drink coffee, eat cheese, or consume mustard and paprika, and the like. I beg of you, take a look at the whole bunch of cycles and see if you can find any of these things there! So anyone who, even with the best of intentions, advocates these things as they are advocated and makes stories out of them that appear to be made in the name of the Society is falsifying what this is all about in the worst possible way.

Of course, I know that many, many, hopefully the majority of the members, feel the same way, but it is important to judge the things. If you have a society, you have to consider: everyone is a member of this society; but does that blind you to the qualities of the society? Is it necessary that it blinds you to the qualities of the society? Isn't it true that sometimes one has to deal with a person, one should also deal with him, one can perhaps do him some good by dealing with him. But does one then have to be blind to the person? Can't one walk alongside a person with seeing eyes? Does one have to justify oneself to oneself when one is friends with a person, that he is a high I or even a terribly great incarnation or the like?

I am talking about very specific things that have happened. Really, a lot would be kept back if one were to make the effort to judge. So it can happen, of course, as attitudes develop in our society, that I can't save myself whenever a certain personality, when I went on a trip, also bought a ticket and of course sat down in the compartment where I sat. That is something I can't prevent. I can't forbid any passenger to sit with me in the compartment, otherwise I would have to buy up all the tickets. — That is harmless; but if people from the Anthroposophical Society then come and, because the person in question always sits in my compartment and travels with me, they consider this person to be a highly initiated one, that is, an especially highly developed personality, then the damage of considering someone to be something begins. It is precisely this that matters, that one has first formed one's opinion.

I really don't always want to be 'betrayed' about these things, but the way these things are coming out of all 'clusters' now, how we really can't go on a journey and see in all places how far people go with the most sacred things. Of course, I never spoke in that place in the most distant of successive incarnations of Christ, but I least noticed that I myself was that incarnation, as in 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907 it was constantly whispered to the world, but not trumpeted, that is precisely the worst thing, that bears its fruits today.

But here we have a person who claims to have heard it, because he claims that he was sitting at the lecture and can also point to others who heard it too. So things go so far that you hear things that could never possibly have been said. But do you think, my dear friends, after the experiences I have had, that I would dare to be completely sure if someone were to say: Yes, there was someone there who took notes, who gave me the transcript, I can prove it! – Do you think I would claim that there can be no such transcript? I am even willing to believe, after all the nonsense that has been spread in the postscripts, that this too can be found in the postscripts.

Just as my dear friends, such nonsense, such ridiculous nonsense in such a hateful way has not really been written at all yet, as is now being written against us, so one must also say: the Anthroposophical Society had to be founded to bring such things to light, which would not actually be possible on any other ground. Nevertheless, many of those who engage in such things are, according to the state of their consciousness, fully convinced that it never occurred to them to ever participate in such things. They may not even know, those who do it.

It is only under such conditions that we are able to see the result that arises, among other things, from this. I will mention only the mildest: Dr. Steiner spoke about the Lazarus miracle, how the human being can be transformed. And then it is shown that he also wanted to perform the Lazarus miracle in a special case with a member. The member felt that the miracle should be performed on her. The way was that Dr. Steiner, when the person concerned was in a sanatorium, sent chocolate biscuits “to thicken the blood”. So, because chocolate biscuits were sent to the sanatorium, as the person concerned herself says, “to thicken the blood”.

Of course, Dr. Steiner only sent them to eat. If she had not walked past a pastry shop, but an orange and apple shop, she might have sent oranges or apples, but she sent chocolate biscuits.

The editor comments on this sentence: “From such occult exercises, even a healthy person can end up in an insane asylum!” — You laugh — but that is exactly what matters to people, what I said the other day: spreading things that are so absurd that they reach the height of ridicule on the one hand and the height of spite on the other. And in these things, only what is really demonstrable, if one proceeds in a truly searching manner, has emerged from all this, that small coteries, that small circles have formed, sometimes there were only three or four. They then found out where they had been together before. But always in these incarnations they came into close proximity to the one around my personality. It just added up over time. An aura has emerged, not a nice one. This playfulness — if one had only thought a little about the seriousness of wanting to implement everything that spiritual science actually wants to be: it could never have come to that.

But once the aspiration has arisen, my dear friends, to seriously tie in with the cultural movement of humanity in general, the society was generally not the right instrument for doing so. I once talked about the first attempts of this or that painter or sculptor and tried to show them. One would like it if one were interested in something that, even if it is only at the beginning, is hung in lecture halls for the sake of shame, and people walk past it; but all such endeavors were ignored. A boycott of everything that is not dilettantism is also an ingredient of the Anthroposophical Society, which weighs heavily on the soul.

On the other hand, if you came into the individual branches, the seven red “patches” over the black cross were everywhere, of course! Whether or not it was a work of art was not the point! Rather, the ugliest and most inartistic was that which was the deepest. And once when I was speaking in Dornach about how the big problem, if one can call it that, with Dürer's 'St. Jerome', but especially with 'Melancholy', lies in the use of chiaroscuro, in the entire spatial arrangement, and how I was trying to place that in the development, since we were able to show the picture as a slide at the time, and one could discuss this particular aspect of the Dürer picture, a voice suddenly arose that found this quite Botokudisch, of course, that I saw the important thing in the actually artistic problem: Can't you see anything deeper in it? He meant that one had to start explaining according to the pattern of how it had happened once – well, we had presented something and someone came and asked: Which person is Atma, which one is Buddhi, which one is spirit self? Everything should be an abstract symbol.

This, of course, leads to the factual, but I also had to mention it for the reason that these aberrations in the factual form the centerpiece; for on the other hand they lead into the abyss of that which presents itself as a love of the nebulous, which is then no longer far removed from all possible subjective deception and which is no longer far removed from objective untruth.

But today it is important not to confuse social issues – and these are very much social issues – with issues of spiritual science, which are something completely different. Otherwise, one could come up with the absurd idea, which someone has already come up with, of setting up a press committee to which anyone who wants to write something, in particular wants to write counterattacks or wants to make attacks, would have to submit. My dear friends, firstly, I believe that if such a committee had existed, Seiling would hardly have bothered to go and ask whether he could write his articles. And neither would the others. If they were forbidden to do so, they would at most resign. That is the second point. The third is that the whole thing would be nonsense.