Anthroposophy and its Opponents

GA 255b — 7 December 1919, Dornach

Old and New Opponents IV

Announcement Before The Members' Lecture

My dear friends, I must trouble you again today with a small announcement in my introduction. But since today is probably the last of our reflections before our departure – the absence will probably be shorter this time – I have to make this announcement, which is not very palatable to me. It is one of a series of numerous attacks that are now taking place and differs from the other attacks already reported to you in that it is perhaps a good deal meaner than others. A newspaper is to be published here – I believe in the not too distant future – called Suisse-Belge-Outremer; this paper contains an article on 'The Key Aspects of the Social Question', and this article begins with the words:

What a chasm there is between Emile Waxweiler and Rudolf Steiner! The former is obscure in his terminology, but his thought is of a sharp clarity. The latter develops his ideas in a language that his intimates may find clear, but his thought seems to us to be extremely obscure! The German writer is a theosophist. It is said that he was the confidant, the adviser and the inspirer of William II. Out of respect, we will not repeat the expression 'Raspoutine' used by William II to refer to him.

Now, my dear friends, first of all there is the logic, which in this case is a piece of morality – and since we have had a lot to say about morality lately, this fits in well with our other considerations . First, the logic, which is a piece of morality: You spread a very mean rumor, and at the same time you say that you do not want to contribute to its spread; you say you do not want to assert something – and assert it. That is the logic of many people today.

Now I would like to counter this with the facts. Our friends will remember that I have given numerous lectures over the decades since the 1880s. You will know that I had only one attitude towards this “Guillaume II” throughout the whole time, the attitude of absolute ignorance - there was no other possibility, after all. Compared to the attitude towards “Guillaume II”, which was truly adopted not only in Germany, in the former Germany, but also abroad, it is somewhat striking that here on our soil, as far as I myself am concerned, the most absolute ignorance took place. I have been thinking since yesterday – I can explain this very simply – yesterday evening I received this article – about what my relationship with “Guillaume II” actually is. And I saw this Wilhelm II once, while I was sitting in the second tier of a Berlin theater: he was sitting in the royal box – I was as far away as from here to the people sitting in the last rows – and I saw him. Then I once walked across Friedrichstrasse, and there he was riding with his generals or something with the marshal's baton. And then I saw him again walking in the procession when he walked behind the coffin of Grand Duchess Sophie of Saxony-Weimar. I have never spoken a word to him; I was never close to him.

That is the truth, my dear friends, and today there is the possibility that the truth is not only distorted by card players at the twilight drink and by coffee aunts in such a way - it has been that way for some time - but also by people who write in “magazines”. And, my dear friends, these magazines are read without anyone concerning themselves with the attitude of our magazine world towards the truth. This raises the question: What prospect does a spiritual movement have at all of making its mark on the world in the face of such bottomless corruption? A spiritual movement that truly needed to say, not out of some external belief, but out of the innermost nerve of its existence, its very possibility of existence: Wisdom lies only in truth? We have often had to point out to you, my dear friends, especially in the course of our reflections over the past few weeks, time and again: If that which I call spiritual science is to truly permeate the world, it is necessary that the soil be prepared with the most honest and sincere truthfulness for what spiritual science has to say to the world. And I have often pointed out that it is necessary for those who want to participate in such a spiritual movement to see how absolute literal truth must prevail even in the most insignificant words and in the most insignificant communication of the most trivial fact. Because that which is the result of not taking the truth in everyday life with precision has an inner growth force, it grows, it has its own vitality, and it then grows into these things that can no longer be characterized because they exceed all measure of the humanly common, because in people who are allowed to reproduce their slander in such a way on paper with printer's ink, there is something that corrupts our culture. And it is absolutely true that as long as we do not take up the fight in earnest and honest against everything that comes from such corners, humanity will continue to drift into things that can now be thoroughly perceived.

My dear friends, we must look at what is happening in the world in terms of such symptoms. Therefore it is necessary here that the small and the great, which goes against the sense of truth, is repeatedly criticized. Those who have an inkling of what is associated with the personality of Rasputin today also know from what a base and mean corner such slander is coined. So you see, my dear friends, not only from the ecclesiastical side, from which the attacks are becoming ever more vehement, but also from the non-ecclesiastical side, many a thing threatens that which wants to assert itself here as a spiritual-scientific cultural impact. And one would truly like to find words - I have said this here more than once - that have more weight than my words have been able to have so far, because that is evident in every nook and cranny; one would like to find words that could find more weight to counter what stands in the way of the spread of truth in the world today. One would therefore like to find more strength, because unfortunately the souls of most people are actually asleep when faced with what is meant here as truth, because the souls of most people basically very quickly forget the tremendous seriousness that lies behind these things, after it has been confronted with them.

Today, I would like to say this as a matter of principle. Try, my dear friends, to use the few weeks during which I may not be giving lectures here to meditate seriously on the sense of truth and the attitude of truth, on the sustainability of the sense of truth and on the tremendously corrupting effect of the sense of untruth that so intensely permeates the world today. Believe me: human thoughts are real powers, and untruthfulness, even if it prevails on a small scale, is deadly to that which must actually be designated as the spirit that promotes evolution on earth. And one simply cannot contribute to the spread of that which furthers the evolution of the earth in the long run if one repeatedly and repeatedly encounters nothing but untruthfulness. I had to say this again today as an introduction so that you, my dear friends, are informed about the reasons why esoteric knowledge might gradually seep out of the spiritual scientific movement, even through our ranks. Do not think that something unimportant is being said here. It is necessary that each one of us should seriously examine himself, should meditate on the question of the bearing capacity of the truth, for on the one hand untruthfulness appears in small, everyday communications, and on the other hand as morally corrupt illogicality, as here in this article. The forms are only quantitatively different, qualitatively they are fundamentally the same.