Anthroposophy and its Opponents

GA 255b — 11 February 1922, Dornach

Religious Opponents IX

Announcement before the lecture

My dear friends! It gives me great satisfaction to be able to greet you here again after a long time. This is after a long journey, which went via Stuttgart, Munich, back to Stuttgart, then Frankfurt, Mannheim, Cologne, Elberfeld, Hannover, then Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Dresden, Breslau. In all these cities one could see that at present there is a deep need in wider circles of humanity to hear something from the spiritual world. It can be said that this need, which has been strongly expressed by the fact that the largest halls in the respective cities were always completely full, that this need stands in great contrast to what is asserted in the official world or also in the journalistic world, as one can see, as an opposition that is admittedly strong today but is becoming increasingly ineffective. The need of today's humanity for knowledge of spiritual life arises from the sense of the hopelessness of what has been brought forth as a worldview from the conditions that must now be considered the right ones for the external knowledge of nature, but which are quite inadequate for the satisfaction of the longings and hopes of the human soul, and especially for the strength that the soul needs to endure in this extraordinarily difficult present, which holds out the prospect of an even more difficult future.

It is absolutely necessary – as the course of such a journey shows – that everything that has been said here about the position of today's so-called spiritual life in relation to the anthroposophical movement be taken into account more and more, and that we should not lose sight of what is necessary in this regard for a moment.

To do this, however, it is necessary within our ranks that we, each of us individually, can first find the right point of view in our hearts and in our souls, also with regard to our feelings. And since I am able to speak to you again today, I would like to start by pointing out something that has been a pleasing fact for me since the time when I started coming here to Dornach again. It is something that I found in the latest issue of the “Goetheanum” that appears here, the review of Professor Chastonay's lecture by our esteemed friend Albert Steffen. This review is such that it can actually, I would say, serve as a prime example of how we should behave in the face of opposition from the most diverse quarters. An essay about this lecture, which hits the nail on the head in every single point it touches, is absolutely essential if one wants to win the right position.

I am mentioning this lecture for the reason, my dear friends, that I would like to link it to the remark that is particularly close to my heart. That is this, that it is now necessary for us first and foremost to get the right assessments within our ranks for what is being achieved. Only when a larger number of our members are able to recognize something significant and exemplary in such a matter; and only when this larger number of our members are able to distinguish such things from what is less in line with our cause, even within our ranks, only then will the spirit of our movement gradually take hold, which we absolutely need. For we need not only an abstract way of talking about things, but we also need an ability to assess what is going on that is attuned to knowledge of the world. We must therefore appreciate what is being done in our ranks in an outstandingly correct way. This is what I have already emphasized on various occasions.

I would like to make it clear that I am not always able to emphasize every single detail; but on special occasions I would like to make it clear that this correct assessment of what is achieved within our ranks – which of course also requires the correct assessment of what is not achieved and what should be achieved – should definitely be given more consideration. If we do not realize what outstanding work is being done within our ranks, our movement will not be able to flourish. So I recommend to every single member that they should check each sentence of this essay to see what I actually mean by this remark in concrete, individual terms.