The Constitution of the General Anthroposophical Society

GA 260a — 16 March 1924

From the Youth Section of the School of Spiritual Science II

What I have to say to the younger members on this matter

In the letter that the Committee of the General Anthroposophical Society addressed to the members of this society in response to my announcement of a Youth Section, there is a reference to the fact that I consider “the matter” of “being young” to be “so important that it can become the subject of a separate spiritual scientific discipline.”

I really do consider this matter to be so important. Anyone who reads the description of my life in the weekly magazine “Goetheanum” will understand why I think this way. When I myself was as young as those who speak in this letter, I felt lonely with the state of mind that I find alive today in wide circles of youth. My youthful companions at that time felt differently than I did. The life of civilization, which this letter says prevents young people from “developing a worldview through any profession” and that young people, through their “striving for a worldview,” can no longer be “led to any profession,” was on the rise at that time. It was perceived by young people as the flowering of the latest stage in human development. They felt “liberated” from the excesses of striving for a worldview and secure in the prospect of professions that stood out from the ‘safe’ foundations of “science.”

I, too, saw the “flowering” of this civilization. But I had to feel that no real human fruit could come from this blossom. My fellow young people did not feel this. They were carried away by the experience of “flowering.” They did not yet lack the fruit because they wasted their enthusiasm in the sight of the barren blossom.

Now everything has changed. The blossom has withered. Instead of fruit, an unnatural structure has emerged that freezes humanity in people. Young people feel the coldness of a civilization without a worldview.

My fellow young people lived in a higher state of consciousness. They were able to rejoice in the fruitless blossom because its fruitlessness had not yet become apparent. And the blossom was brilliant “as a blossom.” The joy of its brilliance covered the deeper layers of consciousness, the layers in which the longing for true humanity lives inexhaustibly in human beings. The youth of today can no longer find joy in the withered blossom. The upper layer of consciousness has become barren, and the deeper layers have been laid bare; the longing for a worldview is evident in people's hearts, and it threatens to wound their spiritual life.

I would like to say to the youth of today: do not scold too harshly the “old people” who were young with me forty years ago. Certainly, there are superficial people among them who still vainly display their emptiness as superiority. But there are also those among them who bear their fate with resignation, a fate that has denied them the living experience of their true humanity.

This fate placed them in the final phase of the “dark” age, through which the grave of the spirit was dug in the experience of matter.

But youth is placed at the grave. And the grave is empty. The spirit does not die and cannot be buried.

Being young has become a mystery for those who experience it today. For in being young, the longing for the spirit is laid bare. — But the “light” age has dawned. It is just not yet felt, because most people still carry the aftereffects of the old darkness in their souls. But those who have a sense for spiritual beings can know that it has become “light.”

And the light will only become perceptible when the mysteries of existence are reborn in a new form.

Being young is one of the first of these mysteries. How does one experience youth in a world that has become rigid with age? This is the emotional question that lives in the young people of today.

Because being young has thus become a human mystery, it can only find its living solution in “its own spiritual scientific discipline.”

In such a discipline, being young will not be discussed in empty phrases, but rather the light will be sought that must fall on being young so that it can perceive itself in its humanity.

Being young today requires a worldview that can fill one's life's work with warmth. It fears the professions that a civilization without a worldview has created. It wants to see the profession grow out of humanity, not humanity killed by the profession. Finding one's way in the world without losing oneself in the search requires a living soul relationship with the world. But this can only be awakened through experiencing a worldview. It is in this spirit that the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society has made its announcement. It is in this spirit that it would like to unite young anthroposophists in a youth section to work toward a life of true humanity.

But there is one more thing I would like to say to the younger members. If we succeed in giving the youth section the right content, those who have understood in anthroposophical life how to grow “old” in the right way will want to join forces with the youth. May the youth then not say: we will not sit at the same table with the “old.” For anthroposophy should have no age; it lives in the eternal, which brings all people together. May the youth find in the Anthroposophical Society a field in which they can be young. But the “old” will, if they take anthroposophy into their whole being, feel the pull toward youth. They will find that what they have conquered through age can best be communicated to youth. Youth will struggle in vain for true humanity if they flee from the humanity into which they must one day enter. In the course of the world, the old must constantly rejuvenate itself if it does not want to fall prey to the insubstantial. And youth will be able to find what it needs in genuine “old” anthroposophists if it does not want to one day reach an age from which it would like to flee but cannot.