Social Questions

GA 305 — 26 August 1922, Oxford

The Development of Social Life in Humanity

Ladies and gentlemen! It has become a matter of universal concern for all of humanity to consider the social question and to find within it those answers that are currently suitable for prompting people to take action that can steer our social conditions in a direction that many people envision as an undefined, I would say nebulous vision of the future that many people have in mind, but about which there can be no clear concepts today. I say “can” and not “are.”

If I take the liberty of speaking about the social question in three short lectures, it goes without saying that I will only be able to offer a few rather unsatisfactory points of view, and that some of what I can only vaguely hint at due to the brevity of time will first have to take shape in what my esteemed listeners will make of my words. I therefore ask you to regard these lectures as only very vague suggestions intended to provide some inspiration.

How does the social question actually present itself to us today? If we take an unbiased look at human life in the present, it does not present itself to us in such a way that we have a clear formulation of it, that we know this is the social question and this is how it can be solved. That is not the case at all. What we have before us is a vast array of different living conditions across the globe, which have created gaps and chasms between people's inner experiences and their external economic circumstances. These diverse and differentiated conditions exist. How diverse they are can easily be brought to mind by looking at the very different nature of these living conditions before the terrible world war and how they are now after the world war. If one considers even a slightly larger territory on earth, one will soon find that the differentiation in social living conditions before and after the war is fundamentally different from the conditions that existed in the same territory fifty years ago.

Today, we may look at these living conditions more with our hearts, and we must say, thank God, we feel the tragedy; but the mind, the intellect, however much it has been developed in recent centuries, has not kept up. That is what is peculiar about all social conditions of the present: the question of reality, of immediate life, is enormously pressing, and people's understanding cannot keep up.

When we ask ourselves: Where are the fruitful social ideas? — then we will find little that we can describe as such with complete impartiality. When it comes to social life, people's thoughts tend to fail.

Now, as a result of the social development that humanity has undergone, the question of social coexistence is directly linked to another question, in which only expertise can be decisive, only real insight into the concrete can be decisive.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is very easy to think about a paradise on earth where people can live well and where all people can be content. One might say that this goes without saying. To say how, from the configuration of our economic life, from the individual concrete facts that arise from nature, from human labor, from the human spirit of invention and combination, to say how a dignified existence for human beings should gradually develop from this, requires such in-depth expertise as no other branch of science, nor any branch of natural science. For compared to the complexity of social and economic facts, what we see under the microscope and observe in the sky through the telescope is extraordinarily simple.

So one must say: It is precisely in the field of social issues that everyone wants to have a say today, and very few people have the patience and perseverance, or even the opportunity, to acquire the specific expertise. That is why we have left behind an era in relation to social issues about which we must say: We thank God that it is behind us. — It is the age of utopia, the age in which I would say, imagined in a novelistic way how people should live in the future in order to find a kind of paradise on earth. Whether this utopia was written down or whether people wanted to establish it in reality, as Owen in England or Oppenheimer in Germany wanted to do, is not what matters. Whether utopias are written in a book, where one can see that they cannot be realized, or whether an economic parasite is established somewhere in a small colony, which can only exist because the other world is still there, and which can only exist as long as it remains a parasite on the economic world and then perishes, is basically the same in relation to the present life of humanity, in relation to social issues.

Now, if one wants to talk about the social question, one must first and foremost acquire an eye, a sense for what pulsates socially in the undercurrents of humanity, what was in the past, what is in the present, what wants to have an effect in the future, because what wants to have an effect in the future is largely present in the unconscious of people everywhere. In these lectures, we will therefore have to draw particular attention to this unconscious in human beings. But above all, it is necessary to gain an understanding of the overall social conditions on Earth and how they have developed historically.

For, ladies and gentlemen, what once was long ago is still with us as tradition, as remnants, and we can only understand what is before us if we understand what once was long ago. And what is present is always mixed with something that points to the future, and we must understand what is already future, what is already germinating in our present. We must not regard the past merely as something that was centuries ago, but as something that in many ways still lives among us and still has an effect, and which we can only understand as a present past or past present if we know how to assess it correctly. Insights only arise when we can trace the external symptoms back to their deeper causes.

Do not misunderstand me, ladies and gentlemen, when one speaks of such things, one must sometimes point them out rather strongly, and it may seem as if one wants to criticize something that one only wants to characterize. So, I do not want to criticize if the past is still present today; I can even admire this past and find it extremely appealing as it enters the present, but if I want to think socially, I must know that it is a past and that it must also enter the present correctly as a past. This is how I must be able to acquire a feeling for immediate social life.

For example—please forgive me if I cite a symptom from the immediate present that may seem somewhat strange, but is certainly not meant to be offensive in any way—yesterday we encountered the esteemed chairman on the street, dressed in a gown and wearing a beret. He looked very handsome. I had to admire him. But, ladies and gentlemen, I not only had the Middle Ages before me, but I thought someone from the ancient Oriental theocracies was coming towards me in the immediate present.

It is true that in this case the gown was worn by a very contemporary soul, even an anthroposophical soul, which perhaps even attributes to itself a future; but what was immediately symptomatic, physiognomically, I might say, is history, history in the present.

And so, if we want to understand social life, if we want to understand the economic conditions that affect our daily lives, that determine how much we have to take out of our wallets to put food on the breakfast table, we must have an overview of the social development of humanity in order to understand these conditions. And today, especially when looking at social issues, this social development of humanity is treated almost exclusively in a materialistic sense.

First, we must look at very different conditions that once existed within the historical and prehistoric development of humanity. We must look at those social communities that can be understood as Oriental theocracies, which still have a strong influence on the West.

These were very different social communities. They were social communities in which the structure of human relationships had been brought about by the inspiration of a priesthood that was foreign to the rest of the world. There, the impulses for the outer world were drawn from the spiritual impulses that were available. If you look at the social structure in Greece and Rome, you see an enormous army of slaves, above which there is a self-satisfied, wealthy — the words are of course relative — then you cannot understand this social structure without looking at its origin, its theocratic origin, within which it was possible to make this social structure credible to people as something given by God or the gods, credible not only to the head, credible to the heart, credible to the whole human being; so that the slave actually felt that he was in the right place in the divine world order. Only by the interweaving of the external material-physical social structure with inspired commandments can social life in ancient times be explained.

And from these commandments, which a priesthood removed from the world sought to obtain from outside the world, emerged not only what man should have for his salvation, not only what he thought and felt about birth and death, but also what should form the relationship between man and man. From the Far East comes not only the word, “Love God above all,” but also the other, “and your neighbor as yourself.” Today, we perceive such a phrase as “your neighbor as yourself” in a very abstract way. It was not so abstract at the time when the inspired priest proclaimed this phrase to the crowd. Then it became something that had an effect between people, for which all those concrete relationships later arose that we summarize under the name of law and morality. For these conditions of law and morality, which only later became part of human development, were contained in the original divine commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself” through the very way in which they were brought into the world by the inspired priesthood in the theocracy.

Similarly, the activities of economic life, what man should do, what he should do with livestock, what he should do with land and soil—you can still find echoes of this in Mosaic law—were determined by divine inspiration. Human beings felt that they had been placed on earth by divine powers in relation to their spiritual life, their legal and moral life, and their economic life. Theocracy was a unified structure in which the members worked together because they were driven by a common impulse. The three elements – spiritual life, legal life (what we now call state life) and economic life – were combined in a unified organism that was pulsated by impulses that could not be found on earth.

In the further development of humanity, what is peculiar is that these three impulses, spiritual life, state-legal-moral life, and economic life, drifted apart and differentiated themselves. The one stream that flowed in the theocracies as a unified human life gradually became two, as I will show shortly, and then three; and today we are faced with these three streams.

I will discuss what resulted from this one stream of theocracy in the second part after the translation.

Ladies and gentlemen, theocracy as it existed in ancient times, with the inspiration of the mystery priests flowing into the social structure, into legal, moral, and also economic life, this theocracy, to mention just one example, can only come about in economic life can only come about with what in economic life extends to agriculture, with what has to do with the relationship of man to land. Commandment-like rules of conduct for economic life can be developed from inspiration if economic life is based primarily on land, agriculture, livestock breeding, and so on.

This is based on the fact that there is a peculiar relationship between human beings who cling to the land. They have in their hearts something that can accommodate what comes out of theocracy.

The moment trade and commerce begin to play a greater role in the development of humanity, things change. The old, the oldest theocracies can only be understood if one knows that essentially all economic life is based on man's connection to the land, that trade and commerce were, so to speak, only superimposed on top of this. They were there, but they developed in such a way that they developed in connection with the conditions relating to the land and agriculture. We see in the development of humanity how trade and commerce emancipated themselves, as it were, from agriculture, first in its infancy in ancient Greece, and then more clearly in the ancient Roman Empire. There we see how human activity in trade and commerce grew out of the social structure as something independent, and this gave the whole of Roman life its configuration.

When the consequences of this emancipation for the people of the Roman Empire touched the hearts of the Gracchi, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and Cajus Gracchus, and when these consequences were put into action, the great social struggles of ancient Rome began. The first strike movement was basically in ancient Rome, when the people went out to the “Sacred Mountain” and demanded their rights, and the urge for a new order in the future arose.

And what we now recognize as something independent, which was previously integrated into the entire social structure, is human labor, which establishes a special relationship between people. When people know from the commandments that they are inferior to those above them, they do not ask how they should organize their work; this results from human relationships. The moment work appears as something emancipated and independent, the question arises: How do I relate to my fellow human beings so that my work fits into the social structure in the right way? Trade, commerce, and work are the three economic factors that then inspire people to bring forth from themselves what is right and also what is abstract morality, the morality drawn from religion. And this prompts people to allow two currents to emerge from the one stream of theocracy: to allow the old theocracy to continue and to allow a second stream, essentially the stream of war and, in particular, of law, to flow alongside it.

Therefore, we see how, as Oriental culture develops in Europe under the influence of trade, trade, and labor, the old theocratic thinking gives way to legal thinking, how the old relationships, which were not legal relationships at all—try to make that clear to yourself from Mosaic legislation—are replaced by the legal relationships of property, the relationships that are supposed to express the relationships between people.

One sees this emerging in its infancy at the time of the Gracchi, later blossoming more fully at the time of Diocletian; one sees how the second stream stands alongside the first, and one sees this expressed in human life as a whole.

One can say that in the East, in the ancient theocracies, what people were supposed to know as spiritual knowledge about the supersensible worlds was all self-evident theosophy. Theo-Sophia is the concrete wisdom that was received through inspiration.

When the current crossed over to Europe, jurisprudence arose alongside it. Jurisprudence can no longer be Sophia, because it does not deal with something that is inspired, but with something that human beings themselves develop more and more in their interactions with one another. Judgment becomes decisive. Logic takes the place of Sophia, and jurisprudence, into which all social structure is now poured, becomes primarily logical. Logic and dialectics develop their triumphs, not in natural science, but precisely in legal life, and all human life is forced into this second stream, into logic. The concept of property, the concept of personal rights, all these are realized logical categories.

And this matter has such a strong force in this second stream that this force rubs off on the first stream. Theosophia becomes Theologia. The first stream is thus thoroughly influenced by the second stream. And now we have, side by side, an old tradition, an old theosophia, which, having become less lively, somewhat drier, somewhat leaner than it was in its youth, is now becoming theology, and alongside it jurisprudence, which actually encompasses everything of this kind up to the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, which appears in various guises and still has an effect on the entire economic life of humanity.

Jurisprudence also had an effect on Adam Smith, even though he wanted to consider economic life. Read Adam Smith with the feeling that legal thinking is rumbling there, but economic life is coming up. Now he wants to squeeze into the old concepts of law — at that time they had already become old again — what is emerging as economic life in complications after scientific thinking has taken hold of technology and so on.

And so we see how, for a time, two streams emerged within civilized humanity itself: theology, which then flowed into science on the one hand — for it can be demonstrated everywhere how the later sciences, including natural science, developed out of theology. But in the meantime, people have learned dialectical-logical thinking, which they now carry into everything, including science. And so the modern era develops. Social and economic conditions arise with overwhelming complexity. People are still accustomed to theological-legal thinking, and they now carry this extra into natural science. In natural science, this is no longer noticed. When one looks through a microscope, or when one looks at the starry sky through a telescope, or when one dissects a lower animal in order to study its organism, one does not believe that one has carried a historical phase of human thinking into it, and not something absolute. And so, in recent times, this scientific thinking has taken hold of humanity and civilization: everything should be thought of in the same way as it is thought of in science. Today, this is not just found in the educated, it is found in all of humanity, even in the most primitive people.

I don't want to be misunderstood here either, but I would like to make a comment. When something like this is discussed today, as I did, for example, in relation to education in the past, then what illuminates natural science from a spiritual perspective must also be brought into the discussion. When people today, who have been educated in natural science, approach these things, they find that what is said here is not in a physiology book; what is said here is not what they have heard from the physiology lecturer, so it must be wrong. One does not assume that what cannot be said there, that everything I have said in relation to natural science has been thoroughly verified, that it takes full account of what is written in the physiology book and what is taught as physiology from the lecture hall. But humanity today is such that one does not know how one thing follows from another. And so today, brilliant natural science, which is fully recognized within anthroposophy, is today — not through what it itself says, but through people, through the way people perceive it — an obstacle. And I would like to say that one can make it tangible in the development of the newest humanity how it is an obstacle.

You see, there was a man whose name is well known to you, Karl Marx, who in recent times has spoken particularly forcefully to millions and millions of people about social life. How did he speak? Well, he spoke as the representative man of the scientific age must speak about social life.

Let us imagine how this representative person must speak. The natural scientist has thoughts in his head. He does not attach much importance to them; he only attaches importance to thoughts once they have been verified under the microscope or through another experiment or through some kind of observation. But what he observes must be completely separate from human beings, it must not be connected in any way, it must be brought to him. And so those who think scientifically must see an abyss between their thinking and what is brought to them.

Now, Karl Marx did not learn this way of thinking, which does not want to allow the outside world in, entirely in the spirit of the latest natural science, I would say, but he learned it in an older form than Hegelian dialectics. It is basically just another shade of scientific thinking. When he learned this way of thinking of modern man, he was still in his milieu. But he was a representative of the scientific age, so he couldn't do anything with it. He was a German, he was immersed in the German logical-dialectical way of thinking. But he couldn't do anything with it, just as the scientist can't do anything with his thoughts. He waits to see what the microscope or telescope shows him. It has to come from outside. Karl Marx couldn't do anything with his thoughts. And since he couldn't get out of his own skin, he left Germany and went to England. There, he was confronted with social conditions from the outside, just as the natural scientist is confronted with the microscope or telescope. There he had an outside world. There he could talk and establish a social theory based on a scientific model, just as the natural scientist establishes his theory. And because this way of thinking is deeply ingrained in people, it became immensely popular. And because what relates solely to external nature is decisive when talking about humans in the same way as external nature, as Karl Marx did, everything that is said about humans, including their social conditions, looks as if it were nature. What I say about Jupiter, what I say about violets, what I say about earthworms, I can say just as well in Iceland as in New Zealand, and in England as in Russia. This applies to the whole world. I don't need to be specific; it must apply universally.

So when you base a social theory on the model of natural science, you seem to be establishing something that applies across the entire globe, something that can be applied everywhere. This is the peculiarity of legal-political thinking, which has only found its culmination in Marxism, in that it wants to apply the general-abstract like a universal garment everywhere. You find this even where thinking is not yet socialist, but only legal-logical, for example in Kant with the categorical imperative, which you may also be familiar with as something foreign.

Ladies and gentlemen, this categorical imperative says: Act in such a way that the maxim of your action can apply to every human being. In concrete life, this cannot be applied, because you cannot tell anyone: Have your tailor make your skirt so that it can fit every person. But according to this pattern, which is the logical pattern in general, according to this pattern, the old legal-state thinking is already formed. This reaches its peak in Marxist-social thinking.

And so we see how what Marx observed in a scientific manner is first realized and implemented by applying German thinking to the English economic situation.

Now it is being carried back to Central Europe. There it lives out in the impulses of people's will.

And then it is carried even further, all the way to the East. In the East, this superimposition of the purely abstract onto concrete human conditions is already prepared. For in the East, we see how Peter the Great has already paved the way for Marx. Peter the Great had already pushed the West into Russian life, while Russia in its soul has a largely Oriental character and the people still have theocracy deeply ingrained in them. Through him, the legal-state system was introduced and Petersburg was placed more in the West, alongside Moscow.

People did not understand that these are two different worlds, that St. Petersburg is Europe and Moscow is Russia, where oriental theocracy still plays a deep role in its purity. So when Solovyov developed a philosophy, it naturally did not become like Herbert Spencer's dialectical-scientific philosophy, but rather became theosophical. But Solovyov is Moscow. Solovyov is not Petersburg. Nor do I mean that in Russia things can only be separated geographically. Dostoevsky, however much he may be chained to Moscow, Dostoevsky, however far he may go to the East, is Petersburg. And the experiences in Russia take place between Petersburg and Moscow. Moscow is Asia, viewed theocratically, even today; Petersburg is Europe.

And in Petersburg, preparations were already being made in a state-legal manner for what Leninism then completely perpetrated on Russia, where something so foreign to the Russian essence, but as the ultimate consequence of the Western European essence, was imposed as something abstract, so foreign that one can say: One might just as well have done what Lenin did in Russia on the moon or somewhere else. It did not even occur to anyone that this was Russia, where Lenin wanted to rule.

Gradually, circumstances arose in which one did not even consider the social aspect. But that is what we must do, ladies and gentlemen. We must be clear that in the development of humanity, spiritual life arose earlier than legal and state life, that it emerged as a second stream alongside the first, and that perhaps something else must now occur other than this mere rubbing off of jurisprudence on theosophy, transforming it into theology; that perhaps spiritual life must reawaken in a new form.

For the fact is that the evolution of humanity has proceeded in such a way that many aspects of the spiritual life of ancient times have retained their form. It has not only retained the gown and cap, it has also retained the thought forms. These thought forms no longer fit into a world in which trade, commerce, and labor have been brought in as emancipated, so that spiritual life today often stands as a separate limb alongside the rest of life, most so the further west one goes.

In Russia, in Moscow-Russia, this is least the case. In Central Europe, all struggles, including social ones, revolve around the fact that no proper relationship can be found between the dialectical-legal-state element and the theocratic element. It is not known whether one can keep the robe and cap when sitting as a judge, or whether one should take them off. Lawyers are already ashamed of them today, while judges still find something very dignified about wearing the robe. One does not know. In Central Europe there is a fierce struggle; in Western Europe the theocratic is very strongly preserved in intellectual life, very strongly preserved in thought forms.

But the second current in humanity has developed. On the one hand, we have the human being who, if we consider this a symptom, wonderfully preserves the old – gown, cap – and now we would like to see him take off his gown and cap and have something else underneath, a second garment, whether it be a king's cloak or a warrior's cloak, but it would have to be something that now fits into the legal relationship, into the state relationship. And so, I would say, when you meet him on the street today, in order to see him as a complete human being, you would want him to take off his gown and cap and find underneath something like a warrior's cloak, or something that fits into the lawyer's office; then you would have the two currents in man living side by side.

I must confess to you — it is said in jest, but it is meant very seriously — that when I meet a person in a gown and cap on the street today, the thought occurs to me: Yes, if you were to write a letter now, you wouldn't know whether to write 768 BC or, because there might be a legal scholar inside that gown, 1265 AD? It's hard to figure out the date because the past, the older and middle past, doesn't even need to be taken into account, and I would come to today's date last — because the more distant past and the less distant past stand side by side like two currents. And they stand side by side like Moscow and St. Petersburg.

And we are faced with the question: How does real organization, real structure, come into what stands side by side today? This twofold structure that I have described so far will then evolve into a threefold structure in modern times, where the three parts also stand side by side.

Threefold structure, ladies and gentlemen, does not mean that we now have a beautiful unity in social life and should now make three cuts so that the three parts develop side by side. Rather, threefold structure means that it is there, just as there are three parts in the human being: the head-nervous system, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic system. But they must work together properly, and each must be assigned its own task. If the digestive system works too little and gives too much of its work to the head, then all kinds of migraine-like illnesses arise.

If the spiritual member of the social organism does not work properly, if it gives too much, let us say, to the economic sphere, for that is the head of the social organism today, then all kinds of social illnesses arise.

So one must relate these things to the development, to the evolution of humanity, if one wants to look into social life. This allows for nothing less than a superficial view. So we must come to the point of introducing forms in academic robes and caps that now also make it possible to think the two historical data together. That is then the present. Otherwise, the past remains the past, with the parallel currents that today stand as the very source of social illness in the world, even if people do not believe it. I will say more about this in the third part of my lecture today.

Ladies and gentlemen, as time is running short, I will keep what I have to say to you today very brief. It already brings us into the present, into the present day, and so I will have to save the most important points for my next lecture. What I would like to say today is this: in addition to the two currents I have characterized, there is a third current that has been growing since the beginning of the 15th and 16th centuries, but most clearly in the 19th century. It becomes more and more apparent the further culture moves toward the West. What was originally theocratic, adapted to the land and agriculture, is joined in the middle regions by the legal system, which is adapted to trade, commerce, and labor. And in the West, what we later understand as industrial, truly industrial, with all that is technically associated with it, is now increasingly added.

Just consider what the introduction of the actual industrial element into the evolution of humanity means. Today's conditions could easily be converted to what I am about to describe, but I want to describe it for a somewhat earlier period, approximately the 1880s. At that time, one could already say that if one were to count the physical human beings on Earth, one would find about 1,500 million people. But that is not the true population of the earth. That would only be the true population of the earth if we were still living in ancient times, when people essentially did all their work with their hands or with things connected to humans, such as the hand when guiding the plow or guiding the horse, and so on. Already in the 19th century, a whole new population had entered the earthly world: machines, which took over part of the work from humans. And if one calculates how much human work machines took over from humans even in the 1880s, one comes to the conclusion that the population of the earth must then be regarded as 2,000 million people, 25 percent more. Today, and even more so before the war, if we look at the people on Earth purely from a physical perspective, we arrive at a completely false figure for the Earth's population. We must assume that there are 500 million more people on Earth based on the work that is done.

This has indeed brought a completely new element to the old theocratic and legal current, a completely new current in real circumstances, because it has not brought people closer to the outside world, but has turned them more inward. In the Middle Ages, man was such that part of him was what he made, say, as a key to a lock or the lock itself. What man did was transferred into work. When man stands at the machine, it is quite indifferent to him, relatively speaking, what his relationship to the machine is. This makes him turn back on himself all the more. He feels his humanity. Man enters development as a completely new being. He detaches himself from his external activity.

This is what has emerged in the West as the democratic element in recent centuries, but only as a demand, as a postulate, not as something that has been realized. For circumstances overwhelm man. People can only think theocratically or juridically. But life is becoming industrial and economic, with overwhelming demands. Thoughts cannot yet enter into this. Even a man like Marx thought only juridically. And the understanding he found among millions and millions is only juridical.

And so one can say: this gave rise to a third current, which we will discuss in the next lecture, alongside the other two. The proletarian human being is born. What is stirring within the proletarian human being manifests itself as a certain view of capitalism and of work. People are forced to confront these problems in their everyday lives. Now the evolution of humanity is actually only present.

One could say: there stands the man in the gown and cap, wonderfully beautiful, magnificent; he looms in from the past. There stands the man in the warrior's cloak and with the sword as the embodiment of the legal — the warrior is only another side of the legal —, the more recent past, not yet the present. And when I see the man in the gown and cap, he may still, because humanity has been accustomed to it for centuries, be a good lawyer, a good advocate under certain circumstances. In that case, I will not feel the disharmony so strongly. But if he is now to be placed in economic life — I almost suspect that, unless he is capable of actively participating in economic life despite his cap and gown, he will simply lose his money! For humanity in general has not yet grown into what this third current in life means. And it is not, on the whole. Therefore, the social question stands before us as a human question. For man is placed alongside the machine. Today, we must not view the social question as an economic question; we must be able to grasp it as a human question, and we must understand that we must solve it within humanity.

However, the intellectual impulses that were available for theocratic and legal matters are still lacking. They are still lacking for economic matters. And the struggles of the present are about finding intellectual impulses for economic matters, as they were found for theocratic and legal matters. That is essentially still the content of the social question today. On a large scale, we are even less on a healthy path than on a small scale. The states that were suddenly supposed to receive this industrial economic life wanted to integrate it into their old legal forms. And since they were unable to do so, they resorted to what was a kind of outlet so that they would not have to develop economic life alongside state life for the time being. And this outlet is colonization. Because they could not find the possibility for strong social ideas internally, they initially created something like a way out in colonization.

This worked for England. It did not work for Germany. Germany was unable to integrate its industry, undoubtedly because colonization did not work. And today, humanity is faced with the big question: How will humans deal with economic life, just as they once dealt with theocratic life and legal life?

Today, people believe that this big question can be solved in a purely materialistic way. Everyone wants to solve it through economic life. Here, I will show, in modest beginnings, that it can only be solved through spiritual means. That will be the content of my next two lectures.