The Crisis of the Present and the Path to Healthy Thinking

GA 335 — 2 March 1920, Stuttgart

1. The Spirit and the Absence of Spirit in their Effects on Life

Dear attendees! A significant phenomenon in the field of discussing current public issues is the book by the Englishman John Maynard Keynes about the economic consequences of the peace agreement. Today, this book in particular can be mentioned in the broadest sense when discussing public affairs, because on the one hand it is written with all the prejudices, I might say with all the preconceptions of an Englishman, but on the other hand it is written with an extraordinarily significant knowledge and overview of contemporary public life. After all, Keynes was a delegate at the English Treasury during the war for a long time. And Keynes was then in the English delegation at the Versailles Peace Conference until he resigned his post because he was extremely disappointed by the negotiations in Versailles in June 1919. It must be said that if you take a closer look at the content of this work, you will find many things that are quite significant for forming an opinion on the public affairs of the present moment. I will just mention a few characteristic points from this book by way of introduction to my remarks today.

When Keynes went to Paris, he also went there, so to speak, with a full sack of prejudices – above all, prejudices about the possible success of this peace agreement from an English point of view, but also prejudices about the personalities involved in the course of current public affairs. I may say that I found it particularly interesting to hear the judgment that one of the members of the Versailles negotiations had formed about the man whom, until recently, the whole world had idolized. If I have repeatedly and repeatedly rebelled against this judgment of the whole world – truly rebelled not only within Germany, but, where I had the opportunity to do so, during the war itself and until the end of the terrible days, also in Switzerland – then I was really able to make very little impression with such rebellion. It had to be learned that even within Germany there had been a short period of time when a larger number of people had joined in the deification of Woodrow Wilson – for that is who I and Keynes mean – a deification that had taken hold throughout the world. Time and again, it had to be pointed out, based on the views that I have been advocating here in Stuttgart for a long time, that when it comes to Woodrow Wilson, we are dealing with a man of phrases, with a man whose words have no real, substantial content.

And now Keynes describes the behavior of Woodrow Wilson at the Peace Congress in Versailles. He describes the glory with which this man was received and the prejudice with which he was met. And he describes how this man, far from any insight into any reality, attended the meetings. He describes how this man, because of his slow thinking, was not even able to follow the thoughts of the others, how the others were already on completely different things when Wilson was still thinking about something that had happened or been said in an earlier time. It must be said that the complete inadequacy and phrase-mongering of this world-famous contemporary figure has been portrayed here with extraordinary skill by someone who truly did not see this fact from a Central European point of view. Keynes also described other people who, precisely because of their presence at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, gained a significant influence over the fate of Europe. He says of Clemenceau that this old man has actually slept through the period since 1871, that his only concern is to restore the state of Europe that prevailed before 1871, and above all to gain from the current world situation what the French consider necessary for their own nationality since 1871. Then he describes the statesman of his own country, Lloyd George: how the man is only concerned with momentary successes, but how the man has a fine instinct and, as it were, scents out the views and opinions of the personalities who surround him and with whom he has to deal.

And then Keynes looks at what is being negotiated. And in his book he discusses, with the insight and method of a calculator, a strict calculator, what economic consequences for Europe can result from what has been concocted by this so-called “peace agreement”. And he comes to the conclusion, not out of some political ambition, not out of some sentiment or sensitiveness, but out of the results of his calculations, that the economic impact on Europe of this so-called peace treaty must be the economic decline of Europe. Nothing less is learned from this book, through exact calculation results, as I said, than that the decision-making personalities have made arrangements and institutions that must necessarily lead to the dismantling of the economies of the whole of Europe.

One can read, I would say, in the undertone of the book, how the Englishman speaks from the English point of view; how he actually lets the feeling work on his soul: this downfall of Europe must be so thorough that England must suffer too. So one can say: Like so many present-day statesmen of the West, this Fellow of the University of Cambridge is also a little obsessed with fear, but a description of the current situation can be found in this book in particular. Such a thing illuminates the current international situation of the world more than all the rest of the talk.

But the most significant thing for me about this book is that, having approached his subject from the point of view of an exact calculator, and at the same time mixing in vivid descriptions by a connoisseur of human nature of the personalities who were involved in the institutions that were to lead to this downfall, one sees nothing that would cast any ray of light from this book on what one should do to prevent general destruction from occurring, so that instead of dismantling, building could come about. And it is characteristic that this calculator, of all people, has an extraordinarily strange sentence on the last pages of this book of his. He says, roughly, that he cannot imagine that anything favorable for the further development of European civilization can arise from the old views, as they have so blatantly developed in the Versailles Peace Treaty. And he can only hope that a better time will come by combining all the forces of education and imagination – “by setting in motion those forces of instruction and imagination,” as he says. But this means nothing less, my dear ladies and gentlemen, than that this exact calculator hopes for nothing more than a transformation of the spiritual condition of European man.

From this site, there has often been talk about the necessity of this transformation of the spiritual condition of European humanity. Today one cannot speak about economic questions while continuing to think in terms of the old conditions of economic life. Today one cannot speak about the reorganization of the state on the basis of the conceptions one has been accustomed to in the thinking of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. And one cannot talk about all this without pointing out how necessary it is that a new way of thinking about public affairs should take hold in the whole of European humanity. For what has occurred as a catastrophe of terror is the result not of this or that defective institution, but of the whole state of mind that European humanity has arrived at at the beginning of the 20th century. What has taken place in the sphere of legal or state life, and in the sphere of economic life, is nothing other than the spirit, or rather, as will become clear in the course of this evening, will become apparent in the course of this evening: the evil spirit that has expressed its effects in the living conditions of European humanity, the evil spirit that has been carried over from the life of the spirit, from the so-called life of the spirit, into the life of law and of the state and into the life of economics.

We must now grasp this spirit by its most significant symptoms. We must grasp it where it has asserted itself within intellectual life itself. If we want to get a clear view of these conditions, we must first take a look at what has developed since the beginning of so-called modern intellectual life, since the last three to four centuries. And one must gain an insight into how this intellectual life has crept into the life of human feeling and emotion. And one must gain a further insight into how our economic conditions have gradually become the outward expression of this intellectual life.

But what is the most significant characteristic of this intellectual life? Again and again, one must say that only someone who is able to sufficiently appreciate the bright sides of this intellectual life, who is able to see through what science, in particular, has achieved for the development of humanity, for civilized humanity, in the last few centuries, can really form a correct judgment of this intellectual life as it has developed over the last three to four centuries. Here we must always point out how the fabric of nature has been embraced by the ideas of this science. We must point out how, by embracing the field of nature, the maxims, the drives, the impulses have been found for the great achievements of modern technology, which are, after all, what have completely transformed economic life in the course of the most recent history of the development of mankind.

Let us imagine that – and this hardly ever happens today – someone takes the trouble to look around at the common branches of the natural scientific world view, as they have developed over the last few centuries. Let us imagine that someone looks around at the significant achievements of mechanical, physical, chemical, biological and so on. We imagine that such a person would also be able to assess what the way of thinking, the way of imagining, that has been trained on the admirable methods of these physical, these chemical, these biological, these mechanical achievements, has achieved for the knowledge of the anthropological in human development. We imagine how, starting from a scientific education, it was possible to explore how humans developed from originally primitive conditions to higher cultural conditions, how the social conditions of the present gradually developed. We imagine how people equipped with a scientific education endeavored to gain sociological insights into the living conditions of human beings. If we now imagine such a person with this universality of [scientific] knowledge, who, as I said, no longer really exists, we have to ask ourselves: How does such a person today face the great human questions of existence? How does he stand, above all, before the fundamental question that must always arise from the depths of the human soul to the question: What is man actually within the realm of the earthly-cosmic, the soul-spiritual world order?

The strangest thing is precisely the way this question is answered by the scientific world view. This natural-scientific world view has achieved a great deal by producing, as it were, the theory of evolution as its conclusion and by showing how one can imagine that organisms develop from the simplest to the most complicated and that at the pinnacle of this development, as it were, as the summing up of living beings on earth, stands man himself. What can be achieved in this field? It was possible to answer the question: What is the relationship between man and the animal world? What is man's relationship to those beings that he must regard as subordinate to his own organization in the universe? — These questions could be answered in an exemplary way from the external, sensory facts. But the moment the great human question arises: What are you actually as a human being?, this approach fails.

I believe that those of the honored listeners who have heard the whole series of lectures that I have been giving here for years will have hundreds of proofs for what I am saying now. If one summarizes everything that can be gained in this field and finally raises the question: What is this human being that you are in the context of the earthly-cosmic, in the context of the soul-spiritual world being? —, then one must say to oneself, especially when one is able to sufficiently appreciate the achievements of the modern scientific world view: As much as one can know in this direction, as much as one can have knowledge about nature - all these insights say nothing about the human being itself. And as this natural-scientific world view has asserted itself more and more in the minds of men, as it were, as a spiritual — I could also say unspiritual — authority, what has been conceived there of nature has extended into the life of feeling, into the life of will.

Man does not truly want to know nature only intellectually. Man wants to sense and feel what he is. Man wants to pour into his will, into his acts of will, into his entire outer life and its effects, that which can flow from his innermost, deepest being into the world being. Today, he has the feeling that he cannot merely act instinctively in his volitional decisions and acts; he must absorb something that presents him with goals for his actions and his will. These goals do not come in a way that they permeate this volition in a satisfying way if one knows nothing about the world and man except what science can give. And so, precisely because of the great achievements of the scientific world view, a desolation of human feeling and a perplexity of human will have occurred. Those people who, in a certain selfishness of soul, do not want to go along with what the achievements of natural science give, rely on old religious or other traditions. They effectively blind themselves to the fact that these traditions can no longer be used to live by now that these achievements of natural knowledge are available. They do this out of a certain selfishness, saying to themselves: I fill my inner being with what one or the other confession gives; I do not care whether this confession can still give something to people today who want to keep up with the demands of their time, in the face of the statements of the scientific way of thinking.

We can grasp the essence of public life in the present by pointing to these scientific foundations of contemporary thinking; I will say more about this in advance. We must not forget that what one generation thinks becomes the attitude, the impulse of feeling and will in the next generations. And perhaps today, with some justification, we may refer to some rather peculiar people who spoke about half a century ago. There was one man, one might say a strange blusterer, who said many a thing in those days in the seventies of the nineteenth century that one might call a blusterer. I refer to Johannes Scherr. By calling him a blusterer, no one would suspect that I overestimate the man. But the following must be said: This man had a heart and mind for what was happening in European civilization, and in his rambling speeches there are some extraordinarily apt remarks, though some remarks that perhaps only the sleeping souls among people could properly judge today – if only the works of such old fogies were taken seriously again; they are left to gather dust in libraries. Johannes Scherr saw at the time how this way of thinking reached a certain peak, which is indeed able to say great and powerful things about knowledge of nature, but is incapable of telling man what he actually is himself - a way of thinking which is incapable of giving man the feeling that he himself is spiritual and soul-like in his innermost being and that he must invest spiritual and soul forces in the impulses of his will. Johannes Scherr has observed enough to ask himself: How does a way of thinking that is only able to talk about matter, but not about the human being, how does this way of thinking flow into humanity, if one looks not only at the present - at the then present of the sixties and seventies - but also at the following generations? He wonders what happens when what the, well, one might say “silent scholars” proclaim on their lecterns in a certain age turns into people's perceptions and feelings, when what is proclaimed in this way takes hold and into the counting houses, the factories, the banks and the stock exchanges. He asks himself what happens when that which is asserted as a mode of conception in the knowledge of nature becomes the dominant mode of conception in relation to the shaping of the financial and economic world as well.

Such questions are not usually asked. For it is believed that what man thinks in the economic field, what is speculated on the stock exchange, what is negotiated in the banks, is independent of what the quiet scholar proclaims from the lectern. But in life everything is intimately connected. This intimate connection is hidden only by the fact that it can be a theoretical way of thinking for one generation, but for the next it becomes the driving force behind external action and public sentiment. It was under the impression of such thoughts that Johannes Scherr said an extraordinarily beautiful sentence at the time. He said: When the materialistic demon that now dominates all circles makes its way through the civilized world; when it asserts everything it is designed to do in Europe's financial economy, in Europe's economic constitution, then a time will come when one will have to say: nonsense, you have triumphed!

Such words were spoken in those days. What lies behind these words? Behind these words lie all the hymns of praise for the economic upswing, for the way we have come so gloriously far, for the glorious achievements of modern life with which we entered the 20th century from the 19th. What we have heard of the nature of these paeans of praise! But beneath the surface of all this praise, there was a growing sense of what Johannes Scherr said: “It will express itself in such a way that one must say: nonsense, you have triumphed.” And nonsense has triumphed! Let us look back over the last five or six years. What, ladies and gentlemen, is the fate of those who, with an inner insight into the circumstances of the present, are able to calculate the future? At most, what they say is heard as a sensation, but it is not taken seriously. They let things take their course, abandoning themselves to their slumbering souls, and then they arrive at the frame of mind that sees with each passing week how things descend deeper into the abyss, but still keeps saying: tomorrow will be better. This or that will happen. Tomorrow we will again – yes, I don't know, come to something.

Where does this way of thinking come from? What is the origin of that which Johannes Scherr, the German writer and critic, called the demon? The origin lies precisely in the fact that a world view has emerged over the last three to four centuries which, from the ideas that one gains from it, is unable to say or allow anything to be felt about man himself. But what does one do when one is brought up on a world view that does not allow one to feel or sense anything about man himself? What does one do then? One is compelled to talk about human beings. Yes, one must talk about human beings; one cannot avoid it, since everyone is actually involved in public life, and since people appear in public life who must talk to each other about their affairs, must talk to each other about the whole world. One cannot avoid talking about human beings.

And what is the consequence if one must speak about the human being after all, if one must speak about what should be treated in terms of institutions under the human being in terms of the rule of law, in terms of spiritual and cultural matters, and in terms of the economy? What is necessary if one is to speak about the human being after all and has no basis because precisely what is emerging as a worldview does not provide such a basis – what is needed then? Given what dominates the world today in the field of intellectual life, of public intellectual life, one needs – because one is not able to put spiritual substance into his words from the inner experience of the spirit – one needs the phrase!

You see, ladies and gentlemen, the spiritual science meant here wants people to put into their speech, into their words, that which alone gives words their justification: spiritual substance. The words that a person speaks do not acquire spiritual substance through scientific knowledge; spiritual substance cannot be gained in the easy way that is practiced in chemistry, physics, botany, and biology. Spiritual substance must be acquired in a way that is less comfortable for spiritual science, as it is meant here. Spiritual substance must be acquired by gaining a real insight into the innermost nature of man. But this is only possible if one develops the intellectual modesty that has already been characterized here. This is only possible if one comes to say to oneself: the great achievements of natural science in particular show me that if I remain as I was when I was born into the world, purely physically, I face the great affairs of humanity like a five-year-old child faces a volume of Goethean poetry: it tears the volume apart, not knowing what it is dealing with. But the child can develop so that it then takes on the essence of what was previously something completely different to it. Modern man does not like to apply this to himself as an adult. He does not like to say to himself: I must take my inner soul development into my own hands; I must go beyond what I have simply become through physical birth, through my own inner soul work; I must develop my soul to a higher level than what I receive without my own efforts.

And when the spiritual researcher goes among people and says: In order to really recognize the spiritual, which is also in man, it is necessary to apply inner, spiritual methods, to transform one's thinking through inner soul exercises in such a way as it is described in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” or in the second part of “Occult Science,” or in the other books, people come and say: Oh, so-and-so says it is only the imagination of a dreamer. When he describes how a discipline of the will, otherwise not occurring in ordinary, external life, is necessary to lift the soul out of the state into which it has come through mere physical birth, and to develop it in a way that can only be achieved through one's own inner cultivation of the soul , and so develop it as one can only achieve from one's own inner control of the soul. Then people come and say: Oh, that's just the ravings of a fantasist; that's someone who wants to capitalize on the disappointments and shattered hopes of modern humanity, who is telling people something about the possibility of supersensible knowledge!

No, my dear audience, the true spiritual researcher does not speak from such a background today. He truly does not speak out of amateurishness towards science, but he speaks precisely out of a true knowledge of the achievements of science. And he knows that spiritual-scientific methods are necessary because, although science says something about many things, it does not say anything about the actual nature of the human being. He knows that we can only gain insights into the nature of the human being through knowledge that is acquired through slow, laborious inner soul work, and that this knowledge of the human being must be acquired by truly rising from the sensory to the supersensory. Let the philistines look down on this elevation to the supersensible as fantasy; it is necessary for knowledge of man, for knowledge based on sense perception shows in every field that it can never give any information about the nature of man. But what is intended by this spiritual science is a renewal of man from the very depths of his inner being; it is the striving for the possibility of gaining knowledge about man that really passes over into intuitive perception, that really also provides goals, ideals, that can flow into the will, right into the reality of economic life.

But what kind of effects on life arise when one does not strive for this spirit, which is so unappealing to modern humanity, but when one strives for the anti-spirit, which as a world view is only able to provide information about the non-human, about the extra-human? What kind of effects on life does this produce?

The first of these effects on life appears throughout the civilized world, and what already dominates this civilized world in the field of intellectual life – people just don't want to see it, they just close their eyes to it – the first effect on life is the world domination of phrase. Because if you don't have a spiritual outlook that flows into the world as a living substance, the words remain empty. Then words are uttered that only make sense as a phrase, that is, have no meaning. And in the course of the last few years, when the unspiritual itself has led ad absurdum through the external world events, we could truly see the triumph of the phrase across the entire civilized world. Phrases are words that do not require any real basis to be thought of – one only needs to recall characteristic phenomena, such as the two English parties that remained in parliament until the mid-19th century, the Whigs and the Tories. One says these words and of course no longer has any idea of the origin in life that these words once had. When the word arose, “Whigs” was a term of abuse used by Scottish revolutionaries against English institutions, and “Tories” was the nickname for Irish papists. Just as these words in the English parliamentary language relate to their real-life origins, so today the statements that set the tone for people relate to their real-life origins. How life, reality, is overshadowed by what we do not dare to think, but what we force out of ourselves as words. The world domination of the phrase will become clear to people. For those who do not want to realize it from the contemplation of circumstances, it will become clear to them by the fact that they starve to death through an economic life that develops without the dominant impulse of the spirit, through such an economic life. Starvation will provide the real proof that our economic life is not ruled by the spirit but by the anti-spirit, because we have brought it about that we no longer seek the spirit in reality but adhere to the anti-spirit, which in the field of so-called intellectual life can then only express itself as a phrase about the human.

There is only one remedy for this, there is only one remedy for getting beyond the world domination of empty phrases: to emancipate the intellectual life from that under whose pressure it has become empty verbiage. A spiritual life that does not build on its own foundations, a spiritual life that allows itself to be organized by economic life or cobbled together by state life, a spiritual life that must follow the guidelines of the state or the forces of economic life, such a spiritual life cannot develop freely. Only a spiritual life that is free can develop freely and thus come to real spirit and get beyond empty phrases by creating its own institutions out of its own foundations. There is only one remedy for the ever-increasing triumph of the world-phrase, and that is to make spiritual life independent. Just as the fruits of the field perish under a swarm of locusts, so does spiritual life become desolate when it is dependent on factors other than itself alone, and what is revealed by spiritual life among people becomes a phrase. The world domination of empty phrases will only end when spiritual life is organized by those who are the bearers of spiritual life; it will only end when, from the lowest to the highest school and in all other fields of spiritual life, those who are active in that spiritual life make the institutions of spiritual life, and when what is the principle for teaching, for the dissemination of spiritual life, is also the decisive factor for the external institutions. Only an independent intellectual life will be able to oppose the triumph of the phrase, which has had such a devastating effect and which has led itself ad absurdum in the terrible events of the last five to six years.

My dear attendees, if you look honestly and sincerely at the development of intellectual life, the so-called intellectual life, in recent years, in the last few decades, you will see strange examples of how this intellectual life has gradually become powerless in the face of the realities of life. It is most remarkable what meets the eye when one contemplates a personality whom one admires most highly, a personality who is characteristic of the highest achievements of intellectual life at the end of the 19th century. I see Herman Grimm, the great art historian, as such a personality. Again, I want to speak of the phenomenon of Herman Grimm only as a symptom of the newer intellectual life. This Herman Grimm, this art historian, has created something great, truly great. And when I look around at his rich essays, which are available from him, I have to say: something that is so saturated with the inner richness of the late 19th century, such as his two essays, one on Iphigenia and the other on Tasso, are truly spiritual revelations that show to the highest degree what a person at the height of modern intellectual life is capable of achieving. And these intellectual achievements are characteristic of the way in which the minds of those who were truly the best worked. Herman Grimm wrote treatises on Goethe's Iphigenia and Tasso that show aspects of intellectual life that penetrate the human being with admirable depth. But he wrote something that already exists in the mind. He needs something like Iphigenia or Tasso, which already existed, as a model. I looked around to see what such a symptom actually means, and I could not help but find: The greatest and most beautiful achievements of our intellectual heroes at the end of the 19th century are precisely those in which they have written in a spirited way about the intellectual achievements of the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Very characteristic, very significant. But anyone who is awake and not looking at recent intellectual life with a sleeping soul could make this observation.

Now there is also a book about Goethe by the same Herman Grimm. It is not about Iphigenia, not about Tasso, not about the intellectual products of man, but about Goethe himself, about the living man Goethe. I read chapter after chapter – I have already repeatedly said publicly what I have to say about this book about Goethe – I read chapter after chapter; I try to visualize how this brilliant man, who wrote so magnificently about Iphigenia and Tasso, now speaks about Goethe, the living man himself. Chapter after chapter, I do not find the description of a living human being; I find silhouettes that creep across the wall, silhouettes without thickness, silhouettes of Goethe, the living human being. Herman Grimm was able to describe that which was produced spiritually. At the moment when he stood before the description of the living human being, not a description of this living human being arises, but shadowy images arise that have no thickness, that have a surface, that only scurry away, that one cannot push against, but through which one reaches everywhere when one gets close to them. This is very characteristic of the effects of the spiritual state of mind of this end of the 19th century on life. At the moment when it turns to spiritual matters, this spiritual state of mind was strong enough to judge and describe people's spiritual production, and also to provide numerous insights into human life in general. But it fails the moment it is supposed to penetrate the spirit of the reality before us.

This is what spiritual science, as it is meant here, strives for: to guide the human soul to the real spirit, so that we are able to find the spirit in reality. It strives to enable us not only to paint shadowy images of reality, but to grasp the spirit in reality. Then we will not gain the abstractions and intellectualism that today's knowledge of nature serves up, but we will gain a real insight into the inner workings and essence of nature. And from there we will gain an attitude that corresponds to the human being's own nature, dignity and significance in the earthly-cosmic, in the soul-spiritual context, which truly corresponds to this nature, this dignity of the human being. But only by penetrating into reality through the spirit can we overcome the clichés and put into the living word that which is effective in actions and encounters between people, and which can also be effective in economic life. Those who believe that mere improvement of old institutions will suffice in economic life, who do not want to move on to such a complete renewal of the way of thinking, are indulging in insubstantial illusions. For today we are not faced with small, we are faced with the greatest conceivable human issues.

And especially when it comes to establishing a truly social relationship between people on the outside, it is necessary that people treat each other in such a way that they can see the spirit in their fellow human beings. It is necessary that he can see in his fellow man that which is a special case of a spiritual-soul entity, that he can imbue himself with all the feelings and perceptions that can only be impelled, only inwardly permeated, by a spiritual world view. Because we had no independent spiritual life, we developed materialism on a large scale, and in the field of spiritual life we developed the world domination of empty phrases, which is still hidden from many people who are asleep in soul.

And when the demon enters the realm of feelings and perceptions – not the spirit, which brings life and creativity to everything that comes from the human being – when the demon enters the feelings and perceptions, what then arises? Then no living relationship arises between people that can provide the basis for the social structure of the social organism; then convention arises in the relationships, in the emotional and mental relationships between people, through the unspiritual. I would like to say that we Germans can count ourselves lucky that we have to say “phrase” when describing the current state of intellectual life, because we have no real word for it in German. And now we are once again at a loss to find a German word for what has emerged in more recent times from the emotional life dominated by the demon; we have to say 'convention'. Convention is that which is merely externally fixed; that which we can only look at externally, which is not grasped by the innermost essence of feeling and sensing. But in those people in whom the thinking and consciousness does not flow in, what can spiritualize the phrase, in those people the spirit that permeates feeling and feeling cannot be forced in, and no social intercourse, no social relationship can develop that is worthy of human beings. Under the influence of convention and external appearances, a second area has developed, which in modern life has become state life, political life. Just as intellectual life is dominated by the world domination of phrase, so state life is completely dominated by convention.

Only when true democracy reveals itself among people, a democracy that is truly built on the living relationship between people, will that which develops from living person to living person take the place of convention. This is based on the fact that the mature human being faces the mature human being, when, therefore, those human relationships come into consideration that are independent of the greater capacity, the ability of the mind, and that are independent, because they are legal relationships, of the strength of economic power. When the economic life on the one hand and the intellectual life on the other are detached from the legal or state territory, and when only that which comes from the equality of all people who have come of age is asserted on this legal or state territory, then what develops from living human being to living human being will truly take the place of world domination by convention. It is what a world accustomed to empty phrases cries out for and understands nothing of: the right that can only be born out of the living feeling, the living sensation in the intercourse of one human being with another, the right that can never be born out of any convention. But in this area we live under the world domination of convention. Convention is everything that asserts itself as sentiment, as feeling, in public affairs through the unspiritual, just as phraseology asserts itself in public affairs when, in the sphere of intellectual life, it is not the spirit but the unspiritual that conditions the realities of life.

And let us look at the third area of public life, the area of economic life. Since a spiritual life that truly encompasses the human, that generates human sentiments and feelings, has not emerged in this age of materialism, economic affairs could not be imbued with goals that would have been inspired by the spirit. A true life practice could not develop in the field of economic life, because a real life practice can only flourish if the people who are the bearers of this life practice bring into every action, into every activity, what they gain from the connection of their soul with the spiritual-soul nature of the world. Something else develops in the place of the practice of life when the spirit is replaced by the unspiritual. When the unspiritual becomes dominant, then, on the level of the outer, economic life, man falls into routine by not imbuing economic measures with what the spirit inspires in him; he falls into routine instead of the practice of life. Man falls into routine. And that is the characteristic feature in the economic field: that we have come more and more from the realm of the real essence of life, of the purposeful, only from the spirit to give birth to the realm of routine. Just as we have come to use empty phrases in the sphere of intellectual life, and to rely on convention in the sphere of political and legal life, so we have come to rely on routine in the sphere of economic life.

How completely the man of today is absorbed in his routine! How proud he is of it! How he asks only: How is it done? And how he strives to educate the one whom he wants to put into the business of managing, so that things go mechanically! How one sees precisely a great thing in it, in the economic life, not to have people who come up with something, but to have people who are able to continue the practice of life, which has gradually become routine, as mechanically as possible.

That is why it has come about that man, because he is stuck in the routine and cannot draw any satisfaction from this routine itself, seeks to get rid of what he has in the outer practical life as quickly as possible and then pursues sensations, pursues that which is as different as possible from that in which he is professionally immersed. Is there any spirit in the outer economic life? Are people who are respected because they come up with ideas welcome in the economic world? They are more of a nuisance to the economic world than the old hands. But if these people who come up with ideas are welcome, then the economic professions will flourish. They will not take on an egotistical character, but an altruistic, humanistic one. Why is that? Well, when a person merely follows routine, there are no other impulses for him than selfishness, than the satisfaction of his instincts. When you put into external life what you have under the influence of a spiritual education of humanity, then what you put into it because it comes from the spirit has a very special quality. It has the peculiarity that it does not apply to every single person, but that it is basically irrelevant whether one person thinks or another thinks; it has the peculiarity that it works as a thing, that it has an effect that can benefit all people in some way in the realities of life.

All this, dear attendees, is certainly not said to be contemptuous, to be spoken from above down to the modern world's demon, it is said for a completely different purpose. It is said to create the sense of looking at those foundations that are indelible in human nature and yet always lead from the demon to the spirit. This is said to awaken the present sleepiness of souls, so that those depths of human life in human reality may be sought out, from which alone we can remedy the decline and arrive at a constructive development.

The practical Keynes, from whom I started, says: What we do not know, what we cannot provide information about, depends on how all the hidden forces combine - he calls these forces “instruction” and “imagination” - to arrive at a new view of the world. Spiritual science wants to give this in the most comprehensive sense; spiritual science wants to bring that which the insightful people of the present must cry out for, but which they consider a fantasy the moment it comes before their souls. People today would rather be told: “There is someone who is talking about the astral body, who is talking about spirit and immortality” than to really delve into what can be said in the field of spiritual science from the same exact method as the scientific knowledge itself is gained.

But if we consider the foundations on which this spiritual science rests, then, my dear ladies and gentlemen, we will also realize that this spiritual science has a particular characteristic: it not only works through what one knows through it, but it changes the way a person thinks. It leads people to a different view of themselves. It gives people a different feeling about themselves and thus also a different feeling towards their fellow human beings. Spiritual science enables people to fertilize economic affairs from the spirit again. It leads to the fact that it must be demanded that this economic life must exist independently as a third area of the social organism; it must exist in such a way that economic affairs are only ordered out of economic objectivity and economic expertise by personalities who have grown into this economic life. All institutions of economic life must be based on the fact that the facts in economic life come about through expertise and knowledge of the subject, but not through parliamentary or majority decisions. Majority decisions only make sense when it comes to matters between people who are equal as mature human beings.

In the field of economic life, expertise and experience are decisive. In the realm of the spirit, however, it is our talents and abilities that count. Both areas demand independence. And at the center of it all, the social organism demands independence as the third link in the social organism. This concerns everything that takes place in public life that arises from the soul, from feelings and emotions, but which must be actively fanned by the spirit, not by the unspiritual. Everything depends on the spirit taking the place of the unspiritual. The spirit will overcome the domination of empty phrases in the life of the spirit itself. The spirit will permeate the life of feeling and sentiment so that we will gain a real life of state and of right. The spirit will so enrich economic life that this independent economic life can truly flourish in a way that is different from under the influence of unspirituality, under the influence of complicated, abstract Marxist or other theories. If one wants to make these theories a reality, then what has emerged in Eastern Europe is the most extreme, most radical phase of destruction – destruction, not construction.

Humanity has to face three things, not in order to criticize, but to seek in the depths of the human being and of humanity itself that which can truly lead to a reconstruction. These three things are: empty phrases, convention, and routine. In place of empty phrases, there must be cultivation of the real spirit of life. In place of convention, there must be a living sense, which can only arise when we, inspired by spiritual ideas, face each other as human beings in the life of the law and the state; otherwise, because the spirit is the fruitful part of everything, we come to mere empty phrases even in the sphere of the life of the law. Otherwise we shall end up speaking like that man who was worshiped by the whole world and who said remarkable things, for example, about the law. I am referring to Woodrow Wilson, whom I have studied in some detail, so I am not talking about him like the blind man about color. For example, in his thick book about the state, which is actually a compendium of modern phraseology, we find the following phraseological definition: “The law is the will of the state with regard to the civil conduct of those who are under its authority.

Now, my dear attendees, the one who is accustomed to reality and knows how the living will sprouts from the living personality - I would like to know what he should think when this historian of the state tells him: The law is the will of the state. - In the time when the state is nothing more to man than an external institution of

AI economic life, one speaks, without really knowing it, of the will of the state - in seriously meant books, which, however, for the truly serious mind inclined towards essence, are compendiums of modern phraseology.

Now, if we look at modern economic life, there is a lot of talk about it. But this economic life itself is basically not governed by what is said. Here, too, the phrase passes over it like a breath, and below it the real economic life takes place. The phrase passes over it so much that the Marxist-Socialist doctrine senses the phrase-like nature of these phrases and calls it “ideology”. It senses, as it were, that the unspiritual reigns in economic life, but it does not think of putting the spirit in the place of the unspiritual; instead, it sets itself the ideal of putting another unspiritual in the place of the unspiritual that has ruled so far, a different unspiritual that is to rule in the future.

Truly, anyone who wants to look today at what can lead to recovery must know exactly how the decline was brought about under the triumvirate of phrase, convention and routine, yes, how the horror of the last five to six years was brought about. The day after tomorrow, I will try to talk about what needs to be found if one is to see through this triumvirate in a healthy way. But this lecture had to precede the others today for the reason that only he can understand what is needed for tomorrow who is able to see clearly what has brought about the destruction. Today it is truly not enough just to point out that somehow the forces must be transformed into a new “teaching”, into a new “imagination”. Today it is already necessary to point to these living sources of the spirit.

Now that I have, so to speak, long since discussed my time, perhaps I may add a few minutes to what I have said today. It is something that shows, by way of an obvious example, how what is being said today among people who are striving to understand the times and at the same time looking for conditions that can lead to a way out of destruction and towards some kind of reconstruction. But if I wanted to talk at length about what I want to touch on in a few words, I would have to give a long lecture, because there is a great deal to it.

When I left here last time, I heard that all sorts of slander was circulating about me and those associated with me in our work. It soon became clear that these slanders were carried out with extraordinary sophistication, with the informers choosing just the right moment. I was then able to learn that this denunciation, this slander, is even based on letters that are forged and could be understood as having been written by myself. These letters are used to prove things that originate from me or from the people of the Federation for the Threefolding of the Social Organism. Yes, they even lacked shame in the slander that lay in saying that my measures included helping to extradite Germans to the Entente, and in so doing, they referred to letters I had written.

Dear attendees, for me this is just one example of how people are treated today who honestly strive to search for the truth and who do not shy away from saying what today leads to destruction rather than to reconstruction. But of course it goes without saying that such mud-slingers, who come up with such things, should actually be stopped in some way. But they cannot be stopped. There are no legal means; refutations are of no value because the people themselves know that what they are spreading is a lie. They do not spread it for the sake of telling the truth, but to get rid of those who are inconvenient to them. For such people it is not about saying something they believe, but about raising something that can harm the person concerned, if possible, in the eyes of those who have no judgment. I have experienced this for many years, albeit not with the same refinement as has occurred recently. I take no pleasure in getting involved with such dirty people and touching their dirty laundry.

Nor do I love it when, years ago, a certain clerical side – and there are certainly people among them who do not care about the truth – spread the word that I was a priest who had left the Catholic Church. When such people are confronted with a mass of evidence proving the falsity of what they have written, they have no answer except what the gentleman concerned had written in a respected clerical journal: “Recent enquiries show that the claim that Dr. Steiner was once a priest can no longer be maintained.” In so doing, people believe that they are making amends for the damage they have done to numerous souls. But it is not done by saying that. The point is that the attitude that the Austrian parliamentarian Count Walterskirchen once held against the government must take hold in the face of such behavior: He who has once lied will not be believed even if he speaks the truth a hundred times. Well, that is one example. Those who make such accusations are nothing more than purveyors of objective untruths, and I suspect – because I believe that they know this too – that they are liars. It must be said publicly: there is nothing to the whole slander except that it is a completely fabricated story from start to finish.

The second thing that is being peddled again and again today is the rehashing of a Jesuit lie that occurred many years ago. I will certainly not say anything here about the pros and cons of anti-Semitism. I am not expressing an opinion here about this world view. But again and again and again, certain people, because they know that they can make money from it, spread the lie that I am Jewish; somehow it is always pointed out from some corner. At the time when this system was first practiced by the Jesuits, I had my certificate of baptism photographed, and I still have very small photographs of my certificate of baptism that I can show to anyone who wants to see them. But I do not believe that one can do anything with such a document against the pages that actually come into question. Among those who have brought up this strange tale of my Jewishness is the “Semi-Kürschner”. In it, my entire biography is doctored in such a way as to suggest that I am somehow of Jewish descent. What I can trace in my ancestry is solely that all my ancestors on my mother's and father's side emerged from the Lower Austrian peasantry. My father served a truly non-Jewish institution, namely the monastery and abbey of Geras in Lower Austria, which is a Premonstratensian monastery. The Premonstratensian monks liked him and even gave him a scholarship to train for the first few years of high school. He later became an Austrian railway official, but not a civil servant, rather a private official. But just as it can be proven that these ancestors on my father's side were so un-Jewish that they were servants in a devoutly Catholic monastery, so it can be proven for all the ancestors on my mother's side, as far as they are accessible to me. But I don't even think that one can do anything with such a thing in the face of these pages, which deal in these lies. Among those personalities listed in the Semi-Kürschner as Jews is one who in more recent times even came close to joining the Jesuits, Hermann Bahr. His biography has been doctored to such an extent that one might believe that he was somehow of Jewish descent. But now he was able to come up with the fact that twelve of his ancestors were real Upper Austrian farmers, not Jewish or anything of the sort. When this could be documented, the editorial staff of the “Semi-Kürschner,” which is quite in line with the series from which such things come, objected: Well, yes, we want to believe that the twelve ancestors are far removed from all Judaism. But then we believe in reincarnation and believe that Hermann Bahr was a Jew in a previous incarnation.

As you can see, this side cannot be dealt with by thoughts or refutations. Completely different methods must be found. However, I do not believe that another path can be found that will really lead to the goal, other than the fact that little by little the number of people who think reasonably and decently will become greater and greater compared to those who want to wallow in filth in order to defame their fellow human beings. I do not believe that indecency can be defeated by anything other than decent-minded people. Neither court proceedings nor refutations will get us anywhere; it can only be done if as many people as possible have a sense of decency.

And it must be said publicly: Even such things as I have had to present now are part of what is coming in our time from the intrusion of the unspiritual into the realities of life instead of the spirit. But everything that is working so terribly destructively among mankind today is aimed at the one thing that must be summarized in the words: Humanity in general, but especially the German spirit, is in great need of to replace the unspiritual, to replace the materialistic unspiritual, with the spirit, because the unspiritual must be defeated if we want to rebuild, if we want to advance as a people. And only the spirit, the true spirit, will defeat the unspiritual.