The Crisis of the Present and the Path to Healthy Thinking

GA 335 — 10 November 1920, Stuttgart

10. The Spiritual Crisis of the Present and the Forces for Human Progress

Not only everyone notices that civilized humanity is going through severe crises in the present, but everyone actually experiences them. I would like to say that two of these crises have recently emerged quite clearly, so to speak explosively.

The first, more insidious crisis, is already being noticed and mentioned by a great many people in the present, but its nature is understood by very few. For this crisis, which has brought such severe misery and hardship to humanity in the first instance and which we can describe as the state crisis of the present, we can probably set 1914 as the year of explosion. We know, of course, how the most terrible struggles took place in the European state system at that time, and how humanity is still suffering from the terrible after-effects of those struggles today. It may be said that it became apparent during the course of these struggles, but especially after these struggles came to an apparent end in 1918, that it became apparent how little is understood as to where the source, the actual cause of this state-legal crisis of humanity is to be found.

From two sides, one could hear something like a motto that would indicate the direction in which the terrible crisis would develop. Some thought – I do not want to go into the characteristics of the individual parties now, that does not belong here, but I just want to mention it – they thought that a different structure of the state system of civilized humanity must emerge from the chaos of war; at least, many thought, the existing states would have to change their borders, set up safeguards here or there. The others, no less numerous, wanted to make the motto from the most diverse points of view: Neither winners nor losers! - That would mean that the system of states of civilized humanity must emerge from the chaos of war in the same form as it was before.

It must be said that both those who thought of conquests, of changing state borders, and those who spoke the slogan “neither victor nor vanquished” actually realized that this terrible confusion in the second decade of the 20th 0th century had arisen from the fact that the states, in their mutual relationship, with their borders as they were, simply could not remain, but that they also did not have the strength within themselves to reorganize themselves in such a way that a tolerable relationship could emerge between them. That it could not come to the conclusion 'neither victor nor vanquished' is shown by the outcome of the war. But that the conclusion 'victory' is not enough either is shown by what has developed since then, because if you look at what has arisen from the way of thinking, from the outlook of those who are among the victors , then one must say: in Versailles, in Saint-Germain, in Spa and so on, everywhere those who thought with the same thoughts were together, with which one set up the states that had come into confusion and chaos. They wanted to continue with the same way of thinking, the same way of looking at things. They wanted to set up some new state territories, which we also saw emerging – at first only on the surface – but what was hoped for did not come of it. Anyone who takes an unbiased look at the conditions of civilized humanity today will have to admit that what has been established, especially in Europe, already clearly shows that it cannot have an inner foundation. From the disorder in which everything that emerged from the peace agreements finds itself, the unbiased must recognize that one simply cannot continue the old way of thinking, the state way of thinking, which has emerged through modern history. It has asserted itself in the peace agreements; it has proved its impossibility through the facts.

The second crisis – or perhaps it would be better to say the explosion of the second crisis, since it had been in preparation for a long time – occurred around 1918 and in the following years. It can be called the economic crisis. Out of the chaos of war arose in the yearning of humanity what could be called the aspiration to arrive at economic conditions such as are present in the instincts and needs of numerous members of today's civilized humanity. What have we seen emerging from this economic crisis so far? If we look to the West, we see absolute helplessness; we also see the continuation of economic activity as it has emerged in modern history; we see continuous experimentation without guiding ideas; we see those who are concerned about this economic activity, so far in great apprehension about the outcome of this experimentation. And if we look to the East, we see how purely economic thinking, insofar as it has asserted itself in the minds of the proletariat, has taken on a strange form. We see in the European East – and we see the same thing continuing deep into Asia – the endeavour to create, one might say, a militarized economic state structure. We see the purely militaristic principle applied in the East, which has suffered such shipwreck from the old constitutional states. I would like to say: we see the purely militaristic principle applied to an economic organism that is to be created. And today the facts speak clearly enough for these efforts. Who would claim today that anything else could be achieved by this militarization of economic life in the east of Europe than merely the plundering of the old economy and the destruction of the old economic structure? One has illusions about anything that is to be created for humanity, but which crumbles more with each day, with each week. On the other hand, we see how the ideas and views of people, how they have developed, particularly in the second half of the 19th century, as so-called thought-based economic reforms, social reforms, how these ideas, where they are to be applied radically, cannot in the least produce anything fruitful.

And so it may be said that two crises, the state crisis and the economic crisis, now face civilized humanity with no prospect of a way out. One does not need to develop extensive spiritual abilities to recognize this, as I mentioned in the introduction; one need only devote oneself impartially to observing what is happening. From these observations, which could already be made over decades, if one directed the attention of the soul to the way in which these two crises were clearly preparing, arose that which has been undertaken in recent times in Dornach as anthroposophical college courses. Of course, the anthroposophical college courses held in September and October of this year in Dornach by three lecturers from the most diverse branches of science need not be overestimated in their present significance; they are a very first and perhaps very weak beginning, but the beginning of a very definite, purposeful will. The thirty lecturers in Dornach were intended to show that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that I have been presenting for almost two decades now, also in Stuttgart, has the inner strength and the inner scientific methodology to fertilize the most diverse human scientific branches, so that they can take on a form corresponding to the demands of contemporary and future life.

But what is necessary in order for something like this to be undertaken in a purposeful way? It is necessary to understand what the most important, the third crisis is, of which the other two crises mentioned are basically only the outward expression. But this third crisis is not yet being properly understood by almost all of humanity today: it is the crisis of our entire spiritual life. I know, my dear audience, that what I am saying is something that is met with the gravest doubt in the broadest circles today. I also know that what I am saying is something that people actually find uncomfortable to hear. This is shown, for example, by the fact that many people admit the state crisis and many people admit the economic crisis, that they demand fundamental changes in the conception and organization of state and economic life as a result of this admission, but that very few people are convinced that intellectual life, including the individual sciences, must also undergo a transformation. In many circles today, it is thought that intellectual life must provide the sources for further fruitful progress for humanity, for emerging from hardship and misery and social confusion. But people think of the contribution of intellectual life in such a way that they simply take only those 'intellectual goods' that have been produced so far as so-called 'safe science' and want to introduce them into the widest circles through the most diverse channels, through adult education centres, popular education associations and so on. But - as I have mentioned here before - people are not unbiased enough to thoroughly consider the following fact: When one recognizes that it was precisely those circles that have so far participated in the intellectual life as it has developed in modern human development, and that it was precisely these educated circles that have essentially become the bearers of the confusion, when one recognizes this, one must admit that the same confusion cannot be removed by popularizing the thoughts that have led to disaster and that have been brought about by this intellectual movement, because then the same confusion would arise from the widest circles that has already emerged from the narrow circle of the representatives of this intellectual life.

Therefore, the aim that has emerged from Dornach, where these Anthroposophical college courses have taken place, is not to simply popularize in a conservative way what we already have in terms of so-called certain science or other spiritual goods within which the confusions have asserted themselves, but to fertilize this spiritual material anew, to give it an impetus through which it can become the bearer of a different social and economic life. The aim of the spiritual movement inspired by anthroposophy is to renew spiritual life, not to broaden the old spiritual life. It should be recognized within the spiritual movement inspired by anthroposophy that the impulses, thoughts and views that have led to the confusion of states and the confusion of the economy were already present in the old school of thought. But few people today still take the trouble to really look at the origins of our distress and our lives, at the crisis in our intellectual life. That is just inconvenient. After all, something should be “certain”, one should be able to stand on some firm ground. One believes that everything would be shaken if one were to have a reforming effect on this intellectual life itself. That is why it is so difficult for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to speak to people of the present day, because basically the interest that it must assert out of its inner sense of duty in world history is not active at all among the people in the broadest circles. One would like to look everywhere, in the economic and the state, for the sources of the crises, but one shrinks from looking for them in the spiritual life.

But until we look for it in the intellectual life, nothing, absolutely nothing, will improve – not in economic life, nor in the life of the state. For what is external reality in the life of the state and in economic life is, even if people do not want to see it today, only the expression of what people think, what they have learned to think through the spiritual life that has emerged in the last three to four centuries, particularly in the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century in the developmental history of humanity. The state and economic crises are too noticeable to be denied, and it has become necessary to recognize that new impulses must be supplied to both state and economic development. Many people admit that something must happen in the spiritual life as well. But that something must happen that is oriented towards anthroposophical spiritual science is something that people of the present day, who also admit the former, very often resist. We can already give enough examples of this today - examples that can be taken from the present, both from the world regions suffering from terrible cultural pressure that belong to the defeated, and from those cultural regions that belong to the victors.

We see, now that the war turmoil has come to a temporary, but only apparent, end, that after the revolutionary spirit had emerged, the call to separate the ecclesiastical and religious element from the state element has been asserted within Germany. Taken in the abstract, I would say that this is the first call for a part of what the threefold social organism wants: it wants to separate the entire spiritual life from the state and economic life and place it in its own self-government, built only on its own principles. Today, only this innermost part of spiritual life is understood, so that one has demanded, but only in an abstract sense, its separation from state life.

Now, however, other phenomena have emerged in this very area within Germany: from a certain quarter, a decidedly anti-religious, anti-Christian sentiment has asserted itself, and that which has asserted itself there has combined with the war cry: separation of the Church from the State. In particular, it became difficult for Protestantism to come to terms with what emerged as a result of the war, the revolution. On the one hand, one had to realize that the Catholic Church, with its ancient constitution, would not lose much by separating from the state, because it has so many political and administrative and also popular impulses within itself that it could indeed only gain from this separation from the state, especially if it still circumvents the separation from the state in a scheming way. On the other hand, the connection of the Protestant churches with the state authorities was so close – the Protestant churches were designed to see the ecclesiastical authority exercised by state powers – that they had to feel, as it were, abandoned by the separation from the state. This was felt to a certain extent, leading to a kind of rallying call for a gathering of all that could still, from a religious point of view, direct the gaze towards the spiritual. The various denominations were to be organized so that they could achieve together what they could not achieve separately, through a kind of self-government.

Yes, something else emerged that is highly characteristic: those who were the bearers of this “consolidation” idea of the various church denominations openly stated that it was good that the separation of church and state affairs was still taking place as trustingly as possible with regard to the state authorities, that the separation - as it was put - was happening in a “benevolent” manner, so to speak. They openly stated that at least religious education would still be provided by the state and so on, that the church would not simply be released from state authority, but would be compensated in a certain way - well, and what more such things are -: “benevolent detachment from the state”. From this it can be seen that religious denominations are accustomed to being run by the state; they cannot imagine a certain state independence. This is not only due to economic circumstances, but also to the way people think. And so we see that the churches that are to gain their independence still look, so to speak, if only halfheartedly, to the state leadership they have become accustomed to over the centuries. This is more or less the case in Central Europe.

Let us now look at the rest of the world. It is extremely interesting that in Switzerland, for example, speakers from America are now being heard who are church representatives of religious denominations. What do they say in their speeches? They say something like the following in their speeches – I can only summarize what is explained in detail in a few sentences – they say something like the following, from the American point of view, of course: Humanity is striving, they say, for the League of Nations. The League of Nations is supposed to lead humanity out of the old, militaristic conditions; it is supposed to bring the longed-for peace and a new human culture and human civilization. But, they say, the achievements of the statesmen to date, what they have accomplished so far, cannot bring about a viable League of Nations. In saying this, they are attacking Woodrow Wilson, whom they describe as a well-meaning but somewhat foolish idealist. For such a League of Nations would be forged together by external, state conditions that have actually outlived themselves, that no longer have the strength to support human civilization. The true League of Nations, so say these American pastors, must be rooted in the hearts of men. But it can take root in the hearts of men only when Christian feeling and religious confession are found throughout the earth. And so these American speakers would actually like to come to the constitution of the League of Nations with the Europeans from the religious point of view; they would like to win the hearts of humanity religiously.

What I am relating to you, ladies and gentlemen, is something that comes from the spiritual life. But anyone who hears the speeches of such American pastors, and who is able to see without prejudice what is now raging economically in Europe, will say: however beautiful the words may be – they are sometimes very beautiful, these words that are spoken there - however beautiful the words may be, they do not find the way to the hearts of men; they are powerless to found an inner league of nations. For those people, whose instincts and desires give rise to the social battle cries of today, no longer have an ear for these beautifully spoken words; they demand something else; hearts do not open to these words. Here it is shown, as well as on the ground, where the call sounds to break away benevolently from the state, to gather together what is scattered, everywhere it is shown that one already notices the creeping mental crisis of the present. But one must really be quite biased if one can believe that, on the one hand, the beautiful words of American pastors can found the world federation in the hearts of men or that, on the other hand, by collecting the various denominations that exist in Central Europe can be brought about by the collection of what exists in terms of denominations in Central Europe – a spiritual renewal that is truly powerful enough to bring about strength for social human progress, to bring about strength that can reform in the state and economic spheres. Only if one is biased can one believe such things.

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science studies what is actually taking place from its insights and its perspective, and it notes: Yes, the will is there to make a spiritual life powerful among people again, so that the state and economic life can emerge from thoughts rooted in a fruitful spiritual life. Otherwise, economic and political life cannot be reformed. The will is there, but something is missing: the creative power. Today it is not enough for American pastors to repeat old-fashioned words, however beautifully they are forged, but which have lost their value for human hearts. Today it is not a matter of collecting the confessions of the past; today it is a matter of bringing a new spiritual life to people through a new creation. Only those who do not merely want to repeat the old, do not merely want to collect the old, but who develop the will to create spiritually anew understand the spiritual crisis.

We must ask ourselves: Why do the most beautiful words prove powerless? Why does the collection [of religious creeds] lead to nothing? We see that in the course of the last three to four centuries, what is called state life and what is called economic life has become powerful throughout civilized humanity. These two have taken the spiritual life so completely in tow that those in Central Europe who, in terms of their religious confession, are to be separated from the state, nevertheless crave the state and its leadership. So completely has the spiritual life been dragged in tow that today the most beautiful words that can be spoken from this old spiritual life no longer find their way to the hearts in which the instincts for today's reforms arise. This proves, from the external historical facts, that we do not merely need a new fertilization of the old, a stimulus for the old, but that we need a complete new creation. From this point of view, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science stands. It wants to fertilize the individual sciences, which are supposed to provide the thoughts for the state and economic life of humanity. But spiritual science as anthroposophically oriented should also inspire state life itself and economic life in such a way that both are supplied with new impulses that are created in spiritual life itself. We have succeeded in doing this for a large part of the sciences, at least for a start – we can emphasize this after our successes, after our results during the Dornach college courses. Historical, physical, chemical, biological, legal, yes, even mathematical, philosophical, psychological research – all these fields have already taken shape through our college courses, showing what these branches of science will become if they are methodically and rigorously permeated by what spiritual scientific research intends, as it has been presented here in Stuttgart for more than a decade and a half. It is precisely this crisis of the spirit, which makes necessary new spiritual creations, that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to point out. Why, I said, have the most beautiful words proved powerless? Why do we long for guidance from the state again? Because, basically, we have gradually attained a spiritual life that was entirely an appendage of state or economic life, that was entirely established in relation to educational and teaching institutions out of state will, that was entirely maintained by the aging economic forms. What state and economic life have hammered together with spiritual life over the past few centuries, what they have made out of the old creeds, has now become something that proves powerless when it wants to assert itself, as is the case with the American pastors for the founding of a League of Nations. Yes, my dear ladies and gentlemen, spiritual life has been reduced to this impotence by the state's supreme supervision and economic supremacy. The spiritual life towards which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science aims must, as I have often discussed here, arise from the innermost soul life of the human being himself. This soul life, however, cannot be subject to any kind of supervision or control, but can only arise in full freedom, through the completely free development of human individuality, in the free self-administration of this spiritual life itself. If this spiritual life is in free self-management, if it can produce precisely the kind of science that has emerged in Dornach and that the Waldorf School demonstrates for the art of education every day, if this spiritual life in free self-management can truly bring forth the human individual abilities that are sent into the physical world with every human being through birth or conception from spiritual worlds, then the fruits that flourish from such a free spiritual life can be fed to state life and economic life. The crises in the life of the state and in economic life are due to the fact that they lack the fertilizing ideas which should be supplied to them from a free spiritual life. When the state and economic life took it upon themselves to direct the spiritual life, it resulted in the suppression of the fertilizing influence which can only come to them if the spiritual life is left free, so that from this freedom the spiritual life can have an effect on the state and economic life. What I am hinting at here can also be fully substantiated by an unbiased observation of the course of civilization history. I will just point out some of this evidence. We see how, since the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, especially since the 18th century, economic life has become more and more complicated. We see how the necessity has developed to lead this economic life, which used to be guided more instinctively, even into city culture, even into the guild system, out of unconscious thinking. But one need only look at the people who are to be named among the spiritual founders of the newer economic sciences, at minds like those of the Frenchman Frangois Quesnay and the Englishman Adam Smith, and one will find that, in the period of world history in which it has become necessary to grasp the economy from the spirit, scientific thinking itself has become powerless to cast any kind of light on economic life. Both Quesnay, the Frenchman who wanted to establish a political economy more from a natural science background, and Smith, the Englishman who founded a similar political economy, basically wanted to construct the whole political economy from a few axiomatic-looking principles such as “the validity of private property” and “the economic freedom of the human individual”.

If we look in particular at the founder of modern political economy, Adam Smith – and his thinking is, of course, only an expression of the thinking of his entire age, the 17th and 18th centuries – we find that this economic thinking of Adam Smith is basically a true reflection of the thinking that was established as scientific thinking in the West of civilization in particular at that time. It is very interesting to follow how, for example, what entered into physical-astronomical thinking as a method, as a way of looking at things, through Newton, and then entered into science as a way of dealing with problems, is encountered again in Smith in the treatment of economic tasks. Just as mathematical physics seeks to derive everything from a few principles that can be grasped by the intellect in the abstract, so a man like Adam Smith seeks to derive the whole of political economy from a few principles that can be grasped by the intellect in the abstract. It is interesting to observe how unprejudiced minds, even Bulwer in a novel, set about mocking what has now become established as thinking in political economy. We find the mocking thought in Bulwer: “In the past it was believed that anyone who wanted to get involved in political economy had to have extensive knowledge of what people do when they do business with each other. Today, all you need are a few abstract principles, and you can derive the entire national economy from them. - And even earlier, an unbiased thinker, Young, said: Until now, he had thought that someone who wanted to talk about the national economy had to know the virtues and vices of people, the way people communicate in economic life, what they do there - in short: that such a person had to have extensive knowledge. But Adam Smith showed him, said Young, that you only need a few ideas and that with a few strokes of the pen you can compress all the extensive, empirical economic knowledge into a few abstract ideas.

As economic life has become more complicated, what has happened to economic thinking? Well, my dear audience, something has come over this economic thinking, which first asserted itself in the West, which originates from the newer economic life, which is modeled on the newer economic life and which, in its final consequences, whether one admits it or not, now appears in the East of Europe in the few abstract thoughts of Lenin and Trotsky as the final consequence. That is what we have to face. But you only understand what is at stake here if you not only acquire a few abstract thoughts - which today's humanity loves very much - but if you get a thorough overview of the course of human development for many centuries, as I have often hinted at and as I will now hint at from a different point of view.

My dear attendees, just as a view such as that begun by Newton, which then came into the human psychology through other thinkers and mechanized the human psychology , just as Newton mechanized astronomy, just as this mechanical-mathematical scientific approach came into political economy through Adam Smith, so, basically, it has taken hold of even the popular views of the modern civilized world. And today, in the age of newspapers and the popularization of science, there are basically few people alive who have not been touched in some way, even if they are unaware of it, by the spirit of this scientific discipline. This type of science lives on the one hand in mathematics; in mathematics it has the only thing that springs from within the human being, for all of mathematics is not something that is gained through observation, but it is something that springs from within the human being. This branch of science, which has mathematical thinking, which can be clearly seen, for example, in Smith, and also in Ricardo, the later editor of the national economy, - this mathematical thinking is one side of modern science. The other side is the sensory observation of the external world and the formation of all kinds of abstract theories, of atomistic or other materialistic theories about this sensory external world. These two currents actually stand there: sensory observation of the external world, mathematizing thinking. We must be fair to what appears on the one hand as mathematizing thinking, right into economics, and on the other hand as conscientious observation and conscientious experimentation in the external world. We must be fair to this, for it has brought about the great triumphs of modern Western science. And I have emphasized it many times: these triumphs of modern science are by no means opposed by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, but fully recognized. But it must be realized that there was a time in the development of humanity when this kind of scientific attitude was not present at all. Today, of what was present in humanity in this field, only the last decadent remnants are left.

Again I point to the Orient. But if one wants to see the essential things in their true form, one must not look to the present-day Orient, where everything is already in decline and destruction, which was once an ancient wisdom of humanity, which was even greater than it later became — you can read about it in my book “Occult Science”. It was even greater in the time before the Vedas, before the Vedanta philosophy came into being; what still shines out artistically from the Vedas, and only in the last echoes from the Vedanta philosophy, can still be seen by the unbiased knower in the whole of oriental development. There is much that is magnificent and powerful in the wisdom. There is nothing in it of the special way in which Western science of more recent times works. The way of thinking, the way of looking at the world, was quite different. The scientific methods that we so admire today, and rightly so, that we must emulate, were not found in ancient oriental thought. Instead, ancient Oriental wisdom had what I would call a world view, in contrast to science: a world view without science. That was basically the characteristic essence of the ancient East in its wisdom.

This world view is significant in that it encompasses the whole person; it is significant in that through this world view, the human being grasps himself as spirit, soul and body. Admittedly, this world view in the ancient Orient occurred in such a way that little attention was paid to the body and to that which belonged to the external, physical world. This life was more of an understanding between soul and spirit, in which man knew himself rooted, but it was a world view. That is to say, through what man thought and felt, he firmly established his position, his relationship to the world of the senses and to the world of the spirit. He did this not in a scientific way, but through soul perception. What was gained through spiritual contemplation certainly lived in its original form in the ancient times of the Orient. But the legacy of it lived on, and basically, the legacy of this oriental world view can be felt right up to the present day. This life of world-conception gave that through which, for example, the first Christianity - in which this ancient oriental wisdom and world-conception was still alive - grasped the mystery of Golgotha that gives meaning to the earth. But in the place of the view that the ancient Orient had, the intellectual element became more and more established as this view remained. Before the appearance in more recent times of the Western world's science, which is also without a worldview and which has also given shape to the teaching of the soul and to economics, as I have mentioned, what I would like to call an inner struggle arose in the middle, beginning with ancient Greece, clearly developing in ancient Rome, and then establishing itself throughout Central Europe. He grasped an event that can only be grasped by the spirit, the Christ event, still through the inherited echoes of ancient, oriental wisdom. Alongside this, through the special talents of Western humanity, there shimmered more and more, even into this Central Europe, that which is mere human intellectuality, which basically wants to understand the entire cosmos, above all our earthly surroundings and human beings themselves, only through mathematics and through observation of the external world.

And so, in Central Europe, on the one hand, there was precisely that which one might call a leaning towards the ancient oriental heritage. Everything that lived and still lives today through the Middle Ages and more recent times in the content of Christian teaching, everything that lives in it as a world view - even if it has almost gone out, even if pure rationalism has taken hold of modern theology - is for the most part old oriental heritage, because only a few attempts at a new creation exist. And connected with this is what man now finds out of himself through mathematics and observation of nature, but which does not lead to a world view. And so we see in the Middle Ages, in the time when Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas were working, this conflict between what human reason can achieve through observation and mathematics, what should be limited to the sensory world, and that which is supposed to be revelation, world-view revelation – the Mystery of Golgotha, which was not called by that name at the time, but which, in terms of its content, not of fact, was ancient oriental heritage. And basically, this dichotomy lives on to this day in all public life in Central Europe, including in state and economic life, emerging from the Middle Ages - this dichotomy between scientific thinking without a worldview and an old, inherited worldview without science. Man in Central Europe has been called upon to wage this inner battle since the time of the ancient Greeks. And it was precisely this inner struggle that produced the greatest spiritual achievements during the period of German culture at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. For that which lived in Herder, Schiller, Goethe, in the philosophers of German idealism, in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, only lived in all these minds because these minds, in their inmost depths, concentrated the struggle that exists between science without world-view and the inherited world-view without science. In Goethe's works, one can follow this conflict in his individual utterances, as he tried to reconcile what science gives on the one hand, and what lived in him as an intuitive feeling, in accordance with the imagination, as an ancient heritage of the Orient. Indeed, with Goethe it goes even further; he experienced this inner conflict until the eighties of the 18th century. Then he was drawn to the south, so that he could at least still feel in the south the echoes that remained in southern Europe of the ancient oriental, unscientific world view, which, however, was very, very much dying out in Greece. From this unscientific world view, nothing but mathematics, dry mathematics, came through the Arabs from the European south to the west. It is basically Europe's last remnant, albeit a lasting remnant, of what arose from the unscientific world view of the Orient as a comprehensively universal concept. For there, all wisdom was so intrinsic to the human being, whereas in our civilization, only mathematics is still intrinsic. Novalis, in particular, felt this about mathematics and stammered out.

And what the Western civilization has gained is what I would call the system of observation and experimentation, from which the actual science of the West has emerged, from which everything that man does not initially gain from his inner being emerges, but which he gains by allowing the world of the senses to have an effect on the senses. And what has become of the scientific spirit in the process, what has been transferred from the scientific spirit to all the things through which our leading people gain their education, their scientific knowledge, that, my dear audience, has revealed its powerlessness in the face of economic and state life, in the face of the spirits I have mentioned, to whom many other names could be added.

And so we see our modern life looming. I would like to express it symbolically, what has actually become established in the last three to four centuries as our looming modern life. Outwardly, it is characterized as follows: On the one hand, we see the essential spirit of science developing and dominating schools and universities. But we see that what is done in schools and universities leads to an unworldly existence. We see how the universities stand as lonely islands of education. But we also see something else happening: that what is done in the way of newer science, of science without world view, stops at nothing. A characteristic example of this is the Darwinian doctrine, which, with such scientific conscientiousness, traces the development of living beings from the simplest creature to the most perfect one. However, it places man at the top of this animal organization, so to speak, and only comes to explain man insofar as he is an animal. From this and many other examples, one could show how the insights of mathematizing and purely externally observing science stop at the human being. Thus we have a scientific system of education, without a world view, that lives in abstractions, that does not give the human being what the world view of the Orient, without science, still gave - a sense of his place in the world - that only satisfies the head, only the intellect, that does not take hold of the whole person. On the one hand.

On the other hand, something arises that I would like to describe symbolically by showing you the factory with the modern practitioner. What is the relationship between the factory and the university? Yes, there is a relationship, but this relationship has become very one-sided. The one thing that shines from the modern universities into the factory is mechanical science. And this shining of mechanical science has brought about the great development of technology for the factory and for everything that goes with it, which has founded modern civilization. This science, which stops at the human being with its knowledge, was able to contribute to the development of technology in the highest sense. But even in the factory, the practitioner stops at the human being. He extends his routine — for it is nothing other than routine — only into the technical and into that which is connected with the technical. He cannot establish any relationship, any human relationship, between himself as an entrepreneur and leader and those who work on modern civilization from out of the broad mass of humanity. In knowledge, science stops short of the human being; in practice, in social activity, it stops short of the human being. This halting of the advance is indicated by a boundary. Everything that could come from modern mathematical science into technology, everything that could fertilize trade and commerce, and so on, has been taken into the area that has this boundary. But from science, which stops at human knowledge, no social life could be gained from this science that could have satisfied the great demands of modern times on this purely human side. And so, beyond the boundary, stood all of humanity, which in the most recent time now demanded its human dignity; so stood that humanity to which one had not found the path in practice, just as one had not found the path to the human being himself and his essence in the modern world-view-less scientific knowledge. This is the tragedy that has led to the modern crises, because what is written about modern practical life in the books, what is written in the ledger and the cash book, has nothing to do with what lives in the souls of those who stand beyond the boundary, beyond which humanity one stopped. But these came forward with their soul demands, and from these soul demands arose the counter-image of the spiritual crisis of the present.

Thus we have seen the rise of those universities, those colleges, those educational institutions that only opened the way to the technical, to the commercial, to the inhuman, I might say, into the factory, into industry, into the modern money economy, but which did not penetrate to the human being itself. And so, on the other hand, we have seen the imperfect sense of observation, which was first found in cognitive science without a world view, develop into the experimental sense of modern practitioners, who want nothing to do with guiding ideas, who limit themselves to experimenting with the mathematical-mechanical-technical, who summon people and make them work without concerning themselves with the social structure of humanity. We have seen the rise of the practitioner, who today has a formal hatred of all guiding ideas, who has a formal hatred of everything scientific, of everything cognitive, but who is right on the one hand in that this modern, world-view-less science has nothing of what can illuminate practice, insofar as the human heart is involved in practice. But this practitioner is wrong in that he attributes to this branch of science what he attributes to every spiritual life. And so he wants to remain a routine practitioner, he wants to continue what I would call a spiritless, mere experimental approach. This makes it so difficult to really build the bridge that could be built from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to the most practical life. The only thing to blame for this is the aversion of practitioners, who want to remain routiniers, to what, for example, the impulse for the threefold social organism comes from spiritual science. More and more we have seen this hatred of practice against everything that is spiritual life. And so today in the West we see a confused hustle and bustle of experimental economic activity, of experimental state activity. And we see in the East this economic activity, this state activity, leading to a militarized economic state that must paralyze everything human.

Thus we see how the crisis of the state and the economic crisis have actually arisen from the crisis of the spirit. Based on this clear insight, what has been represented here for more than a decade and a half as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would like to develop the forces for human progress. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to develop living knowledge out of the same scientific spirit that developed in the West without a worldview, out of the innermost human soul experience. This knowledge in turn becomes a worldview, not just a repetition of old words that no longer find their way to the hearts of men, but which seeks to shed light on the old creeds and to open up the view to that mighty event in the evolution of the earth, the Mystery of Golgotha. There is resistance to such a renewal of spiritual life, which, from the spirit of modern humanity, seeks to view the fundamental fact of Christianity, which can only be properly grasped and contemplated in spirit. We can no longer return to the ancient Orient. We can no longer aspire to a worldview that is not scientific. We have moved beyond the times when a worldview lacking in science could suffice for humanity. Today we are faced with the great task of developing a worldview from science through the inner development of the human being. We will be able to do this if we truly understand the nature of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. However, as long as there are still people who claim that what is gained through the spiritual-scientific method of knowledge - an inward but strictly scientific method modeled on the strictest mathematical methods - could be just as much a vision as any other vision or hallucination, as long as there are there are people who claim such things, because, for example, they cannot in reality read what is written in my books “Occult Science” or “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds”; as long as there are such people and as long as such people find credence, spiritual science will indeed have a difficult road to travel. I will have more to say about this. For such people do not realize that what is grasped with spiritual insight, what is grasped by man inwardly awakening himself to a spiritual insight, teaches him to distinguish fantasy from reality just as one learns to distinguish fantasy from reality in ordinary consciousness. The logic of facts on which this distinction is based is basically very simple, a logic of facts that only our opponents cannot grasp.

How do I know, for example, that when I lift a kilogram weight, I am not hallucinating, but that it is external reality? How do I recognize that? I recognize this by the fact that I simply have to strengthen my sense of self when I lift the weight. I have to make myself stronger inwardly. If I have a mere vision or hallucination, my sense of self remains with the same intensity. I am absorbed in the vision because I do not have the experience of intensifying my sense of self. I notice the resistance by the fact that I have to apply strength that is within me when lifting the kilogram weight; I am not absorbed in the vision. Likewise, when I have spiritual experiences, I do not lose myself in hallucinations or fantasies in which my sense of self does not increase. They are described everywhere in the spiritual scientific writings that those experiences through which one penetrates into the world in which man is before birth or conception, in which he will be after death, in which his eternal is rooted , that these experiences through which one penetrates into the supersensible world presuppose that one must awaken the soul more than in ordinary life, that is, one must make it experience more intensely, more strongly inwardly. But this expresses precisely what guarantees the scientific nature of what is asserted as spiritual insight. And if one asserts what I have only hinted at here, what I have often discussed in lectures here in Stuttgart over many years, if one asserts this, then, yes, then one acquires accurate views about what has seized modern humanity like a crisis in intellectual life.

For example, one sees how mathematics came to the West as an ancient inheritance via a detour through Arabia, but how it was powerless to conquer the complicated economic and political life of the West, as can be seen, for example, in Adam Smith. One observes that this mathematical thinking, this mathematical view, is gained entirely from within the human being, and by inwardly awakening the soul, one develops precisely that which adheres to this mathematical thinking. It is precisely that which lives in mathematical thinking that one develops into a higher perfection through inner, spiritual methods. In this way one acquires a very specific spiritual view. By inwardly enlivening the mathematization, which is limited only to the world between birth and death, through spiritual-scientific methods, one learns to recognize that which comes into the soul through inspiration. It comes in such a way that the intuition opens up for us to what the human being has experienced supersensibly in spiritual worlds before birth or conception. Mathematics is the one field of science that has preserved for us a final starting point for arriving at a view of prenatal human life.

What Western science, without a worldview, acquires in its external observation, if it is developed here [in spiritual science], initially provides something that does not remain an abstract view - for worldview For science without world-view it remains abstract contemplation – but it rises to become moral, as I have shown in my Philosophy of Freedom, rising to become moral imagination and thus the foundation of the moral life of the human being. Everything we gain in thoughts from the outside world leads to images, to imaginations, which ultimately connect with inspiration. We experience this. And however imperfect what we can observe of the external world between birth and death may be, when we process it inwardly, when we also experience what we have observed outwardly in our soul through the spiritual-scientific method, then from our imaginations we also gain a view of the life into which we enter after our death. When applied to science, spiritual science will in turn lead to a world view that is based on mathematics, observation and experimentation. However, this world view can give modern civilization the strength to advance humanity. For the world view has the property - as it already showed as an oriental, science-less world view - that it affects the mind and will of man, that it works in such a way that man founds a legal life according to these particular views, through which he brings about an understanding from person to person in the human community, in other words, that he builds himself a state life. A worldview stimulates the will through which economic life is determined. Science without a worldview speaks only to the head, to the intellect; it leaves the emotions and the will unaffected.

And so we see that while intellectual science has reached its highest flowering at the beginning of the twentieth century, the feeling that should permeate the state and the will that should shape economic life have remained uninfluenced. We would be heading towards this barbarization if head and intellect increasingly develop the life of instinct and leave mind and will uncared for, as it is already so terribly evident in the East of today's civilization. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, on the other hand, can take hold of feeling and will and thus generate a new force for human progress. This is something that science, without a worldview, cannot do. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science in turn penetrates into feeling, that is, into state life; it penetrates into the will, that is, into economic life. It is by this crisis and the healing of it that one must recognize what the other two crises are. Non-ideological science, ladies and gentlemen, only seizes the intellect. It leaves unaffected the emotional life, which should lead to that proper understanding between man and man, which is the decisive thing in the state, and it leaves equally unaffected the will, which should have a formative effect in economic life.

And so we see what has emerged as the threefold crisis in modern times. We see how people long for a renewal of intellectual life, but how they do not want to admit that this renewal of intellectual life can only come from a new creation. And so we see the powerlessness of the old intellectual life in the “collection” idea, in the fine words of the American speakers who address the Swiss and the Europeans in general. But attention must be drawn to the necessity of a new creation of intellectual life. Only from this new creation of spiritual life will something new be able to emerge that was not there, that has not proved its impossibility, like the modern state system, which in 1914 entered into its catastrophe, not merely into its crisis because it had no free spiritual life alongside it, which had not proved its impossibility like the economic life, which entered into its catastrophe in the present because it did not have the fertilization of the free spiritual life.

In modern times, we see the emergence of an intellectualized science that cannot produce the human being who is equal to political and economic life, who can find fruitful ideas for political and economic life. We see the emergence of the type of person who, in the institutions of the state, seeks only the satisfaction of his or her egoism through human sentiment, instead of communication from person to person, and thus gradually undermines the structure of these state institutions. We see through mere intellectual science, which seizes the head alone, the will degenerating into mere instinctive life, and thus also flowing into acts of egoism. We see the rise of a lack of brotherhood, which aims only at enhancing the existence of one's own being, from mere science without a worldview. However, we will find the new forces for human progress precisely through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and thus find a worldview from modern science. It will produce a thinking human being whose thinking is not merely intellectual, whose thinking shines into feeling, whose thinking penetrates into will. We will see the man of action springing from the thinker, the man who, instead of merely satisfying his egoism, seeks human understanding in a state community.

We will see the emergence of the human being who, in the associations that bring together people with the most diverse economic needs and with different economic abilities, we will see the sense of brotherhood emerging from the will, which is fertilized by a real spiritual thinking, which works in associative community in such a way that the human being works together with the other people with understanding for all and thus also for himself. We shall see emerging from a truly spiritual world-knowledge the thinking man of action, the feeling man of right, the fraternally minded economic will-man, and thus we shall gain out of such an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science a new power for human progress out of the spiritual crisis.