# The Big Questions of our Time and Anthroposophical Spiritual Knowledge

## GA 336 — 25 January 1921, St. Gallen

### 18. To What Extent is the Threefold Order Called upon to Lead out of Chaos?

It is quite conceivable that some people find a topic like the one to be discussed today fruitless and perhaps even impossible to discuss because they believe that nothing fruitful can be created from such foundations, from foundations of social knowledge and social insight, in the face of facts.

Now, my dear attendees, the great catastrophe that befell our entire civilized world in the second decade of the twentieth century could well teach people the necessity of facing the latest development of civilization in order to perhaps come to a different insight than the one I have just characterized in my introduction. What has taken place in the civilized world during the last decades, the last 70 to 80 years, is precisely the failure to take into account the emerging social situation of humanity. If you look back over this period, you will find that precisely those personalities who belonged to the leading classes have, as fate has brought them, entered into some situation, into some professional or creative situation, and that they have worked in this situation in the way that circumstances have dictated for a long time, without taking into account whether it is necessary was necessary to look into these conditions, to intervene in these conditions themselves, one accepted what was offered without much ado, which then resulted in the great and powerful progress and triumph of modern civilization, and one left it to the broad masses of the working population, the proletariat, to criticize out of one-sidedness what had emerged from social conditions. The inconvenience of having to intervene gave rise in the leading classes to a certain desire to basically let things go as they were going under the influence of the rapidly developing production conditions, and those who exercised criticism were caught up in the wheels of social conditions; their unfruitfulness was evident in many areas. If we reflect on how we have failed, for a long time, to maintain an overview of what actually needs to be done, and on how circumstances today demand a different way of thinking, a different way of feeling about people than in the past, then one will surely come to the realization that now, when the time of the terrible catastrophe has come, that now one must begin with such a rethinking, such a re-sensing; that should be clear to anyone who is unbiased. At least in the West, the circumstances that caused 12 to 15 million people to go mad and as many to become cripples arose from impossible economic conditions. This is undoubtedly the case in the West, but in the East we have completely different civilization conditions, where psychological factors have played a greater role. It should be clear to everyone that this whole chaos, the state of war and the current crisis, has arisen from the sins of omission of the last decades.

We have the peace treaties. But ultimately, is the peace that has been made a real peace? It could only be a peace of significance if it offered the prospect of the old civilization of humanity being rebuilt. But let us look at the actual circumstances and see if they support this. In England, it dawned on people first, and in a very significant way. English thinkers have said many things about the bleakness of the current situation and what is needed to improve it.

Then, in October [1920], at the Second National Economic Conference, we heard it said that what had emerged from the war catastrophe was alarming and that it must be replaced by something else if the misery was not to grow ever greater. There were many men there who realized what the situation was really like.

We in our civilization today are like a person who takes comfort in the fact that he still has a coat that is just starting to get shabby, and so on. [Lücke in der Mitschrift?] So steht [es] mit demjenigen, was man als die Besserung ansieht. Es ist durchaus diese Besserung nur scheinbar, denn dasjenige, was geblieben ist aus der Zivilisation der Vorkriegsepoche, ist in einer gewissen Beziehung abgetragen, muss in furchtbare Zustände hineinführen, wenn nicht beizeiten daran gedacht wird, wirkliche Besserung zu schaffen.

A significant word rings in one's ears when one hears how a conscientious person has described the present situation, with the words: “Within the present conditions of European civilization, a great crime of an incomparable kind is being committed and we are all participants in this crime.” The word has been spoken in England, and one may say that such a word sounds in one's ears as something that seems quite true. Those people who reflect on the present conditions are struck first by the economic conditions, and one thinks, this gentleman will become master. One believes that one can master them in this or that way, and then it will spread to all other areas of civilization. However, within the economic conditions there are circumstances that easily, very easily show how, basically, it is not managed from some reasonable foundations, but from chaos, from a situation riddled with decay. Can it be called rationing at all when, for example, Switzerland, which needed a million tons of coal in the first half of 1920, obtained 4,000 tons of that million tons from America? One need only consider that Switzerland is surrounded by coal-producing countries and that it is an impossible way to manage the world when things are supplied as expensively as possible. Hundreds of such examples could be cited today; one could see the impulse from which economic efficiency actually flows. - About 4500 million pounds sterling are needed for reparations, etc. [gap in the transcript?]

All of this provides a horrifying overview, and one should not believe that any area, such as Switzerland, can be exempted from the consequences. It is now definitely the time, even if one resists it, in which the progress of civilization makes the world economy necessary.

If we also consider that these Central European countries, if they are to have any chance of working at all, need at least 100 million pounds sterling in credit, then the prospect before us will be a very sad one indeed. The economic situation is before our eyes; [from the same side] from which the economic situation is already clearly emphasized, something else also emerges. One could hear it in the conference of October 1920. Basically, it could not have turned out differently, because those who were gathered were diplomats, they were politicians all together, they all understood nothing of a national economy; it is necessary that economists offer their hand out of the economic conditions to improve them, to intervene in the improvement. Today it is admitted that the politicians, those who are only politically trained - and unfortunately they are poorly trained politically enough - are not at all in a position to intervene in the economic situation in any way that would improve it.

You see, my esteemed audience, the views that are finally being imposed by the necessities of the times on the few today, are the ones that want to put the threefold social organism into the world as an impulse to lead to ascent. It wants to take civilization as a whole, it wants to see how the various factors, the various elements of civilized life interact. We cannot look at economic life in isolation; we can only look at the whole, but then it shows us very clearly how radically different the individual areas are, and it is on this radical difference between the three areas of civilization that the threefold order of the social organism focuses, and from there it tries to contribute to the recovery of human development. These three areas are spiritual life on the one hand, economic life on the other, and in the middle of them we find what we can call state, legal or, in fact, political life.

When the newer life of civilization began, it was quite natural, indeed historically necessary, that what had developed out of the modern state should gradually take hold not only of political and legal life, but also of intellectual life, of education, teaching and the whole intellectual life. But today we are in an age where this has fulfilled its task and must make way for something different. It is absolutely the case that the forms of civilization are first young, then mature, and then grow old and decay. So the deepest cause of our current plight is actually that we do not realize that we are living in an abstract unitary state, that this is actually heading towards its [doom] period, and that something new must be born to take its place.

The goal is to carve out intellectual life and economic life from state life, so that three elements take the place of the abstract unitary state, which has confused everything: an independent state life with its own legal system, an independent intellectual life, and an independent economic life, which must and can grow and flourish under these conditions. The nature of an independent spiritual life must be such that the greatest possible development can take place of that which man brings with him into physical existence through his birth, whether it be spiritual or mental. That which is to be developed must be introduced into the other areas of life with the greatest strength, and it must be allowed to unfold completely freely.

In more recent times, the state has taken control of education and teaching; it has done its part – what has come of it? Those who are supposed to develop human abilities in teaching and education have found themselves dependent on what the state prescribed for them; in a sense, they were what the state needed for its enrichment, for fertility. But because the actual life in education and teaching was guided from outside, the content of teaching became alienated to what we see today – especially viewed by certain personalities – to an abstract scientificity, to an abstract intellectual life. These educators of humanity were unable to administer the teaching and education from their own hearts at the same time; so they had no choice but to live in an abstractness. The fact that many people do not want to admit this is the cause of our present misery.

What can help is spiritual life. The most important component of spiritual life is independence, spiritual self-reliance. May this come into its own administration, and into the power of those who are directly involved in education and teaching. Here we must strive to ensure that they can also administer this educational system freely and autonomously in their corporations and in their cooperation, so that we need not fear anything that arises from the educational system itself. Forced authorities are fought against. Anyone who is familiar with the conditions of intellectual life knows that a specialist naturally has the greatest influence because others need him in order to learn from him. Independence is what matters. Of course, the establishment of intellectual life is developed out of economic life. But in terms of the spiritual, this intellectual field must be completely independent of any other influence.

For millions of people, intellectual life has become an ideology. But you can't come to such a view if you experience that the spirit is not just something you have thought about, but something you have experienced; from this living life flows the state of the heart as it actually is. One hears quite justified statements that in recent times intellectual life has in a sense brought itself into a state of decadence, even brutalized, because it has striven for pure intellectualism, while the soul, the heart, has actually withered.

It is easy to say such things, but it is more difficult to see how one can follow suit. One can demand that the atmosphere of emotional education should be abandoned, etc. [gap in the transcript?] But one cannot simply draw a line under what has gone before. Modern life has its techniques, it has cultivated the intellect, the development of the mind, one-sided cleverness. The task is to direct the serious, profound question to the destiny of the human being: What brings harmony with the development of the heart and soul? ... (reference to spiritual science).

Such a science cannot be like it used to be, considering that the great task that one wants to set oneself there is to come to the spirit, to the true spirit; not to spiritualism, to theosophy, etc., but to a spirit that can permeate the whole human being, that can reconcile spirit with feeling. This is what has been seen in reality, and what now wants to happen from within, to enliven this spiritual life from the Goetheanum in Dornach. However, this does give rise to many annoyances for Dornach, because it has to take a stand on other contemporary endeavors that may come from good intentions but prove to be unfruitful. What do people strive for most in our time to strengthen the life of the mind, the life of morality, the deepening of religion? What is being striven for there? One wants to spread what one has acquired intellectually through all kinds of enterprises, such as public libraries, etc. — Dornach cannot go along with this because it recognizes the futility.

One must ask oneself: Did those who were leaders not see and know what the schools had achieved, did they not possess precisely what is taught at the universities? But did that prevent them from sailing headlong into the catastrophe of the twentieth century? And if those who were in possession of this education were not protected from it, but were also driven into it, can one hope that it will lead to something different when it is spread further? Do we want to deliver that to the millions as well, so that it will bear fruit to an even more devastating extent? This is what is being seen through in the field in Dornach, in order to carry it out to the people from there. First of all, it must be carried into the educational institutions, so that something different can come of it.

I just wanted to mention the reasons why this understanding of the necessity for the liberation of spiritual life can arise. It is precisely from this that the demand for a free spiritual life arises. Teachers from the lowest to the highest classes have to administer this spiritual life themselves; they themselves will have to set up the practical teaching institutions that exist; they will not be told what to teach, because it is said that they themselves must administer what is to be used in spiritual life. But then they are also forced to immerse themselves in practical life, to teach and educate, because they do not have to teach an abstract science, but rather that which really sustains life.

The free spiritual life must stand on one wing of the social organism. On this one wing of the social organism, it will be necessary to judge things for ourselves by putting ourselves in the place of the spirit. This will cause difficulties because people are unaccustomed to grasping such a spiritual life correctly; they only have a mere thinking about the spirit. But we cannot make a decision about whether to leave it or improve it; it must be understood that in this way life is fertilized in the right way from the spiritual side - it must become independent. That is on the one wing.

On the other wing is economic life. I would like to show you, by means of an external comparison, the difference between the living conditions in economic life and in spiritual life. (Example) In the economic sphere, the freedom that we have in spiritual life is not possible. In economic life, we are all, without exception, dependent on each other. In economic life, it is a matter of gradually acquiring what one has acquired through economic experience, through being connected to an economic sector. In the field of economic life, it is impossible to start from freedom. It can be strictly proved that it is impossible. (Example: the negotiations that have been conducted regarding the introduction of the gold standard.)

The opposite of what the clever people preached has occurred. What has emerged on a large scale in the global economy is now emerging on a small scale in the present day. As a rule, they will have the opposite effect on the economy as a whole and thus on economic life in general. In this regard, we need to take a somewhat unbiased look.

In earlier [decades and] years, we have the emergence of the social question. In this regard, quite clever people have also had strange thoughts. (Austrian minister M.) In the 80s, I had many a conversation with people from the business world. It was precisely in this area that people were the last to notice the pressure and the social unrest that had brought such misery and hardship. But those who were involved in the conversation said: We are powerless to intervene productively in economic life, etc. These things were simply accepted as an uncertain fate. Today, these things must be thought about on a large scale.

In the field of economic life, the most important thing is the price; because only when prices are such that people can exchange their things, then social life is truly present in a human way. Now it is very easy to say, with mathematical certainty, what must be the case with regard to [a] determination of prices, the original cell of economic life, and that is called: The person who produces something must receive so much for this production that he can maintain himself and those who belong to him, himself and his own, until he can produce the same product again (example: boots). This is, as I said, expressed in the abstract. It must be obvious; it is only a question of how this can be achieved in the reality of life. What must intervene here, and this must be taken very seriously, is that the individual human being can come to an economic judgment. The aim is for everyone to be able to work productively in a single field. Therefore, something must arise that leads to active participation in economic life and sets the living in motion. What I have called the “core of the social question” must come into being: the principle of association in economic life. (By way of explanation, an example from my own life.) Books are written, etc., sent to the printers, typeset, printed and shipped, with a great deal going to waste. Consider what that means! It means nothing other than that so many hands have been involved in producing the paper, typesetting, printing and so on. That is unnecessary work. (Example: publishing house, consumer economy.) Such examples point to what I have described in terms of my core points under the principle of association. The point is that those who participate in economic life – and that includes all people – join together, and that in itself results in an association. The individuals join together according to production and this with the consumer circles. Consuming, producing, if you take all this into account, you get very specific groups of this association. (World Economic Federation.) Within this economic association, negotiations take place from person to person, and that is where it comes about that people contribute everything they can; what they cannot do is supplemented by others.

If it is considered that price conditions are the decisive factor, it must be possible to intervene in this pricing; this cannot be done by theoretical decrees. The point is that it must be started from the other side. It cannot be regulated by decrees, but only by the living life, it can only be achieved by the associative economic life, which should be based on sound economic experience.

Neither in the intellectual nor in the economic life can parliamentarization be imposed, because only those who are knowledgeable and competent in both fields can act. Therefore, it must be negotiated from person to person, from corporation to corporation, so that the one who has experience is placed in the relevant position because he has experience, not because he is placed in a party that he does not represent, so that expertise and professional competence can be brought to bear.

There will be many objections. But these objections are overcome when one considers that, for example, only those who need a mild amount of freedom to pursue their profession might feel harassed by the associations. But when the matter is put into practice, it is no more difficult than exchanging money. (Bureaucracy removed.) These things are treated in a lively way, and so they can also be handled in a lively way. But what is meant by the associations would precisely free the human being, and then the other liberations in other areas would follow. (Applied in Stuttgart.)

One might object: on the one hand we have the spiritual life and on the other the economic life, so there is nothing left in the middle. We just have to wait and see what happens in the middle; there is a large, larger area there; humanity demands from its essence the decision from itself, from this middle. (Unification of people who have come of age, standardization of goods, time, and measure.) These things, which affect people themselves and for which people must stand up with their person – they must not become commodities. In economic life, one must accept what nature offers and manage accordingly; therefore, it must be independent of the state.

Much else will belong to it; we shall see what living right is. That which ought to arise there is not really there; the actual legal life has been corrupted. That which ought to be right, which only flows from people who have come of age, has withered away. People must have the opportunity to find an area where they can determine what lies in the judgment of mature people; one must not be afraid of it. (Quotation of an article from a newspaper.) Such a man cannot imagine that precisely because it is justified in the right way, these three limbs of the social organism come together to form a unity. It is the same in man; the unity, the living unity in man also consists of a threefold structure, and so it must be in the social organism. A man once objected: Yes, life must be a unity, and you cannot think of it differently, as a unified state; everything must go together. (Example: rural economy, women, servants, children, a number of carts working together in unity.) The unity comes about precisely because everyone does their part. We have seen that very enlightened people say: the people who put together this seemingly new form were politicians who understood nothing about economic life.

We just don't have the courage to face up to what people long for, to develop the impulse of will. We have to relearn. The great significant ideals, freedom, equality and fraternity, have so far not been able to lead people out of the chaos of the times. Very clever people have proved again and again how freedom and equality can exist, and how fraternity is affected by both. Freedom can be attained in the realm of spiritual life; equality will arise out of state life; and fraternity can be developed in economic life, genuine, practical fraternity. Thus one will have to say: by recognizing how these three great, significant ideals must flow into life, humanity will be led out of the terrible chaos through the threefold social order, if it is understood in the right way. Based on the feeling of the bitter need of the time and on decades of experience, it can be said that this threefold social order aims to lead humanity out of chaos by not forcing anything together, but by introducing these three ideals into their proper possessions, into a large social organism. And this viable organism will bring together what can arise: freedom in spiritual life, equality in legal life, fraternity in economic life.