50. Theosophy and the Cultural Tasks of the Present Day
The brief summary of a lecture on “Theosophy and the cultural tasks of the present day” by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in Berlin, Weimar, Hamburg and Cologne is provided here.
A sea change of the greatest significance has taken place in the thinking and feeling of human beings in the last few centuries.
The great discoveries in the field of natural science have expanded our knowledge of the external world and given us an ever-increasing control over nature.
As a result, man has also placed all his thinking and imagining in the service of this outer natural research and natural domination.
The mental power that is applied to this in modern times was applied in earlier times to the life of the soul, to spiritual development.
Today, people are proud of their astronomy, of their knowledge in physics, chemistry, botany and zoology. They devote all their mental strength to these and to the control of nature, to external, material culture.
Because this mental power was previously applied to spiritual life, to an immersion in the spiritual forces of the world, we owe works of the mind to earlier times, which we look at with all the more reverence the more we recognize them.
Anyone who knows how to read the signs of the times recognizes that humanity must increasingly sink into an external, purely material way of thinking and culture if it is not brought back to spiritual life. Only through this life can man recognize his true nature, only through this life can he fulfill his destiny.
Today there are still only a few who have completely fallen prey to materialism; without a renewal of spiritual life, their number would grow ever greater.
The theosophical movement owes its origin not to arbitrariness but to the deep realization that humanity needs spiritual deepening.
Whoever wants to use a material or a natural force in the right way must learn its laws from chemistry. Spiritual chemistry, the knowledge of one's own higher powers, is taught by theosophy so that one may fulfill one's true destiny.
Machines and industry have made man the master of the outer forces of nature; the world economy, which spans the entire globe, has united all races and nations in an external way. The theosophical movement will unite the souls. It will provide the necessary spiritual bond to go with the material one. It already has representatives in England, Scandinavia, France, Spain, Italy, India, Australia and also in Germany. It will continue to expand as people increasingly recognize that the spiritual future of culture lies in it, that it must bring the knowledge of the soul, the truth of the spirit.