The School of Spiritual Science VI

The Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum is striving to establish the sections already mentioned, but it would like to add a further one. This will be possible if the intentions of the Executive Council meet with a positive response on the part of the General Anthroposophical Society. In every age, young people have been in a certain opposition to old age. This gypsy truth comforts many people about the life phenomena within today's youth.

But this consolation could easily become a disaster.

We should understand the young from the “spirit of the present” in both their questionable aberrations and their all too justified striving for something other than what the old give them.

First of all, there is the youth that is pushed into an academic career by the circumstances of life. They are offered “science”. Solid, secure, fruitful science for the outer life. It would be nonsense, in the manner of many laymen, to rail against this science. But youth still freezes spiritually in the face of this science before it comes to recognize its solidity, its security, its fertility for the outer life.

Science owes its greatness to the strong opposition it has faced since the mid-19th century. At that time, people realized how easily man can sail into the uncertainty of knowledge when he rises from the lowlands of research to the heights of a world view. It was believed that chilling examples of such a rise had been experienced.

And so they wanted to free “science” from world view. It should stick to the “facts” in the valleys of nature and avoid the high roads of the mind.

When they were opposing the world view, they got a certain satisfaction out of the opposition. The opponents of worldviews in the mid-19th century were happy in their fighting mood.

Today's youth can no longer share this happiness. They can no longer stir up satisfying feelings in their souls by experiencing the fight against the “insecurity” and “crush” of worldviews.

For today there is simply nothing left to fight against. It is impossible to free “science” from “worldview.” For the worldview has died in the meantime.

But young people's feelings have made a discovery. Not at all a discovery of the intellect, but one that comes from the whole, undivided human nature.

Young people have discovered that without a worldview, it is impossible to live a dignified human life. Many of the old have heard the “evidence” against the worldview. They have submitted to the power of the evidence. The youth no longer pays intellectual heed to this power of evidence; but they instinctively sense the powerlessness of all intellectual proof where the human heart speaks from an invincible urge.

Science presents itself to young people in a dignified way; but it owes its dignity to its lack of world view. Young people long for a world view. But science needs young people.

At the Goetheanum, we would like to understand young people in such a way that we can seek the paths to a worldview with them. And we hope that in the light of the worldview, a true love for science will be generated. We don't want to lose science in world view reverie, but rather to gain it through a waking spiritual experience.

The leadership of the Anthroposophical Society asks young people if they want to understand it too. If it finds this understanding, then the “Section for the Spiritual Striving of Youth” can become something vital. (To be continued in the next issue.