The Nature of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 68d — 5 February 1906, Bremen

5. Brotherhood and Struggle for Existence

Report in the “Bremer Nachrichten” of February 8, 1906

The day before yesterday, Dr. Steiner, General Secretary of the Theosophical Society, spoke to a large audience at the Trade House about brotherhood and the struggle for existence. He said the following: Two ideas arise in the mind of anyone who observes human social life according to its dominant forces. The one expresses the great ideal of humanitarians: brotherhood; the other that in which so many see a law of harsh reality: the struggle for existence. With a heavy heart, many say to themselves: Brotherhood is a beautiful ideal, but like so many other beautiful goals, only the slightest part of it can be realized in practice. Many human communities existed and still exist today in order to implement the ideal mentioned above in life. For thirty years, the so-called theosophical movement has joined them, and it has spread to most educated countries. It has made it its first principle to found the core of a general brotherhood of man. It regards, among other things, the spiritual deepening of life, feeling and thinking as one of its most important means. For it, brotherhood is not just a demand that applies to details of life; for it, brotherhood is what must necessarily arise when people recognize their true spiritual essence. It does not just speak of what is there for the senses and the mind, but seeks to clarify that spiritual forces and abilities lie dormant in people, through which they are citizens of an invisible world. It provides proof that the struggle for existence is only a necessary property of the lower physical world, but that unity and harmony set in immediately when man devotes himself to his higher powers. It is certainly not ignoble minds that believe that struggle is a mediator of human progress, that the forces of creation and action are steeled precisely by competition. A truly spiritual insight will never fall into the one-sidedness of regarding this competition only as a product of injustice and inhumanity. On the contrary, it proves that competition is a necessary consequence of the laws in the physical world. But it also proves that those who see struggle as the only means of civilization fail to take into account the existence of a higher world. Humanity owes all of modern civilization to purely materialistic thinking, which has harnessed the forces of nature to the service of progress in such a tremendous way. Present-day industrialism and commerce have emerged from this thinking. They stem from the knowledge of the physical world. And the harmony of humanity, which must necessarily follow in the wake of this external culture, can also come from nothing but knowledge. Knowledge of the physical separates man from man, but knowledge of the spiritual unites man with man, for it shows how the individual is nothing without all of humanity. - The speaker was rewarded with enthusiastic applause.