The Human Soul, Fate and Death
GA 70a — 1 December 1914, Munich
1. The “Barbarians” of Schiller and Fichte
Dear attendees! Every winter I have been able to give a few lectures in different European cities, including here in Munich, on topics in the field of spiritual science. I believe it is a legitimate sentiment that the lectures I am giving this winter should take their starting point from what is so close to us in these fateful days. The impulses that these days stir in our hearts and souls will be the subject of today's introductory lecture. Do we not have the feeling that in these trying times of ours, no word can be spoken that is not accompanied by an intense feeling, which looks towards those fields in the east and west, where powerful judgments are being written into the course of human development, not by words, but by deeds? One could see how, since the days of August, what lives in the deepest impulses of the German people has been drawn out like a mighty breath of the spirit; one could see how, in our time, courage to make sacrifices, selflessness, devotion, and an infinite love have grown out of the depths of souls. All this has given rise to a unified feeling, the like of which we have not seen for a long time. It is not for me, in these reflections, to transgress Bismarck's 1870 warning to those whom fate has left behind from the fields of battle, that they must not, above all, anticipate events with words and reflections until something decisive has happened. I will not deal with what lies in the impulses of the day, but with what runs through these impulses of the day and what can, must occupy the spiritual researcher in particular - albeit in complete harmony with the feeling that has seized everyone.
Dear attendees! In recent times, there has been much talk of heredity in schools of thought that are more or less influenced by materialism. By this heredity one means something that is fundamentally quite external to the spiritual contemplation of things and entities: the survival of the qualities of preceding beings in subsequent beings. I do not intend to discuss the essence of this idea of inheritance today; but I would like to draw attention to how something similar to this inheritance is present in the lower spheres in the entire progress of the spiritual development of humanity, and in particular in the life of a nation, as a kind of spiritual inheritance, but more comprehensive and universal than what is usually called by that name.
What is it that holds the souls of a people together, that can pour fire into the souls of a people, as it now passes through the spiritual veins of the people? One can say: It flows down like a real, actual stream, like a stream [from] the spiritual world; in this stream live the impulses of the best leading spirits, the best leading geniuses of a people. Not only in the sense of the Greek fairy tale is it real for the spiritual researcher that the forces that were connected in the leader-geniuses with a people remain with this people, in that the same forces live on in this people, and that one can truly say that out there in the fields to the east and west, the same forces live in those who have to enter the scene of events with blood and soul, the same forces live as they lived in the best leadership geniuses of the people.
Two of these leading geniuses shall be singled out today. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” says a weighty word; by the fruits one can also recognize what is contained in the deepest forces of the national soul, and these fruits, these highest fruits, which grow out of the roots and trunk of the national soul, these are the deeds of the leading geniuses of a nation. Therefore, one can say: Let the forces blow over our fields in the east and west, which we can also perceive in such spirits as those who are to be singled out today from the culture of Central Europe, in Schiller and Fichte.
And let us start from a moment that is particularly suitable for these two guiding geniuses, to bring them close to our feelings. I do not want to evoke sentimental feelings by starting with the last moments of Schiller and Fichte, with those moments when they passed through the gateway of death, but because I believe that the symbolic and the symptomatically significant of these geniuses are indeed characteristically expressed in the moment of their death.
Here we turn to Schiller. It is indeed remarkable that we have grown so fond of spirits like Schiller that literature, to our great satisfaction, gives us the means to observe the most intimate personal side of these geniuses as well. And so we can almost step in front of Schiller's sickbed and dying bed from the accounts of the younger Voß, Schiller's friend, and let the fact have its effect on us, in which the victory of the soul over the external body has been expressed in this spirit.
We can follow the last days of this genius, can follow how his body was visibly dedicated to death and only maintained itself through the tremendous power of his soul. Then we accompany him into the death chamber, see how this spirit, in the hour of death, is directed towards the highest things, see how he has his youngest child brought to him, how he takes it and looks deeply into its eyes, how he gives it back and turns away. We can guess, as the younger Voß suggests, what thoughts may have crossed his mind: how much he, as a father, could and should have been for this child. And it is truly not a sentimental feeling when one says: this looking into the eyes of the child, one feels it as a symbolic looking into the eyes of the German people. When one allows the whole personality of Schiller to take effect on oneself, then one says to oneself: He had to go through the gate of death with the feeling of how much should have emerged from the seeds he had sown in the cultural field of the German people. That is why we, with a deep interest in the development of German culture, are looking closely at the living Schiller, at the Schiller who is still alive today, at the Schiller from whom radiate the forces that can still be effective in our souls today.
A similar moment is the moment of death in Fichte, in Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great German philosopher, one might say the most energetic philosopher who has ever walked through the history of philosophy. When the German people had experienced the deepest humiliation, Johann Gottlieb Fichte spoke to them the most invigorating words in his “Discourses to the German Nation,” and when the time came for the German people to seek liberation from their humiliation, Fichte took the most heartfelt interest, interest with his whole personality, and we feel this interest most keenly when we look at his last days. His wife was a nurse. She brought the military hospital fever home with her. She recovered, but passed it on to the philosopher himself. And now we see him: a kind of victim of the war in his last days and hours. The philosopher who had found the most powerful words to characterize the inner life of the human soul in its strength, the philosopher who, in his “Speeches to the German Nation,” sought to understand and proclaim the German essence, as he himself always said, from the “roots of life's stirrings,” where did his thoughts dwell in his last hours? Oh, it is very characteristic: in the feverish delirium of his last hours, he felt - Johann Gottlieb Fichte - his soul at the battlefields, at the crossing of the Rhine, which was just taking place under Blücher. His thoughts were absorbed in the feverish fantasy of participating in the war. When his son approached his bedside and offered him a medicine, Fichte said that he could not have experienced anything more satisfying than this upsurge of his people. He pushed the medicine away and said, “I know that I will recover.” These were his last moments. A philosopher, ladies and gentlemen, bearing in mind the saying: “You shall know them by their fruits.”
What Schiller and Fichte can be to their people expresses what also lives in this people today, what this people fights and bleeds for. That which is real in the world reveals itself outwardly in the most diverse stages of transformation; but one can recognize that which lives in the national instincts, in the subconscious soul stirrings of the members of this nation, by the fruits, where it is expressed at its highest peak.
It was in a time of great difficulty that Fichte delivered his “Speeches to the German Nation” to his oppressed people. Right at the beginning, he raised three questions, three questions that can be said to have only limited significance today. The first question is: Is there a German nation in truth and reality and is its existence in danger? Regarding the last words, however, the question can still be asked today. The second question is: Is it worth the effort to devise the means for this German nation to continue to exist and to exist in what way? Well, I think one need only look at Schiller and Fichte and the others related to them and one will find: The nineteenth century answered this question through the facts of its German cultural development. And the third question that Fichte raises is: what means are suitable for helping the German people to achieve a future that corresponds to them? Today, we should be particularly concerned with what Fichte sought as the sources from which he spoke at that time about these means for his people, what occupied him as the sources from which he tried to hint at the essence of Germanness, as he said.
It must be admitted that what he said about Germany, what he indicated as the means for developing this Germanness, did not find its expression in the nineteenth century, and today we must think differently about things than Fichte did, differently about the significance of a nation's language than Fichte thought at the time, differently about the effectiveness of precisely the kind of educational method that Fichte indicated, because in it he saw the means to secure the future of the German people. What matters is not that, but rather the soul-germs out of which Fichte spoke his powerful words at that time; for out of these soul-germs the German people still live today.
And I believe I am not saying anything unjustified when I say that in particular what I have meant from this place as spiritual science has often been discussed, and may be linked to Johann Gottlieb Fichte , for even if what he spoke in his time sounds different from the results of spiritual science today, the same soul-germs gave rise to Fichte's science in his time and to spiritual science in our time, as I believe. This can be shown in detail. For those of the honored listeners who in past years have heard much of what has been said from this place about spiritual science, it will be clear without further ado what I want to suggest briefly and in general terms about spiritual science.
What is the essence of spiritual science? In relation to the search for spiritual results, it consists in the fact that spiritual science, unlike the other sciences, the external sciences, does not merely go to what presents itself to the external senses and shines to the mind when it devotes itself to the external world, but that it goes to what arises in the soul when it remains passive to things, but that it goes to what can only be can be recognized and experienced when the soul - allow me to use this word of Johann Gottlieb Fichte - goes to the deepest roots of its life impulses, when it actively seeks to recognize inwardly, when it not only allows the world to flow into it, but when it tries to embrace the world in its innermost core by invoking the deepest forces lying within the soul.
And so, one could say, without being presumptuous about respect to conventional science, spiritual science is a kind of science that relies on the inner courage of the soul, on being inwardly stirred, on grasping the world in one's activity. And here we may say: in all the impulses of the development of German culture – this is particularly evident in minds such as Fichte and Schiller – in all these impulses of the development of German culture, it is found, either in a germinal or more or less explicitly suggested form, that man finds knowledge of the world by seeking knowledge of the soul in his innermost being. We need only recall what is so epigrammatically presented to us in Goethe's Faust, where Faust encounters the spirit and speaks to it:
Exalted spirit, thou hast given me, given me everything
I asked for. Thou didst not in vain
turned Thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature of a kingdom,
the power to feel and enjoy it. Not
only dost Thou permit cold, wondering visit,
but givest me the right to look into her deep breast,
as into the bosom of a friend.
Thou leadest the line of the living
before me, and teach me to know my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.
And then, after this suggestion of how the spirit – the spirit that lives and moves in all things – reveals the secrets of nature to him, Faust draws attention to how this knowledge is connected to the living comprehension of one's own soul.
And when the storm rages and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce topples, crushing neighboring branches
And neighboring trunks, sweeping down
And the hill thunders hollowly with its fall,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Then myself, and to my own chest
open up to me, and the deep, secret wonders of my own breast are revealed to me.
The one - and this is more or less the meaning of the whole spiritual cultural development of Central Europe - the one who is able to recognize himself in the deepest soul as a spiritual being, does not get involved in setting the boundaries of knowledge, because he knows: wherever he goes, the spiritual part of his soul goes with him. And he will find spiritual essence everywhere. And so arises (I can only hint at this today) from this spiritual science, living in the activity of the soul, a knowledge of the human being, the human being that goes through its temporal existence in the body between birth and death, but which belongs to eternity, which enters through birth into physical existence, which through the gate of death again emerges into the spiritual world and there experiences its further destiny. And it is not only in a theoretical sense that the nature of the soul is spoken of in spiritual science, but spiritual science, in its active recognition, brings to life that which lives in man as an eternal being; it makes this recognizable by showing that one can look from the spirit, which is free from the body, at that which lies between birth and death in the human body.
Spiritual science does not merely want to provide theories, but rather an expansion of spiritual experience. And so it comes to the conclusion that it is possible for those who apply the spiritual research method to their own soul to experience the moment that a person experiences in the natural progression when they pass through the gate of death: to look at what the body and bodily laws are from the being that is outside of the body. The retrospective view of the bodily and the sense of oneself in the spiritual as a real inner experience is one of the foundations of spiritual-scientific knowledge.
Now we turn to Fichte, to something that he gave right at the beginning of his “Speeches to the German Nation”. And from what he gave there, one can see what he meant by what he often emphasized: to make human wisdom out of the innermost “roots of the stirrings of life.” Fichte wants - I have to say this so that his words can be understood - to indicate how it seems to him when someone comes to him and says: Oh, what you tell us about a special education, , about rejuvenating the nation, that can no longer make an impression on us; because it is all so contrary to what we have experienced so far that we lack the possibility of having confidence in this completely different thing. And then Fichte says, as it were, as an objection: He who speaks in this way seems to him to be a person whom he now characterizes in the following way. Fichte says:
Time
— he means his time —
seems to me like a shadow that stands over its corpses, from which an army of diseases has just driven it, and laments and cannot tear its gaze away from the formerly so beloved shell and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plagues. Although the invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the departed has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with a warm breath of love, although she is greeted by the [joyful, secret] voices of her sisters and welcomed, although she is already stirring and expanding [within herself] in all directions, to develop the more glorious form into which it is to mature, but as yet it has no feeling for these [breezes] or no hearing for these voices, or if it did have it, it is absorbed in pain over its loss, with [which] it believes itself to have been lost.
Fichte rejects one objection and characterizes the person who wants to look back at the old that is facing the new, as well as the spiritual researcher who comes to the certainty: When the soul has gone through the gate of death, it stands as a truly observing being in front of its corpse and looks at it like an external object.
Now, esteemed attendees, I do not believe that anyone can doubt that Fichte could only arrive at such a symbol because the seeds of spiritual science were already alive in him, just as they were able to live in the energetic philosopher in his time. And was it not Fichte who, time and again, at every opportunity, tried to make clear how all being of the outer sense is rooted in the spiritual?
Only a few characteristic words from his penetrating “Speeches to the German Nation” will be mentioned here:
Time and eternity and infinity beholds
– and he means his philosophy –
in its emergence from the appearance and becoming visible of that One, which is absolutely invisible in itself, and only in this invisibility of it is grasped, correctly grasped. (..) All persistent existence appearing as non-spiritual life
- says Fichte —
is only an empty shadow, cast out of seeing and mediated many times over by the Nothing. In contrast to this and through the recognition of this as a many times mediated Nothing, seeing itself is to be elevated to the recognition of its own Nothing and to the acknowledgment of the Invisible as the only true thing.
One grasps Fichte, as it were, at the very root of his being when one hears such words from him, and when did he utter such words? They came to him at a time when he wanted to speak about the essence of Germanness, as he coined the word. But what is it that this essence expresses? For Fichte, it is that which does not lead to a philosophy of death, to a philosophy of matter, to a philosophy of outer sensuality or observation of the senses, but which leads to the knowledge of that world in which the eternal is rooted in the human soul as in the universal cosmic eternal. And out of the energy of his being, out of the deepest 'roots of life impulses', Fichte tried to grasp in its cosmic significance that which gives the human being within him the guarantee of his eternal being. Fichte opposes everything that can be sensually perceived in its highest forms, everything that confronts man in the outer sun and planets and in other outer beings; and he opposes all this with what he believes he knows to be the essence of the self rooted in man, the eternal self that passes through birth and death.
And in his writing, which he was compelled to write because of the charge of atheism, he spoke in a wonderful way about this energetic consciousness of the eternal nature of the human soul. He also addresses what is external reality, and in contrast to this external reality, he sets the spiritual, which can be grasped in the innermost inner human being. It is as if he were addressing what passes before us as sun and planets, to which Fichte says:
You are changeable, not I. All your transformations are only my spectacle, and I will always hover unscathed above the ruins of your forms. That the forces which are to destroy the inner sphere of my activity [which I call my body] are already in effect now does not surprise me; this body belongs to You and is transient like everything that belongs to You, but this body is not I. I myself will hover over its ruins, and its dissolution will be my spectacle. That the forces are already at work which will destroy my outer sphere [that has only now begun to become so in the next points] - which will destroy you, you shining suns all, and the thousand times thousand world bodies [that roll around you], cannot alienate me; you are [by your birth] doomed to death. But [when, among the millions of suns that shine above my head, the youngest will have long since exhausted their last spark of light,] then I will still be the same, unharmed and unchanged, as I am now; and when [from your ruins, new solar systems will have converged as many times as there are of you, all of you shining above my head, and the] youngest of all her [last] sparks of light [will have long since been exhausted], then I will still be, unharmed and unchanged, the same as I am today.
Dear attendees, these are words that may be said – as the spiritual researcher may mean – one might claim that Fichte's soul sought the body within the Central European people in order to find the language with this corporeality, thus to speak of the eternity of the human self, of its triumph over the external world of the senses. Everything that Fichte, one might say, out of this consciousness, also transferred into his “Discourses to the German Nation” as their deepest inner forces, all this is basically for Fichte always the basis for answering another question, the question that can be characterized as the question: How does man find what he is supposed to be in the highest sense of the word? And there we stand, one might say, before the peculiarity of how German culture actually wants to understand this humanity.
Fichte, with powerful words, has indicated how it is basically in the nature of Germanness to transcend Germanness precisely through Germanness, to represent humanity in its generality, to seek out in the human soul that which is elevated above all nationality, above all limitations of space and time. Therefore, one can say: the Englishman is English, the Frenchman is French; the same cannot be said for the German, fundamentally, if one wants to grasp the essence of his Germanness in the spirit of such geniuses as Fichte and Schiller were. The Englishman is English, the Frenchman is French, the German has at his innermost being the question: How can I become German? And this German is always standing before him like an ideal, which he wants to approach, which he first wants to become. And when he believes he has grasped it, which lies in the innermost stirrings of human life, in order to become such, then, precisely through his Germanness, he rises above the narrow bounds of nationality.
Fichte's statement is characteristic in this regard:
The principle according to which she
- he means German philosophy -
to conclude this, is presented to her what spirituality and freedom [this spirituality believes] and the eternal development of this spirituality through freedom wants, that wherever it is born and in whatever language it speaks, it is of our kind, it belongs to us and it will join us.
It is certainly legitimate to point to this ideal of becoming German in our own day, when the word “German barbarism” has arisen from all corners of the compass and when, as it seems and as we shall shortly will be shown, the judgments that are passed on Germanness today are based on nothing other than the necessary misunderstanding that must arise when there is no sense of what Schiller and Fichte, for example, understood to be the essence of their people.
Let us now turn our gaze away from Fichte and towards Schiller! One could cite many things about Schiller; one could go into this or that of his poetry and writings! But to grasp what connects him to Fichte and what connects him to the essence of German culture, one must point to a work by Schiller that unfortunately is appreciated very little, and basically, but which, if it is appreciated properly, shows how this striving for becoming German, which for Schiller is identical with becoming human, how this striving has been expressed in Schiller. And this writing is the one in which Schiller expresses himself in a very general, human, non-philosophical way: the “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”. What does he want to present to his fellow human beings in these letters?
Oh, Schiller is deeply convinced that the outer man who stands before us, who goes through birth and death, is only the outer shell of man, and that man's endeavor must be to seek the higher man in man. Schiller seeks it in his own way, according to the peculiarities of his own time, but he seeks it characteristically. On the one hand, he says to himself: out there is the world of the senses, sensory forces that have an effect on people. Schiller summarizes everything that is brought about in man under the concept of external natural necessity, also in man. Can man truly be human if he is subject to this natural necessity, he asks. No, is the answer, then he is a slave to this natural necessity. There is something else, there is the rigid concept of reason; everything that can be understood by theory, everything that reason can think up, can man, if he devotes himself to it, be fully human? No, says Schiller, because then man is subject to the compulsion of the necessity of reason, he is its slave. How do you free the true human being from himself, as it were? Then we release him, when we come to feel what reason inspires in us in the same way that we feel the sweetness of a sensual impression, when we lovingly feel what higher spirituality is in the same meaningful way that we can lovingly feel through the senses what makes an impression on them. Schiller seeks to elevate what is sensual into the sphere of spirituality, and to grasp what is spiritual with the freshness and liveliness of the senses. Then, in this middle state, man becomes free. When this thought is suggested, it cannot immediately make the impression it does when the human soul completely immerses itself in it. This is a thought that seeks to answer the question of what path of development a person should embark upon if they want to rise above themselves, if they want to redeem the person hidden within them and come to a higher conception of reality.
One could say that such thoughts arose at the pinnacle of human development. And how does Schiller seek to interweave his thoughts with everything that he is aware of as the essence of his people? In our days, Schiller's words have often been quoted – beautiful words – in which he, as it were, sees the essence of the German people, which he himself, as the highest human being, seeks to fathom in his aesthetic letters.
To
- says Schiller -
who forms and rules the mind, must ultimately become the ruler, because
finally at the goal of time, if the
world has a plan, if human
life has any meaning, finally
must win the custom and reason,
the brute force of form must succumb
and the slowest people will catch up with
all the fast, fleeting ones.
He is destined for the highest,
and just as he is in the middle of
he is the core of humanity,
they are the flower and the leaf.
He is chosen by the world spirit, during
to work on the eternal construction of human education
to preserve what time brings,
therefore he has appropriated what was previously foreign
and kept it within himself.
Everything that was valuable in other times
and peoples, which arose with time and vanished, he has preserved;
it is not lost to him, the treasures of
Not to shine in the moment and
to play his role, but to win the great
process of time. Every people
has its day in history, but
the day of the German is the harvest of
And so one may say, when looking at these two geniuses, Fichte and Schiller, that the deepest German search and striving is to seek and fathom the most general human, the higher self in man - as spiritual science would say - and how one can live one's way into it. In this they stand, one might say, at the dawn of the development for which we seek the sun, of that development which a culture is capable of creating, which, whatever external undertakings it may pursue, to whatever flowering it may come in the external world, seeks only to use this external world to find the body for a soul, for that soul which we can best characterize when we look to such geniuses as Schiller and Fichte.
One may now raise the question: did the people of Schiller and Fichte live on after these geniuses had departed from the physical world? Is it disputable that the spirit that lived on a peak in Schiller and Fichte, that it also progresses in the plains of German intellectual life?
Well, esteemed attendees, I was reluctant to talk about this question when I should somehow be calling upon German judgment itself. This could very easily be taken as a kind of self-aggrandizement, as a kind of self-deception. So let another way be chosen to characterize the extent to which the belief can be justified that in the course of intellectual culture after Fichte and Schiller down to our time something of this Fichte and Schiller and all the geniuses related to them, above all also of Goethe, whether something of this lived. We need not dwell on what Germans can think about this survival of the soul in Fichte and Schiller and Goethe; we may first refer to a man who did not think and write in German, but who stood on the heights of nineteenth-century cultural development: Emerson.
What I want to present as an opinion about what survived of Schiller's, Fichte's, Goethe's soul, is presented with words that were originally written in English by the English American Emerson. He – not a German, but an English-speaking American – says:
One quality in particular that Goethe shares with his entire nation makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public: that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, people respect talent, but they are only satisfied when it works for or against a party of his conviction. In France, one is already delighted to see brilliant ideas going wherever they want. In all these countries, however, talented men write as far as their gifts reach. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours.
He continues:
The German mind has neither the French liveliness nor the Englishman's practical understanding nor, finally, the American adventurousness, but what it does have is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: “Where does this lead?” The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and express himself in a way that is appropriate to them: intellectual activity is present, so what does it stand for? What is the man's opinion? Where does it come from? Where does he get all these thoughts?
At another point he says:
The English [...] see only the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws. The Germans think for Europe. The English do not grasp the depth of the German mind.
And now another of Emerson's judgments about this German character:
For this reason,
he says,
the distinctive terms used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and the French, who are honored for their acumen and learning, approach their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality, and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, speaks, not because he has talent, but the truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, even though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. No matter how excellent what he says is, he has something even better in mind [...] He has that fearsome independence that arises from dealing with the truth.
So judges, dear ladies and gentlemen, a nineteenth-century writer writing in English, one of the greatest, about those who are today called the German “barbarians”. What could be characterized as self-aggrandizement or something else, if only it could be taken out of German judgments, must be understood differently if it comes from such a place.
But now, esteemed attendees, is such a judgment only heard at such heights of humanity as Emerson's, and do others perhaps have a different judgment in general? We may point to a very recent judgment, as it were, juxtaposing it with that judgment about Germanness. Those who do not have the time or opportunity to read Miss Wylie's book 'Eight Years in Germany' can also take the very nice excerpts that Hofmiller has made of it and find important sayings from that book in them, getting an overview of an English-written judgment on the German character, written a few months before the outbreak of the war. But when and how was it written? Not written in the way that many people write today when they speak of the German “barbarians”, but written in such a way that the writer first spent eight years in Germany, got to know everything, delved deeper into the essence she wanted to describe. After visiting hospitals, schools, medical and other institutions, she wrote about the German character in English:
We read a lot [...] about the new Germany and its new spirit. But there is no new Germany and no new spirit. What exists is the mature work of generations, what has always been. Blinded by the sudden splendor of Germany's prosperity, we are inclined to forget that, except for prosperity, it has rarely occupied a place other than one of the very top among nations. In religion and philosophy, Germany shone at a time when everything around her was dark; in literature, she gave an epoch-making impetus; in music, she has always dominated [...]. German literature, German religion, German philosophy are
- to us Englishmen -
are books with seven seals. What we know is how many dreadnaughts Germany has and how much her trade has increased. What is really important is not the dreadnaught, but the brain of its builder, the courage and skill of its commander. What is really important is not the increase in sales, but the human qualities that prompted it. Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its existence, and it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany is already at its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined battle against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago. [...] At every border and across the water, opponents sit, commercially and politically, eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little, to pounce on it and overwhelm it. Germany knows this very well.
Many of the judgments, esteemed attendees, that are being read today, where are they being read? In newspapers, including English newspapers. Not so long ago, in 1912, a number of scholars in Manchester gave lectures on German nature, German politics, German history, German education, German economics, German literature. In the preface to the book, which was also translated into German and is called “Germany in the Nineteenth Century”, published by Herford, we are given a hint as to why these lectures were given. They were given, so we are told, to teach people from the press somewhat correct ideas about the German character.
We shall quote only a few of Herford's individual words, spoken in England and in English, about the German character:
On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Reich has contributed to world peace. This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is for history to shed light on the tangled web of the present, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For if we look to the past, we find that our ancestors looked at France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And our ancestors had good reason to fear them. [...] To sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866-1871 put an end once and for all to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the previously unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed a temptation to war that had so often often tempted into the wrong channels; they put the German people in a position to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish on a firm basis a new European system that has preserved the peace for forty years. This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved in one fell swoop what Great Britain, despite all its expenditure of blood and money, had never been able to achieve, namely, to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a major war became the most dangerous of all ventures.
In 1912, these words were spoken in English in England, for the press, so that they would be better informed about German character. I leave it to each individual to decide what these press people learned from these lectures. When these lectures were printed, a man whose name may have also come up for discussion in recent days wrote a preface to them. In this preface, written by Lord Haldane, are the words:
The source of the stream of
—Germany's—
spiritual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of modern Germany is to a great extent material and practical.
And further:
Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of mistrust and free us from the burden of arming ourselves against attacks that in reality none of us has in mind.
Dear attendees, in this book there is something else that is highly, highly remarkable, something quite unique. Something that was also spoken in English in Manchester in 1912: “No German words are more deeply imbued with the juice of national ethics than those that describe these things: true, thorough, loyal.”
I do not wish to express this as something that only sounds out of the German soul, but we have heard it across the Channel: “true, thorough, faithful” are words that, more than any other words, are “imbued with the juice of national ethics”.
Now, let us – without, of course, engaging in day-to-day politics or speaking about the events without authorization – let us tie what we are experiencing in our days to these words. In recent weeks, it has often been rightly pointed out how the current war originated in southeastern Europe, and how Austria's mission – one might say – in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina is linked to these war events, all the way down to the Balkans.
I, esteemed attendees, lived in Austria during the aftermath of Austria's undertaking this mission. Those who lived in Austria at the time and tried to look into the course of events in the 1980s often heard a word that had been cleverly and humorously coined by Bismarck, but which, one might say, expressed something related to fate. “There are autumn crocuses in Austria,” he said. Autumn crocuses! You see, the Austrian liberals had a leader named [Eduard] Herbst. He was a great, important man. These liberals, under Herbst's leadership, had resisted what Bismarck considered to be Austria's advance into the east, which was in keeping with the times and his views. That is why Bismarck called them “Herbstzeitlose” (autumn crocus). Well, one does not need to cite human judgments everywhere, which arise very easily from feelings and passions, which come from sympathies and antipathies; but history is actually the real teacher of things.
What, then, did Austria do that led to the events that are intimately connected with what is happening today, with everything that is happening today? All of this goes back to its ultimate beginning, to the mission that was assigned to Austria at the Congress of Berlin to advance into the Balkans. Who was it that opposed Russia's intentions at the Congress of Berlin and advocated this mission for Austria? It was British policy. Above all, it was those who represented British policy at the time who assigned this mission to Austria. This put Germany in a difficult position with regard to Russia.
Everything that happened after that, up to the assassination of the Archduke, is only the consequence of what was conferred upon Austria at the Congress of Berlin, for anyone who looks back in history with understanding. Today Germany and Austria must take the stage for what England conferred upon Austria at that time, and England is among the enemies of Germany and Austria.
That, dearest present, is the consequence of history. When one speaks of loyalty, there is also a loyalty to what one has once done. When one is characterized from the English point of view, one cannot help but say: “No words are so deeply imbued with the ‘juice of national ethics’ as those that describe these things: ”true , thoroughly, faithfully” – one cannot help but take these words seriously, and one would like to ask: Is it inner truthfulness to act in 1914 against what one initiated decades earlier? Is it thorough, and above all, is it faithful? Such questions may be raised today.
And when you consider all of this, then yes, then you have to say: Is it really possible to discern from the most recent events what the German character is, how it is connected to its great geniuses, and how this German character must relate to today's events? It cannot truly be seen from the latter, no matter how many compilations are made about the very latest events. It must be seen from what ruled in the deeper forces of Europe and what ultimately led to today's events. But something ruled in these forces of Europe, that is what lived on in Fichte, Schiller, Goethe and the others in the German people, in the peoples of Central Europe.
One man whom I would always like to mention is Herman Grimm, whom I would always like to call Goethe's governor. He tried to express in beautiful artistic words what he had absorbed from the great German period, what had become a world view. And these words of Herman Grimm, which express a feeling, not a judgment, and may therefore be taken from the German essence itself – in contrast to the judgments of non-Germans cited above – are cited as a testimony to how the seeds of the spiritual way of thinking of Fichte, Schiller and Goethe have taken root in people. How beautifully this was expressed in Herman Grimm's words, which he wrote in his Homer book:
The solidarity of the moral convictions of all people is today the church that unites us all. We are looking more passionately than ever for a visible expression of this community. All truly serious aspirations of the masses have only this one goal. The separation of nations no longer exists here. We feel that no national distinction exists in the face of the ethical world view. We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland; but we are far from anticipating or bringing about the moment when this can happen through war. The assurance that keeping the peace is our [all's] most sacred wish is no lie. “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men” permeates us.
So Herman Grimm 1895 - since 1901 he is dead, and then how the look into the spiritual world of Herman Grimm's words:
Recognizing people as a totality, submitting to an invisible court enthroned as if in the clouds, before which not to be allowed to exist is considered by them as a misfortune, and whose judicial proceedings they seek to adapt to their internal disputes. With anxious eagerness they seek their right here. How the French of today are at pains to present the war against Germany that they are planning as a moral imperative, demanding that other nations, even the Germans themselves, recognize it.
Anyone familiar with the German character knows that these words are taken from the innermost being of the German people, that they were truly not a lie in the mood of the German character. But the Germans have never subscribed to an opinion that is different, which Herman Grimm expressed in 1895:
How the present-day French are endeavoring to present the war against Germany, which they are planning, as a moral imperative, demanding recognition of it from other nations, even from the Germans themselves.
Dear attendees, compared to what one could know by looking at the driving forces of Europe with a gaze that is strengthened by the essence that has reached its highest level in Schiller, Fichte and Goethe – looking at these forces means recognizing that the answer to what has recently been heard again from across the Rhine must be given in a completely different way: Who wanted this war, those of mine who want to answer this question themselves? I believe that, when faced with the deeper forces at work in European life, it can be said with certainty, if one wants to proceed with a certain external sophistry: this or that did not want the war. One can say perhaps: not everyone wanted it – this can be proven sophistically. But one can also ask a different question, because whether the answer is correct depends on the correct formulation of the question. Who would have been able to avoid the war? And here only one answer is possible: only the Petersburg politicians would have been able to avoid the war. But this too need not be proved from the most recent events, from Blue and Yellow Books; it can be proved from the effective forces at work in the last decades within the life of the nations of Europe. And I will try, in a way that may perhaps be felt to be peculiar, to draw attention to how one can find the thing that has come to expression in this terrible war today as competing effective forces.
Let us assume that someone had taken it upon themselves to observe how provocative press reports were coming from Russia this spring, as these hinted at a certain mood that became more and more intense during the spring. He would then have followed the events of July, the last days of July, and he would also have tried to talk to some well-meaning Russian friends who see the better sides of the Russian people and would like to overlook what was going on as a real will directed against peace. What could someone who had proceeded in this way have said today, that is, this summer? He could have characterized this summer as follows: He could have described how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German politics. These attacks intensified into strong demands for pressure that Germany should exert on Austria in matters where Germany could not easily attack Austrian rights. One could not lend a hand to this, because if one alienated Austria from Germany, then one would necessarily become dependent on Russia in Germany. Would such a dependency have been tolerable? One could have believed it earlier by saying to oneself that one had no conflicting interests with Russia, one could even ask Russian friends who would explain this or that to one, and one could not contradict them. But the process, in view of everything, shows, when one considers what is happening in Russia, that even a complete subordination of Germany to Russia cannot protect us against our striving not to come into conflict with Russia. With these words one can characterize what took place between Europe's center and east; the words fit our present situation.
But now I have done something strange; I have only slightly altered words; because I did not make these words myself, not for our present situation; they are altered from words that Bismarck spoke in the German Reichstag in 1888. Bismarck said in 1888:
[...] how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German politics and personally suspecting me of ulterior motives. These attacks intensified during the following year until 1879, with strong demands for pressure to be exerted on Austria in matters where we could not readily challenge Austrian law. I could not lend a hand to this; for if we estranged ourselves from Austria, we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such a dependency have been tolerable? I had previously believed it could be, by telling myself: We have no conflicting interests, there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. At least I had not directly contradicted my Russian colleagues who explained such things to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even the complete subordination of our policy (for a certain time) to the Russian policy did not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think that if the very same words can be applied to 1914, which were aptly applied by Germany's greatest statesman in 1888, then this is an extremely strong indication of the explosive elements that have always been present; that one must look for what is at stake in this war in terms of something other than merely the most recent events is proven by this. And do only people who are steeped in a certain spirituality say that it is the nature of the German to proclaim “peace on earth and goodwill toward men”? I said that anyone who looks into the German essence cannot perceive this as a lie. But those who would like to believe that such a thing only existed in the spiritual heights on which Herman Grimm stood, should look at the words with which Bismarck, in the same session of the Reichstag in 1888, characterized his attitude towards the German sentiment that Herman Grimm expressed when he said: “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men”. That is what is rooted in our deepest souls.
They are remarkable words that Bismarck spoke at the time; he said, roughly: “In a machine like the one we have, you don't wage wars of aggression.” And he concludes his deliberations in this sense, saying: Suppose I were to come before you – in the Reichstag that is – and explain that it is better that we attack, and demand that you grant so many millions of marks, would you have the confidence to grant it? Bismarck said: “I hope not.”
One must look at the moods, at the forces prevailing within the soul, if one wants to recognize the truth, the actuality in this regard. However, Bismarck recognized the truth; he knew that because he stood up for England's demands on Austria regarding the Balkans at the Congress of Berlin, he provoked Russia's antagonism towards Germany, but he also knew that he had had done everything that could mitigate this antagonism, so much so – he said himself – that he could have believed that he would have been awarded the highest Russian order for his services to Russia if he had not already had it. But that was precisely Bismarck's constant endeavor, to postpone for as long as possible what threatened from the east.
These are just a few examples, esteemed attendees, of what history says, what history says to those who delve into the fundamentals that can provide real answers to the question of who wanted this war.
Now, dear attendees, in German intellectual life, as it radiates from such geniuses as Fichte, Schiller, and Goethe, lies much that can, so to speak, give us a clue as to how we are to understand what now so often confronts us as a characteristic of what are called German “barbarians.” Then one could find some very peculiar tests.
There is a European spirit that has also made a great impression in Germany. He once spoke about this in one of his writings, in which he particularly expressed his inclination towards the spiritual life, towards mysticism; he spoke about what he owes to the three greatest mystics, whom he cites and as the third of whom he names a German spirit, Novalis; he speaks about Novalis and what he was to him. Novalis, he says, is like a spirit that leads to heights that are the real heights of humanity. It is basically a very, very beautiful and intimate characteristic of the German spirit Novalis. If an angel - so he says - or a genius from the cosmos descended to earth and wanted to experience on earth what is actually particularly important for the cosmos on earth - one would like to show him everything that Shakespeare has written, what happens between Hamlet and Ophelia and others - that may be very important for the Earth, he says, but even if it is important for the Earth, it would not be necessary for a genius who descended from another planet to Earth to learn something special. This characterization lists many other things that would be unimportant to someone who descended from the cosmos to Earth. But what lives in Novalis' soul, which – for anyone who knows Novalis – is clearly drawn from the deepest depths of the German national spirit, is characterized by this characterization with beautiful words:
But if he needed other evidence, it would lead him among those whose works almost stir to silence.
Because what can be spoken does not express the deepest human essence, he finds in Novalis:
She would open the gate of the realm where some loved her for her own sake, without worrying about the small [gestures] of their bodies. [They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness rises by one level] and where all those who are restless about themselves [feel] attentively circumvent the immense ring that connects the world of appearances with our [higher] worlds. They would go with him to the boundaries of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably [only] begins [and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are only in the] invisible, where he must be on his guard unceasingly. On these heights alone are thoughts that the soul can approve of, and ideas [that resemble it and are] as commanding [as she is.] There, humanity has ruled for a moment, and these dimly illuminated peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth in the realm of spirits: Their reflection is truly the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of a foreign reason; but the people I am talking about have come out of the small village of passions in their works and said things that are also of value to those who do not belong to the earthly community.
Such are the words of the Novalis critic in Novalis. He who once spoke of Novalis, who once characterized the German soul as giving experiences to the genius who descended from cosmic heights, is Maurice Maeterlinck.
Dear attendees, I have nothing to add to what Maurice Maeterlinck has said today, to what I have quoted, but I would like to say that Novalis spoke a wonderfully beautiful word from a truly German soul. “The only true temple” - says Novalis - “is the human body. In it lies a uniquely heavenly form. It is said to touch heaven when you feel the human body.” So Novalis at a perhaps tangible point.
It is the same as what Goethe says: “What would all the suns, all the stars in the sky, be, all the splendor of the stars, if it did not all shine in the human eye, flow into human hearts and a human soul could delight in it with admiration.”
Those who spoke like Goethe and Novalis felt this out of their spirituality: that there is a supreme work of art, a higher work of art than all human works of art: the human form, the work of divine art. However, only those who know that spiritual beings permeate the world and who see the greatest work of divine art in the human being will speak of the human form as Goethe did. Perhaps this may be recalled in an age when the German is accused of particular “barbarism” because it is said to have happened that some cannonballs also fell on the cathedral of Reims. Now, after seeing this cathedral in 1906, I know for sure that I am the equal of anyone in my admiration of this work of art – however, I have also gained the impression that it is fragile, so that it will not last for much longer will not last long, that it must be damaged by natural causes, but in many a judgment it depends not only on how one stands in relation to this judgment, how one perceives something, but whether one makes this judgment at all or not.
In view of the fact that, against the background of our fateful events, the human form, the work of the gods, is destroyed in countless cases when challenged by fate, then, yes, the judgment may be made that a human work of art can also be fired upon.
I know there is only one objection, someone might say: a cathedral only exists once, a person exists any number of times. I'll leave it to others to argue about what constitutes “barbarism” in this context, but I believe that anyone who understands the way of thinking of Goethe, Schiller and Fichte will not dispute that this judgment – there are so many people and only one cathedral and therefore the cathedral must be spared even if the people are shot – that this judgment is in fact the most brutal “barbarism”. There is a very definite character which may be called the stamp of the German spirit.
And I believe it is already apparent from what I have only been able to hint at, that this German character is intimately, intimately connected with humanity's search for spirituality, for the invisible, and that this search, which has found expression in the German leaders, , is also connected with this, even if only unconsciously, those who with blood and soul in our fateful days must make the sacrifices that must be made for the further development of humanity. And once you have delved into the essence of Central Europe, as expressed in the geniuses we have mentioned, you will no longer be able to object; you will no longer be able to doubt that this Central Europe is a body for a soul, that it contains an invisible power, which invisible power must have a perceptible impulsivity for a higher purpose in its own essence.
And when you look at things this way, then you can feel, no matter what may come: you can feel trust, strength, confidence when once again the German world is faced with the question of being or not being. Not a Hamlet answer, a Faust answer can give the German essence: “Whoever strives, we can redeem them.” One is always becoming German. When Germany has grown old, it can become young again. Goethe has one of the symbols in his “Faust” be the rejuvenating potion.
And where he talks about Goethe, not a German, again the English-speaking Emerson, says with reference to what has become of Goethe, the words:
The world is young, great men of the past call to us with a friendly voice. We must write sacred scriptures to connect the earthly and heavenly worlds. The secret of genius is not to tolerate a lie, to make [everything we are aware of] a truth, to inspire certainty and confidence in books and in people, and to honor every truth, as in the beginning and as in the end, as for endless times, by making it a guide to our actions.
Thus Emerson in reference to Goethe, whom he designates as the head and the content of the nation. And one can be mindful of the words of the American Englishman that it may lie precisely in the mission of the people of Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, to do something of what Emerson points out: “We must write sacred books to reconnect heaven and the earthly world. The secret of genius is not to tolerate that a lie should remain in existence for us."
To what extent this is connected with today's lecture, I leave to you to judge. But I believe that I have at least stammered out the one thing that this lecture has hinted at, which is about the essence of Central Europe, about this culture that, according to Schiller's words, is the heart of Europe - the other is the leaf and the flower - what “great men of the past” make us feel about this culture.
Emerson says: “They call to us with a friendly voice”. We want to hear something of these friendly voices, because perhaps it can be used in our time. How we can arrive at something that can be suggested for our present time by really listening to the living spirit of these minds will be discussed tomorrow. Today, as an introduction, I wanted to point this out, not so much what was in my words, but what emanates from certain German geniuses and can flow into our hearts as consolation, hope, confidence, as a support in our mental and physical life for the present. For it can, when one feels vividly what flows over from the spirits, whose essence lives on in the German national spirit, it can, what flows over, in the soul to a hope, to a confidence, but also to something dense, what one can feel as the deepest truth in Central Europe.
And it is peculiar that, as if from the same spirit in which Goethe, Schiller and Fichte worked, the German-minded Schleiermacher wanted to coin his word about the connection of all human striving with the invisible, who also fell upon it, one can say, to suggest the deepest German essence by pointing to the invisibility of this German essence. And this invisible, this spiritual essence, which Fichte spoke so energetically in times when the German nation was in decline, to encourage it, it still sounds to us today in the right way, even if not in times of humiliation, but in times when we experience a supreme, a wonderful thing, we can just point to what the German nation has always striven for as its most precious. Today, as if from the soul of this German people and for our own consolation, we can say with Schleiermacher, saying with him, still expressing our feelings today in the center of Europe, in the heart of Europe: “Germany is still there and its invisible power is still unweakened.” And today we may add, after all that has developed out of German strength, it may justifiably hope: this invisible strength of the German people is not only unbroken today, it is also indestructible for an incalculable time.