Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul
GA 70b — 13 March 1916, Stuttgart
14. The Forgotten Pursuit of Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought
Dear Attendees!
Once again, as in my previous attendances during this fateful time, it seems appropriate to me to begin with a consideration that is related to the development of German intellectual life, and then tomorrow to come to a subject that more strictly belongs to spiritual science.
And if today's reflection is to be linked to the development of German thought, then I would like to emphasize, first and foremost, that this reflection should not fall into the trap of establishing an external connection between all kinds of intellectual changes and the fateful historical facts of our time, a trap into which so many reflections today fall. At a time when the fate of nations is decided by the force of arms, the word cannot possibly intervene, meaningfully intervene, for example, in that which is to be decided by the force of arms. But this is the age in which self-reflection - including national self-reflection - seems to be entirely appropriate.
Now, when it is said, from the point of view of science, including spiritual science, that certain developmental forces of such a spiritual science are rooted in popular forces, as is to happen today, one will immediately encounter, dear attendees, all kinds of objections, objections that are extremely reasonable because they are so self-evident, from a certain point of view, that they seem extraordinarily plausible precisely because of their self-evidence to those who do not want to rise to certain higher points of view. In such a consideration, one will repeatedly encounter the objection that science as such, and everything that somehow wants to claim that it is so, is said to be “international,” and that one is not entitled to claim any rootedness in popular culture.
This objection can be appropriately countered only by means of a comparison. “International”, dear attendees, is also the moon, for example. It is the same for everyone; but what different things the various peoples have to say about the moon! Of course someone may object: Yes, that is in the realm of poetry. Yes, of course; but anyone who delves a little deeper into the spiritual life of humanity will notice that – even if the observations and insights relating to the external, actual things are all the same in the science of the moon – that which comes from the innermost drives of the human soul, on the basis of what man can recognize, that this is different for each individual people, and that each people penetrates more or less deeply into the secrets of existence, depending on their different dispositions and drives. And the overall progress of humanity does not depend on what is the same everywhere, but on what is incorporated from the driving forces of the overall development of humanity, which are peculiar to the innermost individual nature of each people.
From this point of view, it should be pointed out today how German nationality is intimately connected with the endeavour not only to found an external science of the senses, but also to penetrate deeply into the spiritual secrets of existence – how the very search for a way to arrive at the spiritual secrets of existence is peculiar to much of what can be called German nationality.
And there is another reason, esteemed attendees, for such a consideration here, because it is my conviction – not arising from a narrow-minded, parochial sentiment, but from what I believe is the appropriate consideration of the German essence that what has been advocated here for years as spiritual science is strongly rooted in the general spiritual life of the German people, that all the seeds of a genuine spiritual science are present in the spiritual development of the German people.
Dear attendees, I will take as my starting point three personalities about whom I had the honor of speaking here in this city a few months ago, when I tried to sketch out the world view of German idealism. Even at the risk of repeating certain details, I will take as my starting point the three great figures who appear within the development of thought and spirit of the German people and who create a world view that provides the foundation, the background, one might say, for what was then artistically and poetically achieved by Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and so on within German intellectual life, as a flowering of the newer intellectual life in general, which can only be compared with the tremendous flowering of human intellectual life in ancient Greece: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were the starting point once again.
Fichte stands before us – and I already remarked this in the lecture a few months ago – as he has something like the feeling that he has given his people everything that he has to give as the best, in terms of a world view and insights into the nature of his people, and that he has gained this through a dialogue with the German national spirit itself. Carried inwardly by the consciousness that the most German essence speaks out of his soul, Johann Gottlieb Fichte is.
It is also he who, not only in one of the most difficult times of German intellectual development, found tones that were highly suited to inspiring the entire nation to rise up from oppression, but he was also [the one] who, in the way he wants to receive a world view for his knowledge, so clearly shows that he seeks this world view from the qualities of the human soul, from the powers of the human soul, which are essentially German qualities of spiritual life, German powers. He emphasized that. And that is certainly the truth with regard to Johann Gottlieb Fichte.
And what is it that is so distinctly German about Johann Gottlieb Fichte's endeavors? It consists in the fact that, out of his Germanness, as he himself calls it, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was led to seek in a living way to deepen and at the same time strengthen his own soul-being, his own ego, and was convinced from the living inner that what permeates the world as divine-spiritual, illuminates and warms, can flow into this I, if it experiences itself in the right way, if it becomes fully aware of itself. So that, in Fichte's view, what speaks outside in all natural phenomena, what speaks in the course of history, but also what speaks behind natural phenomena and behind history as spiritual forces, flows into human will.
The human will that asserts itself in the self is only the innermost, secret expression of the soul for that which permeates and warms all beings in the world, from the most materialistic to the most spiritual. This intimate interconnection of the experiences of the soul with the great mystery of the universe, as far as man can fathom it, that is the very German in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's striving.
And if you observe Fichte as he presents himself, you can see how this is to be judged, how it is not something invented, something acquired, but how it arises from the most secret depths of his soul as his natural disposition. To substantiate this, a few details from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's life will be given. As I said, even at the risk of repeating details that I have already taken the liberty of mentioning.
For example, we see this Johann Gottlieb as a small, seven-year-old boy in front of his father's house, who was a poor master weaver. We see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seven years old, standing in front of the small stream that flows past his father's house; and he has thrown a book into this stream. His father comes along and is amazed at what has happened. What had happened? Well, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a six- to seven-year-old boy and a diligent student. That which is called a sense of duty lived in his soul with the greatest strength; and because he was so diligent, his father gave him a book for the last Christmas: “Gehörnte Siegfried” (Siegfried Horned). The seven-year-old boy, who could already read fluently, was so extremely interested in the book of the “Horned Siegfried” and he was always absorbed in the great figure of the horned Siegfried; so that one could have noticed that he had become a little less diligent at school, and it was held against him. Now, within the life of the will, even in the seven-year-old boy, the soul's duty stirred: he no longer wanted to read on, nor be tempted to read on in the book of horned Siegfried. And to be quite sure, he throws the book into the stream, crying! Such was the nature of the one who, according to his own consciousness, was to create the German worldview for his time!
And again, let us look at nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. One Sunday morning, the estate neighbor had come to hear the sermon. But he had arrived too late, and so was unable to hear the sermon. Some of the squire's acquaintances had hit on the expedient of sending for little Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was so good at listening to sermons that he could repeat them word for word. So they fetched nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. After he had appeared awkwardly at first in his blue peasant's coat, he then stood and repeated the sermon, but now not in a way that was only an external adherence to the words, but with the most inner participation, not only in terms of memory, but with the most inner participation, so that one saw: everything that had been spoken lived a very own life in his soul.
These are the small traits that show how intimately entwined Johann Gottlieb Fichte's soul was with what he called duty on the one hand, and on the other hand with what was in him the urge to elevate his own human ego so powerfully that what willfully permeates and warms the world as primal laws could live and reveal itself in him. And how he later aimed to work when he was appointed professor in Jena is told to us by people who heard him speak and who assure us that when he spoke, his words were serious and strict, but at the same time forceful, as if interwoven with the language that spoke the secrets of the world from the nature of things themselves. His language was like the rolling of thunder, and the words discharged themselves – so someone who heard him speak and was friends with him tells us – the words discharged themselves like lightning. His imagination was not lavish – we are told – but it was majestic and grand. And so we are told that he lived in the realm of supersensible ideas, not like one who merely dwells within it, but like one who essentially mastered this realm of ideas.
And it was also peculiar, for example, how he perceived his teaching profession: there was not much of what one is accustomed to from a speaker or teacher. He was in constant inner work. His preparation for any lecture or speech consisted not so much in working out the content as in trying to place himself, with his soul, in that spiritual inwardness that he wanted to infuse not only through the content of the words, but through the way in which he , he strove to work in such a way that it was not so much the content of his words that mattered as the fact that the souls of his listeners were moved by the whole way in which the spiritual was expressed in the flow of his speech. Thus, again, someone who knew him well could say: He strove not only to educate good people, but great souls.
We should like to draw attention to a little-known trait that must be mentioned again and again if we want to bring to life the direct and lively way in which Fichte related to his audience. For example, the deep thinker Steffens told us that in Jena Fichte said to his listeners: “Think the wall!” – The people found that easy, of course: they thought the wall. After he had let them think the wall for a while, he said: So, and now think the one who has just thought the wall! – Some were amazed!
This was an indication of one's own soul, in which that which flows through and warms the world at its deepest core should be ignited. However much he may have amazed people with this, at the same time it is also a testimony to how Fichte actually did not just want to convey spiritual ideas to his listeners with clever words. He wanted to work through words, not just in words. That is why it could happen that this man also sought to actively grasp the historical aspect of the creative national spirit. And in that he wanted to connect vividly, as with the workings of the world in general, he also wanted to connect vividly with that which is part of this world-working and lives close to him as a member of his nationality; he wanted to connect with the essence of the German national spirit. And no one can understand the meaning and the significance of the wonderful words which Johann Gottlieb Fichte addressed to the German people in his 'Discourses to the German Nation' during such a difficult period in the history of the German nation. No one can understand this unless he sees the connection between the way in which Fichte wanted to grasp the world-will in himself in his own ego, and then to carry the power that arose in his soul into action, into events, into the social and other forms of human coexistence, and into the conception of life.
There he stands before us – albeit in our way – this Johann Gottlieb Fichte! And – as I said – it is not out of narrow-minded patriotism, but rather out of actual observation that these things are to be said, which must now be discussed. We need not fall into the error that the enemies of the German spirit are now falling into, who not only accuse this German spirit, but even slander it in the truest sense of the word; we can take an objective point of view within the considerations of the German spirit and will be able, precisely through this objective point of view, to recognize in the right way what the essence of German nationality is.
Fichte wanted to grasp the will of the world in itself. And this will of the world was for him the bearer of what he called the duty of the world, which in turn separates into individual human duties. Thus, that which lives outside becomes for him a living being everywhere. But this also puts him in opposition to everything, as he himself emphasized in his “Discourses to the German Nation.” You can read about this in my essay in my little booklet “Thoughts During the Time of War,” which is now out of print , but will soon be reissued, [how] he, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seeks the living everywhere and is aware that he is thus in opposition to much of what he calls a dead science. And this dead science, Fichte also finds it among the Western European peoples, among the French and the British. Only, as I said, for the sake of actual characterization, not to impose anything on any people, may that be said; but it must be recognized in which relation the German spirit stands to the other national spirits in this fateful time!
In my earlier essay on the world picture of German Idealism, I pointed out that Descartes, Cartesius, is a typical example of the development of the French world-view at the beginning of the seventeenth century. I pointed out how he characteristically expresses that which lives in his worldview from his nationality, in that not only the mineral and plant world, but even the animal world is nothing more to him than a sum of living — not souled, but only moving — machines! That is the peculiarity of this Western mind, that it can only grasp a dead science at bottom.
In this respect, Fichte, with his living approach in all his works, stands in essential contrast to the path of knowledge and the striving of the West, [where] animals are like machines. This has continued. And not long before Johann Gottlieb Fichte worked in Germany to show life in all the facts and beings of the world from the living grasp of the secrets of the world, a descendant, I might say, of that Descartes - Cartesius - worked in France: de La Mettrie.
And while Cartesius at least conceded to man a special soul from inner experience, from inner experience, de La Mettrie, in an exaggeration of this western dead science, expressed himself in his book “Man a Machine” that even that which stands before us as a human being is itself part of the world in the same way as a mere machine; that we can understand the whole person by regarding him as the result of purely material processes and forces. According to de La Mettrie, everything about a person, including all soul qualities and activities, should be understood in such a way that the person is only recognized as a machine.
Of course, to a certain extent, man is a machine. This is not the essence of spiritual science, that it contradicts what such assertions have right about it; but that it can show other ways - we will talk about this tomorrow - that it can show other [supplementary] ways to this, that it knows other ways that also lead beyond the justified claims of materialism. De La Mettrie is basically, from the French folklore, one of the most significant minds of this view that the whole world of man is only a kind of mechanism. And it is interesting to consider the contrast between the Frenchman de La Mettrie and the German Johann Gottlieb Fichte. For de La Mettrie, everything about man is mechanism; for Fichte, everything is spirit. He received into his soul what he calls the will of the world, and for him, the external material world is only an internalized field for the performance of duties arising from the spirit. Hence that beautiful, that wonderful striving of Fichte to derive everything that appears to man in the world of the senses from the spirit; whereas, in de La Mettrie, everything is imbued with the goal of regarding the external physical as an immediately decisive impulse for the spiritual as well.
De La Mettrie is sometimes quite witty in such matters, for he is just as deeply immersed in his mechanistic worldview as Johann Gottlieb Fichte is in his spiritual worldview. For example, when de La Mettrie says in his book The Machine Stops Here: Can't you see how the body shapes the soul? Take a famous poet, for example, whose soul can be seen to consist of one half rascal and the other half Promethean fire. de La Mettrie was a little clever in not saying which poet he meant, but Voltaire flew into a rage at this remark. When he was told this, de La Mettrie said: Well, okay, I withdraw the one half of the claim – he meant half of Prometheus! – but I maintain the “filou.” He just expressed it in his own way; there's no need to press it. But if you take the individual statements, that man is a machine – and in this he is tireless in showing how the machine-like, the heating-up [gap in the transcript] in man, as it were, how that characterizes the whole man, causes satisfaction – that is where he sometimes becomes quite remarkable. And I don't know, and I don't know with what feelings a passage from 'Man a Machine' will be read in France today! I certainly don't want to quote it as something that a German, for example, needs to share; but I would like to quote it because it is quite characteristic and because – you will see in a moment why I would like to quote it – one could perhaps ask precisely from the point of view of spiritual science: how such a soul – he did deny that this was possible – but how such a soul, more than a hundred years after its death, looks down on the praise that has been exchanged between France and England, when he, de La Mettrie, the Frenchman, in his book “Man a Machine” proves how people's characters are dependent on the way the materialistic affects them, when he says the following:
“Raw flesh makes animals wild; men would become wild if they had the same food.”
He cites this as proof that material things also condition the spiritual.
“How true this is,”
says de La Mettrie, the Frenchman,
"can be seen in the fact that the English nation, which cooks meat less than the French, eats it quite raw and bloody, shows a greater wildness, which is partly brought about by those foods, but partly also by other causes, which only education can suppress. This savagery engenders in the soul arrogance, hatred, contempt for other nations, stubbornness and other feelings that corrupt the character, just as coarse food produces a heavy and clumsy mind in a people whose main characteristics are laziness and dullness."
As I said, there is no need to adopt this characterization of the French materialist; but it could not be uninteresting to recall it today, from the point of view of how perceptions change over time.
If we, dearest ones present, picture the second of the spirits who created a worldview background for that which German art and German poetry created in the age of Goethe, then it is Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. And if, in the case of Fichte, one must admire above all how he conceives of the influence of the will on the ego and how he permeates himself with the awareness of this influence of the will on the ego, then in the case of Schelling it is that he establishes a science of nature and a science of the spirit in such a way that one can truly say: Wherever he wants to understand and recognize natural phenomena in an abstract way, the German soul is at work in him. This makes Schelling, in a very special way, not the opposite of idealism, but rather its successor and enhancer. In Schelling there stands, alive, created out of the German soul, a world-picture which in the best sense of the word lifts to a higher level of spirituality that which, for example, a Giordano Bruno could only inspire. In this soul of Schelling's, which was so completely aglow with the German soul, also artistically aglow, nature and spirit grew together in a unity. He could go so far as to claim that nature and spirit grew together in unity. Of course, such a thing is one-sided, but today it really does not matter that one must be a childish supporter or opponent of a worldview, but that one knows that it is not a matter of being a supporter or opponent, but of considering the striving that lives in such a person, the striving for truth, the striving for the knowledge of the deeper secrets of human existence. From a one-sided but vigorously powerful point of view, Schelling came to the assertion, to which I have already referred here in one of the last lectures: To know nature is to create nature. - Certainly a one-sided assertion, but an assertion from which one can say: It arises from a soul that knows itself to be one with what lives and weaves in nature.
Again, out of the essence of the Germanic spirit, a creator of a world view who knows that the human ego can be so exalted, so invigorated, so ensouled that it expresses that which mysteriously pervades and warms the world in a spiritual way. And again, one could say, precisely because of the effect that Schelling had on his contemporaries, Schelling is also clearly recognizable. We are told – by the deeply spiritual Schubert, himself a student and friend of Schelling, – how people knew when there was a special buzz in the streets of Jena in the afternoons. Schelling was a professor in Jena, and it wasn't a student event, but Schelling speaking about what he wanted to gain as a world view. Schubert, who heard him in Jena, expressed it as Schelling appeared to him. I would like to read this passage verbatim from Schubert so that you can see how a contemporary spoke about Schelling, about this Schelling, who really, as can be seen in Fichte, grew together in his whole way, in his whole human way – with his spiritual striving – with the secrets of the world.
This immediate – I would say – deeply sincere merging of the soul with the mystery of the world is the very essence of the striving of the time of which we are now speaking.
[Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert describes Schelling as a young man. And] I knew, dear honored attendees, people who heard Schelling in his old age, and it was still the case that what lived in him spoke directly and personally out of Schelling's entire personality, lived as if it had flowed in from what spiritually reigns and weaves in the world. Therefore, he appeared to those who listened to him as the seer who was surrounded by a kind of spiritual aura and spoke as a kind of seer by coining words not out of human arbitrariness, but because he looked into the spiritual driving forces that underlay the world. That is why Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, a lovable and brilliant thinker, says:
“What was it that drew young people and mature men alike from far and near to Schelling's lectures so powerfully? Was it only the personality of the man or the peculiar charm of his oral presentation, in which lay this attractive power?”
It was not only that.
“There was in his lively words”
indeed
“an absorbing power which no young soul, wherever it met with any susceptibility, could resist. It might be difficult for a reader of our time”
Schubert writes down in 1854 what he had experienced with Schelling in the 1790s
"who was not, like me, a young and participating listener. It was understandable that when Schelling spoke to us, I often felt as if I were reading or hearing Dante, the seer of a world beyond that was only open to the consecrated eye. The powerful content of his speech, as if measured with mathematical precision in lapidary style, seemed to me like a bound Prometheus, whose bonds to be loosened and from whose hand the unquenchable fire to receive, is the task of the understanding mind. But it was neither the personality nor the invigorating power of the oral communication alone that so soon after its public announcement through writings evoked such interest and excitement for or against its direction for Schelling's philosophy, as no other literary phenomenon of a similar kind has been able to do before or since. Here, the content itself had to do so. In matters of sensually perceivable things or natural phenomena, it is immediately apparent to a teacher or writer whether he speaks from his own insight and experience or merely speaks of what he has heard from others, or even has invented according to his own self-made ideas... The same applies to inner experience as to outer experience. There is a reality of a higher kind, the existence of which the cognizing spirit in us can experience with the same certainty and assurance as our body experiences the existence of outer visible nature through its senses. This reality of corporeal things presents itself to our perceptive senses as an act of the same creative power by which our corporeal nature has come into being. The being of visibility is just as much a real fact as the being of the perceiving sense. The reality of the higher kind has also approached the recognizing spirit in us as a spiritual-bodily fact; it will become aware of it when its own recognition rises to an acknowledgment of that from which it is recognized and from which, according to uniform order, the reality of bodily as well as spiritual becoming emerges. And that realization of a spiritual, divine reality in which we ourselves live and move and have our being is the highest gain of earthly life and of the quest for wisdom. Already in my time,
as Schubert said,
“there were among the young men who heard him such who sensed what he meant by intellectual intuition, by which our spirit must grasp the infinite source of all being and becoming.”
Schelling's speaking of such a world of the spirit out of such a direct intuition is what Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert wants to express.
And as if the German spirit wanted to reveal itself in all directions, we see in Hegel - who, like Schelling, is a native of Württemberg; he is even from Stuttgart - we see in Hegel how he is endeavoring to experience in what the soul can experience in itself, at the same time, what, as divine-spiritual, flows through the world and can live into one's own soul, only in a third way. As if the German spirit wanted to reveal itself on all sides: Hegel tries to do this in the third way. For him, what permeates and illuminates the world is divine-spiritual thought. And as man thinks, as man illuminates thought within himself – thought that does not depend on memory, but thought that is free of sensuality – this thinking in the soul grows together with what, as thought in the laws of the world themselves, floods the world.
And here Hegel establishes something — as I said, one need be neither an adherent nor an opponent, but [one may] turn one's gaze to the contemplation of the striving — here Hegel establishes something that is so very characteristic of the German national soul. The way in which Hegel strives, one could say, is the nature of mystical striving grown together within oneself with what fundamentally fills the world as divine-spiritual. But this growing together does not take place in dark, nebulous conceptions, in chaotic feelings, as many who aspire to be mystics love to do. Rather, it is a striving that is mystical in its way, but in its own way, in its very own way, it is a striving that is filled with thoughts and clear thoughts. The characteristic feature of the fundamental quality of the German striving for a world view is that one does not want a dark world view that arises from mere feelings or mere trivial clairvoyance, but one that is on the way to the divine-spiritual of the world, but which is illuminated and illuminated by clarity and light of thought. And now that is the peculiar thing about Hegel!
And when one lets these three momentous figures step before one's soul – Fichte, Schelling, Hegel – one always has the feeling that three sides of the development of German thought are expressed in these three minds – sides of the development of German thought that are already becoming popular.
Last time, when I spoke from a different point of view, I pointed out that a way can be found - even if the dull-witted still say, “Oh, that's all abstract thinking!” Despite the objections of these dullwitted people, a way will be found to express these great forces, these great driving forces that seek to connect the human soul with the world secret, in the simplest language, so that - one would like to say - every child can understand and every child will be able to listen. That they could be expressed in this way will be the result of the spiritual self-contemplation of the German people.
But one always has the feeling that within what is expressed in these three revelations of German intellectual life, there is something deeper, a higher spirit, as it were, speaking through the three. And then one gets the impression that this is the German national spirit itself. It expresses itself in three different ways, forming a worldview with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel! And one gets this feeling in particular when one considers what I would like to call in today's reflection: a forgotten striving, a forgotten, a faded tone of German intellectual life.
For the peculiar thing, honored attendees, is that the aforementioned minds, which are minds of the very first rank in development, have followers, smaller minds, minds that appear to be less significant than these three great minds, but that these smaller minds are able to produce more significant things than the great ones. There is no need to be surprised at this; every schoolboy can grasp the Pythagorean theorem. The stimulus to grasp it naturally had to come from Pythagoras! But, as I said, I wanted to express what is at issue here only in a somewhat paradoxical way; it does not apply in such a paradoxical way.
But it is true that these three spirits have successors who, to be sure, cannot hold a candle to them in terms of developmental power, resilience of soul, and talent, but who, in terms of the path that the human soul must take to enter the spiritual world, the living spiritual world, can achieve even more than these three great, inspiring ancestors.
And there we see the son of Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Hermann Immanuel Fichte. He is not as great a mind as his father, but he was certainly under his father's influence as long as his father lived. And Immanuel Hermann Fichte - who also taught at the University of Tübingen - Immanuel Hermann Fichte, he comes from the newer thinking, from the newer development of thought, to speak of how man, as he appears to us in the world, not only has the outer physical body, but Immanuel Hermann Fichte speaks of an ethereal body that underlies the outer physical body. And just as the outer physical body is bound by its forces and laws to the outer material of physical existence, so the etheric body is bound by its forces and laws to the element that pervades and interweaves the world. And starting from the physical, Immanuel Hermann Fichte sees at the bottom of man, as it were, a higher man in man, the etheric man; and he looks at this etheric man.
And then we see how, as a successor to the greats mentioned, a spirit emerges that is truly rooted in the faded, forgotten tone of the development of German thought. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Troxler, Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler. Who knows Troxler?
But that is quite characteristic of the smaller ones, who now follow and create greater things than the great ones, because the German nation pulsates through them and expresses itself in them.
A remarkable personality - this Troxler! He begins to write early under the influence of Fichte and Schelling in particular: “Glimpses into [the essence of man],” he writes. In his “Lectures,” which were published in 1835, he writes in a wonderful way about how man can develop from the recognition of the sensory world to a supersensory recognition of it; how man can come - and I am now using the characteristic expressions that Troxler used - to two soul powers that lie dormant in the soul in ordinary life. Troxler says that man is not only dependent - in terms of knowing the world, not only dependent - on the ordinary sense and on the ordinary mind that is tied to the brain, but Troxler says that although man does not use these higher powers that lie dormant in him for the external world, they can be developed.
Troxler speaks of two forces in the human soul, of the “supersensible spirit” and of the “super-spiritual sense”. These are Troxler's own words. But I would like to characterize the essence of what he believes with a few words that resonate with what I have already developed here in spiritual scientific terms. Troxler says that when we look out into the world here, we do not speak in such abstract terms of “nature, nature, nature” and mean plants in general, but we speak of the tulip, the lily, the clover, and so on, don't we. But the philosophers, the abstract thinkers, that is what they talk about: the spirit in general, this spirit that as a spirit - but not actually in the gray general - permeates and permeates everything. And one feels exalted when one can be a pantheist, but for the external life of nature. Troxler sees this clearly: If you go into the concrete, into the individual things through the sense, then there is a “supersensory sense” that does not merely, in general - forgive the expression - sulfur from what, as spirit, is pantheistically at the basis of all phenomena and facts and at the basis of all entities, but which engages with the concrete, with the individual reality of the individual spiritual beings: “supersensory sense”.
And again: “supersensible spirit” - [meaning a spirit that is by no means bound to the brain, but] that it stands directly in the spiritual world, without the mediation of the senses and the nervous system, just as physical cognition of man stands in the bodily being: “super-spiritual sense” - “supersensible spirit”.
And not in a generally vague way, but in a genuinely scientific way, Troxler talks about the fact that feelings can become intelligent, can be elevated – we will have to talk about this tomorrow, not in relation to Troxler, but in relation to the subject that will be discussed tomorrow – can be elevated and themselves provide cognitive powers. In 1835, Troxler speaks of intelligent feeling and sentient thoughts, of thoughts that touch spiritual being. This is a tone that has faded away, striving for spiritual science out of a primal German essence within the development of German thought.
But Troxler goes even deeper into the human soul by saying the following: Now, certainly, here in the physical world, the soul is embodied in a body and works through the body. And the most beautiful, the greatest thing that this soul can embody here in the physical body, can express in this embodiment, is faith, that is love – the crown and blossom of the physical existence of man – and that is hope. But when these three eternal powers – faith, love, hope – express themselves through the human being's soul working through the body, then higher powers are experienced in the eternal powers of the human soul that pass through death and enter the spiritual world. Because they are inherent to the soul, which is purely spiritual and exists beyond the physical, what stands behind the power of faith - which is supreme as the power of faith but in the body - stands for Troxler in what he calls “spiritual hearing”.
What a wonderful, magnificent view of spiritual knowledge, the details of which we will discuss tomorrow. What the human being does here in the body in the face of certain phenomena is this: he develops his power of faith. But this power of faith is the outer shell for what the soul has freed from the body, with which it can enter the spiritual world through the gate of death: spiritual hearing, spiritual listening. And this spiritual hearing in the body expresses itself in the power of faith.
And love, this crown and blossom of life, of the soul in the body – what is that for the soul, insofar as it, this soul, carries the eternal powers within itself? Love is the outer shell for spiritual sensing. Troxler speaks of it: Just as one reaches out one's hand and touches physical things, so one can extend the feelers, but the spiritual feelers of the soul, and touch spiritual things. And that which manifests itself as love here in the body is the outer material for the spiritual power of feeling.
And hope is the outer shell of spiritual vision.
We see that this development of thought in Germany is absolutely on the right path, the path that has always been sought in these lectures here as the spiritual path, which we will speak about again tomorrow. Troxler feels that there is a faded tone within German intellectual life, he feels so at home in it that he talks about how one can seek spiritual reality in and outside of the human being, just as the senses and the mind bound to the senses seek physical reality.
I would like to read a passage from Troxler that is characteristic in this regard. He says:
"Even in the past, philosophers distinguished a fine, noble soul body from the coarser body... a soul that had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and which for them was the higher inner man... In more recent times, even Kant in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously jokes about an entire internal spiritual human being who carries all the limbs of the external one on his spirit body; Lavater also writes and thinks in the same way; and even when Jean Paul humorously jokes about the Bonnese underskirt and the Plat Platner's soul-string-bodice, which are supposed to be hidden in the coarser body-skirt and martyr's robe, we still hear him asking, “What for and whence were these extraordinary dispositions and desires in us laid, which, like swallowed diamonds, slowly cut our earthy shell? ... In the stony limbs”
of man
“grow and mature in a way of life unknown to us.” We could
continue to
we could cite a myriad more similar ways of thinking and poetizing, which in the end are only different views and representations in which... the true, only teaching of the individuality and immortality of man is contained.
And now, as I said, Troxler has before his mind what I am communicating here, contained in other writings of Troxler's, in particular in his “Lectures,” published in 1835, in which he seeks to present a world picture in his own way. Anthropology is the science that arises when man observes man with the senses, that which he combines with reason. Anthropology: the observation of the outer human being by the outer human being. Troxler presents the image of a science in which the inner human being, the human being with the awakened faculties of the supersensible spirit and the super-spiritual sense, in which the invisible, supersensible human being also observes the invisible, supersensible human being. And how does Troxler speak of this science, which is supposed to be a higher spiritual one in contrast to anthropology, which is directed towards the sensual? Let me read this to you literally from Troxler's book. There he says:
"If it is highly gratifying that the latest philosophy, which... must reveal itself in every anthroposophy... must reveal itself in every anthroposophy, it cannot be overlooked that this idea cannot be a fruit of speculation, and that the true individuality of man must not be confused with what it sets up as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it confronts it as absolute spirit or absolute personality.
Troxler has an anthroposophy in which the spiritual person contemplates the spiritual person, as in anthropology the sensual person contemplates the sensual person. When anthroposophy is spoken of today, one speaks of the continuation of what lies in the germs in the faded tone of German intellectual life, of which I speak.
And is it not wonderful, esteemed attendees, truly wonderful, when we see – and not only where one strives for a worldview in a professional sense, albeit in a higher sense, as with Hermann Immanuel Fichte, as with Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler – that not only do such things emerge there, but that they can emerge within German intellectual life from the simplest of circumstances!
Is it not wonderful when we see a book published in 1856, a small booklet by a simple pastor – Rudolf Rocholl, who was a pastor in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck – who, as a simple pastor, is trying to develop out of German spiritual life into a spiritually appropriate worldview? And anyone who reads this little book, which is called 'Contributions to the History of German Theosophy', and which was written by this simple pastor as early as 1856, gets the impression that a human being is speaking here! From today's point of view, much of it may seem fanciful, but that is not the point. What is important is the impression of striving that one gets, the impression that here we are dealing with a person who is not merely able to speak in philosophically abstract sentences, but of a concrete spiritual world through which one can see. And in a wonderful way, this simple pastor in 1856 points in his little book “Contributions to a History of German Theosophy” to a lively, spiritual worldview!
These are just a few isolated points in German intellectual life. One could take issue with them all, and hundreds and hundreds of examples could be given that belong to the fading sound of German intellectual life.
But right now I want to talk to you about another spirit, a spirit - I would like to say - in whose local aura we actually live here. Although he is so important for German intellectual life that I – and I mention this explicitly, otherwise someone might think that I just wanted to flatter the Württembergers – I have emphasized this spirit in recent times in Hamburg, Bremen, Leipzig, everywhere that it was possible to talk about this topic: “A forgotten pursuit of spiritual science within the development of German thought.” The person I mean is Karl Christian Planck, who was born here in Stuttgart in 1819, a — I would like to say — genuine son of the German national spirit and a conscious son of the German national spirit, Christian Karl Planck, a son of the German national spirit who only wanted to create what he created as a spiritual worldview out of the most original essence of this German national spirit! Christian Karl Planck is a wonderful spirit. He strove against what seemed to him to be far too idealistic and thus selfish – for even idealism can be completely selfish – he strove against the idealism of the Germans, which he considered to be one-sided and merely a realism, but a spiritual-scientific realism, a realism that should produce precisely the power of thought development in a spiritual way, in order to penetrate reality; but not only into the outer, material reality, but into the whole, full reality, to which matter and spirit belong.
This is quite characteristic - one can only emphasize individual, so to speak symptomatic aspects of his world view. How does Christian Karl Planck see the Earth from his point of view? Dear attendees, one can only grasp the magnitude of the thought that Christian Karl Planck has conceived when one sees how geologists - ordinary scientific geologists - view the Earth. There is this Earth, caked together, isn't it, made of mere mineral substance. To look at the earth in this way seemed to Christian Karl Planck as if one wanted to look at a tree only in relation to the trunk and its bark, and did not want to accept that blossoms and fruit belong to the whole of the tree; and that one only looks at the tree one-sidedly and half-heartedly if one does not look at that which belongs to its innermost being. Thus, the Earth appears to Planck not only as a living being, but as a spiritual-soul being, which is not merely material, but which drives forth from itself the flowers and fruits of its own being, just as a tree drives forth the blossoms and fruits of its own being. Karl Christian Planck strives for the wholeness of an earthly conception. And he strives for this in all fields, and not only in such a way that this is a theory, as I said, but he wants a foundation that is equally aware of the soul, so that one can grasp that which permeates and lives through the world in terms of strength, but which can also have an effect on external human conditions, on human coexistence.
This Christian Karl Planck – of course, there are all kinds of people like the ones I just called dullards, and they can come and say: yes, if you look at the later writings, namely the work left behind after Christian Karl Planck's death , the work he left behind, 'Testament of a German', you can see an increased self-confidence; and then they will talk about the fact - and these dullards are right on hand with that - that he was half crazy, right! But now, it was a sad life! Planck was aware that the German essence is not only surrounded – we will talk about this in a moment – in a political sense, but that it is surrounded by a foreign essence, that it must be saved from this above all. You encounter this at every turn, which is extremely important to consider in this area.
So, dear attendees, it must be said again and again: Goethe created his theory of colors out of the depths of the German essence; and out of the depths of the German essence, in this “theory of colors,” he became the opponent of an color-egg that has encircled the world in the English way: Newton's theory of colors!
Today, all physicists will naturally tell you what I was told years ago: the only objection a physicist can make to such amateurishness in relation to Goethe's theory of colors is that he cannot conceive of it at all! Certainly; but the time will come when this chapter “Goethe in the Right against Newton” will be understood in a different way than it is today. In the field of the theory of colors, too, there may come that self-contemplation of the German spirit, which is so necessary and for which the present time may be an extraordinary sign, when we shall no longer forget such spirits as Karl Christian Planck, who consciously wanted to create out of German national character.
Only the Viennese, the noble Viennese, has taken care of him; it has been of little use, just as I characterized Karl Christian Planck in the first edition of my “Welt- und Lebensanschauungen” as early as 1901. These things are still not being addressed today. But when the German spirit becomes conscious of its full world-historical position, and this will happen, then people will understand such things and appreciate how Karl Christian Planck was conscious of creating out of the depths of the German spirit. The following words, which he wrote down in Ulm in 1864 in his “Foundations of a Science of Nature”, show this:
“The power of deeply rooted prejudices from the previous view of his”
the author's
"Schrift entgegensteht, dessen ist er sich vollkommen bewusst; allein wie schon die Arbeit selbst, trotz aller Ungunst der Umstände, die zufolge der ganzen Lage und Berufsstellung des Verfassers einem Werke dieser Art sich entgegenstellte, doch ihre Durchführung und ihren Weg in die Öffentlichkeit sich gekämpft hat, so ist er auch gewiss that what must now first fight for its recognition will one day appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in it not only his cause, but the truly German view of things, will triumph over all still unworthy external and un-German conception of nature and spirit. What our medieval poetry has unconsciously and profoundly foreshadowed will finally be fulfilled in our nation in the maturity of the times. The impractical inwardness of the German spirit, which has been afflicted with harm and ridicule (as Wolfram describes it in his Parsifal)
- 1864, written before Wagner's Parsifal! —
“Finally, in the power of her unceasing striving, she attains the highest; she looks into the last simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what poetry has symbolized in a fantastically medieval way in the wonders of the Grail, the mastery of which her hero attains, that, conversely, receives its purely natural fulfillment and reality in the lasting knowledge of nature and of the spirit itself.”
Thus spoke Karl Christian Planck, who then summarized what he had to say. He died in 1881; in his last year he wrote his book Testament of a German, which was published by Karl Köstlin, his fellow countryman, in a first edition, and in a new edition in 1912.
As already mentioned, Karl Christian Planck was not given much attention, even after the second edition of “The Last Will of a German” was published in 1912. They had other things to do. Those who at that time were much concerned with questions of world-view were occupied, for example, with other books from the same publishing house as Karl Christian Planck's Testament of a German. At that time people were preoccupied with the great spirit of Henri - yes, he is still called Bergson today -, of Henri Bergson, the spirit that now, in such an unintelligent and foolish way, not only defames but really slanders the German essence, the German knowledge, everywhere. Until now he has done so in Paris, telling the French all kinds of nonsense about German intellectual life so that the French and their allies could see what terrible things live in Central Europe, what wolfish and tigerish spirits dwell there. He is now to do the same in Sweden.
One had, if I may use this trivial expression, fallen for him. If you look at what can at least be shown in Bergson – I pointed this out in my “Riddles of Philosophy”, and the passage in question was written before the war, as you can see from the preface itself – if you look at what can be shown to some extent in Bergson's world view, then it is that in Bergson's view it turns out that one must not start from the different beings in the consideration of the world, but that one must put man first, that man would be, so to speak, the first work, and that man, as he develops, then repels the other realms, the animal, the vegetable, the mineral.
I cannot go into the justification for this world view today, although it may seem as incorrect as possible to the contemporary world view, it is nevertheless true that there is something in this world view that hits the mark in terms of reality. But I also pointed this out in my book “Riddles of Philosophy”, as I said, not prompted by the war, but long before the war, that this thought, before it took root in Bergson's mind, in a deeper more penetrating and comprehensive manner, because it arose from the depths of German intellectual life, in the German philosopher Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss, who in turn is mentioned in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”. The idea was expressed much earlier than Bergson put it forward – as early as 1882 and even earlier – forcefully expressed by Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss in his book on “Geist und Stoff”!
We cannot know whether Bergson knew it from Preuss – which, in the case of a philosopher, is just as culpable as if he knew something and did not quote Preuss. Based on what has now been revealed, we can also assume and believe the latter about Bergson. For if one investigates the matter, one can show that in Bergson's books entire pages are copied from Schopenhauer and Schelling, in part quite literally! It is certainly a strange process: you ascribe to German intellectual life, and then you stand there and explain to people how this German intellectual life has degenerated since this great period, how this German intellectual life is mechanistically conducted – I have already said this once before last year. When one looks across to Germany, one has the impression of being confronted only with the mechanical. Bergson thought, as I have already said, that if the French shoot with cannons and rifles, the Germans will step forward and recite Goethe or Novalis! What Bergson has to say today is about as logical as that!
As I said, I can only highlight in a few isolated examples what is really there as a forgotten tone of German intellectual life, but which is nevertheless present within this German intellectual life. It will only depend on the length of time, ladies and gentlemen, to suppress what creative minds like Troxler or a Karl Christian Planck, for example – those with limited knowledge of him may say of him: he just became somewhat twisted at the end of his life – at the end of their lives, because they had to counter the world, which today is also spiritually encircled, with words from the German consciousness, as Planck writes in the preface to his Testament of a German. He says:
”... often, in the bitter struggle of a whole lifetime, the words of the old Roman wanted to force themselves on the lips of the lonely one: ‘Ungrateful fatherland, not even my bones shalt thou have!’ For throughout all the best and strongest decades of his life, right into his old age, it did not even grant him the profession whose indelible seal, despite all obstacles, bore his entire life and work, and only recently did his own immediate community inaugurate the beginning of the fifth century of its university by excluding its only creative philosophical force from the professorship!
The time will come when everything alien will be seen for what it is, how it has crept into German, into the original German intellectual life, and then people will reflect on what this German intellectual life is capable of! Then we shall see much more clearly the relations that exist between this Central European intellectual life and that – which is not to be reviled, only characterized – [and] that which is all around, and which is currently trying so hard to fight this German intellectual life, as I said: they not only fight the German character with weapons, but also revile and even slander German intellectual life!
History will one day be able to express something with large numbers, albeit sober numbers, dear attendees, which in view of today's facts may be brought to mind; history will have to record something strange after all. One may ask: how does the area on which German intellectual life develops relate to the area - and how does the population of Central European intellectual life relate to the population of those who today not only not only use arms against Central Europe, but even, through the better part of valor, want to starve the Central Europeans – which is how it had to come about that this Central Europe is being starved! It is, after all, the better part of bravery – especially when you consider the circumstances that history will one day speak of! History will have to ask: What percentage of the entire dry land, mainland earth, do these Central European people own? It is four percent! What percentage do the small nations own today, even without the Japanese – those who face them as the so-called antipodes: 46 percent! That means that today, 6 million square kilometers are owned by those who encircled Central Europe, compared to 69 million square kilometers for Central Europe. They really had no need to be envious of what Central Europe was taking away from them. And without counting the Italians: 741 million people on the side of the Entente are opposed by 150 million people in Central Europe. That means: with nine percent of humanity, Central Europe is facing almost half of humanity on earth: 45 to 47 percent. History will one day record this as the situation in which people lived in this present time.
And what forces have led to this can also be seen in the spiritual realm. In my booklet 'Thoughts During the Time of War' - which is now being reissued after being out of print for some time, as I said - you can read about how the forces have been moving in recent decades. Not only is there in the West an opposing force that expresses itself in the same way, as has been characterized, at least in very general terms, by means of a few strokes of the pen, but in the East there are opposing forces that perhaps need to be taken into account even more than those of the West. There is no need to stoop to the level of our opponents! There is no need to vilify the Russian people. If we are to exercise German self-restraint, we need not stoop to the level of our opponents. But attention can still be drawn to certain characteristic aspects that are truly indicative of the Russian character. They must be emphasized, especially in a people that, with a certain versatility and adaptability, and even, when you look at the people, with a certain peace-loving character, want to elevate themselves to intellectuals within the Russian East of Europe, there emerge, for example, the views – I have already emphasized them here in earlier lectures – the views that this Central European, this Western European intellectual life is basically decrepit and has fallen into death and that Russian intellectual life must replace this Central European intellectual life.
This view took root deeply, first in those who appeared as Slavophiles; and then it took root deeply in those who replaced the Slavophiles as Pan-Slavists. And I do not want to mention anything uncharacteristic, but only to present what has really been expressed in a spiritual way - one after the other from different sides - but is the same as what has been expressed in the political sphere.
For example, as early as 1829, Ivan Vasilyevich Kireyevsky, speaking from what he believed to be knowledge, said that European essence and life had become decrepit, was dying, and that Russian essence should gradually replace and supersede this Central European and also Western European essence. And then Ivan Vassilyevich Kireyevsky says:
“The fate of every European state depends on the union of all the others; the fate of Russia depends on Russia alone. But the fate of Russia is decided in its formation: this is the condition and source of all goods. As soon as all these goods will be ours, we will share them with the rest of Europe, and we will repay our debt to them a hundredfold.”
That means that they aspire to Russia belonging to all of Europe; and then, once they have it, they would be inclined to divide it, of course, under the care of all of Russia. This is what lives on in Russian intellectual life from the 19th into the 20th century; it lives everywhere. These people, who are the intelligentsia in the East, could not really understand much of German intellectual life – as I said, let me just emphasize these things at the end! They did try to understand something like Goethe's 'Faust'. And it is interesting to read the mind of the Russian people - [Michajlovskij] - when he says something like: Yes, these Germans, they see something in 'Faust' where the human soul strives for world secrets, for a kind of redemption. But this “Faust”, he is before a deeper realization, says Michajlovskij, he is before a deeper realization, but he is nothing more than the purest expression of Central and Western European egoism, of capitalist striving. This Faust is a real capitalist metaphysician. And when he comes to speak of metaphysicians, of those people who go beyond the immediately sensual, then Michajlovskij becomes quite strange. There he says, for example, metaphysicians are people who have gone mad with fat. — I don't know whether one can find particularly much of this view in Central Europe of all places, of this sort of people “who have gone mad with fat”. But now he also counts Faust among these metaphysicians who have gone mad with fat! In short, we see that there is not much understanding among those who want to conquer first and then divide.
Much could be said about this, but, as I said, I would like to emphasize this at the end, as one of the most characteristic minds of Russian intellectual life, Yushakov, in a book at the end of the nineteenth century, makes observations about Russia's relationship on the one hand to Asia and on the other to the European West - not just to the German European West, but to the European West - in the broader sense. In 1885, he – I mean this Yushakov – wrote the book, [it is a remarkable book]. There he turns his gaze across to Asia, and he sees: over there in Asia, there live peoples; they are indeed somewhat run down today, but they show the last traces of a great, spiritual worldview that once lived with them. They have tried to lift themselves up to the spiritual side of existence, but they could only do so, they only succeeded in doing so, says Jushakow, by mentioning a myth of the Orient, by uniting with the good God Ormuzd against the evil spirit Ahriman. From Turan, from the Turan peoples, there emanated that which Ahriman, as an opponent, had done against the good Iranians, to whom he also counts the Hindus and the Persians, according to Yushakov. They sighed under the deeds of Ahriman, these Asians who had joined forces with the good Ormuzd, and thus created their culture. Then the Europeans came - in 1885 he can't speak much about the Germans yet, can he. But he does speak about Europe - we will see in a moment which Europe he is talking about in particular - and then he says: These Europeans, what have they done to these Asians who had taken up the fight, who had joined forces with the good Ormuzd against the evil Ahriman? They have taken from the Asians, the goods they have acquired by fighting alongside Ormuzd against Ahriman, and have even more handed them over to the clutches of Ahriman. And with whom does Jushakow see this evil? The book is called “The Anglo-Russian Conflict” - dispute, war - and there he says, in particular with regard to the English - in 1885, this Yushakov - the following, showing how the English treat these Asian peoples. There Yushakov says: They - the English - treat these Asian peoples as if they believe: These Asian peoples are only there to
"dress themselves in English fabrics, fight each other with English weapons, work with English tools, drink from English vessels and play with English baubles.
And pointing out once more what he finds so terrible about these Englishmen, Yushakov says: This will only oppress the Asians; Russia must intervene and liberate these Asians by empathizing with them. And – it is not me saying this, it is Yushakov himself: a great force will arise from Russia, a wonderful alliance will arise from Russia, an alliance between the peasant, who knows the value of the earth, and the bearer of the noblest spiritual life, the Cossack. And from this alliance between the peasant and the Cossack – and it is not I who say this, but Yushakov – will emerge, and will move towards Asia, that which will in turn bring the Asians to the pleasures of Ormuzd and free them from the clutches of Ahriman. Then he says in summary:
“England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples inhabiting the rich peninsula; I do not wish anything similar for my fatherland – I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this state of affairs, which is as glorious as it is sad.”
1885 spoken by a Russian intellectual. Perhaps this is where we have to look for the reason why Russia allied itself with England?
I do not want to say that the Asians have been liberated from the clutches of Ahriman and that it has somehow come back from glorifying this wonderful alliance of the peasantry and the Cossacks. But a change has also occurred in the relationship. It is important to consider such changes and to understand the circumstances, dear attendees!
I have not undertaken these considerations in order to speak fruitlessly about a faded tone of German intellectual life, but because I believe that what could be said about German intellectual life does indeed contain living seeds. They can live for a time – I would say – below the surface of progressive conscious education; but they will emerge. And we can be aware that a spiritual life that carries such seeds [...] has a future, that it cannot be crushed, not even by the kind of union that it is currently facing.
Perhaps it is precisely in our fateful time that the German spirit will find self-reflection on the great aspects of its nature. And that is more important to us than the present hostile attitude towards us, and more important than the vilification of other nations. Above all, it is more important to us to realize that when the German nation turns to spiritual matters, it does not need to become unfree, but that, like the power of real thinking allied with spiritual life, it can also be free. I could cite to you a great deal of evidence that this is the most trivial of objections, that the statement that spiritual life makes one unfree and that a complicated idealist must be the one who lives in the spirit is the most unjustified thing that - if the expression is used again - dullards can object to the spiritual life.
Karl Christian Planck, the Württemberger, is an example of what could and would be shown in hundreds of cases, if something like this is seen, it is characterized precisely by Karl Christian Planck. Dear attendees, “practical people” have always spoken about European politics, about what is rooted in and present in the political forces of Europe, and about what can come of it – “practical politicians” who certainly look down on people like Karl Christian Planck, people of the intellectual life, as on the impractical idealists who know nothing of reality. These “practitioners”, whether they are diplomats or politicians who think they are great, look down on them because they are the practitioners, because they, who believe they have mastered the practical side of life, look down on such “impractical idealists” as Karl Christian Planck is! But from Planck's Testament of a German, I want to read you a sentence that was written in 1880, in which Karl Christian Planck speaks of the present war. This is what he, the “impractical” idealist, says about the present war:
"No political wisdom, no love of peace on the part of Germany, can prevent this hostile clash within the current merely national order. For the nature of the circumstances is more powerful than all wisdom; and already, despite the friendly attitude of Germany and Austria, the hostile mood of the Russian East is only becoming all the more apparent because it could not be given a free hand in everything, but rather a certain goal had to be set. And if it comes to a fight one day, then, however much we have to fight it for the good of Europe, the latter will not stand by our side, but as in the East, we will also have to defend ourselves in the West and in the South at the same time; on all sides, national jealousy will rise up against the new empire that has been placed in their midst.
Written in 1880! Where have we ever had a “practitioner” describe the current situation so accurately based on such knowledge of the facts!
A time will come, most honored attendees, when people will realize that it is precisely the reflection on the best forces of the German people that will lead to the fact that no more un-German entities can exist in Central Europe and [that that what the justified striving – or at least much justified striving – wants to suppress, remains in the power of the incompetent], so that Germanic nature, as Germanic nature is in its own root, would not be eradicated in the world.
It is only right to speak serious words in serious times, if these serious words are based on facts and not on all kinds of crazy idealism that any amateur can find without taking the trouble to look into the facts.
If you look at it, this Central European essence: you will indeed find it in contrast, in a meaningful contrast to the Oriental essence, which today stands so threateningly behind Oriental Russia; you will find it in a characteristic contrast. What lives in Asia today is the remnant of a search for the spiritual world, but a search as it was and as it had to be at a time when the greatest impulse had not yet impacted development, the development of humanity: the Christ impulse. The striving for the spiritual world in pre-Christian times was as follows: it occurs in Asia, in which the human being is paralyzed, the ego is paralyzed, so that the human being can merge into the spiritual world with a subdued and dulled ego. This was a merging as it occurred in Hinduism, Brahmanism, Buddhism and so on, but as it is never appropriate for a newer time, in which the Christ impulse has struck. This essence of modern times has emerged most profoundly in what the faded tone of German intellectual life so beautifully indicates to us today: not the paralysis of the ego, but the invigoration, the revitalization of the ego, the right standing within the ego.
The opposite of what was once oriental nature, which finds, by strengthening itself inwardly, in man also the way into the spiritual worlds. The fact that the German nature has this task puts it, with its mission, into the overall development of humanity – it stands on the ground of 6 million square kilometers against 68 million square kilometers of the peoples who threaten the German nature all around it today.
Let me conclude by quoting you the words of an Austrian poet, which show how deeply rooted in all of Central Europe is what I have dared to mention today, the “German essence”, and which I have tried to characterize in its world-historical sense. Let me characterize it by referring you, as I said, to a poet of Central Europe who belongs to Austria. I myself have spent almost thirty-one years in Austria and have been associated with all the struggles that the German character has also had to fight in recent times. I must be allowed to refer to Robert Hamerling; to that Robert Hamerling who, in view of the circumstances, the welding together of Central Europe, from Germany and Austria, in terms of intellectual life as well; but since he was not immune to external circumstances, how deeply such minds feel rooted in the overall Central European, German essence is shown by such statements as the one just made by Robert Hamerling, who says, “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland”. This is felt precisely by someone who is connected to Central European culture as a German from Austria. But he is also connected, such a German Austrian, to all things German.
Just – I would like to say – I would like to point out a small, insignificant [poem] that Robert Hamerling wrote in 1880, at the time when the French were burning the German flag in front of the Alsatian statue, in front of the statue of Strasbourg and performed a dance during which they burned the German flag in [Paris] at that time, then Robert Hamerling wrote – I do not want to point this out as a poetic meaning – but to something special; then he wrote the words:
"Believe in revenge,
And in the victor's future wreath:
Do not hope to steal back
A clod of German soil!
You may rave like ravens
Around an Alsace statue,
You will not have Strasbourg, Strasbourg nevermore.
Thus cried out the Austrian German Robert Hamerling from the Waldviertel. But the great mission of the German people also appeared to him; in 1862 he, Robert Hamerling, wrote his “Germanenzug”. It is wonderfully described how the ancestors of the later Germans moved from Asia to Europe with the Germanic peoples - how they camp in the evening sun, still on the border from Asia to Europe; the setting sun and the rising moon are wonderfully described. And wonderfully, Robert Hamerling expresses how one person watches over the sleeping Germanic people as they move from Asia to Europe. Hamerling expresses it wonderfully by letting Teut, the fair-haired youth, watch alone; and the genius – the genius of the future German people – now speaks words of the German future to the fair-haired Teut. There he speaks, the genius of the German people, to the blond Teut, while the other Teutons sleep all around:
"To whom will the word break out of the depths of the soul one day
Like your people, so rich, so delicate, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly into the sounds of the strings
His innermost being? Who carves his mind so magnificently
Into the heavenly blue granite hieroglyphics
Of the soul's upsurge from the narrowness of life?
Who finally ties the strands
Of the inquisitive thought to the stars
So boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Whom leads so high, so deep his urge, his foreboding?
Who grasps the near and far so faithfully?
Where is every earthly and heavenly zone
reflected as in your thinking, O Teuton?
And this essence of the German spirit, which is a post-Christian renewal, but a deepening of the spirit out of the self, which, among others, was so beautifully expressed by the one called the philosopher of Germanness, Jakob Böhme, this essence of the German spirit, which always wants to connect knowledge and recognition with a religious trait, this essence of the German spirit in Jakob Böhme we find it expressed thus:
"When you look at the depths
, he means the depths of the blue sky
“When you look at the depths of heaven and the stars and the earth, you see your God, and in the same you live and are also. And the same God reigns through you and also reigns you.” “You are created from this God and live in the same. All your knowledge also stands in this God, and when you die, you will be buried in this God.”
This mood of the German spirit is beautifully expressed in Robert Hamerling's 1862 poem “Germanenzug” (German March), in which the blond Teut speaks words that are intended to express how the best aspirations of Asia are to be developed in Europe by the German people with heightened vibrancy. The genius says to the blond Teut:
"But however proudly you may strive, high above other swarms, you will still keep a sacred, ancient fire burning within you: the joyful, dreamy drunkenness of God, the blissful warmth of the heart of of the ancient Asian homeland. This holy ray, a temple fire, will glow in your chest and soul, free of smoke, with a pure flame, remaining for you and as a pilot for your rudder! You only strive because you love: your most daring thought will be a devotion that seeks to merge with God."
Thus, in all of Central Europe, the German is aware of his identity as a German. And if we consider the pure facts, as we have tried to do today, esteemed attendees, one can find that one may believe, as I have said here before in earlier lectures, that one may have the confidence and the belief in the nature of the German people, that because it contains germs in the spiritual realm, as characterized, it will one day, in distant times, bear the blossoms and fruits. And those who are the enemies of the German people will not be able to remove these blossoms and these fruits from world development.
As I said, the fate of outer world history is decided by the power of arms. This power of arms, as it lives today in our fateful time, is only one side of the power of the German character. The other side is the power of the German spirit, which I wanted to reflect on this evening.
I would like to have achieved this with words, which could only be fragmentary in the face of the task you set yourself, I would like to have achieved this from an actual, purely objective consideration of German intellectual life: the fruitful, indestructible nature of the German is that which, in the face of the most severe oppression, enables people who are surrounded by 6 million square kilometers to say, just as people in Central Europe are able to do, from the depths of German soul and the essence of the German heart, and in so far as it is connected with German intellectual life, to express what Robert Hamerling, summarizing the indestructibility of the German spirit, expressed in the beautiful words with which I would like to conclude this reflection today:
“And when the day dawns that is
hostile to the German name,
From ocean to ocean will be found
The path of the German spirit.”