Freedom, Immortality and Social Life
GA 72 — 19 October 1917, Basel
2. Anthroposophy Does Not Interfere with Anyone's Religious Beliefs
If religious feeling and experience want to understand their task in relation to the demands of the present day, and then, from the perspective thus gained, approach with full understanding what anthroposophy as understood here strives for, then religious feeling and confession would find in anthroposophy a very welcome ally, especially today. However, in the present day, people do not always make it their task to really get to know the nature of the things about which they believe they can make a suitable, competent judgment. This is particularly true of what is meant here by anthroposophy; one can say that this is the case to a sufficient degree. People judge what they encounter by labeling it with some external label, often creating a true caricature of what it really is; and then they judge not this reality, but the self-made image, often the self-made caricature.
If one were to engage with anthroposophy, if one were to really consider its task in relation to the riddles and problems of our time, one would be drawn above all to one thing that shines forth from the whole spirit, from the whole meaning of anthroposophical research. That is: anthroposophy differs, one might say, from all other opinions and views that arise about the world and human beings and so on, in that it is permeated — as must be the case, given its insights — by what lies in the most comprehensive sense in the idea of evolution.
Human opinions, especially when they aspire to be worldviews, are only satisfied when they can say, in a certain sense and within certain limits at least: I have thoughts that are valid; they are absolutely valid in themselves; I have found them, or science or religion or something else has found them; but they are valid, they are absolutely valid in themselves. This is not the case with anthroposophy. Anthroposophy knows that thoughts must be born in every age from what can be called, in a deeper sense, the spirit of the age. And the spirit of humanity is in constant development. So that what appears as an opinion about the world in one age must have a different form from what appears in this way in another age. As anthroposophy presents itself to the world today, it knows that centuries from now, what it says today will have to be said in a completely different form for completely different human needs and interests, that it cannot strive for “absolute truths,” but that it is in a state of living development.
A certain attitude follows from such premises. And this attitude in turn determines the assessment that anthroposophy must make of other spiritual endeavors and spiritual currents, and determines the relationship it must establish with other spiritual currents, other opinions, other views. For our time, it should be borne in mind above all that anthroposophy did not come into being in the way that many people think, and that it cannot be placed within the fabric of contemporary opinions and views in the way that is still very often believed today. People think that by learning about anthroposophy in such an external, superficial way, by listening to a lecture about it once or reading a few pages of a book about it, a brochure, or perhaps not even that, but by having someone tell them what anthroposophy is about, someone who knows only in a very dubious way, one thinks that anthroposophy presents itself as a belief system, as a kind of new religious view in opposition to other religious beliefs. Over time, people have come to feel that the thoughts and ideas about the world that are being put forward are just one belief system among many others. And so people think: this anthroposophy is just another sect, like the many sects that appear in the world, presenting itself as such a sect alongside others.
Now, in contrast, it must be emphasized: Firstly, what is characteristic of anthroposophy in the sense meant here is that it did not come into the world alongside or in opposition to any particular creed. The reasons why it came into the world do not lie in this or that creed to which it has to take a stand, but rather in the reasons why it came into the world at this particular time. the reasons for this lie in the scientific developments of the last centuries and of more recent times, in those scientific developments that have shaped the opinions and views of people today. Anthroposophy aims to be a supplement, an extension, a perfection of what has come into the world through science. This starting point must be taken into account. For if one becomes acquainted with the achievements of natural science — and here I am referring not primarily to the achievements of specialist scholarship, but to what has passed from natural science into the public consciousness, what has become the opinion of natural science itself about the world view, what has become the feeling about the world view — when you look at all that science has to offer people, you have to say: science has developed, and over time it will continue to develop in a brilliant way into an interpreter of what is externally perceptible existence and what can be understood by the intellect from this perceptible existence. Precisely — as I mentioned yesterday — when one can engage deeply with what modern science has achieved, one not only gains the highest respect for it and harbors the greatest expectations for the future, but one also knows that science achieves its perfection precisely by developing laws and methods that are eminently suited to understanding the external, natural, sensory existence, but which are unsuitable for grasping the spiritual if they are left as they are in natural science itself. If one wants to grasp the spiritual with the same rigor, with the same scientific validity as the natural in the sense of modern science, then one must work one's way into the spiritual world in the manner described yesterday, starting from science, from the way of thinking and the attitude of science.
However, this presents great difficulties for some people today. It can be said that it is precisely because of the brilliant advances in natural science, which have also allowed us to look into the spiritual border areas, that a natural worldview has developed in which the spirit actually has no place. This must be so. Precisely because scientific methods are appropriate for natural existence, they must be such that they exclude the spirit from their own field of research in a certain way. If one takes the human being itself into consideration, one must say: anatomy, physiology, biology, as they regard the human being in relation to its physical existence, can only study and penetrate it in all its aspects if they show that with their own method, with their own way of research, the spirit is, so to speak, excluded.
But if one engages in the way that natural science proceeds, if one lives in this way, then one can continue natural science as I characterized it yesterday. And through certain methods that the human soul applies to itself, one arrives precisely from natural existence into the realm of the spiritual world. The spiritual world becomes a reality before the spiritual eye, before the spiritual ear — to use Goethe's expressions in a modified way — just as the sensory reality of the mineral, plant, air, and star worlds is a reality for the outer senses. One works one's way into the spiritual realm.
This presents a difficulty for many people. When one speaks of the relationship between natural science and anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, people say: Yes, he may be quite right in what he says about natural science; you cannot capture the spirit with scientific methods, you cannot determine anything about the spirit; there are limits, there are areas beyond natural science about which we cannot know anything. — But yesterday's lecture, its entire meaning and spirit, will have made it clear that this is not the opinion of anthroposophy. The opposite is the experience of anthroposophy: that one can really penetrate the spirit, that it is not just a matter of saying that there are unknown areas to which one must refer, but that one can really penetrate these unknown areas through certain spiritual methods.
It is difficult for some people to say to themselves: there is still a realm about which one can perhaps learn something if one engages with certain ideas and research. — It is much more comfortable for these people to say to themselves: this is a realm that no one knows anything about — because they themselves do not yet know anything about it. However, the fact that one does not know anything about something oneself is no proof that one cannot know anything about it, although this conclusion is strangely often drawn. This is precisely what is at stake when anthroposophy is asserted, that one can enter as a human being through the application of the methods that were indicated yesterday and that you can find in my writings, namely in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Occult Science.” You can enter a spiritual world in which human beings truly exist with their souls, in which human beings truly experience what can be called immortality and freedom, the actual impulses of their supersensible existence.
And because in recent centuries and up to the present day, natural science had to be of such a nature that it focused on the transitory, on that which is ended by death, something had to oppose it which, like natural science, could claim to be scientific and which entered the spiritual realm.
In earlier times, when religious currents and religious confessions that referred people to the spiritual world were not yet opposed by a natural science that, precisely through its methods, developed a certain inclination for the sensory world alone, it was not necessary for a special spiritual science to emerge; for there was also no special natural science that claimed to have the only correct method and, based on this belief, arrived at the view that is today called “monistic” because the term “materialistic” is no longer considered socially acceptable. There was not yet a natural science that could lead to the belief that the only reality is the external sensory reality, that is, what can be understood with the intellect from this sensory reality as science. Only in the period when such a science and thus such a belief could arise did a spiritual science have to come along which asserts the other, which places the science of the spirit alongside the science of nature. This is simply part of the development of the times.
Therefore, the emergence of anthroposophy can only be understood in the right sense if one understands its emergence from natural science, if one understands its necessity alongside natural science. If natural science were to generate a kind of creedal faith in people on its own, it would gradually, through the seductive nature of its strictly scientific methods, completely dissuade people from the view that one can penetrate the spiritual world scientifically, through knowledge; it would lead people to believe, to the greatest extent possible: Well, we can know about the sensory world; everything else that is above the sensory world is subject to belief, which can never lead to certainty, but only to a subjective, supersensible emotionality.
This is the point that is most difficult for contemporaries to understand at first, because it takes a certain effort to subject the soul to those experiences through which it grows beyond ordinary existence, through which it acquires spiritual organs in addition to the sensory organs in order to penetrate the real spiritual world. And it will be a long time before the prejudices that prevail in this regard disappear, before a sufficiently large number of people come to realize that it is really possible to penetrate the spiritual world in the same scientific way as nature.
Now, in order for this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to gradually become established in our cultural life, it is necessary — and this should actually be taken for granted — that people who have the will and the need to pursue such spiritual science come together. Everything that has developed and continues to develop in and around the Dornach building has arisen from this need to come together to develop such spiritual science. The coming together of individuals, however, immediately leads to the mistaken opinion that this is a sect, that people are coming together to cultivate some new religious belief among themselves. But joining together in this field has a different meaning than joining together in sects. The purpose of joining together in the anthroposophical field is that anthroposophy cannot be attained through a single lecture or by reading a single brochure, but that anthroposophy is something that, for those who really want to know it to a certain extent, must be worked out gradually, something that people must work out for themselves. This must also happen in schools and universities; and if one wants to describe the gathering of an audience in universities as a “sect,” then one can also describe the gathering of those who practice anthroposophy as a “sect,” but not otherwise. If only a certain number of people who have already absorbed other knowledge can attend certain lectures or events, this seems quite natural, for it is the same with all other forms of knowledge acquisition. Anthroposophy wants to establish itself in the most modern institutions, not in sectarian entities. It wants to reckon precisely with modern institutions. And there is nothing particularly mysterious about people coming together and holding events only for themselves, but solely the fact that they have sought preparation for this, just as one seeks preparation for university lectures before attending them, because otherwise attending them would be pointless. Any other opinion formed about such a gathering is wrong in this area, because it does not apply to the matter at hand.
Now, however, it must be said that such a gathering in this particular area must necessarily have a different character in certain respects than, for example, a gathering of students at a university. The knowledge imparted at a university mostly relates to external life, with the exception of very few, one might say, enclaves; especially in today's scientific trend, it relates to what the intellect and reason comprehend on the basis of sensory observation. But this is directed more toward mere thinking, more, one might say, toward one aspect of the human being: it is directed toward mere intellectual understanding. Not that anthroposophy is not directed toward intellectual understanding! People who believe themselves to be competent sometimes judge anthroposophy according to their prejudices; they find some things disagreeable; they find anthroposophy dilettantish. If these people were to look more closely, they would find that the thinking required for external science, the logic required for external science, must not only be present in anthroposophy, but that a much finer, higher logic is necessary for real understanding later on, in the advanced parts of anthroposophy. But what must be said about anthroposophy, what must be revealed from research into the spiritual world through anthroposophy, does not only affect the human head, not only the intellectual understanding, but it affects the whole human being, it affects the human being in all their soulfulness: all feeling, all thinking, all willing, all inner impulses are affected by it. As a result, I would say that when people approach anthroposophy, they enter into a more intimate relationship with the knowledge that is handed down to them than they would, for example, through mere university study.
Now, in order to make myself completely clear on this point, I might add that anthroposophy is only important in the sense of human development for the present time as a supplement to natural science, that it appears precisely in the spirit of the present age, but that what anthroposophy strives for, what human beings want to achieve in terms of knowledge, has always been there in the way it was useful in earlier ages, in the way it corresponded to the needs and interests of earlier ages, has actually always been there. But people had different views about the operation, about the development of the corresponding knowledge. When we look back to earlier times, we must speak of analogies to what we have today in anthroposophy, of mysteries, we must even speak of secret societies in which, in the course of human development, what must be pursued today in an entirely different form, corresponding to the present, was pursued in anthroposophy. Those who in earlier times pursued such research, who cultivated such activities through which the higher knowledge of the spiritual world was brought to human beings, were of the opinion that one must shut oneself off from the outside world in a circle of people who were very well prepared for such activities, in which one was assured that they really had the right attitude and also the necessary preparation of knowledge character preparation necessary to receive something that touches the whole human being in his entire soul. And so the knowledge cultivated in such mysteries, in such secret societies, was kept strictly secret. Even today, one can still see that, apart from secondary considerations, which were also valid and which I need not elaborate on, there were good reasons to protect this higher knowledge from the general public, one might say, from desecration by the general public. There were good reasons for this. And with regard to the development of spiritual science today, I would like to hint at some of these reasons.
For when one enters the spiritual world from the sensory world in the manner described yesterday, one is faced above all with the task of crossing a certain boundary. One can make good use of an expression that many who understood such things have used: one has to cross the threshold, as they always said, into the spiritual world. This expression means something. It is not merely a figurative expression. It means something insofar as the science of the spiritual, the knowledge of the spiritual, when it really approaches the human being seriously and the human being connects with it seriously, brings concepts, ideas, representations, and views into the human being that are now really quite different from the representations and views one has about the outer sensory world. One can already say: those who are so obsessed with accepting only what is habitually considered to be the truth in relation to the outer sensory world will find that when truths from the spiritual world are communicated, they initially sound paradoxical; they sound so different from the truths about the sensory world that they may seem paradoxical, or, as some would say in common parlance, fantastical, confused, perhaps even crazy. This stems from the fact that one is completely mistaken if one believes that the spiritual world, which underlies our sensory world, is merely a kind of continuation of this sensory world; that it basically looks the same, only that it is somewhat more nebulous, somewhat more misty, somewhat finer, somewhat thinner than the sensory world.
No, one must become familiar with the fact that one must experience as truth what is new, unheard of in the sensory world, paradoxical to the sensory world, if one wants to enter into the real spiritual world. Therefore, entering into the real spiritual world is not only striking, but often evokes feelings in people which, especially when they are standing on the border between the sensory and spiritual worlds, are similar to the fear and shyness that are always present when people enter unknown territory. For those who have only had experiences in the sensory world, the spiritual world is unknown territory. And so it happens that at the threshold to the spiritual world, two things can flow together in human perceptions: on the one hand, there is what must still be recognized as truth in relation to the sensory world, what must be recognized as the sequence of facts, as the lawful course of events; but then, from the other side of the world, from the spiritual side, something strikes us that is subject to different laws, that proceeds in a completely different way, that makes a paradoxical impression. At first, these two things can clash.
But this puts thinking, puts the soul's perception, in a position that places high demands on common sense, that places high demands on a healthy ability to judge the whole situation. One must be well prepared in common sense, well prepared in judgment, if one wants to distinguish between illusion and fantasy on the one hand and spiritual reality on the other. Anyone who really studies the books I mentioned yesterday and today will see that the method communicated there for penetrating the spiritual world is designed in such a way that the health of the senses, the intellect, and reason is not impaired or weakened in any way, but on the contrary is enhanced and promoted. Everything that is nebulous mysticism, everything that is connected with a dreamlike, hypnotized penetration into the spiritual world, is the very opposite of what healthy spiritual research strives for.
However, this does not prevent malicious people—and they are just malicious people—from coming along again and again and declaring: Spiritual science methods hypnotize people, suggest all kinds of things to them – while nothing can contribute more decisively to protecting people from all hypnotic influences, from all suggestion, from all unauthorized influence of one person on another, than what true spiritual science methods, which set people free, which make people stand on their own two feet, can give them. Again and again, the spiritual scientific method works in such a way that it embodies the following principle:
In my book The Riddle of Man, I pointed out that one can say: just as human beings wake up from sleep, in which they have only a very dull consciousness, to ordinary waking consciousness, so they can wake up from this ordinary consciousness, in which they find themselves in ordinary life, to spiritual vision. It is like awakening into a spiritual world, which one acquires through the spiritual scientific method. But just as ordinary daily life can never be healthy if one does not take precautions to ensure that one's sleep is healthy, so entering the spiritual world cannot be healthy unless one first develops a healthy everyday life based on genuine reality and practical wisdom, unless one has first disciplined oneself to the point of being a person who is equal to reality in the outer sphere of life. Awakening to seeing can only come from a healthy daily life, just as awakening to a healthy daily life can only come from healthy sleep, not from sleep disturbed by illness. Everything that constitutes precautions in ordinary life, through which people alienate themselves from this life, through which they become strangers to reality, everything that people seek so much out of foolishness, out of prejudice, in a false asceticism, in a false turning away from life, in a mystical twilight or even mystical darkness, all this must be banished from spiritual science. It is precisely the right standing in life, the eye-to-eye confrontation with practical reality, that is the best preparation for entering the spiritual world.
But then, when one has acquired a healthy sense of external reality, when one is not a dreamer in this external reality, a fantasist, or a person unfit for life, when, in other words, one has developed common sense and sound judgment, then one can also distinguish illusions from reality in the border areas between the sensory and spiritual worlds, where the threshold between the two worlds lies. That is why, in earlier times, to which I have just referred, people were strictly convinced that those who joined such associations striving for higher knowledge were truly prepared in such a way that they could really withstand the stronger struggle that common sense had to face at the threshold between the sensory and spiritual worlds. For those who do not have this common sense will be confused and repelled by the apparent paradox, by that which confronts them in a way that is completely different from anything in the sensory world. they will soon abandon the whole thing, as one abandons a burning coal when one has been burned by it, and they will feel disappointed and, while they have been seeking to enter the spiritual world, will perhaps become more and more opposed to all spiritual striving. These older associations wanted to be sure of their people.
Such associations have continued their work into our time; they still exist. Anthroposophy does not belong to them; Anthroposophy reckons that in modern times, to a far greater extent than was the case in earlier ages, everything that concerns human beings must be subject to public scrutiny. We hear, with some justification, that there are efforts to replace even secret diplomacy with public diplomacy. The spirit of the times is moving toward openness. But it is precisely this spirit of the times that anthroposophy lives by. And only insofar as, I would say, for the reasons discussed earlier, because certain preparations are necessary if one wants to understand what comes later, only on the basis of such prerequisites do some things still have the appearance of the old institutions, but nevertheless strive to place themselves completely and utterly in the public sphere. For only this can make anthroposophy a member, an element of modern spiritual life, which must come about if anthroposophy thus places itself in the public sphere.
But it is not only what I have just indicated that is peculiar to anthroposophy, but also this inner soul experience itself, that which enables one to see in the spiritual world as one sees in the physical world with the physical senses. This requires that one be able to relate to concepts, views, ideas, and everything that fills the soul in a different way than one relates to external reality. And in this area, too, natural science has produced conceptual constructs which, in the form in which they have become popular through natural science, are unusable in spiritual science. They are unusable because the spiritual researcher very soon comes to the following conclusion: as soon as one approaches spiritual facts and spiritual beings, a concept, an idea, a notion is actually never anything other than an image, a photograph that one takes in the physical world, say, of a tree. If you take a picture of a tree from one side and a picture from another side, a picture from a third side — these pictures all look different. They are all of the same tree, but they all look different. And only by taking these images from different sides and holding them together can one gain an idea, an experience of reality. But people don't like that today. Today, people like limited concepts. They like it when they have a concept, they just “have” it! Then they want to stick with it. Spiritual science cannot do that. Spiritual science describes things from a wide variety of perspectives; it describes them from one perspective and knows that it is only giving a one-sided picture, a photograph from a certain point of view, so to speak; it then describes them from another perspective, from a third perspective, from a third point of view.
Yes, what is even more striking is the following. If you really want to become a humanities scholar, you have to be deeply imbued with the sentence so beautifully expressed by Goethe: “The problem lies between two opposing opinions.” If you want to know the truth about an intellectual being or an intellectual fact, you must not only know what can be said in favor of it, but also what can be said against it.
Those of you who have heard me speak on many occasions will know that, in keeping with the spirit of spiritual science, it is my habit, when this or that question arises, not only to say what speaks for a particular thing, but also to say what speaks against it. And I always do this, especially in more intimate lectures on higher areas of anthroposophy. So that those who read my writings will find in them not only what can be used to substantiate certain spiritual facts and spiritual beings, but also what can be used to refute them. Only in this way can one gain a true experience.
This, however, has led to strange things in the field of anthroposophy, things that can really only be experienced in this field under today's circumstances. It is precisely from the ranks of the followers that there are people who have placed themselves in this category, who have not found their place in it, who have not sought work in relation to spiritual science, but rather personal interests. They fell away and became opponents. All they had to do was copy what is written in my own writings, what appears in my own lectures, and then they could refute anthroposophy in the most beautiful way. It is precisely in this field that one has the best opportunity to “refute.” One does not even need to invent one's own refutations, one only needs to copy the refutations that are already available! This has indeed happened in the most comprehensive sense in recent times. In general, what often appears as opposition to anthroposophy from those who were also supporters shows strange characteristics, namely the characteristic that it rarely deals with the factual, but always with what leads away from the factual, to the personal, and takes on forms — I say this only as an aside —, in relation to which refutation is actually quite superfluous, because those who put these things forward know best themselves that they are saying things that are not true.
But what I have just indicated is a fundamental characteristic of anthroposophical research: to illuminate things from the most diverse angles. Only in this way can one acquire the inner discipline of the soul that is necessary if one wants to connect with spiritual realities rather than merely living in abstract concepts. In this respect, an inner discipline of the soul is necessary, of which those who educate themselves solely through natural science based on external nature have no idea. They have no idea because they think they can simply transfer certain concepts and ideas gained from external nature to the spiritual realm, as they consider them to be universally valid. But this is not possible.
I would like to clarify this with the following. Admittedly, this immediately introduces paradoxical concepts, but “paradoxical” only in relation to some of the prejudices that prevail today, even if they are strongly believed. I am thinking, for example, of a lecture given by Professor Dewar in London at the beginning of this century. Professor Dewar, in a similar way to how geologists and geognostics approach the beginning of the Earth's formation, attempted to form ideas about the possible end of the Earth based on physics and chemistry. These ideas are entirely in line with genuine science and are extremely ingenious. If one follows how the Earth gradually cools down, how the conditions of the individual substances on Earth change with the cooling of the Earth, one arrives at certain insights that are valid for the limits within which one observes. Then one extends them and says: What will all this be like when millions of years have passed? Well, one can be a very intelligent physicist, a very intelligent chemist, and then one gets the idea: it is so cold, yes, so cold that actually no human being with their current constitution can live on Earth anymore; but nevertheless, one calculates this as a state of the Earth; one calculates what, for example, milk will look like then. The milk will then be solid; it cannot be liquid at that time; it will have a completely different color. You can find certain substances, such as protein, with which you can then coat the walls so that they glow and you can read newspapers. The professor of physics and chemistry has drawn all this out as a beautiful idea. But those who have trained themselves on the basis of spiritual scientific methods must deny themselves such ideas through inner soul discipline; they cannot arrive at them. For how are they actually gained?
Now I come to what is paradoxical in relation to common ideas: If one observes how a child's vital functions change, say, from the age of seven or eight to the age of nine, one gets a corresponding picture. One can then calculate how the organs must look in 150 years under the influence of this change. This is exactly the same method by which Professor Dewar calculated the final state of the earth. However, when you apply it to humans, you realize that this organism will no longer exist in 150 years! And then you don't consider that what is not applicable to humans is not applicable to the great macrocosm of the Earth, and that the Earth will also die before the state that was calculated in a very ingenious way from physics occurs. Similarly, one could calculate from the changes between the seventh and ninth years what the child was like 180 years ago — but it wasn't there yet! Geologists do this for the Earth; they calculate what the Earth looked like so many millions of years ago. But — the Earth wasn't born yet at that time.
This sounds paradoxical, and as a spiritual researcher, one has to introduce concepts into today's world that already sound paradoxical, that may already be considered crazy by some. But what is experienced in spiritual science is precisely something that can provide soul discipline. And in order to be able to empathize with the spiritual, one needs a discipline of the soul that can also reject certain concepts, that does not make calculations according to the same pattern that one would use if one were to say: The person standing before me today was the same person who existed 200 years ago. The calculation would be based on exactly the same pattern.
I know very well how paradoxical what I am saying is. But if one does not point out such paradoxes, one cannot draw attention to what is so disturbing to some people. When one crosses the threshold of the spiritual world, one cannot emphasize enough how much common sense must be applied when crossing from the physical to the spiritual world. But if one acquires such discipline of the soul, if one comes to connect with reality in this way, then, because such things affect the whole person, what the soul gains from this becomes an achievement of the whole soul; it becomes disposition, it becomes fundamental character, it becomes the essence of the soul.
But then the soul becomes capable of judging how its conception, what it has to form as an opinion, as an idea, as a worldview, relates to other conceptions, to other worldviews. Then the soul becomes inclined to understand how its own worldview relates to other ways of perceiving the world. Then one comes to pursue what is present in other currents of thought, feeling, and experience, not merely to criticize them, but above all to empathize with them. Such behavior then expands into a possibility of judging all historical and contemporary developments in relation to human spiritual life.
And only when one grasps the attitude, this essential element in the human soul, from the deepest impulses of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, can one judge the relationship of this spiritual science to religious confessions. Anthroposophy seeks above all to understand these religious confessions. An attempt is made to empathize with them, not with a critical spirit, but by accepting them as they present themselves in order to understand their raison d'être, their value in existence. This enables anthroposophy to pass a fair judgment on past spiritual currents in a completely different sense than other schools of thought often do.
Let us first take what is called Thomistic philosophy in the Middle Ages, or Aristotle's philosophy in Greece, in a more abstract field. Anyone who today is a philosopher or scientist in the conventional sense will say: Well, Aristotle is an old, outdated man; Thomism, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, belongs to the Middle Ages. Anthroposophy knows that something special must emerge from the conditions and impulses of today's zeitgeist; it does not want to impose on the present era what was right for an earlier epoch. But it understands, from the conditions of those epochs, what only those epochs could grant. And it understands this not merely externally, but internally, in its essence; it understands it so essentially that it says to itself: in Thomistic philosophy, which was essentially a servant, a companion of Christianity at that time, there is something that could only have emerged from the spirit of that time. If one wants to become competent, one must find one's way into what can only arise from the spirit of that time, not from the spirit of our time. Anthroposophy therefore does not regard engaging with Thomism as a merely historical study, but regards what one gains through Thomism as something that can only be gained through it. This is very important. For it does not produce that vague, nebulous tolerance that is so often spoken of today, but rather that inner, understanding tolerance which, while based entirely on development, does not regard what has once developed as something obsolete, but allows it to remain in its place, allowing it to continue to develop in its evolving reality. Some things in nature, some things in spiritual life, must develop like plants that have only a one-year existence: they develop this one-year existence, then develop another one-year existence. Other plants, however, develop from one year to the next, which is there as wood; they are perennial plants. So it is in spiritual culture. Some things must continue in spiritual culture, must be taken up in later times by those who truly want to feel solidarity with the overall development of humanity. But in this way one can also get an idea of the relationship of anthroposophy to religious confessions, to those religious confessions which believe, but only out of misunderstanding, that anthroposophy opposes them, opposes religious life in general as something that is another religion.
No, that is not the case. Anthroposophy knows very well that it can never become a religion, because it understands the development of time in concrete terms, because it knows that just as a 60-year-old cannot become a child again, so humanity in the age in which it now finds itself and in which it will be in the future cannot form religions out of itself. The formation of religions belonged to other ages. New religions no longer arise. Therefore, anthroposophy is particularly suited to understanding the absolute value and absolute permanence of the religious creeds that have formed, that have formed in their own age. Anthroposophy would misunderstand itself if it believed it could establish a new religious creed. But religious creeds arose because people who did not yet have within themselves the impulses and forces that drive them toward anthroposophy — which people today have much more than they believe — because people who did not yet have this, manifestations, impressions from the spiritual world, religions arose that retain their value and can be understood precisely by anthroposophy, which is now also working its way up into the spiritual world in its own way.
Thus, when properly understood, religion and anthroposophy can meet. Anthroposophy works from the human being, through the development of human forces, into the spirit, into that realm in which religion places its revelations. Can one actually be so unreligious as to believe that one has received religion as a truth from divine heights and that one must fear for it when human beings now strive to work their way up to the truth of the spiritual world with the powers that must in any case also come to them from the deity in a religious sense? Does it not seem to be truly religious from the outset not to be afraid when one knows that one has revelations of truth in religion, not to be afraid that the truth will already correspond to the truth that man himself finds with his spirit-given, spirit-bestowed powers?
This is what one should consider in the deepest sense if one wants to judge correctly the relationship between religion and anthroposophy. In earlier times, human beings were not so predisposed, not so inclined, that they needed another path besides the religious path to ascend into the spiritual world. Just as people in the Middle Ages did not need the Copernican worldview, they did not need anthroposophy. Today they need it because humanity is evolving. But what has once been given to humanity, what has entered into humanity from certain powers that were only present in certain ages, retains its value.
In this respect, however, there is a complete contrast between anthroposophy and the modern spiritual current, which I described earlier as scientific, and of which I had to say that it owes its most brilliant results, its value, precisely to the fact that its methods are not suitable for leading to the spiritual. But what has been seen in the field of natural science? Certain people with a scientific mindset have allowed themselves, I would say, to be overwhelmed by the deep, suggestive impression made by the brilliant scientific methods applied to external nature, and have built a creed upon this. Do we not see how a brilliant scientific thinker, David Friedrich Strauss, wanted to construct a religion out of natural science itself? Do we not see how even Eduard von Hartmann speaks of a “self-destruction of Christianity” and wants to establish a religion of the future, purely out of reason, purely out of the reason of philosophy?
Anthroposophy could not come to such errors because completely different forces lead to anthroposophy and because it would consider the attempt to found a religion to be equivalent to wanting to do the same thing at a certain age, say 50, that a child does. Whereby what the child does need not be any less valuable than what the old person does. Anthroposophy knows that the time for forming religions is over. Therefore, it will use its powers to understand religions, to lead people deeper and deeper into the understanding of religions.
Now it must be said: just as the soul strives into the spiritual world anthroposophically from its own powers, namely from the powers of cognition — but not only from the powers of cognition of the head, but from the powers of cognition of the whole soul — so the religions did not strive into it. They strove in such a way that one can say: while anthroposophy proceeds from the human being and strives upward into the spiritual world, religions proceeded from the assumption that they would receive what had been given to them as a gracious revelation. But this has a different effect on the human soul; it fills the human soul differently than what is created from one's own powers. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is a science. But what works there as a truth of faith affects the soul differently than a truth of knowledge, as anthroposophy must also be. One cannot immediately make anthroposophy into a religion. But from a truly understood anthroposophy, a truly genuine, true, unfeigned religious need will also arise. For the human soul is not something uniform, but rather something multifaceted. The human soul needs different paths to ascend on the path to its goal. The human soul needs not only the path through the powers of cognition, the human soul also needs to be imbued and warmed by that way of relating to the spiritual world which is present in religious confession, in truly religious feeling.
One thing was always strange. Over the years, I have received many letters here from Switzerland that always had a very specific tone. These letters said something like the following: I can understand very well what you want to achieve with your anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, and I can also see the justification for entering the spiritual world in this way — not everyone writes this, but there are those who do — but I find one thing lacking in this spiritual science: I miss the fact that it leads into Christian experiences in such an inner way, as — and now this or that sectarian direction is cited — ."
Yes, one wants to express a deficiency in this spiritual science, this anthroposophy, in this way. In my view, the expression of this deficiency is always the expression of a particular advantage. For one demands of anthroposophy something that, by its very nature, it does not want to be. But through its very nature, it also wants to give the other person the right. People resent it when you leave another path open for them. That is the peculiar thing. And so pastors and priests today resent it when you leave open a path that anthroposophy itself does not want to take. Then come refutations from that side, saying: You say something completely different about Christ than we do — one says nothing different; one only says something more detailed — I cannot go into this in more detail now, due to the brevity of time — so you are not on the right path; you must be refuted. Yes, but if the situation were such that one said precisely what he does not say, and allowed him his right to say what he can know, what lies on his path. He attacks one precisely for the sake of what one wants to allow him to do, for the sake of what one does everything to enable him to stand in his place. On the one hand, people resent you for not solving the other person's problem because you leave it to him. If you said something else, they would resent you too. And so the paradox arises, the very strange thing arises, that you are refuted with what is precisely the innermost nerve, what the other person should feel as a blessing! Because anthroposophy does not want to interfere with the specific nature of religious beliefs, because it gives them the right to work in their own sphere, it says something else that is not said in this sphere. It does what it does in order to demonstrate the legitimacy of religious beliefs. It obviously cannot do more to allow religious confessions to be valid in their own sphere. And that is precisely why it is attacked. It is demanded that it should take over the task of religion. In this area, a whole series of clear ideas should actually replace unclear ideas.
It can be said that a certain beginning has been made, a very good beginning, in the excellent work that Ricarda Huch has written about “Luther's Faith.” Among many other excellent things that can be gained from this book, one also gets an idea of the very different coloring of the path of the mind that religious confession takes, as opposed to the path of knowledge itself. The nature of religious truth is something that speaks from every page of this book, among other excellent things. Now, however, in our present time, when deeper truths are spoken, they are usually trivialized, because everyone believes that they do not need much to delve into the depths of this or that matter, that they are already complete. Ricarda Huch actually said something beautiful in connection with the way Nietzsche followers sprang up everywhere a few years ago, because people believed they had what it takes to be like him, as described by this or that person. People don't want to work their way up, they don't want to struggle to the top, but above all, when someone describes a superhuman, they want to be a superhuman right away! And so you saw the “superhumans” running around, running around everywhere in large numbers: they didn't even have the makings of a respectable guinea pig, they ran around as “blonde beasts” in Nietzsche's sense.
One way, as demanded by the present, up into the spiritual world, which comes to the aid of the aspirations of religious confessions, of religious experience in general, is anthroposophy. People also judge the external course of history far too superficially. They think that religion no longer has the influence it had in earlier times in wider circles, and that religion must be restored to what it was in ancient times. They believe that they are also doing religion a favor by fighting what they consider to be its opponents. They do not go into the depths. If one were to examine the truly deeper reasons and study why, for example, in 1873 it was stated that only one-third of the population of France, rural and urban combined, was religious in the ecclesiastical sense, only one-third, two-thirds were non-believers; if one were to take the matter seriously, if one were to study these things, one would say to oneself: It is not for these superficial reasons, but out of deep soul impulses that a lack of interest has arisen, not only in individual religions, but in spiritual reality in general. A materialistic age has dawned.
Anthroposophy knows the following about the course of human development: while one stream of development is taking place, another is taking place underground, more invisibly, unnoticed. For example, while the tendency toward materialism, spiritlessness, and denial of the spirit is running its course, needs and deep interests in finding a way into the spiritual world are developing in the subconscious—people just don't know anything about it—in the subconscious depths of human souls. And so, with his head, man could be a David Friedrich Strauss, a denier of God and spirit; and in his sleeping soul, in the soul of which he knew nothing, forces developed which, however, can only be developed through a direct path, a direct path of knowledge, namely the anthroposophical path, only if one finds it. But then, on this detour, one finds one's way back to religious belief, whereas one leaves religious belief behind if one adheres solely to the dazzling advances of natural science.
How did those scientific movements which, I would say, developed solely under the discipline of natural science, actually relate to religious development? Quite differently from anthroposophy. Anthroposophy seeks to understand religious beliefs. Because religious beliefs speak of the spirit, and anthroposophy, as the result of its research, knows spiritual facts and spiritual beings, it encounters religious beliefs. Other schools of thought speak differently. I would like to cite the example of the psychologist Ebbinghaus: he investigates how religion arose; from his mind, trained in natural science, from his capacity for judgment, he investigates how religion arose. Now, I will briefly summarize what he says: In ancient times, when people did not yet have the enlightened thinking of the present, they found that they were exposed to dangers in the outer world from rain, thunderstorms, and the like; they found that there were hostile forces. Out of fear, they invented demonic spirit beings. Again, they found that they could not overcome these forces because they were too weak. Out of necessity, they invented gods to help them.
Well, such things sound quite nice, and those who are accustomed to today's common ideas understand these things so easily. But it is a completely false assumption to say again and again that the natural man, like a child, is inclined to personify and animate the corner of a table; when he bumps into it, he hits the corner of the table. He does not animate the corner of the table at all, but does not yet know the difference between the dead and the living, and out of an inner urge he hits the dead thing; it does not animate anything. Likewise, the primitive man does not animate anything, but follows his instincts; and it is not true that he always tries to explain what is hostile or harmful to him by inventing a demon. I would like to know: if a useless boy somehow becomes dangerous to a wild man, I do not believe that he immediately invents a demon with which he then defends himself against the boy, but rather he beats him up.
These things seem paradoxical again. But they can only be judged correctly by spiritual science or anthroposophy. Spiritual science knows how to grasp the facts in the right way, namely that the child is not actually predisposed to religion, any more than the wild man is. One sees something childish in religion. But it is precisely the child who is not predisposed to religion; it must first be educated or brought up to religion. This is how human beings have been brought up in the course of human development. Ebbinghaus once said that fear and need are the mothers of religion. He then went on to say, “Churches fill up and pilgrimages increase in times of war and devastating epidemics.” I would like to know whether churches also fill up during epidemics and times of war among those who are entirely materialistic from the outset. They only fill up with those who already have some kind of religious disposition. But this does not come from fear and hardship; it comes from the fact that human beings experience the spiritual in their souls. In ancient times, they experienced it more instinctively. Today, they can experience it more consciously. Because human beings gradually develop the ability to experience the spiritual, they see in the sensory world a reflection of the spiritual.
If one wants to describe the connection that the human soul has with the environment when it encounters the spirit with its spiritual organs, but only wants to describe it by analogy, one can say: it is a kind of compassion. Compassion is known from the moral sense; it is a kind of love. The connection with the spiritual world can be compared to the feeling of love. And so anthroposophy can say: even if primitive religions arose out of need and concern, they have been filled with spiritual content, with concepts and ideas and notions of the spiritual world, because human beings live in such a world. Perfect religions, especially the religion that is the synthesis, the union of the other religions, did not develop out of fear and need; they developed out of what can be called spiritualized love, growing together with the spiritual world. It is not fear and need, but love that actually produces perfect religious beliefs.
So it must be said: those who allow themselves to be dominated only by materialistic-scientific ideas misunderstand the whole relationship between religion and cognitive truth. It can be repeated again and again: if one stands firmly on the ground of religious truth, then one can assume that when human beings approach the spiritual world from another side, understanding and even support are possible. And so we will experience more and more — even if people do not want to admit it today — that while religions felt weakened and religious confessions felt paralyzed under the influence of human impulses expressed in the modern scientific worldview, they will be recognized in their value, dignity, and importance for humanity when people are able to approach the spirit through spiritual science. Friends of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science should be the representatives of religion.
They will become so. For the conflict between religion and science does not arise from certain religious presuppositions. This conflict between religion and science arose because, in essence, the representatives of religious denominations in earlier times also represented science. This fact must be acknowledged. One need not go too far back in the history of human development to find that those who were the representatives of religion were also those who taught people the secular sciences. They were connected with these secular sciences. Only in the course of time did the external sciences, which follow natural science, emancipate themselves from religion. This emancipation has an effect on spiritual world events.
It is only human nature that understanding of such things lags behind. It was not until 1822 that the Catholic Church repealed the decrees condemning the teachings of Copernicus and Galileo. From then on, Catholics were allowed to believe in the Copernican worldview. Perhaps it will take centuries, if it should come to that, to prohibit Catholics from believing in repeated earthly lives, for such a decree, such an opinion, to be repealed. But this repeal will come. For what is truly human religious experience will not conflict with repeated earthly lives, any more than it conflicts with the Copernican worldview.
Again and again, I must recall on this occasion that priest who was also a university professor and who, when he took over the rectorship at the University of Vienna, said in a speech about Galileo as a Catholic priest: A properly understood religion will not rebel against scientific progress; on the contrary, religious truth will feel firmly supported by the fact that it can say: When astronomy points out into the vastness of the starry world and discovers its laws, this also happens out of the glory and power of the divine being and divine existence. Copernicus did not contribute to the undermining of religion, but through his work contributed to the glory of the revelation of the divine being. —- These are very different words from those of priests, which arise again and again out of misunderstanding and which turn against what must occur in the history of human development.
I have already pointed out how strange it is that people are required not only to accept as Christianity what one or another representative of this or that denomination says about Christ Jesus, for example, but also not to say anything else. Experience shows that anthroposophy cannot truly be accused of interfering with any religious confession. But it must recognize something of true significance for the entire universe, namely the important, most important turning point in the history of the development of earthly existence, which is marked by Christ Jesus. It has much more to say about the Christ impulse than has been said so far. People resent the fact that it wants to contribute even more to the foundation and understanding of Christianity than the official representatives do. Just consider how strange such a struggle actually is. Just consider how little one is up to the tasks of the times if one is so unwilling to understand that anthroposophy can never disturb true religious belief, but can only deepen it. Then, of course, one needs an attitude such as that expressed by Bishop Ireland in the words: "Religion needs new forms and ways of understanding in order to get in touch with modern times. We need apostles of thought and action.
Yes, even within religious confessions there are those who are able to feel and sense the signs of the times. They even demand that a different path be made available to them. For they understand that if humanity loses interest in the spirit, then interest in religion must also be lost. But if humanity gains an interest in the spiritual in a way that is in accordance with its present development, then religious denominations must also come to the right understanding. Therefore, we can always observe that while in recent times people have often been dissuaded from their experience of this or that religious creed by one-sidedly developed natural science, they are led back to it again by the spirit being permeated by anthroposophical spiritual science.
If one really wanted to understand seriously how the working of the spirit in the individual religious beliefs can be understood by anthroposophy, how it can be understood that, based on these conditions, one religious denomination arose and, based on those conditions, another religious denomination arose, how it is able to assess the value of the individual religious denominations with its means — one would never want to fight anthroposophy from this side.
Today, people like to dwell on abstractions. They say that anthroposophy seeks the kernel of truth in all religions, that it actually makes all religions equal. This would mean that it is not a true history of development; it would be like something that could never be done in external reality, if you had salt, pepper, and sugar on the table and said: “These are all food ingredients, they are all essentially the same” — well, then you put pepper in your coffee instead of sugar. That is not the case; it is an external assessment to say that anthroposophy wants to recognize the core of truth in all religions as roughly the same. Rather, it seeks to understand how one religion developed out of another. It seeks to understand how the religious creed that wants to satisfy all people on earth in one spirit is essentially the synthesis, the summarizing connection of the various religious creeds distributed among the individual peoples. It knows, with Frobenius, how to speak of ethnic religions and of the religion of humanity.
I would have much more to say if I wanted to combat all the misunderstandings and misinterpretations that accumulate more and more out of superficiality, sometimes out of ill will, sometimes also out of good will, in order to condemn anthroposophy, especially from the point of view of religious beliefs; I would have to cite many examples if I wanted to point out all of these misunderstandings. The relationship between religious life and anthroposophy can therefore only become clear when one understands how anthroposophy affects people, how anthroposophy awakens people to the spiritual world and how this enables them to feel what they can experience in community, in religious community. If anthroposophy is attacked by religions, then it must defend itself. Follow where anthroposophy becomes polemical, and you will always see: in defense. Anthroposophy rarely becomes aggressive or offensive; only where there is something misunderstood that must be removed, as a misunderstanding must be removed. Otherwise, however, anthroposophy never becomes aggressive; it only does so when it has to defend itself. It does, however, have to defend itself very often: for example, when, as I said at the beginning of my remarks today, people repeatedly refuse to engage with what anthroposophy itself is, what can be found in it, if one does not seriously, honestly and sincerely familiar with it, but when people create a caricature and then fight their own caricatured image, which in fact does not really affect those who assert their anthroposophical research out of their innermost conviction!
I did not want to discuss the relationship between anthroposophy and religious beliefs in detail, but rather from the whole, total spirit of the anthroposophical worldview. I wanted to show that for those who understand anthroposophy, there can be no question of any religious experience being disturbed by this anthroposophy. What I said yesterday also applies in this regard: I would prefer to call the worldview that has emerged for me from Goethe's healthy world concepts anthroposophical; I would prefer to call it Goetheanism, and if it were up to me, I would prefer to call the building in Dornach the Goetheanum.
Everything that can be found on the basis of anthroposophy actually always leads one to say: You are only continuing what this unique spirit has thrown into human development. In many respects, he has remained at the elementary ideas. But one is not a true believer in Goetheanism, a believer in the worldview that came about through Goethe, that Goethe brought to life, if one looks at what Goethe himself wrote down from a historical or external biographical perspective; Rather, one is a true adherent of Goethe's worldview when one is able to actively immerse oneself in this worldview and continue to develop it further and further.
Goethe was a Goethean here in the physical world until 1832. He himself would express himself very differently today than he did in his own time. But when something is healthy, certain basic impulses, certain basic forces remain, which also carry a worldview from one epoch to another. When, I would say, what was there in embryo blossoms again in new bloom and new fruit, then it may point to this solidarity of the whole development of humanity, indeed, that it takes up certain basic impulses. And so I may also conclude these reflections today by placing Goethe's confession, which is well known and which I have often expressed, at the end.
Goethe, observing what art and religion can be for human beings, but also what science makes of human beings, considers the human being who does not allow himself to be influenced by pseudo-science, false religion, or false art, but rather by true art, true science, and true religion. He considers the human being and then says to himself these deeply meaningful words:
He who possesses science and art,
Also has religion.
He who does not possess those two,
Let him have religion.
Applied to the case of anthroposophy, I may perhaps continue this Goethean saying in the spirit of today:
Those who possess anthroposophy, spiritual science as it blossoms from it, also have religion. I only fear that those who do not want to possess anthroposophy, or at least its spirit and meaning, will no longer have religion in the future.