Freedom, Immortality and Social Life

GA 72 — 24 November 1917, Basel

4. The Science of the Supernatural and Moral-Social Ideas

If I were to describe a fundamental characteristic of anthroposophically oriented spiritual-scientific endeavors, I would say: Such a fundamental characteristic is the striving for ideas, concepts, and notions about the world that are rooted in reality in a much deeper sense, or, I might say, are permeated by reality, than the concepts, notions, and ideas that are rightly characteristic of the modern scientific worldview. This may certainly seem very strange at first, since many people believe that these scientific ideas are precisely those that are most intensely rooted in reality. However, even if we disregard what has been presented in the three lectures on spiritual science held this year and look only at what insightful natural scientists themselves have said about what natural science has to say about the nature of what underlies natural phenomena, we will come to the conclusion that even such natural scientists themselves are clear about this: With the usual scientific ideas, which are so fruitful in their field, one cannot penetrate into the essence, into the deeper reasons of reality. How much have natural scientists themselves spoken about the limits of scientific knowledge! And I presented a characteristic fact in the first of these lectures, the fact that one of Haeckel's most important students, Oscar Hertwig, himself produced a fundamentally significant book in recent years in which he shows the impossibility—he, the natural scientist, the biologist! —using precisely the scientific concepts that celebrated their greatest triumphs in the second half of the 19th century—to somehow approach the essence of life phenomena.

As long as it is merely a matter of penetrating the essence of nature itself, this limitation of scientific imagination cannot come to light. But it does become apparent when man wants to apply the soul forces he uses for scientific knowledge to moral and social life in the broadest sense. What in science may remain a mere error or a mere one-sidedness that can be discussed, that can actually be corrected conceptually or through experience over time, becomes harmful when it is taken as the basis for work in moral and social life, which seeks to penetrate the shaping of human community and society, and leads to minor or major catastrophes.

One of the greatest catastrophes for human experience is the one we are currently facing. As strange as it may seem to some at present, to those who are able to grasp things in their deeper context, it is clear how what is now passing through humanity as such a tragic event is connected with the inadequate moral and social ideas that have been developing for centuries and that came to particular prominence in the 19th century, which was so glorious in other respects. Mere science, mere knowledge, mere theory corrects in a painless way when inadequate concepts are introduced. Reality corrects through pain and catastrophe when actions are introduced that arise from inadequate knowledge and understanding of this reality.

Now, if we want to apply anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to moral and social life, we will have to come up with seemingly remote ways of thinking, remote only because they still seem very, very foreign to the present, to current habits of thought, because of the prejudices with which they are met. I must start from the point of drawing attention to how the view of human beings, particularly under the influence of the modern worldview, has become relatively one-sided, one-sided to such an extent that even far-sighted natural scientists are now trying other approaches than those on which so much hope was placed in the 19th century, in order to penetrate not only the purely natural side of human beings, but the whole, comprehensive human being, in all its essence. For only when his whole being is taken into account can it become a reality in social and moral life, and can any influence on social and moral life be of any benefit.

Now it might seem strange to say that in order to fully and completely consider human life, it is necessary not only to consider human beings as they act in their waking daily lives, in the life that unfolds through the observation of the senses, through the intellect that is based on sensory perception; but that, in order to consider the whole human being, one must also take into account the other side of life, which, in alternation with the waking state, continually occurs in human life, in human existence: sleep and what emerges from the life of sleep, the life of dreams. Indeed, insightful natural scientists are attempting to gain some insight into this dream life in the present day by taking into account the subconscious alongside what is available to human beings in their waking daytime consciousness. However, even when considering dream life alone, it becomes apparent that such attempts today, because they seek to distance themselves from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, work with inadequate means of knowledge.

What spiritual science is able to show in the ways described yesterday leads us to the realization that this sleep-dream life flows into the whole life of the human being in a much more intense way than is believed in a one-sided view of nature. And I must emphasize a statement that still seems paradoxical to most people today, but which will become more and more substantiated as we move from abstract concepts to concepts that are full of life and saturated with reality. I could present a comparative psychology of sleep through the plant and animal worlds into the human world. In doing so, it would become apparent how spiritual science — as has often been emphasized here — has a more difficult time than a one-sided view of nature, because it cannot start from “simple concepts,” as people so often like to say in their comfortable thinking, and thus encompass the whole world. Just as death — as we had to emphasize in an earlier lecture — is something different for the spiritual scientist in the plant, animal, and human kingdoms, so too is sleep, so too is dream life, something different for spiritual science in animal life and something different in human life. And spiritual science comes to the conclusion, by observing the real life of the soul through the means that have been discussed, that we can only have what we experience as human ego consciousness, this actual central, this actual core being of the human being, by experiencing sleep in alternation with waking daytime consciousness, as we experience it as human beings. The trivial view is, of course, that — as I have already mentioned here — human beings must sleep because they are tired. It is a trivial view, and the observation of the pensioner who sits down at a lecture or a concert and who is certainly not tired, but who falls asleep after the first five minutes, proves sufficiently by experience that the fatigue theory for sleep certainly does not work. Only those who understand sleep as an inner rhythm, as a rhythm of longer duration, as it must permeate life, and as we learned yesterday, such a rhythm of life is one of the links that correspond to the spiritual essence of human beings, can understand sleep.

In a sense, just as — I repeat what I said yesterday — a single note can never be music, but only in combination with other notes can the impression of melody or harmony arise, human beings must live their lives in such a way that one state of life follows another, that one state of life interacts with another over time. Rhythmic events must underlie the soul life of human beings. And it is also rhythmic events that become reality in the alternating states of sleep and wakefulness and in the dreams that play into them.

Now, people usually believe they understand this state of sleep, this “dream state,” when they observe it as it appears to ordinary observation. But it is precisely when we view it in this way that we will never arrive at a true understanding of the nature of the dream state or the sleep state as such. Only when we are able to grasp what spiritual science reveals as the eternal core of the human being will one be able to recognize that when human beings withdraw from waking daily life, when they sever every connection with physical life that leads to sensory and intellectual life, when they sink back into sleep or dreams, then that which belongs to their eternal essence is much more active within them than during the waking state. It is only that human beings, as they are in the present world period, are still little developed in relation to this eternal aspect of themselves. When this eternal nature does not have the foundation of physical life as in waking daily life, when this eternal nature is dependent on itself as in sleep, then what is revealed in this eternal nature points to states other than those that occur between birth and death, but in such a way that immediate perception and immediate observation cannot reveal its essence.

Therefore, spiritual science shows that the essence of dreams, for example, is misunderstood in the most manifold ways. It is misunderstood when one approaches dreams in the old superstitious way, when one focuses on the images in the dream, focuses on the content of the dream, and then believes that the "dream can make some kind of prophetic statement about life. But one also misunderstands the nature of dreams if one is a modern enlightened person and merely smiles at those who have seen something prophetic in dreams.

Spiritual science shows that it is true that there is something prophetic in dreams. What is at work in dreams, what is active within them, is indeed the essence within us that is so connected with our future that it still encompasses that which we carry through the gate of death. The powers of our eternal soul truly work prophetically in dreams. However, what emerges as images, that in which the dream is clothed, is a reminiscence from the past. One can say that dreams are falsified by their very nature, because human beings are incapable of truly working with what acts as their essence in dreams. They clothe what cannot yet come into their consciousness in the images that their bodies give them, certain sensory impressions, certain memories from their past lives. All this is a falsification of the dream, a mask of the dream. And just as it is superstition to attach any importance to the images that appear in dreams, there is a healthy core to the superstition that dreams have something prophetic about them. Only this prophetic aspect cannot come to light in the perception, in the ordinary observation of dreams. From a spiritual scientific point of view, dreams are something extremely significant.

But there is something else that is important. What is important is that the trivial opinion is that human beings live and dream at a certain time and at another time they are awake, fully awake. Spiritual science shows from its real observation of the soul that this is one of the most mistaken opinions one can hold. What lives in us as a state during dreaming, during sleeping, does not cease when we wake up; these states continue into our waking daily life; they are only drowned out by what waking daily life is. This waking daily life, which takes place in the imagination, is, in a sense, a bright light that drowns out what remains more subconscious, what runs beneath the stream of this waking daily consciousness. But while we feel our waking consciousness flowing in our soul, while we experience what flows through this stream, a subconscious, dark dream life continues to flow within us, permeating our entire waking life, and a sleep life continues to flow. We dream by developing feelings, emotions, and passions in addition to clear, bright ideas. In the first of the lectures given here a few weeks ago, I pointed out how what spiritual science seeks in connection has always been found by individual, exceptionally insightful people as in flashes of light, and I already referred at that time to a person with such flashes of light: the great aesthetician and philosopher Friedrich Theodor Vischer. When he wrote his essay on Volkelts' book “Die Traum-Phantasie” (The Dream Fantasy), he pointed out that no one understands passion, no one understands emotions, no one understands this strange life — we characterized it here yesterday in terms of its physical and spiritual aspects — who does not understand the dream being. Vischer, however, was declared a spiritualist for this assertion — one would not believe it, but it happened — by the very “intelligent,” by the very enlightened people of the present, of course. So we continue to dream in ordinary life. Only that when we wake up, we do not have the images of the dream, but what now takes place within us with the same brightness or darkness of consciousness, which has the same degree of reality as the dream: feelings, emotions, passions.

What lives in the life of imagination also lives in feelings, emotions, and passions. But it lives in them as the ideas live in dreams. Only when we develop a feeling, a passion, an emotion, be it good or bad, we do not become aware of the images that underlie them, as they underlie dreams, but rather the feeling, the emotion, the passion come to our dream consciousness.

Similarly, the basis of the will, this mysterious will of man, which is mysterious to a real view of the world, is sleep passing through waking consciousness. Why have there been repeated discussions throughout the course of human intellectual development about the nature of the will, about free will? Why have so many pros and cons been developed in this particular area? And why have philosophers never agreed on how the will actually lives in human beings, whether as free or unfree? The reason is that for ordinary waking daytime consciousness, what happens in the will is overslept. Even though we are quite clear in our ideas during our waking consciousness, even though we are, comparatively speaking, imbued with clarity, we sleep through the real process of volition, the real experience of volition. The deepest part of human nature lives in this volition, but it is not immediately present to our waking consciousness.

Now spiritual science shows that it looks into the supersensible world with what it calls contemplative consciousness. With what it calls imaginative and inspired knowledge in the first two stages, it penetrates into the world that is only available to ordinary consciousness in the ebbing and flowing, chaotic, one might say, in the sense I have just described, false ‘world of dreams’. For the human being with ordinary physical consciousness, as he stands in the outer sensory world, only the false dream paths flow and surge up from the world that is the world of the eternal, the essential, which surges and weaves beneath the outer sensory world. In imaginative supersensible knowledge, in inspired supersensible knowledge, spiritual science truly lifts up from these foundations the true form of what lives and weaves and surges there. And in intuitive knowledge, what is otherwise overslept, what is completely covered by the darkness of consciousness, is lifted up.

From this, however, you will see that human life is not governed solely by what is perceived by ordinary waking consciousness, but that because dreams and sleep also permeate waking daily life, human life is governed by what is real, what is truly real, what cannot be grasped by ordinary waking consciousness, cannot be grasped in concepts or ideas, but which can only be grasped in concepts and ideas by the contemplative consciousness. So let us look at social human life, let us look at human life as it is to be understood in social, moral, and political terms — we find that In this human life, according to reality, lives what is only dreamed, what is even overslept.

This is the mystery of social life, this is even the mystery of historical life, this is the mystery of everything that can be called the moral and social existence of human beings. History cannot be grasped with the concepts that have been developed in natural science, that arise from the habits of thinking in natural science and that belong entirely and solely to ordinary waking consciousness; moral and social life cannot be grasped with these concepts.

Yesterday I pointed out that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science should give back to human beings something they have lost. I said that in earlier centuries and millennia, the impulses that spiritual science must bring to consciousness were instinctively present. It is interesting to consider the intervention of modern science from this perspective of human development. If one asks about modern science and its significance in the way that is often done today, one arrives at a completely false concept. People always assume that natural science has become what it is because the concepts it provides correspond to pure truth, to absolute reality. Anyone who has insight into these matters knows that the following view is entirely true: those who are firmly grounded in natural science must at the same time be doubters and skeptics, because they know that these scientific concepts correspond only to a very superficial form of truth. These scientific concepts did not arise in human development because humans were stupid, foolish, and childish for thousands of years, as many believe who always start from the principle that we have “come so wonderfully far.” They did not arise because humans were childish for so long and have now just become intelligent and will remain intelligent—or at least think so— as long as the earth has existed. Rather, they have come about for a completely different reason.

If we look back to the times when a more instinctive understanding of nature and spirit existed simultaneously, humans at that time had concepts that they applied to nature in such a way that they spoke of natural events and natural beings as if they were also spiritual; and when they spoke of their own spirituality, materialistic ideas came into play. Even in our words “spirit” and “soul” there are still materialistic ideas, if we know these concepts very precisely historically. Man was still so closely connected with nature that he did not distinguish his soul more precisely from nature. The more recent development of human history means that humans have detached themselves from natural existence. And it is precisely through this detachment that they have come to establish such concepts of nature as those that represent the content of the modern scientific way of thinking, which no longer contains anything spiritual. In order to reach such a stage of development, humans have developed these scientific concepts: for their own sake. Not because this is the only truth that leads to salvation, which has finally been arrived at, but because human beings could only reach a certain level of freedom and self-determination by detaching themselves from nature and establishing concepts that are supposed to encompass nature and that cannot give anything to the soul.

When humans have such concepts of nature that they can no longer see their soul in these concepts, that they feel completely removed from nature, as was not the case in ancient times, but is the case under today's scientific worldview, then humans must be made all the more aware of their own inner powers, which we pointed out yesterday. Only then will his self-awareness be able to awaken in the right way. We are in a transitional stage. Natural science will bring about a spiritualism of the conception of soul life. Natural scientific materialism has the great merit of leading man to a high level of self-reflection because it strips nature of everything spiritual.

If one looks at the development of modern natural science in this way, it certainly appears different, it appears to be designed — if I may use Lessing's expression — for the “education of the human race,” then scientific concepts have been developed so that human beings no longer, as in the past, mystically imbue nature with soul themselves, but so that they free themselves in their view of nature from everything spiritual, but all the more must draw from the depths of their own being that which permeates this spiritual, that which can be seen as spiritualized in the spiritual. Then, especially if one is a spiritual researcher, one can see something great in the justified materialism of natural science. And it is only a slander of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to somehow set it in opposition to natural science. On the contrary, it points to the great and significant role that scientific development has played in the great educational process of the human race throughout the history of the earth.

But what appears as a scientific idea, what one takes in as a scientific idea, is, precisely because of what I have just explained, not suitable for encompassing this life, which we can call moral and social life, not suitable for forming concepts, ideas, and notions from which actions in moral and social life can arise. What human beings perceive as nature, they perceive in waking consciousness. What moral and social life is, what historical experience is, is not based on impulses such as those that waking daytime consciousness has, which are entirely suitable for grasping nature, but is based on ideal impulses such as those that otherwise only come to light through dream life.

And so spiritual science comes to the strange conclusion that the historical life of humanity, the social life of humanity, cannot be encompassed by a soul being who has been trained in natural science and now wants to write history according to the model of natural science, wants to view social science according to the model of natural science.

What attempts have been made, especially in the present day, under the conquests of natural science, to understand social life with the means of knowledge that have been successful in natural science!

One need only recall the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, who, in his comprehensive worldview, wanted to encompass everything factual in which human beings are placed, including the sociological structure of humanity. He wanted to apply the concepts of embryology, the concepts of embryonic life, to the structure of social life, to the structure of the moral and social life of human beings: Embryologically, the germ develops in such a way that, in its early stages, a distinction must be made between the ectoderm, from which the nervous system develops, the endoderm, from which other subordinate organs develop, and the mesoderm. From these three parts, the human embryo gradually develops and grows: these are the three parts of the germ. In moral and social development, Spencer also distinguishes three such impulses. He says: Just as the ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm are present in natural development, so too are they present in the social development of human beings. And he wants to show: just as the organic germ has the ectoderm, so in human development, that which is militarily and politically strong, but mainly militarily strong, develops from the ectoderm, from the social ectoderm; that which is working, farming, peace-loving, develops from the endoderm; and the merchant class, the commercial class, develops from the mesoderm. There is a parallelism between the layers of social and moral life and the layers of the organic germ. This view is based, of course, on the idea of the great English philosopher Herbert Spencer that, because the nervous system develops from the ectoderm, the most valuable aspects of the state, of a human community, must also develop from what corresponds to the ectoderm in social and moral life. Therefore, Spencer's worldview naturally relies on seeing the truly valuable status in militarism. In it, political life, the higher life, should be expressed. Just as nervous life is expressed from the ectoderm, the political, the actual leading essence, should emerge from the military.

For easily understandable reasons, I will refrain from further characterizing this strange view of the philosopher Herbert Spencer. But it is necessary to pay attention to such things even in the present. And I could now cite many, many examples from all areas of intellectual life on earth of how attempts have been made to apply scientific ideas to social life, again and again trying to understand moral and social development in the same way as one understands the facts of nature.

But the peculiar thing is that in human development, the old instinctive knowledge, which encompassed spirit and body, matter and spirit at the same time, but was not fully conscious knowledge, has gradually, in the course of human development, passed through the purely external scientific knowledge of the dead into the higher stages of knowledge to which spiritual science today points: into the imaginative knowledge of the contemplative consciousness, into inspired knowledge, into intuitive knowledge. Scientific knowledge is only an intermediate stage between the instinctive knowledge that was characteristic of ancient times and the higher knowledge that must grow out of the depths of the soul itself. I have characterized this in my book The Riddle of Man and more recently in my book The Riddles of the Soul. Contemplative consciousness is divided into imaginative consciousness, which is, in a sense, the lowest stage; inspired consciousness, a higher stage; and intuitive consciousness, the next stage. The peculiar thing is that, in order to observe the external natural world, this instinctive ancient knowledge had to be transformed into scientific concepts. After this transition, the other, spiritual types of knowledge will follow.

Social and moral life cannot undergo this transition. It is attempted, but it cannot happen. Instinctive cognition, instinctive life in the state, in social and political ideas, must pass directly, bypassing the scientific mode of thinking, into conscious cognition of the same world that is dreamed of by humanity in history and social life. What humanity dreams of in history and in social life can only be consciously recognized in imaginative, inspired, intuitive consciousness. And there is no transition from instinctive to imaginative consciousness through natural science in this area. It must be disastrous if one wants to make this transition, if one wants to introduce into the social order concepts and ideas that are modeled on scientific concepts. This has happened everywhere in the course of the last centuries, especially in the 19th century, and continues to this day. Scientific ideas have a catastrophic effect when they flow out of the human mind and into human action. The transition must be immediate from the old instinctive experience, which has resorted to myth and fantasy, to imaginative cognition.

So someone may say with a smile, mockingly: Therefore, the view that social and moral life can be mastered with concepts drawn from natural science must not prevail at all, but rather that this social and moral life can only be healthily permeated when it is recognized that these concepts must be deepened through spiritual science! — Someone may mock, they may blind themselves to some of the great signs of the times, to the clear language that speaks from the catastrophes of today. But that is how it is. And just as in certain circles people are already beginning to take notice of spiritual science, which has something to say when it comes to shaping reality, which is not the fantasy of a few dreamers, but which has something to say when it comes to shaping reality, there will be more and more voices that will realize that when we need concepts full of life for moral and social existence, we must turn to spiritual science, which alone can offer a substitute for what abstract concepts, which have their full validity in natural science, can never provide for the moral and social existence of human beings. That is why spiritual science has not emerged in our time as a result of arbitrary agitation on behalf of individual people, but as a result of the signs of our time, as a result of profound historical necessities.

Let us take a look at some of the things we may encounter in the views of an older era. I have already pointed out here how, from the imagination, or rather, I should say, from the realm of imagination that has developed entirely under the influence of scientific materialism, views such as those that prevailed at the beginning of this war have arisen: that this war could not last longer than four to six months! Insightful, very intelligent people have advocated this as a theory.

But we need not refer only to minor figures when we consider what is at stake here. History is not yet very old, history as a science of moral and social life. It is considered to be an ancient science. In reality, however, as it is practiced today, it is barely a hundred years old! Anyone can convince themselves of this by looking at the history of history itself. When history first appeared, one of the first teachers of history was the great Schiller. And perhaps it is good to mention a great personality here, where one wants to give examples of what is so often said, that one can learn from history for the moral and social life of human beings. How often do we hear people say today, when every day demands that we judge this and that, which must be felt and sensed under the influence of tragic events: History teaches this, history teaches that. Well, if we look at these lessons of history, let us look at one of the greatest: when Schiller took up his professorship in Jena in 1789, he characterized a lesson of history that had dawned on him in the following way. It is probably good to listen to such things. In his famous inaugural lecture, with which he began his historical lectures at the University of Jena, Schiller said about the philosophical mind and the bread scholar in history: “European society seems to have been transformed into one big family. The members of the household may be hostile to one another, but hopefully they will no longer tear each other apart.” That is the lesson that even a great man like Schiller drew from history! One must remember that these prophetic words were spoken in 1789! What happened to the European peoples soon after, and what has happened to Europe again today! What kind of prophet was the historian, even a historian of such genius as Schiller? Why is all this happening? Hundreds and hundreds of examples could be cited to show that a view of history such as is still common today has nothing to offer for life. Why? For the simple reason that such a view of history works with ideas taken from external reality, which is the subject of natural science. These concepts are not suitable for encompassing the life of history and moral and social activity, which can only be dreamed of by people as they are in life.

What the history of life is can only be dreamed of. And if we are to have concepts that intervene in this historical, moral and social life, that truly encompass it, that truly embrace it, that can also master it, then these concepts must be scientifically clear, like other scientific concepts, but it is essential that they clearly grasp what, in ordinary consciousness, only comes into being in the dreams of history and moral-social life.

I know that it is still a paradoxical truth today when it is said that what is historical becoming is not experienced by people in such a way that this experience works in the concepts of waking daily life. But it is a truth; a truth that must be recognized. Only then will it be recognized what kind of concepts and ideas and ideals must be able to master this life.

Herman Grimm—forgive me for making this personal statement today—has often said to me in conversation—he, the witty art historian who has portrayed Raphael, Michelangelo, and other art periods in such a brilliant, witty way—: If one wants to have a historical view that truly encompasses history, then one cannot present history in terms such as those used by natural scientists; one must present history—well, he said, because he had no concepts, no ideas of imaginative knowledge—from the creative imagination of peoples. One must therefore start from what remains, as it were, in the subconscious; one must first bring this into consciousness, but into a consciousness other than the ordinary one. An inkling of what is true in this area lay at the basis of Herman Grimm's intuition.

Anyone who believes that historical or socio-political life can be encompassed by concepts that have been developed through scientific thinking – and these are all our popular concepts today, which we want to apply to everything – is very much mistaken. For those who see through things know, for example, what is the surest way to destroy a community in a relatively short time, to consign it to death. Create a parliament in this community, fill it with professors who are pure theorists and think in scientific terms; let them make the laws, let them make the legal provisions for the community: then, with such a parliament of scientifically minded theorists, you will very soon bring about the downfall of the community. For they will want to translate into reality nothing but concepts, nothing but ideas that cannot have any reality in historical, social, and moral life, but must transform this social and moral life into a corpse.

Hence Herman Grimm's very astute remark that it is strange that the English historian Gibbon, this exemplary English historian, when describing the first Christian centuries, does not describe the rising Christian life, the growing, becoming, and flourishing, but that, strangely enough, he is only able to describe the decline, the decadence of the old life, because, as an honest researcher, he is only able to grasp the decadent, declining life with his concepts. — Growing, flourishing, ascending life cannot be grasped in concepts that are encompassed by waking daily life, but only in concepts that immerse themselves in the same stream of life into which humanity immerses itself when it merely dreams with its ordinary consciousness.

In recent times, all these things have become particularly important because, especially in the 19th century, I would say, the scientific approach attempted to conquer historical and social-ethical life as well. And only a few have resisted this introduction of scientific thinking into historical life. But it was done. It was done brilliantly where it was done most consciously, this carrying over. And it was done most consciously by the newer socialism, which wanted to be entirely scientific. Socialism sought to align social and moral ideas entirely with a scientific approach. Especially in recent times, when natural science began its triumphal march, this extreme way of viewing human life, social and moral human life, solely from the perspective of material interests, class struggles, surplus value impulses, and so on, as it happened in Marxism and in the materialistic view of history, came to the fore.

The humanities are not based on the premise that everything must be either one thing or the other – I must point this out from the outset, otherwise I could be very misunderstood, especially in such a matter – the humanities are based on the premise that human concepts are generally one-sided. I have often used the comparison: when the spiritual researcher rises to concepts, so that he regards them as illuminations or even images of reality from different sides, just as four photographs reproduce a tree from four sides in four different forms, then one can depict the world pantheistically, theistically, monotheistically, polytheistically. All these things can only be seen in their true, genuine meaning if they are taken, as it were, as one-sided images of true reality, which can never be captured in abstract concepts, but only in living unity with reality itself. Therefore, you must not take what I am about to say as if I wanted to completely destroy everything that has emerged under the influence of socialist thinking in recent times. That would never occur to me. For this view has brought forth many valuable things, and it has fought hard enough to establish itself. Those who are the most enlightened, significant official bearers of spiritual life, who have to ensure that correct concepts and ideas emerge, have for decades simply rejected what has come from this side until they have allowed themselves to be tamed, and now not only the sparse concepts of older academic socialism, but much more substantial concepts of socialism have even become salon- no, academic-worthy.

Such things lie outside the scope of spiritual science, which does not take sides, but only wants to look objectively at the facts. However, it must be said that this view of modern socialism, especially the materialistic conception of history, is essentially oriented toward the natural sciences. What are they in truth?

For the humanities researcher, what Karl Marx, for example, presented with such dialectical sharpness and compelling logic is an expression of what humanity dreamed of in terms of social and moral impulses in the four centuries leading up to the middle of the 19th century. Karl Marx described the impulses that were clearly present throughout three to four centuries, beginning in the 16th century. But they were present in such a way that they did not live in people's waking consciousness; rather, humanity dreamed of these things in its impulses, in its social and moral ideas. And when the “dream” had actually already been dreamt, when a social and moral order had actually already come into being, as it had been in the dreams of the last four centuries, Karl Marx wrote his books about what had already become a corpse, from which an awakening was to take place. In reality, what Karl Marx wanted to present as a program actually lived in the time that came before, even before he had conceived of his ideas.

But reality demands that now, as I have characterized, with the bypassing of the scientific way of thinking, social and moral ideas be permeated by what is higher consciousness, what is supersensible consciousness, what is the grasping of the supersensible impulses existing in social and moral life. In the past, this could be grasped instinctively. And even what Karl Marx wrote about was still instinctively dreamed through. The new era can no longer allow itself to merely dream, to merely experience social and moral ideas instinctively; it must know how to immerse them in imaginative recognition, in the recognition of what is supersensible in the human historical, in the socio-political stream in which human beings are caught up.

If one wants to be trivial, one can say of every age that it is a “transitional period.” It is always a question of what is being transitioned. In our time, however, the old instinctive cognition is transitioning into conscious cognition. In the field of natural science, our time has entered the intermediate stage of the natural sciences. In the social sphere, it must find the immediate transition from instinctive socio-political feeling, as it was lived out mystically in ancient times, in ancient instinctive ideas, as it is still carried over, for example, in Roman law; it must find the transition to the creative. It must also find this transition to creativity where, I would say, moral and social ideas directly intervene in the shaping of humanity itself: in the field of education. With pure concepts of knowledge, as they are available to the waking consciousness, one can be neither an educator nor a politician, nor anyone who participates in the shaping of social life in this or that area. A time will come when people will think about what is today known as national economy, about what today appears as socio-political theories, just as one would smile today if some theorist who calls himself an aesthetician were to write down the model examples of what a proper opera or symphony should actually be like, a theorist who cannot compose, who can only view a symphony or an opera from an aesthetic-scientific perspective, who cannot himself create out of his imaginative life. If he were to present the model example, people would laugh.

As strange as it still sounds today, what emerges from mere concepts of waking daytime consciousness as national economy, which has proven so inadequate, will be viewed in this way. People will smile and understand it as an error that was understandable in the age of natural science. But it will be overcome when the consideration of social and moral life has to enter into a conceptual world that is in living connection with the supersensible reality, which brings this supersensible into the legal life, the life of duty, into the spiritual life permeated by social love, into the organizational life of communities.

And one can even specify in detail that those who want to participate in the state-social organization of a community can only gain an image from, I would say, a scientific observation that has something artistic about it, that is itself artistic and creative, if I may use the expression. It is not aestheticians but composers who must create operas and symphonies. It is not theorists with a scientific mindset who can find social concepts, but those who are imbued with concepts that arise from this living reality, which otherwise only emerges in ‘dream impulses’, in the life of feelings, emotions, affections, passions, and the life of the will itself.

And the social structure of the community can only arise from imaginative insight. That life which permeates social communities, that life of dreams which flows out of human beings in love, in the love of one human being for another, in mutual understanding, this life, which then becomes a life of duty, can only experience its external form in the community under the influence of inspired concepts of contemplative consciousness.

And the life of law, this life of law, which today still stands completely under the influence of old legal concepts that still originate from the instinctive consciousness of human beings, either the consciousness of the Germanic or the consciousness of the Romance peoples — in Roman law, as an instinctive form, only concepts live today that in reality grasp nothing of what originally lived under the Roman legal concept — this legal life, which remains so obscure to scientific observation, this legal life, which is being tampered with by bringing all kinds of possible and impossible psychological concepts of modern times, viewed scientifically, into the courtroom, this legal life will only be able to become prosperous and creative again when it is permeated by intuitive knowledge.

Truly, anthroposophical life observation is not about a few dreamers, but about people who should become capable of placing themselves powerfully in life, seizing this life and working together in life; It is not a matter of establishing individual colonies of a few people who want to live comfortably in their own way, eating vegetarian food somewhere in a mountainous region and pursuing similar frivolities, but rather of understanding the signs of the times and knowing what is truly necessary historically in the course of human development. Anthroposophy is not the hobby of individual groups; anthroposophy is something that is demanded by the spirit of our time itself.

Everything that exists today as educational rules will give way to the knowledge that can be found through spiritual science from nature, from the essence of the human being. Preconceived rules and laws will be meaningless to future educators. But educators will be imbued with an understanding of the coming, developing human being that will transform into immediate, cognizant love. They will learn something quite different from theoretical pedagogy; they will learn to stand within the fullness of life. They will therefore also be able to meet each individual being at their level. One will learn to understand how freedom and necessity interpenetrate in life.

One will learn to understand that moral and social life, viewed according to the model of natural science, would be something like this: I have one object here, a second object, a third object. I illuminate the first object, let rays of light fall on it, and it is illuminated; now I illuminate the second object, and the first becomes dark; now I let the second become dark and illuminate the third. I follow this. As I follow this, I say: the first object was illuminated first, which is the cause of the second object shining; the second is the cause of the third object shining. Such an illusion, as if the first body, illuminated from outside, acted as the cause of the second being illuminated, and the second as the cause of the third being illuminated, such an illusion underlies that historical way of looking at things, which always regards the following fact as the effect of the preceding fact, and the preceding fact in turn as the effect of the fact preceding it. Just as there is no connection between the shining of the first object, the shining of the second, and the shining of the third object when they are illuminated by a common light source, and just as one must look at this if one wants to understand why one body shines after another, so there is no such causal connection in successive history as there is in nature. Instead, there is the fact that a common light illuminates the successive facts. And this light must be penetrated in a higher, supersensible knowledge.

What is good in natural science—dividing things into details, grasping things in detail—does not work in spiritual science. But it does not work in social and political life either. For spiritual science, a detailed description of social and political life would be just like—forgive the comparison— but it may, if I use it, aptly convey what needs to be said — like a chess player who wants to calculate exactly what moves he wants to make and believes that when he sits down at the chess table with a partner, he will be able to carry out the moves he has thought out in advance. He cannot carry them out, because that depends on his opponent's moves! But that doesn't mean you can't be a good chess player if you know the rules of chess. As a chess player, you can, in a sense, hold your own. And the same is true if you want to master life. Only in the realm of nature are there precise laws. When you face life, you must have skills that are equal to that life. Then you must always be prepared for something from the fullness of life to come your way, just as your partner does in a game of chess.

For the educator, each individual child is something like the partner for the chess player, each individual child. Educational science will take on forms through which it makes people capable of living, capable of penetrating into each individual human being. However, such a life in the socio-political sphere can only emerge from a real recognition of what is really hidden in human lives and human beings, what is dreamed of as history, what is dreamed of as socio-political impulses. How much is still being neglected in this direction today!

In spiritual science—I just want to point this out—a start has been made many years ago to study what the essence of the Western peoples of Europe, the Central peoples of Europe, and the Eastern peoples of Europe is, what impulses really live there, how the various expressions of the soul are distributed geographically and historically, and what impulses are really present. Only through knowledge of the impulses that really exist can that imagination, that inspiration arise which can be lived out in moral and social ideas, as they emerge in social life, in the life of duty, in the life of law, in the way already indicated. Beginnings have also been made in this field. I would like to point out a very promising beginning here in Switzerland, because here, for once, a single detail has been extracted from the knowledge of the impulses at work in immediate life in a legal context. In this regard, I would like to refer to Dr. Roman Boos' book on the “Collective Bargaining Agreement under Swiss Law,” a book that for the first time captures certain concepts and institutions existing in legal life from their real essential substance, from their very essence.

In recent times, however, various attempts have been made to recognize from the spiritual and social essence how laws and impulses gradually unfold. An American has written a very interesting book—I don't know if he still stands by it today; Roosevelt wrote a preface to it, which is less significant than the book itself — this American wrote a book in which he attempts to show how peoples can be divided into two groups: one group consists of the aspiring, growing, progressive peoples, the other of the declining peoples who are falling into decadence. Brooks Adams, the American, describes the spiritual nature of the rising nations as follows: it stems from a fundamental spiritual characteristic of these nations, from their imaginative and warlike nature; so that nations that have a future are gifted with an imaginative fantasy life and warlike impulses. — I am not saying this, it is the judgment of the American Brooks Adams! And those peoples who are falling into decadence, who have no future, who have only a past behind them, a similar past in warlike and imaginative life, are the industrial and scientific peoples.

This is, of course, one-sided. But even these most one-sided observations show that attempts have already been made to find a mastery of life through truly moral and social ideas based on what is real. However, life cannot be understood using concepts that are based solely on the model of natural science. One can only comprehend it by penetrating into the depths, into the supersensible depths of this life. And this can only be done through the contemplative consciousness that spiritual science makes use of.

I could only make sparse suggestions. In individual lectures, I can only ever provide inspiration. Spiritual science can easily be attacked and refuted today, because it can only ever provide inspiration. Then it is really child's play for someone who hears one or two lectures to come up with all kinds of refutations and the harshest criticism, of course. But spiritual science is not so fortunate today that it has countless chairs at its disposal, as other sciences do. That will come too. And then the criticism of the caliber that still exists today against spiritual science will fall silent. Such things have manifested themselves in the most diverse ways in the course of human development. They go just as these things have gone. But spiritual science today can only inspire. It can also only provide inspiration with regard to social and moral ideas.

And when one finally surveys everything that has been outlined today, one could sum it up by showing that, under the influence of living moral and social ideas, the community must also develop in such a way that the human being as a whole, as a total being, can develop within this community. But this total being includes what I explained yesterday: the independent, eternal being of the human being, this independent eternal being, of which I was able to say yesterday that it contains the idea of freedom.

The highest of the social and moral ideas is this idea of freedom. No community will be able to realize the idea of freedom within itself unless it proceeds from supersensible ideas. For the supersensible, which can be free, can flourish only where the shaping of the community proceeds from supersensible impulses, feelings, concepts, and ideas. The ideas of ordinary, waking daytime consciousness, which have become so gloriously significant for natural science, do not work in the life in which social-moral ideas work. If human beings want to have an effect in this life, they must work into this moral and social life with another part of their being, with a part of their being other than that which becomes capable through the scientific way of thinking.

One can say that the great people of the past have already seen in individual flashes of insight what this was all about. And if yesterday, in a different way, I was able to point out at the end the spirit that is one of the greatest in the course of human spiritual life, after which I would most like to name the spiritual direction that I myself represent, Goetheanism, then today, at the end, in order to summarize what I have stated in a feeling way, I may again point to Goethe. He did not yet have spiritual science. But when he looked at historical life, which is, after all, the manifestation of social and moral life, and wanted to understand what underlies this social and moral life as it is embodied in history, if I may say so, strange words came to him, beautiful words, when he said: The best thing we have from history is the enthusiasm it arouses.

What wonder lies in such a statement! I said that Friedrich Theodor Vischer, V-Vischer, said: “One cannot understand passions, emotions, and emotional life without understanding dreams.” —- Goethe looks at what is experienced in the history of humanity, at the dream of history. He knows instinctively, intuitively, that humanity dreams as it lives history, that historical impulses are not lived out in ideas similar to scientific ideas, but in what is lived out in the dream sphere of historical experience. Therefore, the best we have from history is not the fable convenue that is written in the history books and that we revere today as history, but which offers nothing more than a corpse, an already dead corpse, not that which unfolds as the stream of humanity in socio-political development.

And Goethe knows: it is not what is written in the history books that is the best thing about history for human beings, but what can be connected with this dream of history, a good quality, a creative quality: the enthusiasm that history arouses.

In this way, he intuitively expressed a great truth, a truth that must become reformatory if humanity wants to overcome catastrophic events such as those of the present.

But this truth can be supplemented on the other hand by pointing out that it is not with sophisticated concepts modeled on scientific ideas, as they already exist in modern social life, as they exist in modern academic social science, that it is not with such concepts, formed according to the model of natural science, that one can somehow fruitfully intervene in social moral life, but with concepts that are much more closely related to life itself, much more intimately connected with it, with ideas that are fully embedded in this life, as they are sought after by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

Stronger than the non-creative ideas in history, which historians also dream of, stronger forces are needed: enthusiasm is needed. Everything that is intended to enable human communities and social and moral life to flourish must arise from enthusiasm. But it must be genuine enthusiasm. And genuine enthusiasm can only be that which arises when what cannot be grasped by natural science, but can be recognized through the union of the individual human being with the universal supersensible human through imagination, inspiration, and intuition, fills the soul to such an extent that it becomes moral and social enthusiasm.

Just as Goethe was able to say, on the one hand, that the best thing we have from history is the enthusiasm it arouses, so the spiritual researcher would like to add: Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to penetrate the supersensible; it seeks to recognize the eternal, the immortal, the freedom-loving in human life. But the best thing it can give to humanity will be that it can and may instill the enthusiasm that can shape the highest that humanity can develop on earth: moral and social life, moral and social ideas.

In this direction, I wanted to offer a few hints and suggestions in this last lecture to show that spiritual science does not merely want to be a theory, but a force that works from the innermost impulses of life with the genuine, true, energetic human life that we need. This is evident in these catastrophic times.