Freedom, Immortality and Social Life

GA 72 — 11 December 1918, Bern

10. Moral, Social, and Religious Life from the Perspective of Anthroposophy

In yesterday's lecture, I endeavored to show how human beings can, through a special training of their soul forces, gain a direct insight into the world that surrounds them as a spiritual world, just as as they are surrounded by the sensory world as physical beings, that spiritual world which, however, cannot be recognized by ordinary consciousness, by that consciousness which is not based on the training of the soul that I spoke about the day before yesterday. Today I would like to discuss the relationship of these supersensible insights to important areas of human life, especially to those areas of human life which, from a certain point of view, have either already entered into a crisis in our time and are in the midst of it, or will enter into this crisis. I would like to speak about the relationship between supersensible knowledge and the moral, social, and religious life of human beings.

The naturalist Wallace, who was much talked about in earlier times and who, like Darwin, attempted to bring about a worldview, made a significant statement about the moral development of humanity. Haeckel also agrees with this statement, as do many other researchers, especially those in the natural sciences. Wallace said: As great as the progress of humanity is in terms of knowledge of nature and its background, that is, in terms of the intellectual side of human beings, the progress of moral life is, on the other hand, very small. From stage to stage, one can see progress in the knowledge of the world. But if one looks at moral development, this thinker believed, one cannot say that humanity has made any significant strides forward since ancient times.

Now, such a statement is certainly of particular significance coming from a natural scientist. Admittedly, anyone who attempts to gain a deeper insight into the course of human development will not be able to agree with this thinker for all time; but for the period for which Wallace has a particularly keen eye as a natural scientist, for the period of more recent human development, which has been particularly illuminated by natural science, this statement will hold true. In earlier times, which the aforementioned thinker has less insight into, it is not true that intellectual knowledge advances in such a significant way compared to the upheavals and stages of moral development. But precisely—and this is what is remarkable—for the period in which scientific knowledge has advanced so brilliantly, what this thinker asserts applies. And anyone who looks at the catastrophic events of the last four and a half years with understanding, with humanity, with human interest, with human love, will truly not be able to deceive themselves that what has been experienced does not testify to a special moral progress that keeps pace with the intellectual progress within humanity.

This obviously raises a very significant question, a question that is all the more pressing because, on the other hand, there is a desire in our time to gain awareness of those areas of human life that are referred to as the realm of morality and ethics. But anyone who, in the manner I described the day before yesterday, from the standpoint of spiritual science, who has gained insight into the true character of scientific research, who, through the experience I described the day before yesterday, has really found himself at the limits of this scientific knowledge, who knows that this is not just a coincidence of the last few centuries, but that a causal connection can be found. The day before yesterday, I explained how the significance, the essence of scientific knowledge lies precisely in the fact that this scientific knowledge advances by, in a sense, disregarding that aspect of human soul life which enables us to establish the right relationship between human beings, that aspect of human soul life which we call the capacity for love. But because — as I had to say — this capacity for love continues to work in the human soul, only to be held back, precisely so that natural science can reach its peak during scientific cognition, human beings reach a certain limit in scientific cognition.

Now, as is easily seen in physical life — and something very similar applies to spiritual life — the development of the capacity for love in human beings is connected with all progressive, developing life, with blossoming, emerging life.

If, on the other hand, we consider the spiritual abilities that human beings apply when they pursue the course of nature in the spirit of today's scientific research, we find that the forces that play a special role in this research cannot be directed toward sprouting, blossoming life, but rather toward declining, fading life, toward dying life. When we look into life with these scientific research powers, we do not see life, but what is impregnated in this life as the descending, the dying.

For those who can be spiritually present as the power of scientific research develops, it is not merely something that can be described as a deficiency that gradually spreads when natural scientists who want to be consistent repeatedly oppose the inclusion of something like “life force” or the like in scientific research. In the course of the 19th century, what was formerly called “life force” was rightly eliminated from scientific research. Now, however, some believe that it is only a temporary deficiency that human beings cannot look into life, but can actually only observe the dead, the dying, in living things. But this is not the case. The faculty of cognition, which is thus directed toward nature, is itself dependent on seeking only the dead within the living, seeking that which is in decline. Hence, there is a tendency to drive out life in order to seek precisely that which is not life. And one cannot say that by further developing the scientific mode of thinking, which has reached a particular height today, one will also comprehend life. No, this way of thinking will continue to grow in importance precisely because it does not understand life, but seeks what is, as I would say, impregnated in life as the dead, as the dying.

That is why, even in the age in which this way of thinking has reached a particular height, understanding of the soul's abilities has declined, truly declined, abilities that are connected with that soul ability which natural science does not actually need, cannot need: with the soul ability — if one may express it thus — of loving. And the whole moral life is connected with the soul faculty of loving. Love is the fundamental force that must develop in order for there to be moral life.

It can be shown that external events also confirm what I have just explained. One experiences very strange things in this area. In the course of my lectures in recent years, in my attempt to show the complete harmony between natural science and spiritual science, as it is meant here, from other points of view, I have repeatedly referred to an excellent book that has appeared in recent years by Oscar Hertwig, “Das Werden der Organismen” (The Becoming of Organisms). A refutation of Darwin's “theory of chance.” I had to describe this book as a brilliant achievement by a contemporary natural scientist, because in it Oscar Hertwig refutes all the hasty conclusions of the materialistically minded Darwinists on the basis of conscientious scientific method. In Oscar Hertwig, we are dealing with a thinker who brilliantly masters the scientific way of thinking.

Now something very peculiar happened. Oscar Hertwig followed this excellent work on “The Development of Organisms” with another, smaller work, in which he sought to pay tribute, as it were, to the war years, dealing with moral, social, and political issues. And lo and behold: this work is—I do not shy away from saying so bluntly—this work is full of utter nonsense. This work is based entirely on a way of thinking that is in no way suitable for understanding the questions posed or for solving them in any way. Thus we see a brilliant natural scientist, a natural scientist who is great in his field precisely because he develops his way of thinking one-sidedly in this field, fail completely when he attempts to consider social, moral, and political phenomena. This is an extremely interesting phenomenon that has come to light in the present day.

One could multiply these phenomena, albeit with perhaps less typical examples. But one need only point to one to show how the modern era, which is pushing for justified scientific ideals, has become fruitless in terms of understanding moral life. When characterizing these things, because people today do not yet want to believe them, one must become a little heretical, heretical in this case not so much against the church or any religious community, but heretical against completely different directions. When, in modern times, many people want to point to something significant in the philosophical worldview, they point to something that, in a certain respect, is not as superficial as many philosophies arising from a mere view of nature, but which nevertheless agrees with the scientific way of thinking for many: they point to Kant and Kantianism.

Well, such references are very peculiar. Especially with regard to Kant, one has recently encountered a peculiar, repulsive frenzy of quotations, one might say. For one could see how the worst warmongers invoked Kant and quoted him, just as the most radical pacifists quoted Kant! And those who, in a relatively short time, in the course of a few weeks, have transformed themselves from angry warmongers into radical pacifists in recent weeks—such people do exist!—used to quote Kant and now quote Kant in the most beautiful way, in their opinion.

But Kant is indeed characteristic in many areas of the form that modern thinking has taken. He is also characteristic of the way in which people often absorb what they encounter in intellectual life. Kant's style of writing makes him a somewhat difficult author and he can be considered somewhat difficult to understand. However, since some people manage to understand him and naturally consider themselves very clever — although they do not admit this in so many words — they then find that, since Kant has said something so clever that they can just about understand, this Kant must be a particularly great man.

Now, with regard to moral life, Kant established a principle that is particularly often quoted, although sometimes it is only mentioned by saying that Kant established the “categorical imperative” with regard to moral life. This “categorical imperative,” put into words, what does it actually look like? It contains the following: Act in such a way that the maxims of your actions can become a guideline for all people. — To me, this has always seemed as if someone were saying: Have a skirt made by a tailor that is designed in such a way that all people can wear it. For what is moral, immediate moral impulse, what wants to be grasped in the most individual aspect of human beings, what can only be lived out when it is grasped in the most individual aspect of human beings, is forced into the empty phrases of extreme abstraction, into the gray fog of what is supposed to apply equally to all people.

It is important to realize that one must of course strive for abstractions, for generality, in the realm of natural law, but this way of thinking, which strives for such abstractions, for such universality, leads away from the field in human beings that wants to be grasped if one wants to grasp the moral impulses in the eye of the soul, that is, what directly sustains and permeates human beings in their moral life. For that which makes us moral human beings must be ignited by the immediate circumstances of life, by the immediate relationship between human beings. In each individual case, this is something fundamentally individual. And the human soul must have the opportunity to drive out of itself a primal individual impulse that cannot be characterized by saying that it should be a maxim for all human beings. No, that which can be a maxim for all people has the least moral impulsiveness, does not carry people morally through life, but rather that which, in the most individual sense, compels them directly in their appearance to behave in one way or another.

In immediate life, it is not some concept or some idea that carries people in a moral sense, but only love. And it was my endeavor 25 years ago, already in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” to establish this individual moral doctrine against the abstract tendency of Kantianism. This individual moral doctrine is permeated above all by the realization that moral action can only arise from a love for the action to be performed that is equal to the love for an individual human being. Love must prevail in the action that is to be called moral, love that is not self-love, but which precisely represses the self and replaces the self with that which should be done out of pure love. The individual insight that the action incumbent upon me should be performed is what in truth makes the action moral.

Now, the day before yesterday, I had to explain the following: In that consciousness which, in a sense, springs forth from ordinary human consciousness, which prevails in ordinary life and also in generally known science, in this supersensible consciousness — as I would now like to call it — there prevails precisely that power which does not prevail in ordinary abstract thinking, in intellectual thinking: the power of love. Of course, this does not mean that the activity which the spiritual researcher performs by developing within himself that insight into the spiritual world of which I spoke the day before yesterday is the same as what the soul accomplishes through moral feeling. It is not the same, but it is similar: just as the soul works in a certain area in ordinary life by feeling morally, in the same way it works in a completely different area by awakening a power that otherwise lies dormant, by looking into the spiritual world and developing what can be described as the ultimate goal of supersensible knowledge, intuitive knowledge. One ascends — you can read about this in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” and in my “Occult Science” and in other writings of mine — one ascends from imaginative to inspired to intuitive knowledge. What is called intuitive knowledge is not the same as love in the moral realm, but the state in which the human soul finds itself in relation to the spiritual beings and spiritual events that it beholds and looks into through intuition, the state of the soul in this supersensible beholding, when this soul encounters supersensible beings, this state of the soul is the same as in the sensory realm, in the physical realm, the state of the soul when it feels morally in love. The state of the soul is the same.

Therefore, this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, of which we are speaking here, may say: Within its own activity, on a higher spiritual level, it cultivates precisely that ability of the human soul which is realized in moral life. That is why spiritual science particularly cultivates what has been pushed into the background by the glorious development of scientific knowledge: the regard for and inclination toward that power in the soul that is necessary for moral action. And so it can be said: if one looks at Kantianism, if one looks at the particular mode of conception of scientific thinking, these are such that they push the earlier, more instinctive life of the human being, which provided the moral impulses, into the unconscious, so to speak. But what must come as spiritual science will in turn raise up these forces that are related to moral feeling. And what previously lived in human beings as instinctive moral feelings will be raised up into full consciousness, into bright clarity, through spiritual science.

Thus, one can understand that precisely at the time when humanity emerged from a more instinctive soul life and initially developed one-sidedly in the field of intellectual knowledge of nature, the sense that is directly directed toward what lives morally in human beings initially receded — life is always ebb and flow, a swinging back and forth — the sense that is directly directed toward what lives morally in the human being receded. And so, while on the one hand, in the field of natural science, the human being has achieved immeasurably great triumphs with regard to knowledge, precisely during this scientific age, the sense, the conscious sense for moral impulses, remains neglected to this day. It will blossom when the power for the knowledge of the higher supersensible worlds, which must live in the soul on a different level in ordinary moral feeling, comes to the center of the soul life.

Now spiritual science, as it is meant here, brings about these ideas about the supersensible worlds. Some of these ideas were communicated the day before yesterday; you can find more in the writings already mentioned and in other writings related to them. If these spiritual scientific ideas are accepted by humanity in the same way as the scientific ideas, they will have a different meaning in the life of the soul than the scientific ideas. These spiritual scientific ideas are drawn from those areas of the soul where the soul force related to moral love is cultivated. They therefore have an effect on the human capacity for love and thus on the immediate individual impulses of moral life. While the age of abstractions, of worshiping the purely theoretical reference to the completely abstract: Act so that the maxims of your actions can become a guideline for all people — could only give a general definition, so to speak, could only nail down a general concept, what spiritual science is will be able to intervene directly in life, will be able to warm the soul directly, so that in each individual case it faces life with understanding and receives the moral impulse from the intuition of life in the individual case. Then this spiritual science will exert a completely different kind of moral influence than any abstract moral theory or sum of moral principles. It will exert that which makes a person's maxims immediately moral, for one can see this in life — I have already said this here from time to time and must say it again and again: Moral sermons do not help much in human life; moral sermons actually help as little in human life as good words help a stove to warm the room if you do not put wood in it. But if you put wood in the stove, you do not need to persuade it; it will warm up and heat the room. All talk: It is a categorical imperative that you be a good person, that you behave in a certain way toward your fellow human beings, that you do this or that — is like saying: It is your duty as a stove to heat the room, otherwise you would not be a good stove. But you can refrain from this moral talk and simply heat with wood; because otherwise nothing will come of it. This is how it is with what appears concretely as spiritual science.

Of course, many people today consider it a necessity to emphasize again and again that people should love one another. But this is just useless talk, if not nonsense, if not a mere mask for the fact that people have little love for one another and therefore emphasize it all the more. But with this spiritual science, the less it talks about love, the less it calls the word love vain, the more it will happen that the special imaginations of the mind, arising from the power of love and entering into the soul, will in turn ignite the understanding, I would say, the gift of immediately unfolding the moral in the individual situation.

What this spiritual science can therefore hope for, if it finds its way to people, is that it will not merely provide moral maxims, but — if I may express myself trivially — that it will itself be moral fuel. Therefore, that which has dried up under the mere scientific knowledge that focuses on the dead will thaw again and be brought to life precisely through this spiritual science. And with regard to the moral life of human beings, it will be noticeable that when attempts have been made from one side or the other to introduce scientific thinking into the moral world, this scientific thinking can only lead to concepts of decline in the moral sphere, because it also considers only the declining life in relation to nature. But because spiritual science in its seeking is related to the productive power that expresses itself in love, spiritual science will also be able to bring productive morality back to humanity, namely moral tasks, moral missions. It will bring something back to people that will prevent them from despairing over the question: What should I actually do? What is my task? Instead, spiritual science will have such an effect on people that they will receive inspiration from it to do this and that in life and thereby also be morally supported and sustained by life. There will be fewer of those who are weary and burdened, who are mentally ill and, as a result, also physically ill, because they basically do not know what to do with their lives, because they have nothing in their thinking, in their imaginations and their ideas, that allows the moral task to spring forth from the life task that certainly exists in their lives.

In spiritual science, there will be a body of knowledge, a sum of qualities that will not leave people empty of the conception of such life tasks, but will imbue them with moral impulse, so that they can say to themselves at every moment of life: You have this or that to do — and then find no time to brood with an empty soul, not knowing what to do with life, having to go to sanatoriums here and there to be stimulated from outside, so that the soul may be filled, when in truth it can only be filled fruitfully if the tasks of life can be drawn from the depths of its own inner being and permeate the essence of the human being.

It is easy to object — and some experiences that can still be had today where so-called followers of the spiritual science movement live confirm this — that it is easy to say today that one does not notice these fruits, which have just been mentioned, manifesting themselves in these followers of spiritual science; on the contrary, one finds that in many cases, on the ground where such followers move, selfishness and egoism, sometimes a refined, spiritually nuanced egoism, unfold all the more, and that little human love is often to be found in this circle. This must certainly be admitted today. That which is to develop must first develop through many layers and many obstacles. But it is in the nature of things that they develop in this way. It is also very reasonable that something else appears at first. And those who say: Yes, spiritual science also finds — I spoke about these things the day before yesterday — that the present life of human beings refers back to earlier earthly lives and points to future earthly lives — whereby there is always life in the spiritual world between earthly lives — that, in a sense, the fate that human beings now experience depends, despite their freedom, on what they bring with them from previous earthly lives, and that what they accomplish in this earthly life will in turn have an effect on future earthly lives.

Certainly, I have heard how well-fed people, who were doing quite well in life, when it was pointed out to them that they had something over those who were hungry and miserable, I have heard how such well-fed people, who believed themselves to be quite good followers of some spiritual scientific direction, said: Well, that's quite right, we earned it in our previous life, and he earned his life, his hunger, in his previous life! — This is only a radical expression of what occurs in many cases, whereby people, out of very lively materialistic feelings, use what they receive in spiritual science to justify their materialistic feelings. Of course, if one has to extend human individuality even beyond this individual life between birth and death, if one has to point to what develops super-personally in human individuality and develops throughout earthly life, this can incite egoism; just as theoretical egoism is often stirred up among the numerous adherents of spiritual science, who now have nothing more urgent to do than to think out who they were in their previous earthly life. There are indeed very many such people. But what lies at the root of this is the following.

As a rule, people go through two stages with spiritual science. The first stage consists in receiving what they receive from spiritual science for their own satisfaction, in finding that it fulfills a certain desire, that it does them good, that it is beneficial for certain longings of the soul. They are glad that they are being told something they can live with; they want something for themselves, for their soul's satisfaction. That is the first stage. It certainly has great justification, especially in today's world, where one can get less from elsewhere for the satisfaction of the soul.

But the second stage is where one goes beyond mere desire beyond what produces a refined egoism that can be observed in so many followers of spiritual science, where one goes beyond wanting something for oneself that satisfies one, where one moves on to the point where the will, where the whole human being in his relationship to life, is stimulated, permeated, and imbued with what spiritual science can give one. Then, of course, egoism ceases, then worlds are stirred up in the human being that carry the human being beyond that narrow circle that consists of brooding over one's own soul and desiring that this brooding find its satisfaction. Then the human being is directed away from himself toward other human beings. And what can be described as an individual moral sense is transferred to the social sense, from which moral action springs forth, from which emerges that which corresponds precisely to a fundamental requirement of our time.

In doing so, we touch on something that penetrates deeply into the crisis of our time. At the same time, we touch on an area in which, despite its urgency, the greatest possible ambiguities prevail. But as I move on to the social sphere, I would like to begin by pointing out perhaps the most important thing. When one speaks or hears others speak of the ascent of human beings to such supersensible knowledge, as I characterized it the day before yesterday, one very easily gets the feeling that this is something very remote, something completely foreign to ordinary earthly life.

This is not quite the case. If one does not misuse the expression, one can say that the possessor of supersensible knowledge is a seer. One might then think that he considers himself to have acquired something that other people do not have. But this is not the case. In one area, every human being is always in a state of mind that one must laboriously acquire for the other areas of spiritual science, as characterized the day before yesterday, in order to attain supersensible knowledge. In one area, one always finds oneself in this state of mind, otherwise one would simply be blind in this one area. And this one area is when one enters into a loving relationship with another human being. One regards the other person with whom one enters into a loving relationship from the same spiritual point of view — but only the human being — from which one must look if one wants to have supersensible knowledge. But one must first develop the ability of the soul to bring about the same state in one's soul in relation to others, which is brought about simply by instinct, by ordinary life, when one lovingly faces another person with understanding, with interest, and delves into their soul with interest. In this case, when one approaches another person with inner involvement, with deep understanding, with genuine interest in their innermost soul life, in their whole way of being, at that moment one becomes — if I may say so — clairvoyant in ordinary life. It is only in this one case that a person is granted clairvoyance in ordinary life; in all other cases, they must first acquire the relevant abilities in a methodical and laborious manner.

But this: being able to approach other people with understanding and interest, developing the ability in life to delve into the idiosyncrasies of other people, is what constitutes true social life, despite all the objections of today. Because it is basically the ability that must be instinctively present in human beings if they want to relate to each other, because it is the ability with which the most significant research in spiritual science is accomplished, this spiritual science in turn has an effect on social life and on the awakening of social feelings. The knowledge that must be acquired for the supersensible world has an effect on social feeling, awakening a real understanding for one's fellow human beings. And that is what is important.

That is why social demands arose precisely at a time when, on the other hand, scientific thinking, with its power of abstraction and its sheer intellectuality, was celebrating its greatest triumphs. Before the 16th century, we do not really find that people thought thoroughly, especially not scientifically, about any social demands. All social life was steeped in instinct. With the advent of scientific habits of thinking, the need to acquire social concepts and to assert conscious social feelings began at the same time. And when we look at where social demands arise in the most radical way, among the industrial proletariat, from whom they actually emanate, we find that this industrial proletariat has developed its entire way of thinking based on what has only emerged in recent times, namely with the help of natural science: modern mechanistic thinking, modern machine culture, and so on. One result of modern machine culture is the modern proletariat. What, I would say, the modern proletariat has experienced in the externally realized scientific way of thinking, in the modern mechanistic cultural elements, that is, indirectly from scientific progress, has basically created the special way of intellectually directing oneself toward social demands. By being suppressed by everything that comes into consideration, precisely the clairvoyant-related position of the human being between human beings, the social element has receded significantly in recent centuries. And because it has receded, because social instincts are no longer valid, intellectual social demands arise.

Now, there is something very peculiar about human life. If we do not merely regard it in terms of what human beings are as physical beings in their physical environment, but become aware through spiritual science that they are souls in a spiritual environment of which they know nothing through ordinary consciousness, then the whole human being is distributed between the physical world and the spiritual world. It is distributed in a peculiar way. If we first look at our view of nature, at what is expressed in natural science and at what is connected with natural science, what is the case there? The strange thing is that all questions about what natural science provides come from the spiritual realm. The questions come from the spirit; certainly, they can be brought in from the spirit, as was done in ancient times, or, as natural scientists do in more recent times, they can be inherited from the times when they instinctively implanted themselves in the human mind.

What we observe through experimentation is only an answer in the realm of natural observation. Questions lie in the spirit. The answers lie here in the physical realm. This is a very interesting connection. And because in ancient times, in older times, there existed what in a certain sense can be called atavistic, instinctive spiritual life, scientific questions were instinctively born out of the human soul in ancient times. These questions were much more comprehensive than what people could obtain as answers in external scientific observations and experiments. The peculiar thing that happened was that the ability to still feel the questions instinctively receded. Insight into the supersensible worlds was not yet available, so that only the legacy was retained in scientific questions, precisely in the age in which methods were developed for observation, experimentation, and so on.

Anyone who looks at today's natural science with a reasonable degree of understanding, especially the most outstanding achievements in this field, will come to the conclusion that the questions are all inherited from very ancient times and are even gradually becoming paler and paler. And the answers are definitely impaired by this fading of the questions. If spiritual science did not emerge, capable of providing new questions for natural science from the spiritual world, so that what is found through observation and experimentation can be illuminated in the right way, then one would gradually experience complete paralysis in natural scientific life, despite all external methodological activity, as can already be seen very clearly today, if one has the sense to see it. This is the case with regard to the view of nature.

With regard to social and moral life, the opposite is true. Within the physical world, the sensory world, the questions and demands are revealed; and within the spiritual world, the answers come. The opposite is true.

In the past, human beings had an instinctive spiritual life which, without their being consciously aware of it, provided them with answers from the spirit to the demands of social and moral life here in the physical world. The moral and social maxims that human beings produced in the past were produced instinctively. The time when these instincts were at work in human nature is over. We live in an age where human beings must move toward consciousness, where human beings have advanced above all in terms of intellectuality, which was not as luminous in the instinctive age as it is now. But this intellect, in its initial naivety, works in a certain way, I would say instinctively.

Thus, in relation to social life, social questions and social demands first arose. And the answers can never be found except by ascending into the world of the supersensible, from which alone the answers can come. For a true social science that can provide the necessary answers to the pressing social questions of the present day, we need spiritual scientific insight, for only this will provide these answers. And it is our age itself that confirms what must be said in this regard.

Over the past four and a half years, we have witnessed a terrible human catastrophe. Today, we see spread across vast areas of the earth the results of this terrible catastrophe, which still contains many elements that cause people to look to the near future with concern. Those who observe these circumstances impartially will not raise a question in the abstract way it is usually raised: What has this war catastrophe actually brought upon the whole world in such a terrible form? Those who think in terms of spiritual science think in terms of reality in all areas; they do not think in terms of theories or abstractions, but point to realities everywhere. The effects of this terrible catastrophe are evident in what has been left behind. More than anything else, the preliminary outcome of this catastrophe is the removal of a veil, and the truth now appears in its naked form over Eastern and Central Europe and probably also over other regions. What is now emerging, what is now becoming apparent in the social chaos across the earth, was not absent before; it was only kept in a semblance of order, it was only covered up. The catastrophe has merely lifted the veil. Now what was hidden is coming to the fore, and we see what is now being revealed. We see what exists as social demands and what cries out for answers. These answers are not provided by those who proceed according to the pattern of scientific concepts — however ingenious and plausible to the proletariat the Marxist concepts may be — these answers are not provided by concepts that are taken solely from sensory life, but these answers can only be provided from the sources of spiritual life.

This is what becomes clear to anyone who conscientiously and carefully studies what is so hopeless in this or that point, because it is mere exploitation, as revealed by these or those leaders of today's social chaos. What can these leaders of today's social chaos possibly have in their heads? They believe they are overcoming old classes, but they have only adopted the ideas of these classes. They believe they are bringing about a new human life, but they can only do so with the ideas they have adopted from the old human life. Karl Marx himself said mockingly about philosophers that they had always been concerned with organizing life through ideas, but that what mattered was to transform life through ideas. If he had been complete, if he had been able to take the step from physical life into the supersensible, he would have had to say something else. But then something completely different would have come out. He would then have had to say: The thoughts that have been accepted until now are only suitable for leaving life in the sensual realm as it is; if one wants to transform this life, if one really wants to find the answers to the questions that arise from social chaos, then one needs other thoughts; for the old ones show that they cannot transform life.

A mind like Karl Marx's may rant and rave for a long time about bourgeois ideas and bourgeois life. This is, of course, obvious to the proletarian. And just as it is obvious to the proletarian, one only needs to have experience of it! I have — if I may add, although it is a personal remark — worked for years as a teacher in a workers' educational school run by the Social Democratic Party. I know what is obvious to today's proletarians; I had the opportunity to learn what lives in these souls, that which entire strata of today's humanity cannot even imagine. But what this really is about is something that humanity, including the proletariat, will first have to learn to understand. What it is really about is that we live in an age that can no longer get by with the old instincts from which the moral and social life of human beings has flowed, but must rather transition to a clear, luminous recognition of the answers to the social and moral questions that arise here in sensual life, from the supersensible world.

This brings us back to that point of view of reality that has been lost to humanity, which today believes that it is truly grounded in reality. This humanity sometimes seems like someone who sees a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron and is told: Hey, this horseshoe-shaped piece of iron, which looks like another piece of iron, is a magnet. ‘ 'Oh,’ says the first person, ‘that's just iron, I use it to shoe my horse. ’ He does not believe in the reality of what he cannot see with his eyes. This is basically how materialistic thinking works with the whole world. People believe in something abstract by believing that they are looking into reality. One is far removed from true reality, because true reality includes that which underlies things, processes, and beings as spiritual life, as supersensible life. And one distances oneself from reality in one's habits of thinking, in one's feelings, in one's impulses of will; one distances oneself from moral and social life if one does not want to allow oneself to be imbued with the spirit.

Whereas with instinctive faith, people lived, I would say, in clear circumstances that showed them how everything they were involved in was connected to reality, today they live in a world order that has become complicated, in which they do not even develop the desire to seek a direct relationship with reality for many things. What a soil product is, what cabbage or wheat is, and what cabbage or wheat as commodities mean to humans, humans know at first. They also still know what the performance of human labor means from person to person; they also still know what a spiritual achievement means, because they want to receive spiritual achievements to satisfy their soul's needs. As long as people remain within the sphere of such things, they connect the ideas they gain about them and what they do with their lives as a result of these ideas with immediate reality. But life has become more complicated, and today there are many things in external life that people hardly have the opportunity to even think about how they relate to immediate reality. As strange as it sounds, this is the case for the most important things. What does man know about how capital, interest, rent, money itself, or even credit are connected with what happens in life through capital, rent, interest, credit, and money, and in which he is involved? Man only passes coins from one hand to the other; man makes use of interest payments and rent for his life. Where do they have the opportunity today to think about what it means to pass money from one hand to another, that basically, by passing money from one hand to another, they are passing so much human labor from one hand to another!

Or one need only recall something else to see how people here today have lost touch with reality. Those economists who are today's official economists and who are often so helpless in finding truly social impulses, who have achieved such fruitless results, which are now proving fruitless, when they should be proving themselves in life, those economists are just as unable to give a clear answer to the question of what money actually is in the social process. What money actually is is a matter of dispute in economic science. There are so-called metallists and nominalists in economics with regard to money. The metallists claim that what matters in money is the metal value, the material as such. The nominalists claim that only the name, the valuation given to the piece in question by the state or other corporations, excluding the metallic value, has any significance in social intercourse. So not only is there no incentive to pursue reality in these matters with one's whole feeling, with one's whole human life, but one does not even know in science how these things are connected with reality.

It is precisely in this field that it becomes apparent how urgent it is to rediscover reality. This is what spiritual science can bring to people: a different kind of mental agility and also a spiritual necessity. It is true that many people find spiritual science, as it is presented here, difficult because it requires effort, mental effort; and today people do not like to make mental effort. When one observes nature scientifically, when one conducts experiments, one observes the processes, and thinking is more of an accompaniment. This takes place at the behest of external processes. People love that today, in the age of cinema, where they like to be shown something that they only accompany with their thinking; they love that today, when they are naturally less inclined to go to lectures where they have to follow along; they much prefer places where slides are shown, where they don't have to think so much. Certainly, spiritual science demands effort, activity of the human soul. That is why it is so difficult to establish, why it finds so many opponents, apparent opponents. But there is also compensation, there is also the counter-image. Spiritual science makes concepts, makes the human capacity for ideas flexible, makes it so that, above all, it also has the will to penetrate into what is actually present in reality. Therefore, spiritual science can create order precisely in those fields of knowledge that, through today's, I would say, merely accompanying thinking, come to nothing, namely in national economy, for example, in economics, in social science, and in social life itself. It will be able to travel the long paths that lead from such things as money, capital, interest, rent, and credit to reality itself.

Certainly, there are many people today who say: What, spiritual science, this lofty, sublime spiritual science, which is supposed to float only in spiritual matters, is supposed to strive for something as materialistic as an understanding of capital and interest and rent and credit and so on? This is precisely what must be overcome, this is precisely what one must leave behind when one reaches the sublimity of spiritual heights. — That may be quite right from one point of view, but from that one point of view, it satisfies, at least for this earthly life, only the selfish or sophisticatedly selfish instincts of human beings. What matters is that this spiritual science can be the most practical thing for this human life, that, when introduced in the right way, it will allow us to see through the true reality, especially for those things that otherwise float above true reality like an illusory reality.

And so, because time is pressing, I would like to point out one thing in particular. Anyone who is familiar with proletarian thinking today—and proletarian thinking is still the most important factor in the social question—knows that Marxism is particularly appealing to the proletariat, that one demand is repeatedly discussed in various forms in the context of the proletarian movement throughout the world. This is what Karl Marx was able to make people understand: there are goods on the world market that are bought according to supply and demand and so on. A certain law prevails there. But among these goods, the modern social order also includes a very special commodity, namely human labor, which the entrepreneur buys. Other people have other goods that they bring to the market and sell, objects as commodities that satisfy human needs. Those who consider themselves proletarians today, because they have no possessions, have no such things to sell; they have only their human labor to sell. He carries it to the market, where it is bought from him for only as much as is necessary to cover his living expenses and those of his family. He receives only as much as human society must provide for him to eke out a living, while the surplus value—that is the Marxist term—is pocketed by the entrepreneurs or transferred to the rest of the social circulation.

The feeling that he must carry his labor power to the market is what lives in the proletarian; it is what he wants to abolish through the so-called socialization of the means of production.

Now, this idea is one which, if it is not approached from a deeper perspective, will lead to great moral harm. It must be pointed out, with the power of thought gained through the sense of reality provided by spiritual science, that there is something in the development of humanity, not in the way it appears in Auguste Comte, but in a completely different way, which today calls for the restructuring of something very specific. The fact is that we can look back to the Greek era. Many of us have experienced the blessings of this Greek culture sufficiently — or perhaps not sufficiently — but this Greek culture points us back to Greek slavery, and it then allows us to think further about how slavery itself gradually disappeared in the course of human development. What was transferred to other people along with slavery? The whole human being. Almost as a form of serfdom, the whole human being was transferred to other people. The whole human being had to be transferred to other people as a slave. This was the way of human development and corresponded to the human instincts of the time. And if, on the one hand, we see that Plato, the great philosopher, considered slavery necessary, then we must also know, as the compensation that is always associated with this, that the slave, out of his instincts, out of patriarchal feelings, did not perceive slavery as we perceive it today in retrospect in human development. Slavery was simply part of human development at that time.

Now the tendency in development is that human beings give themselves less and less; as slaves they still gave themselves completely, then came the time when they gave their labor, when their labor was bought from them at the same value as one buys goods. Just as in ancient times humans gave themselves completely in slavery, and just as slavery was overcome by historical necessity, not by human will, so too will the fact that humans give only a part of their essence, their labor, be overcome.

And this feeling that this is so, that it will be overcome, is expressed in the proletarian's understanding of the Marxist theory of labor power as a commodity and so on, which is, of course, very erroneous and one-sided. But what is true is that first the whole human being, then this part of the human being, human labor power, and now, thirdly, what development is striving for, only something else can pass from one human being to another. Social life will not be abolished, but something else will take its place. Once we talk about this something else, once we understand social reality in such a way that we can talk about this something else, then we will find understanding by having new ideas that are in tune with social life.

That intuition which flows from spiritual science tells us: We are standing directly in the time when the social structure of humanity on earth wants to change in such a way that labor power, physical labor can be exchanged for any means that can also be given for goods, for objective goods, but that this human labor is performed freely by placing the human being in a certain position, in a certain social position, and allowing the place in which he finds himself to be determined by human society, and also hiring out his time for human society. First, it was the whole person who had to sell themselves or who was sold; then it became human labor power; and thirdly, it is place and time. In certain areas, this has already been implemented. It is not the case that we can say: We ourselves, who are in different life situations than a proletarian, also give away our labor power, our services, or anything else. We are not paid for our labor, but at most for working in a certain place and sacrificing our energy for the benefit of humanity as a whole for a certain period of time. That which no longer belongs to the individual, that which places the individual in his environment, his social environment, his position, which today is more or less determined by the social structure, except in the case of civil servants, where it leads to other disadvantages, will be what replaces payment and the commodification of labor.

This is what is revealed when one observes the development of humanity as it rushes toward the future, based on spiritual impulses. The moment one realizes this, if one speaks and acts from a position of authority in institutions, in laws, acts where action is needed, in public life, then one will act in such a way that one strives, for example, for such a social principle, and then one will meet what is alive today in humanity as a social demand. Time is pressing, and I can no longer cite anything else from spiritual science.

One can well say: something else now lives in the minds of the proletariat; Marxist ideas live in the minds of the proletariat, or, in the case of revolution-minded people, ideas similar to Marxism; one has to deal with these people. Oh no! I myself, dear attendees—I will make this personal remark at the end—having taught among these people for years, was forced out not by these people, but against the will of the 400 students by four emissaries of the leadership. But these leaders will not be leaders for much longer. What remains as a desert after this catastrophic war, and on which these leaders can now exert their influence for a while, will see these leaders disappear; for they will not be able to do anything with their ideas. With the loss of trust in the leaders, trust in the old ideas will also be lost.

And that is what one would like to hope for, that when the opportunity arises, there will also be ears to hear what can be proclaimed as real social ideas, that there will then be enough people who are inclined to really bring such social ideas into humanity, such social ideas that are constructive, fruitful, instead of those that today, like those of Lenin, Trotsky, and others, want to bring destruction and death to humanity through overexploitation.

This is what needs to be taken into account above all else today. I wanted to hint at what could be done in broad areas of social life, so that it could be seen in principle how this spiritual science also meets the most important demands of the present day in the field of social life.

Finally, I would like to point out that this spiritual science also seeks to find in the third area, that of religious life, what is precisely the goal of the present day in this area as well. It is so easy to hear the objection from people who only have a superficial knowledge of spiritual science as it is meant here: this is a sectarian movement that wants to found a new religion, and so on. Spiritual science as it is meant here is no more sectarian than it is intent on founding a new religion. It wants to be science, the science that is demanded by the impulse of the times itself. It wants to be no more amateurish than natural science is allowed to be in its field; nor is it opposed to natural science, but even more than today's natural scientists themselves, it takes the standpoint that has been inaugurated precisely by the natural scientific direction.

But something else is the case. In accordance with the demands of the present—and these demands will continue to arise in the future—this spiritual science also seeks to understand religious needs in the way that they must now increasingly be understood under the changed circumstances. Spiritual science wants to be science. Science always leads away from human individuality, even though it makes the individual understandable in the moral and social spheres, even though it stimulates the sources of individual impulses. But as science itself, as knowledge, it makes people selfless, leads them away from individuality, leads them into that which is comprehensive, universal. However, in order to be fully human, people always need to have a direct, individual relationship with the supersensible, a relationship that they can live out directly and subjectively. Human beings need not only the connection with the supersensible world, as science, spiritual science, can offer them, but also the connection through cult, sacrament, and so on, with the founders of religions and all the real, external, sensory developments through the decades and centuries that are attached to the founders of religions and to external revelations. Spiritual science will deepen spiritually what lives in external cult, what lives in external forms of confession. Spiritual science will show how that which reveals itself supersensually in the sensory world appears when one penetrates it with supersensible knowledge. Spiritual science will thus prepare people in a truly modern sense to have religious needs. But these religious needs cannot be satisfied in any other way than by looking to the old religions.

Strangely enough, it was a Catholic cardinal, Newman, who, in his inaugural speech in Rome, uttered the strange words that he saw no other salvation for the Catholic Church than a new revelation. The Catholic cardinal was merely showing that he could not accept the previous position of humanity toward the old revelation, for he was proclaiming precisely what spiritual science is to bring forth. Spiritual science takes the world as it really is, and it knows that — although the laws of human development are different from those of the individual human being — just as laws appear in the development of individual human beings, so too do they appear in the development of humanity as a whole. And these laws in the development of the individual human being are such that what a person experiences at the age of 50 cannot be a renewal of what they experienced at the age of 25, for example. At the age of 50, one cannot experience the same thing in the same state of mind as one did at the age of 25. Each age has something different to offer, and in a different form.

Now, development in the course of humanity is something else. It is not the same as in the individual human being, and to seek analogies between individual human beings and historical development is amateurish and wrong. But spiritual science finds laws according to which the whole of humanity develops, and knows that the founding of religions is something that belongs to very specific ages that lie behind us, that Christianity has synthesized what was scattered among the other religions, that Christianity as a religious form is in a certain sense the conclusion of religious forms, that one does not have to wait for a new revelation in the sense of Cardinal Newman, but that one can only understand more clearly the revelation that has appeared in Christianity as a religion among other religious revelations in a new sense, in a higher sense. Precisely because spiritual science thinks in terms of reality and not against reality, it knows that it would be doing something useless if it wanted to found a new religion. It would be doing the same thing as if it wanted to make a 50-year-old person 30 years old again. For what matters in human development is that the way we relate to religious revelation changes over time, that new inner foundations must be created. These new inner foundations are being created precisely for today's human beings and their demands, which, however, remain unconscious for many, precisely through spiritual science. And those who, as official representatives of this or that religious denomination, fear or at least claim to fear that spiritual science could make people irreligious, should first and foremost ask themselves whether they are not contributing much more to people's irreligiousness than spiritual science, which, on the contrary, will lead people back to religious life in the true sense. true sense.

Those who want to hold back this religious life as a church creed at a certain level, who do not want what must necessarily come in from the new state of mind of people to come in, are much more opponents of religion, even if they appear in priestly garb, than those who ask themselves: How can people, with their deepened inner lives, develop that trait in their souls that leads them to an understanding of religious life? Spiritual science is not a religious foundation; it is the science of supersensible life. But in being this, it also leads people to deepen those instincts that have declined under the mere external knowledge of nature, which will in turn make this religious life alive and fruitful in humanity in its most diverse forms.

Spiritual science has to respond to the numerous attacks coming from this side today, which, however, really originate from those who are perhaps more hostile to religious life in reality — even though they defend their religion and their creed with words — than anyone who is merely indifferent, let alone the spiritual scientist who will lead us back to true religiosity. One always wants to give such people an answer, which I will quote again today, which I was once compelled to give to someone. I gave a lecture on “Christianity and Wisdom” in a city in southern Germany. There were also two Catholic clergymen in the audience; they listened. They had heard nothing else, only this lecture; it did not seem so heretical to them. Afterwards, they came up to me and said: You say things that we, as official representatives of religion, do not necessarily have to oppose. But it is not right for you to present it in this way. The way you present it, it is only understandable to certain people. The way we present it, it is understandable to everyone.“ I replied, ”Reverend, you see, I quite understand—because it is human nature—that you think everyone would do the same as you in a similar situation, because it is human nature to always believe that everyone should do as you do. But whether I think I am doing the right thing, or whether you think you are doing the right thing, is not what matters to those who think in terms of reality; what matters is this reality. In this case, reality itself dictates the answer to your objection. I ask you: Do all people still go to your church—which would show that you speak for everyone—or do some stay outside? You could not help but tell me that some do stay outside. Well, you see, I said, for those who stay outside and yet have a lively, healthy desire to find the way to Christ, I speak.

This is what reality says, not the subjective belief that everyone can naturally have. Let us not decide for ourselves, but let reality decide. This recognition of reality, this inner search for reality, is what spiritual science can bring to humanity, especially in the three areas currently at war: moral, social, and religious life. And perhaps, when one sees through these things, one will be able to say: this spiritual science already has tasks for the present. And it is not a coincidence, nor is it arbitrary, nor is it the agitation of an individual, that this spiritual science is becoming established in human thinking, feeling, and volitional impulses precisely in the present. For in a certain sense one can say: the present itself, with its difficult experiences, with the tragic fate that will befall humanity and which still holds many tragic events in store, this present itself shows that a new remedy is necessary for many things. And there are many things — I would like to say this at the end of these considerations — for which the sense of reality developed by spiritual science shows that it alone can be the remedy, and that if humanity does not find the courage and interest to turn to this spiritual science for salvation, we will lack the remedy for many things.

If we do not want spiritual science, we will not be able to move forward in many things. And since humanity is never forced to resort to pessimism, but can and must always believe in the good sides of human nature, we can therefore believe that because humanity needs to observe the supersensible life, it will choose the path to this supersensible knowledge and then also find it.