Lecture V

And if there were no striving on the part of the individuals towards a community of freedom within the social order, the Earth would have to fulfil her purpose with these beings, who would then be individualised, but who would carry on an existence as Ahrimanic spirits, and who would take away from the Earth the possibility of evolving into the next planetary condition, the Jupiter metamorphosis. Stated shortly, that would mean that the abstract intellectuality of our planet would be perfected towards the one side, would not let it come to completion, and that which arises out of the will, not transmuted into love, would create on the other side sheer individual beings. No less than this is seen by one who sees into the beginnings of a civilisation which is undermining the true progressive development of the Earth. This is what such a seer sees being formed today if no impediment is put in the way of the impulses which on the one hand are now arising in the Western world with such strength, and on the other hand developing so forcibly in the Eastern world. What has proceeded purely out of human subjectivity over there and is lying at the base of the State culture, which has fallen into decadence, is something which will actually mould the Earth's evolution in the direction of individualised demons. And what is evolving in the West is something which will sail along into a universal standard of intellectuality and gradually make man into an automaton. These things can plainly be seen in the construction of these automatic machines, which are already here today—partially. I say “partially” consciously, for to be sure they are still to some extent very individual. In many respects, one can see their automatic nature, but there is something still left in these automatic machines which is at the same time very individual. Something which is to be noticed as an appendage to each of these separate automata, in which if things aren't exactly in the form of banknotes, there's at any rate a sound of gold and silver. But a universal automatism would also oblige the individual purse to become the general communistic purse.