6. Spiritual Scientific Findings on the Ideas of Freedom and Social-moral Life

Another example, taken from a larger historical context: In 1789, one could say at the dawn of the era in which the science of history as we know it today first emerged—for it is not as old as is commonly believed; the science of history as we understand it today is barely more than a hundred years old, a fact known to very few people. At the dawn of modern historical thinking, a truly great man took up his historical teaching post: Schiller in Jena. And the speech with which he took up his historical teaching post has become famous: “On the philosophical head and the bread scholar.” In this speech, in 1789, Schiller expressed a very, very remarkable sentence as his conviction, as that which should permeate his historical view. This sentence reads: “European society seems to have been transformed into one large family; the members of the household may be hostile to one another, but hopefully they will no longer tear each other apart.” This sentence was uttered by someone who tried with genius to penetrate what history teaches, and who also, it cannot be denied, had a little genius himself. It was uttered at a time immediately following the French Revolution, with all that it itself brought in its wake.