The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is not easy to talk about the "social question" today. An infinite number of factors are currently influencing our judgment on this question in the most unfavorable way. No matter has been "confused by party favor and hatred" like this one. As in few fields are the views so sharply opposed. What is not put forward? And how soon one realizes that many of the views that emerge stem from spirits who walk through the world of facts with the greatest possible shyness.

However, I cannot consider the obstacles placed in the way of a desirable assessment of the social question by party passions to be even the worst. After all, only those who are within the party drive are misled by them. Those outside this drive always have the opportunity to form a personal judgment. It seems to me that a much more significant obstacle lies in the fact that our thinking minds, our scientifically trained culture bearers, do not want to succeed in finding a sure way, a methodical way of tackling this question.

I always and repeatedly come to this conclusion when I read writings on the social question by authors who are to be taken seriously because of their scientific education. I have noticed that in this field the way of thinking that our researchers have adopted under the influence of Darwinism is not yet having a beneficial effect. Do not misunderstand me. I recognize that the Darwinian way of thinking is one of the greatest advances that mankind has been able to make. And I believe that Darwinism must have a beneficial effect in all areas of human thought if it is applied correctly, i.e. in accordance with its spirit. In my "Philosophy of Freedom" I myself have delivered a book which, in my opinion, is written entirely in the spirit of Darwinism. My approach to the conception of this book was quite peculiar. I thought about the most intimate questions of human spiritual life. I did not concern myself with Darwinism at all. And when I had finished my thought process, the idea occurred to me: You have made a contribution to Darwinism.

Now I find that sociologists in particular don't do it that way. They first ask the Darwinian-thinking natural scientists: How do you do it? And then they transfer their methods to their own field. In doing so, they make a big mistake. They simply transfer the laws of nature that prevail in the realm of organic nature to the realm of human spiritual life; exactly the same is supposed to apply to human development as can be observed in animal development. Now there is undoubtedly a sound core in this view. A similar law can certainly be found throughout the world. But it is not at all necessary that these same laws should therefore operate in all areas. The laws which the Darwinists have found operate in the animal and plant kingdoms. In the human kingdom we have to look for laws which are conceived in the spirit of the Darwinian ones -- but which are as specifically peculiar to this kingdom as the organic laws of development are to the natural kingdoms mentioned. We have to look for our own laws for the development of mankind, even if these are conceived in the spirit of Darwinism. A simple transfer of the laws of Darwinism to the development of humanity will not lead to satisfactory views.

I was particularly struck by this again when reading the book for the sake of which I am writing these thoughts: "Die soziale Frage im Lichte der Philosophie" by Dr. Ludwig Stein (published by Ferdinand Enke, Stuttgart 1897). The author's approach is dominated by the intention of dealing with the social question in a way that corresponds to that of Darwinian natural science. "What Buckle accomplished a lifetime ago for the concept of causality in history, namely that he, supported by the emerging statistics, proved its unconditional validity for the whole of historical life, must be done today, now that we have acquired the achievements of Darwin and his successors, for that of development" (p. 43). Starting from this tendency, Ludwig Stein examines how the various forms that dominate human social coexistence have developed. And he tries to show that "adaptation" and "struggle for existence" play the same role as in animal development. I will first pick out one of these forms to illustrate Stein's approach: the religious one. Man finds himself in the midst of various forces of nature. These intervene in his life. They can be useful or harmful to him. They become useful to him when he finds means by which he can use the forces of nature in such a way that they serve his existence. Man invents tools and devices to make the forces of nature serve him. In other words, he tries to adapt his own existence to that of his environment. Many attempts may be made which prove to be in error. But among the countless many there will always be those that do the right thing. These remain the winners. They survive. The erroneous attempts perish. What is useful survives in the "struggle for existence". Among the forces of nature, man finds invisible ones as well as visible ones. He calls them the divine powers alongside the purely natural ones. He also wants to adapt to them. He invents religion with sacrificial service and thereby believes he can move the divine powers to work for his benefit. Stein views the emergence of marriage, property, the state, language and law in the same way. All these forms have arisen through the adaptation of man to his environment; and the present forms of marriage, property, etc., have been preserved because they have proved to be the most useful to man in the struggle for existence.

You can see that Stein is simply trying to apply Darwinism to the human domain.

In a subsequent article, I will use the book mentioned above to show where such a transfer leads.

In the last issue of this journal, I expressed the view that the assessment of social questions in the present day suffers from the fact that the thinkers who put their scientific abilities at the service of this question apply the results that Darwin and his successors obtained for the animal and plant kingdoms to the development of mankind in an all too stereotyped manner. I have named "The Social Question" by Ludwig Stein as one of the books to which I have to make this reproach.

I find my opinion of this book confirmed in particular by the fact that Ludwig Stein carefully collects the results of recent sociology, extracts the most important observations from the rich material, and then does not set out to derive specific sociological laws from the observations in the spirit of Darrwinism, but simply interprets the experiences in such a way that exactly the same laws can be shown in them that prevail in the animal and plant kingdoms.

Ludwig Stein correctly identified the basic facts of social development. Although he violently applies the laws of the "struggle for existence" and "adaptation" to the development of social institutions, marriage, property, the state, language, law and religion, he finds an important fact in the development of these institutions that is not present in the same way in animal development. This fact can be characterized in the following way. All the institutions mentioned arise first in the

In a way that the interests of the human individual recede into the background, while those of a community receive special care. As a result, these institutions initially take on a form that must be fought against in the further course of their development. If the nature of the facts at the beginning of the development of culture did not place an obstacle in the way of the individual's striving to bring his powers and abilities to bear on all sides, marriage, property, the state, etc., could not have developed in the way they did. The war of all against all would have prevented any kind of association. For within an association man is always compelled to give up a part of his individuality. Man is also inclined to do so at the beginning of cultural development. This is confirmed by various things. In the beginning, for example, there was no private property. Stein says about this (p. 91): "It is a fact, which is asserted by scholars with a unanimity that seems all the more convincing the more rarely it can be achieved in this field, that the original form of property was a communistic one and probably remained so during the immeasurably long period deep into barbarism." Private property, which enables people to assert their individuality, did not exist at the beginning of human development. And what could illustrate more dramatically that there was a time when the sacrifice of the individual in the interests of a community was considered right than the fact that the Spartans at a certain time simply abandoned weak individuals and left them to die so that they would not be a burden on the community? And what confirmation does the same fact find in the fact that philosophers of earlier times, e.g. Aristotle, did not even think that slavery had anything barbaric about it? Aristotle takes it for granted that a certain proportion of people must serve another as slaves. One can only hold such a view if one is primarily concerned with the interests of the whole and not with those of the individual. It is easy to prove that all social institutions in the beginning of civilization have had such a form, which sacrifices the interest of the individual to that of the whole.

But it is equally true that in the further course of development the individual endeavors to assert his needs over those of the whole. And if we look closely, the assertion of the individual against the communities that necessarily arise at the beginning of cultural development, which are built on the undermining of individuality, is a good part of historical development.

With sound reasoning, one must recognize that social institutions were necessary and that they could only emerge with an emphasis on common interests. But the same healthy reflection also leads to recognizing that the individual must fight against the sacrifice of his own particular interests. And thus, in the course of time, social institutions have assumed forms which take more account of the interests of individuals than was the case in earlier conditions. And if one understands our time, one may well say that the most advanced strive for such forms of community that the individual is hindered as little as possible in his own life by the ways of living together. The awareness that communities can be an end in themselves is increasingly disappearing. They should become a means for the development of individuality. The state, for example, should be organized in such a way that it grants the greatest possible scope for the free development of the individual personality. The general institutions should be made in such a way that not the state as such, but the individual is served. J. G. Fichte gave this tendency a seemingly paradoxical, but undoubtedly the only correct expression when he said: the state is there to gradually make itself superfluous. This statement is based on an important truth. In the beginning, the individual needs the community. For only out of the community can he develop his powers. But later, when these powers are developed, the individual can no longer bear to be patronized by the community. He then says to himself: I will arrange the community in such a way that it is most conducive to the development of my individuality. All state reformations and revolutions in recent times have had the purpose of promoting individual interests over the interests of the community as a whole.

It is interesting how Ludwig Stein emphasizes this fact to every single social institution. "The obvious tendency of the first social function, marriage, is a constantly increasing personalization, because it is complicated by psychological factors - a struggle for individuality" (p.79). With regard to property, Stein says (p. 106): "The social ideal is, philosophically speaking, an individualism tempered by the communist trait in the institutions of the state." According to Stein, the following applies to the institution of the state in general: "the obvious tendency of social events" is towards "uninterrupted personalization" and the "driving out of the individual tip of the sociological pyramid". Looking at the development of language, Stein says: "Just as sexual communism leads to individual monogamy, just as the original ownership of land irresistibly dissolves into personal private property, so the individual wrests his spiritual personality, his language, his style from linguistic communism, which is in the interests of society. Here, too, the slogan is: "Self-assertion of individuality". Stein says of the development of law: "The soul of the development of law, which originally extended to the entire genus in order to gradually take possession of the individual corporeal individuals and then within these individuals from corporeality to the finest and most delicate mental ramifications, draws us a fleeting, but nevertheless sufficiently characterizing picture of the process of individualization of law, which is in infinite motion" (p. 151).

I now think that, having established these facts, it would have been the task of the sociological philosopher to move on to the basic sociological law in the development of humanity, which follows logically from them, and which I would like to express as follows. At the beginning of cultural states, mankind strives for the emergence of social associations; the interests of the individual are initially sacrificed to the interests of these associations; further development leads to the liberation of the individual from the interests of the associations and to the free development of the needs and powers of the individual.

Now it is a matter of drawing conclusions from this historical fact. Which form of state and society can be the only desirable one if all social development is based on a process of individualization? The answer cannot be too difficult. The state and society, which see themselves as an end in themselves, must strive for rule over the individual, regardless of how this rule is exercised, whether in an absolutist, constitutional or republican manner. If the state no longer sees itself as an end in itself, but as a means, it will no longer emphasize its principle of rule. It will set itself up in such a way that the individual is asserted to the greatest possible extent. His ideal will be the absence of domination. It will be a community that wants nothing for itself and everything for the individual. If one wants to speak in terms of a way of thinking that moves in this direction, then one can only fight everything that today amounts to a socialization of social institutions. Ludwig Stein does not do that. He moves from the observation of a correct fact, from which, however, he cannot deduce a correct law, to a conclusion that represents a rotten compromise between socialism and individualism, between communism and anarchism.

Instead of conceding that we are striving for individualistic institutions, he tries to support a principle of socialization that only allows itself to take individual interests into account to the extent that the needs of the whole are not impaired. For example, Stein (p. 607) says of the law: "By the socialization of law we mean the legal protection of the economically weak; the conscious subordination of the interests of the individual to those of a larger common whole, still of the state, but ultimately of the whole human race." And Ludwig Stein considers such a socialization of law to be desirable.

I can only explain a view such as this to myself if I assume that a scholar has been so taken in by the general catchwords of the time that he is incapable of deducing the corresponding corollaries from his correct preliminary propositions. The correct propositions derived from sociological observation would force Ludwig Stein to present anarchistic individualism as the social ideal. This would require a courage of thought that he obviously does not have. Ludwig Stein seems to know anarchism only in the boundlessly stupid form in which it strives towards its realization through the rabble of bomb throwers. When he says on page 597: "With a thinking, purposeful, organized working class, for which the laws of logic have binding validity, one reaches an understanding", he proves what I have said. Understanding with the communist-thinking working class is not possible today for those who not only know the laws of social development like Ludwig Stein, but who also know how to interpret them correctly, as Ludwig Stein cannot.

Ludwig Stein is a great scholar. His book proves that. Ludwig Stein is a childlike social politician. His book proves that. So the two are quite compatible in our time. We have achieved a pure culture of observation. But a good observer is by no means a thinker. And Ludwig Stein is a good observer. What he tells us as the results of his and other observations is important to us: what he concludes from these observations is none of our business.

I read his book with interest. It was really useful to me. I learned a lot from it. But I have always had to draw different conclusions from the premises than Ludwig Stein drew from them. Where the facts speak through him, he stimulates me; where he speaks for himself, I have to fight him.

But now I ask myself: why can Ludwig Stein arrive at the wrong social ideals despite having the right insights? And here I come back to my original assertion. He is not able to really find the social laws from the social facts. Had he been able to do so, he would not have arrived at a rotten compromise between socialism and anarchism. For he who can really recognize laws necessarily acts in accordance with them.

I have to keep coming back to the fact that thinkers in our time are cowards. They do not have the courage to draw conclusions from their premises, from their observations. They compromise with illogic. They should therefore not touch on the social question at all. It is too important. Just to build a few trivial conclusions on correct premises, which would be worthy of a moderate social reformer, to give lectures and then publish them as a book, that is not what this question is for.

I regard Stein's book as proof of how much our scholars can do, but how little they can really think. We need courage in the present; courage of thought, courage of consequence; but unfortunately we only have cowardly thinkers.

I would consider the lack of courage in thinking to be the most striking trait of our time. To blunt one thought, according to its consequences, to juxtapose it with another "equally justified" one: that is a very general tendency. Stein recognizes that human development is moving towards individualism. He lacks the courage to think about how we can arrive at a form of society that takes individualism into account from within our own circumstances. Recently, E. Münsterberg translated a book by the Brussels professor Adolf Prins ("Freiheit und soziale Pflichten" by Adolf Prins, authorized German edition by Dr. E. Münsterberg, Verlag Otto Liebmann, Berlin 1897). In its entire content, Prins knows the truth that must cut off the head of all socialism and communism without further ado: "And I think that among the elements that form the eternal foundation of humanity, the diversity of men is one of the most resistant." No socialist or communist form of state or society can take due account of the natural inequality of human beings. Every organization pre-determined in its essence according to any principles must necessarily suppress the full free development of the individual in order to assert itself as a total organism. Even if a socialist generally recognizes the justification of the full development of all individual personalities, in the practical realization of his ideals he will seek to grind down those characteristics of individuals that do not fit into his programme.

The Belgian professor's train of thought is interesting. He admits from the outset that the accumulation of ruling powers in one place is harmful. He therefore speaks out in favour of the medieval institutions with their administrative and judicial systems based on local associations and regional individualities as opposed to the efforts originating in Roman times, which wanted to unite and centralize all powers in one place by bypassing individual properties (p. 4o ff). Prins is even opposed to universal suffrage because he believes that a minority is thereby violated by the rule of a perhaps insignificant majority. Nevertheless, he also comes to recommend lazy compromises between socialism and individualism. That all salvation springs from the activity of individualities: that should have been obvious to this thinker from all his considerations. He does not have the courage to admit this and says: "But the highest degree of individuality does not arise from an excess of individualism" (p. 63). I would like to counter this by saying that there can be no talk of an "excess" of individualism, because no one can know what is lost from an individuality if its free development is restricted. Those who want to maintain moderation here cannot know what dormant powers they are eradicating from the world with their clumsy application of moderation. This is not the place to make practical suggestions, but it is the place to say that anyone who knows how to interpret the development of mankind can only advocate a form of society that aims at the unhindered all-round development of individuals and to which any domination of one over the other is an abomination. How the individual copes with himself is the question. Each individual will solve this question if he is not prevented from doing so by all kinds of communities.

Of all the dominions, the worst is the one that social democracy strives for. It wants to cast out the devil with Beelzebub. But today it is a spectre. And since red is known to be the most exciting color, it has a terrible effect on many people. But only to people who can't think. Those who can think know that with the realization of social democratic ideals all individualities will be suppressed. But because these cannot be suppressed - for human development is once concerned with individuality - the day of the victory of social democracy would also be the day of its downfall.

Those who allow themselves to be intimidated by the red flag of social democracy to such an extent that they believe that every theory about human coexistence must be lubricated with the necessary drop of social oil do not seem to understand this. That's how oily they are, Ludwig Stein's and Adolf Prins'.

Both don't really know how to help themselves. They think. This should make them individualists or, let's put it bluntly, theoretical anarchists. But they are afraid, hellishly afraid of the consequences of their own thinking and so they oil the consequences of their thinking a little with the state socialist airs and graces of Prince Bismarck and the social democratic nonsense of Marx, Engels and Liebknecht. He who brings much will bring something to some.

But that doesn't apply to thinkers. I am of the opinion that everyone should work for the undiminished consistency of the view that is in accordance with his nature. If it is wrong, then another will prevail. But whether we will win, we leave that to the future. We just want to stand our ground in the battle.

The people of the thinking craft have a decisive role to play in the discussion about the social question. Because it is said that their craft does not give rise to blind party passion. But thinkers also need a passion. That of ruthless recognition of their own views. The thinkers of our time do not have this ruthlessness.

In the introduction to his book, Ludwig Stein regrets that contemporary philosophers are so little concerned with the social question. I would not regret this to the same extent. If our philosophers were thinkers who had the courage to draw the consequences from their thoughts, then I could agree with Stein. But the way things are, if philosophers were actively involved in the discussion of social issues, nothing extraordinary would come of it. And Ludwig Stein has proved this with his thick book. There is nothing in it that would have any bearing on the question. The general cabbage that is served up to us by the center parties and compromise candidates all over the world is presented to us by Ludwig Stein with a little philosophical salad. That doesn't make it any tastier.

Napoleon the First certainly expressed the creed of most great politicians when he said: "Events must never determine politics, but politics must determine events. To be carried away by every incident is to have no political system at all." Bismarck's greatness is based on the fact that he made exactly the opposite profession of faith to his own. When we look at the life of a great politician, we are inclined to ask: What political idea did he have in mind? What did he want? And the more of his goals he realized, the more we value him. If someone had asked Bismarck at the beginning of his political career what he wanted, he would hardly have answered anything other than: I want to conscientiously fulfill the duties imposed on me by my office. And if he had been asked about a guiding political idea that determined him, he would probably not have known what to do with such a question. How far removed from the idea of such a German Reich, the realization of which he served, his political thoughts may have been in the revolutionary years, when he believed he could best fill his place in the ranks of the Frankfurt members of the Bundestag by opposing every modern stirring of the German spirit as the bitterest enemy.

There were idealists at the time who wanted to create a unified empire for the German people through the power of thought. Bismarck had not the slightest understanding for such idealism. And twenty-three years later, Bismarck realized what those idealists then thought possible, and what he then thought was a ridiculous fantasy.

At the risk of being mistaken for a diminutive Bismarck by those who believe they can only recognize a great man through superlatives of praise, I will say it: Bismarck owes his successes to the fact that he was never even a few years ahead of his time. The idealists of 1848 had to fail because they wanted to realize an idea that was only ripe for realization in 187x. Bismarck was only available for this idea at the moment when it was ripe to come into existence.

Goethe characterized problematic natures in this way: they are "natures that are not up to any situation, and for whom none is enough". If you transform this sentence into its opposite, you have a characterization of Bismarck: He was a man who was equal to any situation and for whom each one was enough.

The idea that one can have an ideal and want to work towards its realization was far from Bismarck's mind. Anyone who has such an ideal will always be more or less of a problematic nature, because the real state of things - which does not correspond to the ideal - will never be enough for him. But Bismarck had a keen sense for the real state of affairs, for the real demands of his time; and he had the ruthless will to realize what the time, the moment demanded. In the period before 1870, he could have been given a thousand reasons in favor of bringing about the national unity of North and South Germany: he would have smiled at them. In 1870, the facts spoke to him and he brought about this unity.

I say it unreservedly: Bismarck became the greatest politician because he knew how to turn his coat to the wind in the very best sense of the word. But I am only parroting Bismarck's words. In the session of the Prussian House of Representatives on June 2, 1865, Bismarck replied to Deputy Virchow, who accused him of having no firm principles, but of making his political decisions one way or the other, depending on how the wind blew: "Virchow accused us of turning our rudder depending on how the wind changed. Now I ask, what else should one do when sailing a ship but turn the rudder according to the wind, if one does not want to create wind oneself?"

Bismarck never thought about how the world should be. He regarded such thinking as idle activity. He let events tell him what should be; his job was to act powerfully in line with the demands made by events.

But his power has a very specific direction. No one else would have given it this direction. Bismarck was born on ı. April 1815 in a Prussian Junker family. His upbringing led him to act as the personality who had to inscribe himself on his tombstone: "A loyal German servant of Wilhelm I."

You will search in vain if you want to find two men in world history who were as destined for each other as Bismarck and Wilhelm I. A monarch who grasps his tasks in the only worthy, only right way for a hereditary ruler: to make use of the man who knows how to harmonize the interests of his throne with the long-cherished ideals of the majority of the people out of innate selflessness and with enormous strength. And a servant who is educated to place the titanic power that belongs to him at the service of the ruler, whom he recognizes without further question as his "master".

One wonders about the causes of such harmony. I recognize the effects of religion. You can be a ruler like Wilhelm I and you can be a statesman like Bismarck only as a Christian.

Bismarck was equal to any situation in his life. He did what events demanded of a loyal German servant of the Prussian king. He did not think about the justification of his actions. He left that to God. We can look into Bismarck's heart. We can know how he came to terms with his task through his relationship with God. Moritz Busch reports of a conversation in Varzin during which Bismarck said: "Nobody loved him because of his political activities. He had not made anyone happy with it, not himself,.... but many unhappy. Without me, there would not have been three great wars, eighty thousand people would not have died, and parents, brothers, sisters and widows would not have mourned. Meanwhile, he continued, I made a deal with God."

And Bismarck also arranged his relationship with his king with God. God gave him the office of making this king great. And he knew nothing other than to fulfill the duties of this office honestly. It was not his ideal to found a German Empire. It was the office entrusted to him by God and his king. He was not there to fulfill ideals; he was only equal to any office.

Bismarck's principle was to make the Hohenzollern house powerful. If one may speak of a principle in his case. Because that was what the times demanded.

And the times demanded something else. It demanded that the king go with the people. Bismarck also recognized this. Bismarck wanted to create a people loyal to the king and later to the emperor. That is why he introduced universal suffrage. That is why he made a start with socio-political reforms.

It is a lie to claim that Bismarck was ever a friend of the liberal bourgeoisie. In truth, he was always their greatest enemy. He saw it as the embodiment of the republican spirit. Liberalism wants the republic, or if it pretends not to want it, then the king should be nothing more than the hereditary president. This is Bismarck's opinion. I would like to quote the words he himself spoke in the German Reichstag on November 26, 1884: "What is the distinguishing feature between republic and monarchy? Certainly not the hereditary nature of the president. The Polish republic had a king, he was called king and was hereditary under certain circumstances. The English aristocratic republic has a hereditary president, who is king or queen; but the English constitution does not fit into the concept of a monarchy according to the German definition. I distinguish between monarchy and republic on the line where the king can be compelled by parliament, ad faciendum, to do something which he does not do of his own free will. I still count a constitution on this side of the line as monarchical, where, as with us, the king's assent to the laws is required, where the king has the veto and parliament also ... . The monarchical institution ceases to bear this name when the monarch can be compelled by the majority of Parliament to dismiss his ministry, when institutions can be imposed on him by the majority of Parliament which he would not voluntarily sign, against which his veto remains powerless." Bismarck believed that the liberalism of the bourgeoisie was striving for institutions that would force the ruler to simply place his name under the resolutions of the majority in parliament without any will. Of the proletarians, however, he believed that they placed their physical and spiritual well-being higher than a particular form of government. A social royalty, he thought, would be supported by the proletariat against the republican inclinations of the bourgeoisie. And he thought that a king-friendly proletariat could be raised through universal suffrage.

I believe there would have been an opportunity for Bismarck to realize his social royalty. This possibility would have materialized if Lassalle had not lost his life in 1864 as a result of Rakowitza's frivolous pistol shot. Bismarck could not cope with principles and ideas. They lay outside the circle of his world view. He could only negotiate with people who held real facts against him. Had Lassalle remained alive, he would probably have brought the workers to the point where they could have found a solution to the social question for Germany in agreement with Bismarck by the time Bismarck was ready for social reformist plans. In order to solve the social question at the right time in the spirit of Bismarck, Lassalle was missing. Bismarck could do nothing with the socialist parties, which soon after Lassalle's death asserted themselves as a political factor not under the leadership of a living man but under the abstract theories of Marzen. If Lassalle had stood opposite him as a power factor, with the workers as this power: Bismarck could have founded the social state with the king at its head. But Bismarck did not know what to do with party doctrines.

He knew how to reckon with power factors. He was indifferent to theories and principles. On November 26, 1884, he told MP Rickert: "It makes no difference to me whether my view fits into a scientific theory: it fits into my view of constitutional law, and in my view of the king I will know how to preserve the executive power and hereditary monarchy of this freedom."

Bismarck was a loyal German servant of his ruler. An enemy of the liberal bourgeoisie no less. And if this bourgeoisie has its most enthusiastic supporters today, it is because the worship of success is the most widespread virtue in their circles. It is curious that only national enthusiasm helped the German bourgeoisie for a time to overcome Bismarck's opposing attitude. The lasting monument to this deception is the National Liberal Party. It is an idealistic party. National sentiments have always held it together. It cheered Bismarck for a while. He made use of it as long as he believed that an ideal group could serve the demands of the time.

But the mass of the people also forced Bismarck to recognize his greatness. He enjoyed unprecedented popularity. He, who said in a Reichstag session on May 5, 1885: "I would become very thoughtful about what harmful things I might have intended or unintentionally brought about for the country if I had gained popularity there (to the left). The previous speaker can rest assured that I am not striving for this, just as I have never striven for popularity in my entire life."

No, Bismarck never strove for popularity. And if the crowd had cried out loudly for ideals that could have been realized after ten years: Bismarck would not have cared about the loud cries of the crowd. He was always the right man who knew how to seize the moment.

But he always used the moment in such a way that his actions were in line with the historical traditions and religious convictions in which he had grown up. He had grown up in the convictions of a Prussian nobleman and was able to adapt to the similar convictions of his master, King and Emperor Wilhelm I. With this ideal of a monarch, Bismarck's world view had sunk into the grave with him.

He could not have chosen a better epitaph than: "A loyal German servant of Wilhelm I"

And so they may resent me as much as they like, those who can only recognize when they praise in superlatives. I say with Bismarck, the great deceased, that the best maxim of the politician is:

"What else should one do when sailing a ship but turn the rudder to the wind, if one does not want to make the wind himself?"

[Postscript on the occasion of a reprint of the above essay in the weekly magazine "Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus", Stuttgart 1921:]

The above observations were written after Bismarck's death in 1898. Now, after the publication of the third volume of his "Thoughts and Memories", they can appear without their content being changed. For it is precisely through this publication that the colors in which Bismarck's picture could be sketchily painted at that time show their full justification. At the end of this third volume is the sentence: "The task of politics lies in the most correct foresight possible of what other people will do under given circumstances. The capacity for this foresight will rarely be innate to the extent that it does not require a certain amount of business experience and knowledge of personnel in order to be effective..." This sentence is accompanied by the following: "Bismarck never thought about how the world should be. He regarded such thinking as an idle activity. He let events tell him what should be. His business was to act forcefully in accordance with the demands of events." It can be said that Bismarck judged his dismissal with admirable objectivity from the point of view on which he had always stood. He considered it necessary for him to remain in the service because he saw no one in the field of those who came into consideration to whom the events of the time could tell what should be, and because they did not want to know what they told him. One reads about this in "Thoughts and Memories": "How exactly, I would like to say subalternly, Caprivi followed the "Consigne was shown by the fact that he did not address any kind of question or inquiry to me about the state of the affairs of state he was about to take over, about the previous aims and intentions of the imperial government and the means to carry them out."

The title page of the third volume reads: "To the sons and grandchildren for an understanding of the past and a lesson for the future." Today, this dedication must be read with the most painful feelings. One cannot help thinking that Bismarck had an inkling of what was to come if there were no politician with ears to hear what events were saying. If he had experienced what had happened, he would probably still have sometimes said something like: "I cannot help feeling uneasy when I consider the extent to which these qualities have been lost in our leading circles." He means the qualities that allow one to recognize what other people will do under given circumstances and that one must acquire through experience. In politics, you have to feel the wind and steer by it if you don't want to make wind yourself.

People with a clear view of the events of life must have long been convinced of the complete blamelessness of the unfortunate prisoner on Devil's Island. When the feeling of disgust against an unprecedented gagging of the law and the enthusiasm for justice are added to the clear view of such people, then their indignation must be discharged in such strong accusations as those made by Zola, Björnson and others.

It is understandable that there are people in France who rebel against the free rule of law in this matter. For who are these people? Those who fear the revelation of the true facts because they have played a role in the matter that no decent person can envy them. Those who, out of party interests, have to claim that they are convinced of Dreyfus' guilt because they need this lie, which they committed in front of themselves, as a party slogan. And those who are too stupid or too cowardly to look at the true situation.

We also have people in Germany who are hostile to standing up for the tormented captain. They voluntarily play statesman and say: we must not interfere in the affairs of the French. At the same time, they threaten the spectre of a Franco-German war. To be sure, no one has yet provided any proof that clearing up the fog of lies, party passion and political corruption could contribute the least to such a war. But such a "spectral threat" has a strong effect on the masses; and it tickles one's own vanity to claim: I have statesmanlike insight and speak from a higher political point of view about the poor naive lambs who allow themselves to be carried away by misunderstood human compassion to stand up for a man who - since he is French - is none of their business.

Whatever the motives of the opponents of an advocacy for a martyr of injustice, blindness and corruption that is prompted by enthusiasm for justice and freedom, one thing is true of them all: they have not the slightest psychological judgment. Only those who are able to decide according to the whole nature of a person whether he is capable of an act that is attributed to him or not have such a judgment. All people with psychological judgment could say with certainty from the behaviour of Captain Dreyfus before, during and after his conviction: This man must be innocent.

In the last few weeks, another reason has been added to those of these people with a psychological eye. The letters that Dreyfus wrote to his wife from December 1894 to March 1898 have been published. They are a psychological document of the first order. I would like to record without reservation the feelings that ran through my soul when I read these letters. Dreyfus is a personality with qualities that I hate. I dislike him as only a human being can be disliked. He is a narrow-minded chauvinist. He writes to his wife: "Do you remember how I told you that ten years ago, when I was in Mulhouse in September, I heard a German music corps celebrating the anniversary of the Battle of Sedan. My pain was so great then that I wept with rage, tore my sheets in anger and vowed to devote all my strength, all my intelligence, to the service of my fatherland against the enemy who was insulting the pain of the Alsatians in this way." Dreyfus was a stubborn soldier. The cries of indignation that he sent to his wife from his prison and exile all had a petty character. No lion's nature rears up against excessive injustice, but a small patriot and socialite who would have killed himself if he had not felt obliged to live until his "honor" and the good name of his children were restored. I do not stand up for a personality I like or a great personality, but I speak out against the trampled right of personality, against freedom thrown with excrement.

Shrunk down to a few ideas is the whole soul life of the martyred man. The large number of letters bring only the one cry of pain in countless variations: "My heart bled, it still bleeds, it lives only in the hope that one day the braids that I acquired in a noble way and never soiled will be returned to me." How little the tortured man has to say to his heroic wife apart from this! Like a "fixed idea" in the speeches of a madman, this thought pervades all the prisoner's letters. And his state must be similar to madness. His inner life is extinguished except for this one thought. It is obvious to any psychologist that this mental life has reached a point that would make it a traitor to its own guilt, if there were such a thing. This man, driven to the point of obsession, would confess today if he had anything to confess, but Dreyfus' obsessions are credible proof of his innocence. No one who reads these letters with a psychological eye can believe in the slightest guilt of this man. These letters should be read as a monumental testimony that today in the French Republic the right of personality, that freedom can be crushed, that man can be without rights in a state that bases its existence on so-called liberties.

If there were judges, if there could be judges in the present state, who would not pass judgment according to the letter of the law, which is a mockery of the facts, then it would only take these letters to get Dreyfus out of his exile, acquit him of all guilt and grant him what he demands and what he is still capable of. But judges cannot be psychologists. More important to them than the evidence of innocence provided by the letters is whether there is an ambiguous paragraph somewhere that can be subtly interpreted in favor or against the convicted man.

Died on December 29, 1898

What is so often said of personalities who die in their prime as an empty phrase can probably be said with full justification of Moritz von Egidy: he left us too soon. For one is probably right when one claims that this man still had the most important years of his development ahead of him. His blind followers and admirers will hardly have this judgment. But they are unlikely to be the right judges in this particular case. Rather, those who, despite the warmth that emanated from Egidy, remained cold to his words, and who, despite the likeability of his personality, could only be strangers to him, may be regarded as such.

Egidy was one of those people who will always exist as living proof that idealism is a necessary world view for the human race. He envisioned an ideal of human social order. His heart was set on this ideal. The right of the free personality, which can live itself out unconditionally, all-round, completely according to its abilities, belonged to the essential content of this ideal. Egidy had to give up his profession as an officer when he came to the realization that he had to seek his social ideal in personal freedom. And it must be acknowledged that, from this first step, he proved himself to be a courageous personality with a strong character throughout his entire public career, who remained true to himself at every moment to the greatest extent imaginable.

But why were there those who remained cold when they heard Moritz von Egidy speak of his ideals? The * answer to this is probably that this man did not have the vivid power of thought to meet the needs of his heart, which knows how to show the indeterminate, dark ideals the sure, clear paths. There was something hazy about all Egidy's statements. His followers were therefore not the minds that walk through life with sure instincts and know what they want. He was understood by those who wavered back and forth between ancient traditions and modern ideas. Those who shy away from scaring away the sense of well-being that lies in surrendering to undefined, mystical powers through the complete clarity of a world view. They also want to avoid the martyrdom of the soul that must be endured by those who seek to displace the elements of millennia of education with the ideas of a new worldview.

The people who have their hearts in the right place and reason in a somewhat lost position were Egidy's followers. Through such people, a tremendous amount of fruitful work can be done. One need only recall Egidy's manly advocacy in the Zietbens case to prove this. For the great tasks of the time, however, spirits of this kind will achieve less.

However, all of this would probably have been different for Egidy if he had been granted a longer life. It is true that until the end he was always to be found on the side of those currents of thought for which the lack of clarity of thought is an unconscious axiom. His position towards the Russian peace manifesto, which a clear head cannot imagine, proves this. But despite all this, a steady clarification of his views can be observed in Egidy's development. He has not yet come to ground his individualist-anarchist views in the ideas of modern thought. He spoke much of "development" and of the fact that the further progress of human society must be based on the idea of development. But there was little to be seen in his writings and speeches of the concrete laws resulting from the scientific theory of development and their application to human life. As a result, everything that emanated from him was alarmingly reminiscent of the "ethical culture" and the endeavors of Pastor Naumann - that is, of spiritual currents that are unable to reform life in the sense of new knowledge and therefore want to bring back to life in a new form the eternal truth - the so-called enduring moral ideas - in people's minds, according to the opinion of their supporters. There is a lack of understanding in these circles for what is untenable in these ideas. Their members do not know, for example, that the ideas of Christian moral teaching only have meaning for those who believe in the Christian world view. All those who have lost faith in this worldview cannot speak of a reform of the moral ideas of Christianity, but only of a rebirth of moral life out of the spirit of the modern worldview.

Ernst von Wolzogen pointed out in one of the last issues of the Viennese weekly "Die Zeit" the inconsistency that appears in our age in that, alongside the greatest advances in the field of thought and knowledge, the most outdated religious ideas are making their presence felt. Today, the worst reaction asserts itself alongside the proudest consciousness of freedom. Wolzogen is therefore not wrong to call our century the "unruly".

Personalities such as Moritz von Egidy will in the future be regarded as typical of the phenomenon Wolzogen is referring to.

There are two souls in her breast: the modern consciousness of the times in a general, confused form and the ancestral Christian feeling. They now tinker with both until one seems to match the other. The two currents, which are divided between two groups of people, a small progressive one and a large, powerful, reactionary one, unite them in one personality. They win supporters for the reason that they basically do not put a spoke in the wheel of either party. They will therefore find plenty of approval from all the "halves"; but the "wholes" will always be cold and alien to them with the cruelty that flows from knowledge. But these "wholes" will not be able to suppress a feeling of regret. And this feeling will be particularly clear towards personalities like Egidy. What effect could natures like these have with their warmth and boldness, with their honesty and ruthlessness, if they wanted to place themselves entirely at the service of the present! If, in addition to the modernity of their hearts, they also had that of the intellect!

In addition to the enthusiasm with which Moritz von Egidy spoke the energetic words: "It is blatant how one sins against the holiest of human beings, against their urge to grow and perfect themselves, by blindly, childishly and violently fighting against the omnipotent law of development", one would like to wish for a clear recognition of what is really fruitful for the future in terms of this law of development.

On the occasion of the death of Emil Schiff on January 23, 1899

A personality of great significance for the present was taken from us by death a few days ago. Emil Schiff, who died on January 23, was not a creative artist or scholar, nor a productive nature. He did not fertilize any area of intellectual life with new ideas. Everything he wrote was mere reporting; most of it was pure daily fiction. He was a journalist. But when one says this about Emil Schiff, one must remember Goethe's words: Consider the what, consider the how. He was like an embodied protest against contemporary journalism. What would journalism be like if we had many like him! A generally prevailing view of the present cannot separate the concept of the journalist from that of superficiality. Who would deny this view a certain justification? How was Emil Schiff, on the other hand! Every feuilleton he wrote reeked of thoroughness. Many a scholar who writes about a remote topic that is easy to master because of its one-sidedness could take this or that newspaper article by Schiff as a model.

The journalist writes for the day. Whoever does this must understand the day. But the day, the "today" is the result of all human cultural work. And in the smallest daily phenomenon, things can come to light that can only be judged on the broadest basis of a very general education. Imagine a journalist who wants to write in a dignified manner on the occasion of Helmholtz's, du Bois-Reymond's or Treitschke's death! It is certainly less difficult to write about the rodent brain for the most learned journal.

It is said that in our time a certain versatility cannot be combined with thoroughness. The richness of what we need to know in individual fields today if we want to be "thorough" cannot be combined with the universal mastery of the intellectual content of our time. If this were true, it would also be the view that the writer of the day must be superficial. Emil Schiff is living proof to the contrary of this assertion. How did he become this counter-evidence?

You only need to put a few facts together to answer this question. Emil Schiff studied law from the age of nineteen; then he became a journalist. In his twenty-ninth year, he began studying higher mathematics and analytical mechanics, and in his thirty-second year, medicine. In his thirty-seventh he was able to write a doctoral dissertation on "Cabanis", one of the most versatile people of the last century. Schiff's friends tell him that in the last days of his life he occupied himself with English and Roman history, and that Cervantes was to be seen at the bedside of the dying man. So it would not be a wrong judgment to say that the indefatigable man still incorporated much into the broad scope of his knowledge that cannot be documented.

It would certainly be incorrect to claim that Schiff only endeavored so diligently to develop his knowledge in all directions in order to become a perfect journalist. For him, an all-round education was a personal necessity. Not knowing something seemed to unsettle his universal mind. But it is precisely such people who belong in journalism. Nothing is too good for this profession. And even if one has to say that a person with such a thirst for knowledge should have become the ideal of a scholar, one should not regret that he became a journalist. Because a large part of our educated world merely appropriates the daily literature, it needs personalities such as Emil Schiff was.

Only through characters of his kind is it possible to eliminate the much-discussed damage to journalism. Human knowledge forms a self-contained whole. One can at best be a specialist and dispense with general education. One must then compile purely factual information about Byron's influence on German literature; or report what one has seen with one's eyes about the reproduction of mosses. But it is impossible to report on a political phenomenon or a scientific discovery to one's contemporaries if one does not know how to integrate it into the entire cultural fabric of the present on the basis of a comprehensive education. Most of our journalists are unable to do this. Unfortunately, the lack of such an ability is also noticed far too little. Much more fortunate than the Schiffs are those who know how to display a vain erudition in a paradoxical way. The journalist can be as one-sided, indeed as ignorant as possible, if only he is "amusing". Yes, amusing! You can't really disagree with that. But it just depends for whom amusing. For those who have a serious need to participate in the cultural life of the present, or for those who want to fill the time left over from their professional activities with meaningless jokes. Today, the pamphleteer is regarded more as a knowledgeable, discerning reporter. Article writers who have picked up a few phrases from the agrarians' catechism and know how to dress them up with a few stylistic flourishes from a superficial reading of Nietzsche are held in the highest esteem. The one-sided, superficial and paradoxical dominate the writers of the day. Emil Schiff was the opposite of all this. He was an objective journalist. He had the conscience so necessary to the reporter. And he was able to fulfill what this conscience dictated to him, because he worked incessantly on perfecting his ability to judge.

One can be of the opinion that no one should write as a playwright about a play who does not know at least the basics of Darwinism, and that no one should write about Prince Bismarck who does not understand the essentials of sociology. Emil Schiff fulfilled such strict conditions. He combined the precision of a scholar with the wide-ranging interests of a newspaper writer. The mere phrase was completely alien to him.

It will probably not be easy for productive natures to fulfill the journalistic profession as perfectly as Schiff did. They will be too preoccupied with training their own to appropriate the foreign to such an extensive extent. Schiff was able to report on others and other things in such a unique way because his own never bothered him.

All talk of reform within certain living and cultural conditions is worthless if one does not recognize that such reform must be based on perfect human selection. We know today that man cannot be developed against his nature. Those who speak of education and believe that there are general principles according to which human nature can be molded understand nothing of modern scientific achievements. We can do nothing more than bring out the natural endowments in a person. And we must create conditions under which those people who are particularly suited to any sphere of life can also place themselves in it. An occupational class will be best provided for when the natural conditions are such as to lead into it those people who, according to their nature, are best suited to it.

In order to create such conditions, however, there must be recognition and appreciation of the personalities who possess such suitability. The requirements placed on certain professions are based on this recognition and appreciation. And these requirements correspond exactly to what is called demand in the field of economics. Supply will always be based on this demand. If the readers of our newspapers ask for chatterboxes, they will be offered Kerrs; if they ask for well-educated, conscientious writers, they will be offered Schiffs. This is an iron law in the intellectual development of mankind. Therefore, such exemplary, unique personalities as Emil Schiff was must not be carelessly passed by.

Every readership has the journalists it deserves. Emil Schiff was only intended for a select group. That's not exactly flattering for our time, because this man was basically ignored. In many circles, his articles were probably no more appreciated than those of a random typesetter with a scant knowledge of literary history. Few people during his lifetime knew the value of this man.

"Catholicism as such is a principle of progress; but what really and truly stands in the way of spiritual progress among Catholic peoples, for example, is not essentially Catholic. It must be ruthlessly investigated and combated so that Catholicism can unfold its own essence unhindered!" ... "The ideal that guides theological research is the conviction that the equation between correctly understood revelation and correctly interpreted reality can be established. If unbelieving scholars, guided by other ideals, judge differently, they associate the words God and Christianity with a completely different idea than the theologian" . . . So wrote an idealistically-minded German theologian, the Würzburg professor Hermann Schell, a few years ago. ("Catholicism as a Principle of Progress", Würzburg 1897, recently published in its 7th edition). A few days ago, the Pope gave a clear opinion on whether he thinks the same way about the "truly Catholic" as this Würzburg professor. He has placed Schell's writings on the index of books forbidden to the faithful. This means that the professor's teachings are heretical. It is now said that Professor Schell submitted. If this is true, then Schell simply acted as a true and genuine Catholic. And once again, those who hold Cardinal Rauscher's famous words to be the only authoritative statement on Catholicism have been proven right: "The Church knows no progress". Schell is one of those confessors of the Catholic faith who cannot escape the power of scientific achievements. They feel the power of the knowledge that man acquires through his free thinking. But they cannot escape their religious beliefs. They seek to unite their faith with science. It must always be emphasized to them that all free science has developed out of the power of the human spirit; and that in truth Catholicism has never conceded any result of free research for internal reasons. It has only ever retreated as far as it could from the power of the human mind. It has allowed what it could not eliminate from the world. There is nothing within Catholicism that made it possible for him to harmonize his own teachings with the progress of the human spirit. It is well if this is conceded here and there. The true Catholic must be hostile to everything that the human spirit produces of itself. And the modern spirit must be hostile to what the Church teaches on the basis of her faith in revelation. All bridging of this opposition is a falsification of the facts - not necessarily subjective, but certainly objective. And this falsification is harmful. For it prevents the battle between two world views from being fought out honestly. When Professor Schell says: "Why should it be unchurchly in our time to bring the advanced, deepened and expanded philosophy of modern times into a fruitful alliance with the faith in revelation?", such a standpoint prevents the progress of development that corresponds to the actual factors. It creates an intermediate group between honest supporters of the Church and honest opponents, which prevents the clash and pushes the decision out. The confessors of free thought prefer the Pope to Professor Schell. Where they say "yes", the Pope says "no". And that is good. And the Pope has every right to do so. He is infallible in all things that he proclaims ex cathedra. Anyone who speaks about Catholicism must therefore stick solely to the Pope. Since infallibility has become dogma, this must be recognized. - There are certainly naive minds who resent the fact that believers of Professor Schell's kind submit. We would like to ask them: wouldn't non-submission simply be pointless? What should Professor Schell do? Should he continue to claim that his teaching is true Catholicism and that the Roman bishop is wrong? But then Professor Schell would have to say at the same time: Catholicism excludes progress. So he would have to accuse himself of inconsistency. Either Schell remains a Catholic, in which case his teaching is wrong - because the Pope has declared it to be wrong, and anyone who wants to be a Catholic must abide by this declaration - or Schell does not remain a Catholic: then his teaching is also wrong, because Catholicism then knows no progress. - Even more naive minds might say: Professor Schell could fight the dogma of infallibility and say that he, and not the Pope, represents the correct Catholicism. But if I may say so, that would be the very worst thing. Because if he thought it was necessary, Professor Schell would have had to do that long ago. He has been a true Catholic up to now; in other words, a confessor of the dogma of infallibility. If he now comes into conflict with the Pope through his own teachings, then he can only - renounce it.

This is what happens to all those who surrender to an authority. They are enslaved to it. If they want to get away from it, they first have to get away from their own views.

In the session of the Prussian House of Representatives on March 13 (1899), Representative Virchow said that, as an examiner, he had made the sad observation of a decided decline in the general education of our secondary school students. In particular, he missed the ability to think logically, which is absolutely necessary for the proper pursuit of scientific studies. In the past, for example, medical students were required to attend a logical college at the beginning of their studies. Today this is no longer considered necessary. It is believed that healthy thinking does not require knowledge of logical rules. They are considered by many to be old hat. And it was in this spirit that the Minister of Spiritual and Educational Affairs replied to Mr. Virchow. He said that during his student days, logic was still a compulsory course and he remembers how this collegium logicum was ridiculed. Because everything that was taught there as logic, the students already knew from their German lessons at grammar school; and then the treatment was also strange. What was there in the common textbooks? said the minister. And he quoted the well-known conclusion: "All Cretans are liars," says a Cretan; but if a Cretan says that, it must be a lie itself; therefore not all Cretans are liars." Mephistopheles' saying in Goethe's Faust haunts the minister's mind: "I therefore advise you first to attend the Collegium Logicum. - There your mind will be well trained, - laced into Spanish boots, - that it may more deliberately - henceforth - creep along the path of thought. - What you would otherwise do in one fell swoop - driven, like eating and drinking freely, - one, two, three would be necessary." But there is another Goethean saying that seems to have been less contrary to the Minister: "Your good thoughts, in other people's veins, will immediately quarrel with yourself." - If someone experiences that a cobbler makes bad boots, he will hardly vote for the abolition of boots and for walking barefoot. That would be illogical. But what else does the minister do with logic? He is doing exactly the same thing as someone who walks barefoot because he has fallen foul of a bad cobbler. Has he not just proved the necessity of logical training with such illogicality? Just take a look at the current scientific literature. The lack of logical training is outrageously obvious. Yes, one can go even further. Today one can perceive that researchers who are masters in their specialty put forward theories and results of their studies on all sorts of occasions that cause physical discomfort to a logically trained thinker. Our whole spiritual life suffers as a result. Those who follow scientific literature in any field often have to go through a real ordeal. He has to read thick books because he must know the actual results they contain. But he often has to pick out a few bits and pieces from a jumble of useless, illogically constructed theories.

The Minister of Education said that if the entire education is logical, then logical thinking will be achieved even without a logical college. Such an assertion is like saying that one can become a musician through mere musical feeling without first learning the theory of music. Thinking is an art and has a technique like any other art. If this technique is taught in the old logics in a plaited manner, then one should seek to improve these old logics. Anyone who follows the course of intellectual life just a little will know that outstanding achievements have been made in the field of logic in recent years. If the more recent results of this science were made usable for general education, much could be achieved.

There is an urgent need for everyone who deals with any branch of science to do so on the basis of a very general education. All individual knowledge only sheds the right light when it is considered in connection with the common goals of all knowledge. Only those who have acquired a general education can do this. And this can only be achieved if a sum of philosophical knowledge is offered as the basis for all specialized scientific training. Such knowledge is provided by logic, psychology and certain general branches of philosophy in general. Without being initiated into them, someone can handle the methods of any specialized science, but he cannot understand the intentions of spiritual striving. He cannot impart his knowledge to us in such a way that we can see it in the context of the whole development of culture.

It would be sad if there were no sense of such simple truths at all in the leading positions of the subordinate administrations. No one should teach at a grammar school or any other higher educational institution who does not know what the branch of knowledge he teaches means for the totality of human intellectual life. The history teacher should know how historical knowledge relates to mathematical and scientific knowledge in the human soul. To do this, he must firstly know the logical methods according to which all sciences proceed, and he must understand psychology so that he knows how to bring his individual science into a correct relationship with the overall formation of the human soul.

These things are more important than a complete education in a specialized science. For gaps in individual branches of knowledge can be filled if necessary. This is not the case with the general basis of all scientific education. If a teacher of history does not have the details of the Thirty Years' War at hand in case of need, he may sit down and learn them. But general education must permeate his whole being. He cannot catch up on it if he has not acquired it at the right time.

Virchow has touched on an important question. This question has nothing at all to do with which view one takes on the question of grammar school education. One can be of the opinion that our grammar schools are outdated. General education has enough sources in modern cultural life. Today, in order to acquire such an education, one does not need to be tormented for eight or nine years with the study of Greek and Latin. But all secondary schools must be organized in such a way that they offer a general education. And the specialized studies at universities and other institutions of higher learning must be built on a general philosophical foundation.

You have to go back to the founding of Christianity if you want to find a point in the history of human development that seems as significant as the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We are immeasurably closer to everything that has happened in the last four centuries than to what happened before. We feel that our own cultural life forms a whole with the events of this age, and that everything that has gone before seems like something complete.

Gutenberg's invention stands there like the great landmark that separates this completed era from the cultural epoch that still continues today. If we take a closer look, Gutenberg appears to us as a contributor to everything that has happened in the last few centuries. Our material and spiritual life fully confirms what Wimpheling said soon after Gutenberg: "Of no invention or intellectual fruit can we Germans be so proud as of the printing press. What a different life is stirring in all classes of the people, and who would not gratefully commemorate the first founders and patrons of this art?" But it can also be said that no art entered history at the right time like letterpress printing. It is as if the whole world had been waiting for Gutenberg's deed in the middle of the fifteenth century. A change in social coexistence, in people's ideas and feelings had been in the making for a long time. German mysticism, which brought about the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, is the herald of the new epoch. The mystics wanted to free themselves from the ideas handed down to man by an old tradition, which could only be believed on the testimony of authorities. They wanted to seek the source of all spiritual life within their own souls. An urge for the liberation of personality, of individuality, took hold. The individual wanted to examine for himself the thoughts to which he had to adhere in his cultural tasks. The need for a new means of acquiring human knowledge had to arise from such an urge. He who has the will to surrender himself unreservedly to authority can do no other than go and have the views of this authority conveyed to him orally. Those who want to seek truth and knowledge for themselves, based on their own thinking, need a book that makes them independent of authority. Gutenberg put the book in people's hands at a time when they had the greatest need for it. Luther translated the Bible into the native language of the Germans. Gutenberg paved the way for this now comprehensible Bible to travel all over the world. The Reformation is inconceivable without the prior invention of printing.

The way in which the spiritual treasures made accessible to all people through the art of printing initially had an impact clearly demonstrates the immense importance of this art. Before its invention, knowledge of scientific laws was a mystery to a few. The great masses of the people had to rely on the worst superstitions if they wanted to explain the natural phenomena that took place before their eyes every hour. The book gave these masses the opportunity to form ideas about the natural course of what was happening before their eyes and ears. But the masses, who for centuries had relied solely on belief in authority, were ill-equipped to form truly factual ideas. The books conveyed ideas that people had never heard of before. People therefore believed that there must be more to these ideas than the simple, plain letters of the new art conveyed. Such beliefs paved the way for all kinds of "secret sciences" and arts, for the charlatans who claimed to possess a special higher knowledge and whom the people willingly believed, allowing themselves to be beguiled by them because they were slow to form their own independent judgment.

We can still observe the inability, nurtured over centuries, to explain natural facts simply in the profound books of such an exquisite mind as Jacob Böhme (1575-1624). This simple man is truly great in his depiction of all things that can be gained through contemplation of one's own heart and mind. However, he becomes highly adventurous when he wants to explain physical or other natural occurrences.

Such phenomena show how Gutenberg's deed contributed to the expansion of Western mankind's horizons. It was through the art of printing that insight into nature was first gained for the majority of mankind.

This conquest of knowledge of nature gave the intellectual life of the modern age a completely different character. As unworldly and hostile to nature as the life of the Middle Ages enclosed in monasteries was, all education before the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was essentially unworldly. What could be the subject of such an education? Nothing other than what man could draw from himself. One did not allow oneself to be instructed by natural phenomena; one only sharpened the logical weapons of the mind. Scholasticism is the result of such an unworldly educational system. It is fair to say that scholasticism could only be decisive for intellectual life as long as there were only written books that were inaccessible to most people. The educational path that someone who wanted to get hold of these books had to go through beforehand was such that it brought the whole human mind in a direction that was receptive to scholasticism. The printing press made it possible to attract entirely new forces to participate in intellectual culture. People could participate in the promotion of education who had not been forced into a particular path. This also changed the whole physiognomy of education. Instead of merely dealing with unworldly scholasticism, the focus was directed towards experience, towards real life. Gutenberg can also be seen as a silent participant in all the achievements associated with the names Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei, Baco of Verulam. For Copernicus' influential book, which showed astronomy new paths, Kepler's discoveries of the movement of celestial bodies: they could only become truly fruitful for the world if they met a generation that sought a world-friendly, not a world-alienated education.

Gutenberg made it possible for the great pathfinders of science and art in modern times to speak to a wide circle of people. The prosperity of a scientific world view depends on the participation of as many people as possible in education. As long as truth was sought in the human mind alone, it was enough for a few people to devote themselves to this search and communicate their findings to others. But since truth has been sought in the immeasurable number of facts of the external world, it is necessary that the circle of those interested in enriching education be as large as possible.

But not only intellectual culture, but also social and economic life in the fifteenth century was virtually waiting for a new means of disseminating human thought, established facts and experiences. The growth and developing independence of the merchant class placed higher demands on the personal efficiency of the individual than earlier conditions. Previously, the activity of the: Previously, the activities of the individual had been strictly determined by the whole to which he belonged, by the social organism in which he was integrated, and within very narrow limits. In the fifteenth century, all these things underwent an expansion. The individual detached himself from the associations which had formerly prescribed his aims. The whole of life became more complicated. The fixed cooperatives had loosened. The individual had to make his own way through life. It was not the guild that now determined what had to be done, but the personality. The large merchant could now only look at the personal efficiency of his clerks and authorized signatories. Family considerations and class affiliation, which had previously been the deciding factors as to who should be appointed to a particular position, were now completely eliminated. The need arose for the individual to have a broad view of the world. People had to find out what was going on in the world. Again, it was Gutenberg's invention that made this possible. Printed information took the place of the primitive means of communicating about world conditions that had been used in the Middle Ages. The first "newspaper" appeared as early as 1505, bringing news about Brazil.

Printed communication made possible what we call public opinion. The whole of humanity was, as it were, drawn into the great consultation that steered the course of world events. In pamphlets, tracts and pamphlets, the individual spoke to the whole. The seventeenth century saw the development of the newspaper and with it the influence of the popular spirit. Alongside the cabinets and the individual statesmen, the people appeared on the world stage and had their say when it came to major political and cultural issues. And the individual statesman is forced to adapt himself to public opinion if he wants to be successful. We see that statesmen disseminate the motives for their actions through the press in order not to be powerless; we see the respect for public opinion growing more and more among leading personalities. Wallenstein's officers send reports of their military exploits to the Munich newspapers; the Austrian government complains to the Brandenburg government that the Berlin newspapers have an anti-Austrian bias. It is thanks to the art of printing that the popular spirit gradually had to be reckoned with as a fully justified element within the world movement.

It is not going too far to say that the Age of Enlightenment was essentially influenced by printing. Gutenberg's workshop in Mainz laid the foundation for the attitude to which the philosopher Kant gave monumental expression with the words: "Have the audacity to use your own reason." For this reason first had to be gradually developed into such boldness. It could only do so if it constantly knew how to obtain information about what was going on in the world. And anyone who wants to benefit from using his own reason must also be able to count on his voice being heard. The eighteenth century was allowed and able to be enlightened because the seventeenth developed public opinion and established its value.

What the publicity of opinion means was soon learned by those in power, but also by those who wanted to contribute their mite to the progress of intellectual life. We can follow how power and education were linked to the art of printing, because successful work depended on it. Book printing found its best nurturing grounds in the vicinity of educational establishments, and scholars fraternized with the new art, even becoming book printers themselves in order to make their works known to the world. The papal envoys no longer merely sent their own weekly reports to Rome, but also the newspapers in which the popular voice was expressed.

It has a deeply symbolic meaning that the art of printing was met with a similar distrust as knowledge, knowledge itself. And it is significant that Gutenberg's comrade Fust or Faust was associated with the most culturally and historically interesting legend of modern times. Because man has seized knowledge, knowledge, he has fallen away from God. This is the meaning of the Fall of Man. Man's thirst for knowledge could only be attributed to the intervention of the devil. And the "black art", the great ally of the thirst for knowledge, was portrayed as nothing less than a work of hell. It was said of Faust: "He no longer wanted to be called a theologian, became a man of the world, called himself a Dr. Medicinae". The fact that science and the art of printing were followed by a similar formation of legends shows their deep inner relationship.

With the spread of the art of printing, we also see poetry and all literature becoming popular. The scholarly veneer that intellectual life had until then made way for a completely new spirit. The cheerful joke, the amusing prank, enters the art of storytelling. One knows that one can now speak to the people, and one therefore endeavors to offer them things that are connected with their own sentiments, with their feelings and imaginations. And from the people themselves, who are now taking part in spiritual life, new forces are growing. One must not underestimate how much the art of printing has contributed to the fact that personalities such as Hans Sachs were able to rise to a significant height of creativity. How much would never have come before his eyes had it not been for the printing press.

Gutenberg created the bridge between two worlds that are called to work together, which can only bring about a prosperous process of development for mankind through constant interaction. In his "Speeches to the German Nation", Fichte described it as a serious detriment to culture when a scholarly community is confronted with a people that is dependent on itself, that does not understand it and from which it is not constantly supplied with new, fresh driving forces. In the full sense of the word, such a judgment can only be made about the culture of the Middle Ages. The last four centuries have brought about a complete change in it through the printing press. The participation of the people in their work also had the most favorable effect on the scholars. The latter had lost all contact with the other classes. This can best be seen in the first books on natural history that were handed down to the people. These were interspersed with all kinds of miracle stories. It was believed that the people were not ready for real natural truths. In this, too, they soon changed their ways. On the contrary, people were driven to clarify their own thoughts, to give them a better form, because they wanted to be understood. The need to communicate knowledge led to a clarification of knowledge itself. People began to think about the art of how best to make education accessible to the widest circles. Cormenius' great pedagogical thoughts on the tasks of popular education presuppose the need for a lively interaction between the people who desire knowledge and the bearers of the entire intellectual life.

In this way, we can trace the influence of Gutenberg's deed into the whole of modern life. If other intellectual heroes have created the content for this life, he has provided the means to bring this content to full fruition and effect. That is why we are so at home in everything that the last four centuries have produced; and that is also why everything that we historically appropriate about the times that lie before the invention of the art of printing is so foreign to us. How a person thinks depends more than one is usually inclined to assume on the way he relates to his fellow human beings, how he interacts with them. Just as language itself, which builds a bridge from person to person, is a creator of culture, so the printed word, this powerful mediator, this appointed representative of the spoken word, is a co-creator of modern culture. Man took possession of this printed word in the age in which he began to place the highest value on his individuality, on personal efficiency. By emphasizing his personality, he turned away from the old cooperatives, within which the space became too narrow for him. The art of printing has given him a new means to seek a new association in place of the old limited one, which corresponds to the broader horizon of life. The more man individualized himself, the more he needed a means detached from his immediate personality in order to return to the whole. Thus the art of printing proved to be the unifying bond at the point in history when life made the imperative demand on the individual and also on the individual nation to separate themselves in order to make themselves fit for the great struggle for existence.

Since the art of printing was invented, it has shown itself to be the appointed ally of human progress. Where the latter reaches a certain height, the art of printing favors it; where progress is hindered, the art of printing also suffers. The beneficial effect of the Dutch association of the "Brothers of the Common Life" is a clear example of this. It was founded by Gerhard Groote (1340-1384) from Deventer and set itself the task of transforming education from a scholarly monopoly into a source of public welfare. This association developed a significant educational activity. The establishment of a large number of schools can be attributed to this activity. With the advent of the printing press, the cultural work of the Brothers of the Common Life took on a whole new life. It became possible for them to ensure the widest possible distribution of good educational books. They took the printing of these books into their own hands and thus became promoters of the new art in Holland and throughout north-western Germany. If this fact shows that progress and book printing went hand in hand, the regression that occurred in this art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries after an initial period of great prosperity and rapid dissemination is no less indicative of this relationship. The Peasants' Wars, the unfortunate religious turmoil with its bloody, devastating aftermath, the Thirty Years' War, dealt a series of heavy blows to culture, which had reached a wonderful height at the beginning of the modern era. And the art of printing now participated in the decline of intellectual and material culture, just as it had previously contributed to its prosperity.

The interaction between a lower level of general education and the art of printing is also unmistakable in the difficulties the latter encountered in Spain. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, clerical censorship and the paternalism of the people on the part of the clergy were greater here than in Central Europe. For this reason, the art of printing spread only slowly; and even the little that it achieved here was due to the influence of individuals with an interest in science. And because this art had no real foundation in Spain, it was subsequently possible for the subjugation of intellectual life by the Jesuits and the Inquisition to find a special home here. Turkey is the most glaring example of the fact that only those who are also patrons of Gutenberg's art can play a role in modern cultural life. The Turks proved to be complete enemies of this art right up to the eighteenth century. The Sultan Bajazet threatened printing with the death penalty in 1483, and his son renewed the ban. This people had to pay for such anti-cultural measures by losing all significance in the intellectual life of Europe. It is interesting to follow the relationship between intellectual life and the art of printing in Hungary. King Matthias Corvinus ruled there in the second half of the fifteenth century. He had a profound interest in the sciences and arts. For this reason, the art of printing was already being cultivated in the Hungarian capital from 1473 onwards. A lively intellectual life therefore prevailed in this country, which had to contend with "the greatest difficulties in terms of culture due to its geographical location.

Man is a being who can only achieve truly purposeful work in the future by recognizing the past. History is his great teacher. Now compare how much more precisely and intimately we know the last four centuries than the earlier times, when printing was not yet the companion of all culture. With the latter, we are all too often dependent on mere conjecture and bold hypotheses, because historical tradition leaves us in the lurch for large areas. The art of printing is therefore not only an eager contributor to all culture, it is also the best, the most faithful guardian of the treasures of the past, which mankind needs so much for the future.

In the nineteenth century, the age of scientific knowledge and technology, the art of printing did not lag behind other cultural factors in its progress. With its great technical advances, it can stand worthily alongside the other achievements of our time. And if we are not without optimism today as we approach the dawning century and look joyfully into the future of human development, we owe this mood in no small part to the genius of Johannes Gutenberg.

One politician has called the life of Austrian Germans in the present day a churchyard in which a myriad of hopes lie buried. It will be difficult for an outsider to form an idea of the reasons that have determined the fate of the Germans of the Danube and Alpine country in recent decades. But anyone who, like me, spent the first thirty years of his life in Austria, especially those who spent their academic years in Vienna at the beginning of the 1980s, will hardly find anything incomprehensible in the course of Austria's development. For he has seen the individual fates of numerous personalities unfold, which are nothing more than a repetition of that development process on a small scale. And in these individual cases, everything is understandable if one considers the character, the temperament of the Austrian German and, in relation to this, the peculiarities of intellectual life in his state.

I would like to use the example of a student friend to show how easily talents can perish in Austria, which under other circumstances would probably have been very fruitful. I began my studies at the Vienna University of Technology in the eighties. It was a time when a lot was happening in Austria. Liberalism, which had experienced a brief heyday after the defeat of Königgrätz because authoritative circles hoped that it would save the state, which had been brought into complete confusion by the bureaucracy, had lost its prestige. He had lost the leadership of the empire, partly out of weakness and partly because he had been given too short a time to realize his intentions. We young people of that time no longer expected anything significant from him. We devoted ourselves all the more enthusiastically to the up-and-coming German nationalist movement. Its leaders cared little for what had previously been called the "Austrian idea of the state". They saw it as an abstract concept that was hostile to reality. An Austrian state that took no account of the diversity of its national cultures, but instead wanted to resign itself to a democracy that took account of all kinds of inherited prejudices and rights on the basis of quite moderate progress, seemed an absurdity to the younger generation. The younger Germans believed they could look to the future with all the more hope if they emphasized their own nationality, if they immersed themselves in their national culture and cultivated the connection with the course of intellectual life in Germany. The young German academics of the eighties settled into such ideals. They did not notice that the development of real events was taking a direction in which only endeavors that rested on much cruder premises than their own had any prospect of success. The great effect achieved soon afterwards by Georg von Schönerer, who replaced the idealistic German nationalist tendencies with the racial standpoint of anti-Semitism, could not cause us to convert. Rarely do idealists do anything other than complain about the misjudgment of their justified aspirations in such a case. In Austria at that time, these idealists had the rug pulled out from under their feet, so to speak. Their activities were paralyzed by a public spirit whose aspirations they wanted no part of. These words could be used to describe the fate of a large number of personalities who devoted themselves to their studies during the period described. Only a few of them took it upon themselves to seek satisfaction in professions that were remote from the public life of Austria; many fell into a dull philistine life of unpleasant resignation; quite a few, however, were completely shipwrecked in life.

I would like to pay tribute to one of the latter with these lines. His name is Rudolf Ronsperger. In the fullest sense of the word, he was one of the idealists just mentioned. He showed a promising poetic talent to those who, like me, became friends with him during his student years. The German nationalist idea was the soil on which such talents developed. In Ronsperger's case, in addition to the shipwreck we experienced with this idea, there was something else that is no less characteristic of Austrian circumstances. He had not graduated from a grammar school, but from an upper secondary school. To a certain extent, these Austrian upper secondary schools are models of modern educational institutions. There, without Latin and Greek, one is brought to an educational level that is completely equal to that of the Gymnasium in every other respect; the only difference is that their pupils lack knowledge of Latin and Greek. This is why they are denied access to university. These secondary schools are a loud and clear testimony to the half-measures that are indigenous to Austria in all areas. Almost everywhere, one remains stuck in the beginnings of legitimate goals. In most cases, there is a lack of resilience for the final consequences. This was the case with secondary schools. They were set up in such a way that the pupils received a modern-humanistic education; and then the more idealistically inclined among them were barred the way to a profession which, according to their previous education, they alone could wish for. Countless personalities fell victim to this half-measure in the organization of the education system. Ronsperger was one of them. Due to the nature of his talent and the direction this talent had taken within the Realschule, he was completely unsuitable for a technical profession. He did not have the energy to catch up later on what would have opened the doors to university for him. In this he was quite Austrian himself. He remained stuck in half measures. The course of his life is the understandable consequence of his Austrian character and the Austrian circumstances described above. He and I lived through many things together as students; later life led us apart. In friendly intercourse he communicated to me many a pleasant poem and some dramatic achievements, including a drama "Hannibal", about which Heinrich Laube later spoke not without praise. I then only heard that he had become a railroad official. - A few months ago, his sister, the wife of a respected writer living in Berlin, gave me the estate of his friend from university. After all hope had faded, he ended his life at the age of thirty-eight.

I do not feel compelled to share anything from the contents of this bequest, which contains lyrical and dramatic works, even though it contains a comedy in four acts, which was praised by the judges at a prize competition in Vienna for its very good dialog and only had to be rejected because the man who had been mistreated by life had painted this life as all too unreal. It is not these performances that must elicit deep sympathy for the unfortunate man, but his life. There is a document in the estate that clearly speaks for this life. It is a letter to me, written several years before Ronsperger's suicide. In this letter he wrote of his dashed hopes, of the suffering that had been imposed on him; he was trying to revive our old friendship in order to find his way back to some extent with my help. He didn't send the letter because he couldn't get my address. This fact symbolically expresses his whole fate to me. He is a representative of the many characters, especially in Austria, who go so far in all their endeavors until they are confronted with reality. And even if this reality offers obstacles of ridiculous pettiness, as in this case, - they do not enter this reality. I am convinced that countless contemporaries of Rudolf Ronsperger could characterize themselves in the same way as he has done in this letter. I am sharing some of it because I do not regard it as a random individual case, but as something typical. "Little remarkable has happened in my external circumstances. First transferred to Leitmeritz, later to Kostomlat, then back to Leitmeritz, finally for almost two years now a traffic officer in Nimburg, I am now in a position that a subaltern officer could not wish for more prestigious and pleasant... There is more to tell about the fate, or rather the changes that my inner life has undergone in recent years. Much, perhaps everything, may have changed in my views of the world and man - but one firm conviction has not been lost to me even in the five years of bitter struggle: the conviction of my poetic profession. It has remained alive to me, even though I have devoted myself to a life's work that usually takes up the whole person day and night and usually robs him of the ability to devote himself to secondary thoughts that are completely different from his official duties and almost incompatible with them. It has stayed with me in spite of the mocking smiles of all those who have learned of it by chance. And even if nothing will be heard of my writings in the wider world, I believe I can say it boldly: I am a poet after all ... . You might call that self-aggrandizement. But anyone for whom poetry has become a necessity in life as it has for me, anyone who, like me, is compelled to put all his feelings and thoughts into poetry, can justifiably claim that he is called to be a poet. Whether chosen? - That's a question I can't answer with "no", because I would be depriving myself of a good part of my hopes - and a sanguine of the first kind, as I am, doesn't do that. But I am not blind to all the faults that I possess and that have contributed to the fact that I have not yet achieved what alone could have a determining and indeed definitive effect on my professional direction: success. - Lack of energy is the first and greatest of all these faults; the lack of strength and perseverance, of that iron perseverance, that determined and victorious tenacity in the pursuit of plans once made, which are always the accompanying qualities of talent and help it to achieve a breakthrough under the most difficult circumstances. - Without being immodest, I can say that I would have done well if luck had favored me and a warm sunshine had made my ability blossom, if my inclinations had met with no resistance and my attempts had been favored by fate. I would have sailed swiftly in the direction of the wind; and I might have achieved much that others would never have attained under equally favorable circumstances. I lacked the courage and strength to sail against the wind. - I made many fainthearted attempts - and the fact that I did not fail completely and plunged headlong into the waves alone gives me hope that the wind might turn once again and drive the clumsy skipper forward who did not want to learn how to turn the sails." Unfortunately, this shift in the wind did not happen. More energy would have allowed Rudolf Ronsperger to seek his own way, away from the paths marked out by Austrian cultural conditions; less idealism and temperament would have caused him to adapt to the profession into which these conditions had brought him. He would then have buried the conviction of his profession as a poet in the dull sea of everyday life.