The Rudolf Steiner Archive

There are two requirements that the creations of the human spirit must satisfy, like flowers, if they are to give us pleasure: they must be genuine and fresh. Fake truth, i.e. baseless assertion, and fake beauty, i.e. unnatural, elaborate art, are as repugnant to us as an artificial rose. But even if they are genuine, truth and beauty, they lose their appeal as soon as they have grown old and approval and recognition are only paid to them out of habit. The reasons for truth have the best effect on us when the psychological process by which they have found their way into our minds is still like a present experience in us. We not only want to have the truths in our consciousness, but our convictions should also have the after-effects of the difficulties through which they were acquired. A beautiful work of art that does not affect us with immediate, elemental power, but to which our sense has been directed for a long time, loses the gripping effect that a creation has when we first confront it with our eyes and open our ears.

Therefore, from time to time, our whole being needs refreshing. Our spiritual stock must be thrown back into chaos. What has been considered truth for centuries must be doubted and proven anew. What has been admired as beauty for ages must put up with blasé indifference. Nothing can be done about it; that is the fate of the human spirit. Radical destroyers of cultural achievements, spirits who want to start again in all things, will inevitably appear from time to time.

One of the most radical of these spirits is Friedrich Nietzsche. What he had printed makes the face of every logical and conscientious philistine soul red with shame. You can boldly take one of his books and write down the opposite of every sentence; then you will come up with roughly what most people besides Nietzsche call "true" and "right". The current followers of the daring doubter may not hold this assertion against me. After all, they would never have arrived at Nietzsche's views of their own accord; they speak and write after him; so they need not feel hurt in their deepest self. After all, many would be quite good philistines if they were not Nietzscheans.

Friedrich Nietzsche questions everything. He not only doubts whether this or that is true, but also asks whether truth is a goal worth striving for at all. He declares war not only on moral prejudices, but on morality as a whole. He not only wants to educate people to live out the purest, most absolute human personality; no, he wants to overcome the prejudice of "man" himself and lead them to the "superman", who has stripped away everything that limits and restricts "man". Nietzsche did not arrive at a vivid image of this "superman". In his "Zarathustra", he fantasized about the superman in sometimes poetically glorious images and aphorisms; he said a lot about what the "superman" would not be and what he would not have in himself: but the thinker-Icaros was not able to bring it to the positive establishment of this future ideal. Anyone who surveys the many variations in which Nietzsche elaborated his theme will find that the supreme law emerges from them all: man has only the single task of ruthlessly bringing the sum of his personality to bear as strongly as possible and as far as possible. Live as you can best and most fully assert yourself. That is Nietzsche's first basic rule. What you can do, do. The "will to power" is therefore the leitmotif of all life. Nietzsche calls slave morality anything that allows itself to be restricted by any moral principles in the development of its sovereign ego. Only the master morality that says "yes" in moral matters, not because it thinks it is "good", but because it wants to, because it can best assert its individual power in this way, is worthy of humanity. These "yes-men" are Nietzsche's ideal people. All the other slave souls, who have no purpose of their own, are there for their sake. They are the "good ones" and they have the right to call the actions of others "bad" because they want to and because they have the right master consciousness. But these others are too weak to say an equally forceful "yes". They withdraw from the scene of action to that of conscience; they judge men's actions not by the power they bring, but by their moral feelings. Nietzsche believes that this reverses all moral standards. Only weak, mentally crippled people accept such a point of view. They have to suffer a lot in life because they do not have enough strength to enjoy the pleasures of action. They therefore also feel for the suffering of their fellow human beings. Compassion enters their souls. The man with the master consciousness does not know compassion, he has only contempt for the weak and the sick. They are the "bad" to him, while he is the strong, the healthy, the good. Those who are weak, however, turn the tables. They call an action "good" if it causes as little suffering and as much good as possible for their fellow human beings. Where an action impairs the well-being of another person, where it is intended to bring its bearer to power at the expense of another, they call it "evil". "Good" and "evil" are the basic concepts of slave morality, just as "good" and "bad" are those of master morality. Selflessness wants the former, ruthless assertion of the latter. Nietzsche sees it as the basic characteristic and the main deficiency of Western culture that, through the spread of Christianity with its glorification of compassion and selflessness, all master consciousness has disappeared, that slave morality has become the general attitude. "Beyond good and evil" is therefore what Nietzsche wants to fix the moral standpoint of the future; the compassionate rabble with its poor man's odor and the selfless mob with its morally sour attitude are to be thoroughly put a stop to. A true Nietzschean does not like to go where there are many people, because it smells of conscience. That is why Zarathustra-Nietzsche flees from people and goes into solitude. Nietzsche recommends that people grow moral calluses so that they can confidently step on the suffering of their fellow brothers without being tormented by compassion. That those without such calluses are crushed underneath: what does it matter to the oppressors. After all, their master tells them: "Become hard".

Truly, one must not be slow of mind if one is to follow such trains of thought. Anyone who still feels a little discipline in his consciousness will soon fall behind Nietzsche. I felt it was a matter of theoretical honor to follow him everywhere. Sometimes I felt as if my brain were detaching itself from its ground, sometimes the finest fibers of it began to fidget; I thought I could feel them resisting having to leave the positions inherited from all the forefathers so suddenly. But perhaps the primordial ground of things is so difficult to reach that we cannot get to it at all if we do not want to put our brains at risk! Of course, Dr. Hermann Türck, who explains Nietzsche's "hyper-morality" simply in terms of moral madness, does not think this way. To presuppose perverse moral instincts in order to explain the erroneous nature of a moral standpoint objectively from its bearer is a little too Nietzschean for me. Nietzsche, however, explains the moral doctrines of the individual philosophers as merely a paraphrase, a cloaking and dressing up of the instincts that reign in their organic depths. But one should not pay this man with his own coins. He covers them with a very thin layer of an elusive precious metal. If we take them in our "poor man's" smelling hands, the magic layer immediately disappears. Türck is therefore not satisfied with this refutation; he shows the necessity of selfless action, the moral necessity of compassion. He proves how necessary both are for the foundation of a true state and the social coexistence of people. But why all this? Anyone who reads Nietzsche and seriously immerses themselves in him does not need a theoretical refutation to get back on track, but several weeks of healthy mountain air and many cold baths. Those who do not read it do not need to be refuted. But those who only half-read it and then repeat it cannot be refuted. It's not even necessary, they will remain healthy cultural giants and their environment will have something to laugh about.

However, Nietzsche should not be bottled. All flavor is lost on this occasion and stale stuff remains. Nietzsche's creations evaporate quickly. That is why we cannot like the book: "Die Weltanschauung Friedrich Nietzsches" by Dr. Hugo Kaatz. Who is to be served by such compilations of Nietzsche's sayings? At most the third category of people just mentioned. But one should not write books to promote Nietzschegigerltum. Enough of Nietzsche's own views and those of those whose heads he seriously twisted in order to turn up the intellectual pants of the interested parties seeps through. We have had enough of Nietzsche himself. So no more of excerpts from his works.

The latest publication from Nietzsche's estate.

Nietzsche's students eagerly awaited the fourth part of the master's magnum opus: "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". Now it has been published: the conclusion of the most profound of all superficial books. Forgive me, you followers of a new idol, for uttering such sacrilegious words! But you also become too ponderous when Nietzsche is mentioned. Where are the light legs, the dancing legs that Nietzsche wanted to cultivate in you! Dance before this Zarathustra instead of kneeling before him! I have no incense for Nietzsche. I also know that he doesn't like the smell of sacrifice. He prefers smiling faces to praying ones. And I often had to laugh while reading this Zarathustra. For what is this fourth part talking about? Zarathustra wants to overcome man. It is not this or that weakness, not this or that vice of mankind that Zarathustra wants to overcome, but mankind itself is to be stripped away so that the age of the superhuman may appear. Zarathustra's deed, however, which the fourth part of the book tells us about, is an utter stupidity. Hasn't this hermit, who lives in a cave, far from human prejudice and rabble-rousing, in good air with pure smells, even forgotten so much that he falls into the trap of an old soothsayer who wants to teach him the belief that all those who today call themselves "higher men" thirst for the realm of which Zarathustra dreams. It is a cry of distress that Zarathustra hears as he sits outside his cave, and the old soothsayer has arrived, whose wisdom is: "Everything is the same, nothing is worthwhile, the world is without meaning, knowledge strangles." He interprets the cry of distress as that of the higher man who wants to seek redemption from Zarathustra. And Zarathustra sets off in search of the higher man from whom the cry of distress came. He finds them one by one, all the people who consider themselves higher, better than their fellow human beings, who are disgusted by the activities of the latter, who long for something new, something better. And he invites them all to go into his cave. There they are to wait until he returns and pours new life into them. These are deep, meaningful words that Zarathustra speaks at every new encounter with a candidate for superhumanity, words: wise to the point of madness, deep to the bottom of the sea, where there is also unclean, muddy soil. The candidates are: two kings, the conscientious of spirit, the sorcerer, the pope out of office, the ugliest man, the voluntary beggar and Zarathustra's own shadow. Each of these figures represents a distorted image of some bearer of a one-sided cultural endeavor within which man can find no satisfaction. They have all broken with their past, with the views and habits of their surroundings and are searching for a new salvation. They did not find it on their way. So they set out on their journey to Zarathustra's dwelling, so that the great longing within them might be satisfied. After the many encounters (eight "higher people" had come, these make with the donkey that the two kings had brought with them and with the soothsayer ten) and especially after the many spiritual conversations, Zarathustra feels tired and he falls asleep just at noon. He lies under a tree entwined with a vine. And as he sleeps, it passes by him in a dream, the great moment in which he sees the world perfect, he revels in bliss. "What happened to me: Listen! Did time fly away? Did I not fall? Did I not fall - hark! into the fountain of eternity?

- What is happening to me? Silence! It stabs me - woe - in the heart? In the heart! Oh break, break, heart, after such happiness, after such a sting!

-- How? Was the world not just perfect?"

The Lord gives it to his own in sleep, otherwise it applies only to bare innocence. The fact that the superman also has such innocent tendencies may be a comfort to all the simple-minded and poor in spirit, for they will not be excluded from his kingdom. Since Zarathustra has had a good night's sleep, he sets off home to greet his guests. What takes place here is a kind of Zarathustra banquet. The host makes the main toast. He speaks only of "higher people", what they are and what they are not. They must not believe that they are already citizens of the new kingdom. They could never become such. They could only form the bridge, the transition to the realm of the superhuman. Again, these are beautiful words that Zarathustra speaks before he toasts with his friends to the good of the superman. One would like some of his sayings to become proverbs: "What the mob has learned to believe without reasons, who could overthrow it with reasons?

And on the market one convinces with gestures. But reasons make the mob suspicious.

And once the truth has triumphed, ask yourselves with good suspicion: "What strong error has fought for them?"

Beware of the scholars! They hate you: for they are barren! They have cold withered eyes, before them every bird lies unfeathered."

Or: "Want nothing over your wealth: there is a terrible falsity in those who want over their wealth.

Especially when they want great things! For they arouse mistrust of great things, these fine counterfeiters and actors:

- until at last they are false to themselves, shifty-eyed, whitewashed worm-eating, disguised by strong words, by displaying virtues, by shining false works."

Or: "Powerlessness to lie is far from love for the truth." - When Zarathustra had finished, he went outside. He longed for purer smells. These "higher people" obviously still brought with them much of the smell of poor people that Nietzsche hated so much. The guests remained alone and discussed Zarathustra's table and future wisdom. After a while, a noise arose in the cave. Zarathustra heard it from outside and was delighted. For now, he thought, all the heavy and sultry outlook on life had gone from these transitional people; they had learned to laugh. Laughter - in the sense of Zarathustra - means that one has shed the ideals of humanity, that one has overcome them and is no longer saddened by their unattainability. Faust, as Goethe portrayed him, is still deeply rooted in human prejudices. The main prejudice is Faust's basic idea: "never will I say to the moment: linger, you are so beautiful". Zarathustra wants to hold on to every moment, to squeeze as much pleasure and bliss out of it as there is in it. For Zarathustra considers it folly to want to buy the bliss of the future through deprivation in the present. Zarathustra is also a Faust, but one transformed into his opposite. Zarathustra would have to say to Mephistopheles: could the moment ever come that I do not fully enjoy, to which I do not say: bloom eternally, for you are so beautiful, then you have already made me unconditional. Full of this wisdom, Zarathustra believes his transitional people when he hears the cry from the cave; and he goes in. But what must he see! The most abominable, most ridiculous idolatry. All the enlightened spirits worship the donkey that the two kings brought with them! Zarathustra has taken away their ideals; they can no longer lie in the dust before them. But their spirits have forgotten how to stand upright; they are too much like dust. So instead of their ideals, they worship the donkey. This is Zarathustra's great folly. He believed these people to be ripe for his transitional stage, and they have become idolaters because they should not be idealists. But they are now happy. That is enough for Zarathustra. He prefers it when people laugh and dance in front of a donkey than when they become melancholy over unattainable ideals. Also a taste!

But I find it distasteful that Zarathustra has not yet overcome even the most petty vanity, that his ear is still open to words of flattery such as the ugliest man speaks: "Was this - life? For Zarathustra's sake, well and good! One more time!" - -

Because now Zarathustra feels so flattered that he interprets to his guests the profound night-walker song that expresses the sum of his wisdom. And the same people who have just worshipped the donkey are now to grasp the profound meaning of the following words:

O, man! Take heed! What does the deep midnight speak?
"I slept, I slept -,
From a deep dream I have awakened:
The world is deep,
And deeper than the day thought.
Deep is its woe,
Lust - deeper even than heartache:
Sorrow speaks: Pass away! But all lust wants eternity -,
- wants deep, deep eternity!"

They didn't understand, of course. For they had fallen asleep and were still asleep when Zarathustra had long since risen to enjoy the new morning. At last he finds: "Well, they are still asleep, these higher men, while I am awake: these are not my true companions; I do not wait for them in my mountains." He called his animals: the eagle and the snake. Then a wonderful thing happens: Zarathustra is surrounded by a flock of birds and a lion lies at his feet, a laughing lion. "To all of them Zarathustra spoke only one word: "My children are near, my children -." Only now did Zarathustra realize that he had been taken in by the soothsayer. The same had tempted him to his last sin: to pity the higher man!" - "and his face turned to ore".

So Zarathustra had sat up.

A mind of such bold, grotesque thought as Friedrich Nietzsche's must necessarily evoke contradictory feelings in those who study it closely and lovingly. His unconditional admirers certainly understand the least of his proud ideas. But Kurt Eisner does not belong in this category. His admiration does not silence the contradiction that arises from his own significant individuality; not even the irony that Nietzsche's one-sidedness provokes. Alongside ruthlessly approving sentences such as: "Nietzsche's Zarathustra is only a work of art like Faust", or: "The songs of Zarathustra flow broadly and powerfully like Wagner's streams of music. Philosophy is here set to music, thought to sound, not evaporated, no, reheated", others say: "Nietzsche is a true reactionary, because his forward is a backward. And because he is a reactionary, the future will spurn him", or: "Nietzsche's doctrine rests on rotten ground, through his own fault". Eisner is quite sympathetic to Nietzsche's noble way of thinking, but not to its anti-democratic character. The development of the select few should not be bought at the price of the oppression and stultification of large masses. Eisner wanted to aristocratize the masses. "True aristocratism is only possible with true altruism." "Democracy must become a pan-aristocracy." In contrast to Nietzsche, Eisner wanted the community to be placed above the individual. "The herd instinct is health, the ego instinct is degeneration." Eisner counters Nietzsche's motto: "Get tough!" with "Get soft!". The former corresponds to the ruthless "through" of the individual's power content, the latter to the selfless striving of the personality, which also respects the person in the other individual as an equal.

With such a penetrating understanding of Nietzsche, with such an unbiased critique of the thinker-poet, Eisner's judgment of the "Nietzsche-affinity" can of course only be a completely devastating one. Nowhere has the herd-like nature of a following taken on such a characteristic character as in the Nietzsche herd. The contempt for the herd-like has become a wild herd roar. There has never been a more droll following than Nietzsche's. They, these howlers, do not know what the value of the master's works lies in. The secret lies in the fact that illnesses and deformities stimulate thought more than full, fresh health. The diseases of the mind make important contributions to psychology. The charm of Nietzsche's ideas lies in the abnormal guise in which they appear. Through outward appearances one becomes aware of many things that one would otherwise pass by. This is what happened to me with Nietzsche's ideas. Most of their content did not seem new to me. I had already formed it in me before I got to know Nietzsche. But as I went through Nietzsche's mind, these ideas seemed to me distorted, caricatured. A flow of thought that was healthy in itself had to force its way through a rocky cliff that did violence to its calm course. Nietzsche was never a philosophical problem for me, but always a psychological one.

Because this is my position on the strangest spirit of modern times, I must describe Kurt Eisner's writing as very sympathetic to me and recommend it to the widest circle of readers, even if I cannot agree with some of what it contains.

"They also want to improve mankind in their own way, in their own image; they would make an irreconcilable war against what I am, what I want, provided that they understood." Such words were directed by Friedrich Nietzsche against the army of staid philistines who, like the backward intellectual theologian David Strauss, wanted to preach a new gospel to the flat-headed free spirits. Now, however, they have also come up against him, the "philistines of education", and are measuring him by their own standards. No sooner have we choked down one of the writings that bring us a philistine opinion about Nietzsche than a new one appears - and we can't get out of our stomach upset. And if we can't get into the habit of simply skimming over all the stuff that is printed in our newspapers and magazines about Nietzsche: then - woe betide our stomachs.

We, who are brave enough to say "yes" to Nietzsche's desire to purify psychology, history and nature, social institutions and sanctions from the thousand-year-old prejudices and old wives' feelings of theology - we suffer from the current Nietzsche literature.

To all the Nietzsche interpreters who have told us their wisdom about the great anti-mystic, anti-idealist and immoralist in short or long arguments, to the brave woman Lou Salome, to the critical muddlehead Franz Servaes, to Zerbst, who would like to make Nietzsche a seeker of God, and to all the others who talk about Nietzsche without ever having felt a whiff of his spirit, has now been joined by Mr. Hans Gallwitz. "Friedrich Nietzsche, a portrait of his life" is the title of a book that appears in a "series" with other books. Heinrich von Stephan, Alfred Krupp and Fridtjof Nansen have also been described in biographical writings belonging to this series.

Mr. Hans Gallwitz talks about Nietzsche in many ways. He prefers to move in those areas of the immoralist's teachings in which he can find a echoing of Nietzsche's sentences with those of the Apostle Paul; and then he says something like this: what a pity that Nietzsche did not understand the Apostle Paul; he could then have expressed so many things better with the words of this teacher of faith than with his own. Mr. Hans Gallwitz would prefer to make Nietzsche a follower of the Apostle Paul altogether... But what is it to me that Mr. Hans Gallwitz has such an attachment to the Apostle Paul!

I don't want to fight the Apostle Paul; I just want to point out some of Mr. Hans Gallwitz's heartfelt convictions to show how far removed this Nietzsche interpreter is from the teachings of the one he wants to describe.

In essence, Mr. Hans Gallwitz is most annoyed by the godlessness of Friedrich Nietzsche. He cannot help but admit this quite openly: "Nietzsche opposes his doctrine of the creative to any world view based on belief in God. Belief in God and free creation are mutually exclusive. "What would there be to create if there were gods?" " We, those who agree with Nietzsche's teachings, know quite well that God can only be a noble being, and that a noble being does not place unfree children, but free people into the world, who are called to create as masters in the world into which they are born. But Mr. Hans Gallwitz has a different opinion. He does not believe that God has placed the earth at the free disposal of men so that they create on it in his image. He believes that God has created a race of bunglers whom he has to help back on their feet again and again if they are to achieve anything decent. "The limited son of earth, whose thinking and willing only come to fruition in the orders of this earth, can only take the impulses and purposes presented to him a little further and clarify them; he cannot create anything new out of himself, cannot make a new beginning. His activity is only ever like that of the gardener who, through selfless, faithful care, extracts some new forces and values from the plants; this is not done by forcibly forcing his way in, but the creator must make himself dependent on the material that is given to him, he must also know how to reckon with its shortcomings if he wants to finish something differently." Mr. Hans Gallwitz wants to be a gardener, but Friedrich Nietzsche wants to be a creator. How could I be a gardener if the good Lord had not given me a garden to tend: says Hans Gallwitz humbly. -- "What would there be to create if there were gods?" says Friedrich Nietzsche. The gods have created a world; but they also wanted to create a being like themselves; and there they created man, who now continues to create. But they have withdrawn, and only when man wants to create a supreme ideal for himself does he call it God, because he finds the only God in himself, says Nietzsche. The gods have created henchmen for themselves, who go astray every moment, and who cannot create, but can only extract some new powers and values from the plants "through selfless, faithful care", says Mr. Hans Gallwitz.

All that is divine in man, Friedrich Nietzsche wanted to awaken in man, so that he might become a creator, just as God himself is a creator; Mr. Hans Gallwitz wants to squeeze all that is divine out of man, so that he might become a gardener, "who through selfless, faithful care extracts some new powers and values from the plants".

Mr. Hans Gallwitz opposes his view of "man as gardener" to Nietzsche, who proclaimed the doctrine of "man as creator". With his book, Mr. Hans Gallwitz has only shown that he would have done better to read the letters of the Apostle Paul than the writings of Nietzsche. Yet - he knows the former! He could well have occupied himself with some work more useful to him in the time he was reading Nietzsche's works; and if, instead of giving us a book on Nietzsche, he had planted fruit or turnips - then he would have been a better gardener.

I bid farewell to the gardener Hans Gallwitz. He may take comfort from my mockery. He has been praised in the "Preußische Jahrbücher". And the "Preußische Jahrbücher" are a respected organ. The same gentleman praised him there who, in a previous issue, could not refrain from mocking Nietzsche himself. In the same Jahrbücher whose editor accompanied the insipid drivel of Hertn "Brand" with the words that he was only interested in Nietzsche as a literary phenomenon.

Today there will only be a few people who are in Friedrich Nietzsche's camp: People who stand by him because they can understand him. It will be up to them to keep a faithful watch against the advances of all those who want to exploit him in the service of some traditional views. For Friedrich Nietzsche is the most modern spirit we have. But we guardians of Nietzsche will perhaps need sharp weapons. We will have them and know how to wield them. For we have learned to fence from Nietzsche; and he is a good fencing master.

Friedrich Nietzsche is currently staying in Weimar. No wonder that in this "educated" city a brave citizen feels the need to immerse himself in the philosopher's teachings. He wants to know in which order he should read his writings. What does he do? He turns to the "Berliner Tageblatt". The paper gave him the following information in its January 28, 1900 issue: "You ask in which order you should read the philosophical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche in order to gain a deeper understanding of this not exactly easy-to-understand leading mind. We advise you to start with the biography of Nietzsche by Mrs. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, as his tragic life is the best key to his world of thought. Then read some of the "Unzeitgemäßen Betrachtungen" (on Schopenhauer, on the benefits and disadvantages of history, on the origin of tragedy, on Richard Wagner); and then the two complementary major studies: Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil. After these systematic works by the healthy Friedrich Nietzsche, you may turn to the volumes of aphorisms by the ailing and sick philosopher, roughly in the following order: Dawn, The Human-All Too Human, Joyful Science, Antichrist and last but not least his greatest creation, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the understanding of which presupposes an exact familiarity with the intellectual structure of the man. Once you have traveled this arduous but certainly rewarding path, let all the impressions you have received come to an end by reading his "Collected Poems."

These lines are symptomatic of the bottomless illiteracy and ignorance with which the makers of our newspapers are endowed, and at the same time of the boundless carelessness with which they view their profession. For anyone with their eyes open, this is of course a fact as well known as the fact that the sun rises every morning. It seems, however, that there are still many naive people who think it possible to appeal to the superficiality of newspapermen on such an important question as the above. The gentleman who wrote the above note talks like someone who knows something about Nietzsche. He does not know the slightest thing about him. For he does not even know in what order Nietzsche wrote his books. The person in Weimar in need of knowledge should first read: some untimely reflections and then the great studies: Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil, because in these systematic writings the healthy Nietzsche still speaks; then the volumes of aphorisms of the sick Nietzsche should follow: Dawn, Human-All Too Human, etc. Now "Menschliches-Allzumenschliches" was published in 1878, "Morgenröte" in 1881, "Genealogie der Moral" in 1887 and "Jenseits von Gut und Böse" in 1888. The scholar of the "Berliner Tageblatt" considers the works published in the last year before his illness to be the earlier ones; he considers the collection of aphorisms "Menschliches-Allzumenschliches", published in 1878, i.e. 6 years after the beginning of Nietzsche's writing career, to be a work by Nietzsche who was already ill. Poor questioner in Weimar! In the end, you are naïve enough to stick with your newspaper editor. Why don't you ask him how you should study mathematics? He will answer: First you have to learn integral calculus, then differential calculus, then trigonometry, then you will be sufficiently prepared to learn the multiplication tables. That's what it looks like in the minds of newspaper publishers!!!

Open Letter to Herr Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Editor of the Magazine for Literature

Dear Herr Dr. Steiner!

More urgently than ever in the last years, the request of my friends reaches me in these days to take a position anew against the “tactics of violence,” so as not to see my name thrown together with those “anarchists” who are — no anarchists, but one and all revolutionary communists. People are pointing out to me that as a foreigner I am running a danger, in the event of the international measure of an interment of the “anarchists,” of being dismissed from Germany.

I refuse to follow the advice of my friends. No government is so blind and so foolish as to proceed against a person who participates in public life solely through his writings and does so in the sense of a reshaping of conditions without bloodshed. Besides, for years I have unfortunately lost almost all outer contact with the social movement in Europe, whose outer development, by the way, no longer claims my interest in the same degree as the spiritual progress of the idea of equal freedom in the heads of individuals, which is the only thing all hope for the future still rests upon.

In 1891, in my work The Anarchists (in both editions now published by K. Henckell & Co. in Zurich and Leipzig), in the 8th chapter, entitled “The Propaganda of Communism,” I took a position with Auban against the “propaganda of the deed,” so sharply and unambiguously that there cannot be the slightest doubt as to how I think about it. I just reread the chapter for the first time in five years and have nothing to add to it; I could not today say better and more clearly what I think of the tactics of the communists, and their dangerousness in every respect. If since then a portion of the German communists has been convinced of the harmfulness and pointlessness of every violent proceeding, then I claim an essential part in this service of enlightenment.

Also, I am not in the habit of repeating myself, and moreover, for years I have been occupied with an extensive project, in which I am trying to approach psychologically all questions pertaining to the individual and his position toward the state.

Finally, in the seven years since the appearance of my work, the situation has, after all, changed drastically, and one knows today, wherever one wants to know it, and not only in the circles of experts, that not only in respect of tactics but also in all fundamental questions of world view, there are unbridgeable contrasts between the anarchists who are anarchists and those who falsely so call themselves and are called, and that apart from the wish for an improvement and reshaping of social conditions, the two have nothing, but nothing whatsoever, in common.

Whoever still doesn’t know it can learn it from the leaflet by Benj. R. Tucker State Socialism and Anarchism, which he can get for 20 pfennig from the publisher B. Zack, Berlin SE, Oppelnerstraße 45, and in which he will also find a list of all the writings of individual anarchism an incomparable opportunity to increase his knowledge in an invaluable way for the price of a glass of beer.

To be sure, there is a dirty press (it strangely prefers to call itself the decent press), which continues to falsify ever anew even established facts that have become a matter of history. But any battle against it is not only pointless but degrading. It lies because it wants to lie.

With friendly greetings, your devoted

John Henry Mackay
for now, Saarbrucken, Rhine Province, Pesterstr. 4
15 September 1898.

Answer to John Henry Mackay

Dear Herr Mackay!

Four years ago, after the appearance of my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, you expressed to me your agreement with my direction of ideas. I openly admit that this gave me deeply felt joy. For I have the conviction that we agree, with respect to our views, every bit as far as two natures fully independent of one another can agree. We have the same goals, even though we have worked our way through to our world of thought on quite different paths. You too feel this. A proof of this is the fact that you chose me to address the above letter to. I value being addressed by you as like-minded.

Hitherto I have always avoided using even the term “individualist anarchism” or “theoretical anarchism” for my world view. For I put very little stock in such designations. If one states one’s views clearly and positively in one’s writings: what is then the need of also designating these views with a convenient word? After all, everyone connects quite definite traditional notions with such a word, which reproduce only imprecisely what the particular personality has to say. I speak my thoughts; I characterize my goals. I myself have no need to name my way of thinking with a customary word.

If, however, I were to say, in the sense in which such things can be decided, whether the term “individualist anarchist” is applicable to me, I would have to answer with an unconditional “Yes.” And because I lay claim to this designation for myself, I too would like to say, just at this moment, with a few words, exactly what distinguishes “us,” the “individualist anarchists,” from the devotees of the so-called “propaganda of the deed.” I do know that for rational people I shall be saying nothing new. But I am not as optimistic as you, dear Herr Mackay, who simply say, “No government is so blind and foolish as to proceed against a person who participates in public life solely through his writings and does so in the sense of a reshaping of conditions without bloodshed.” You have, take no offense at me for this my only objection, not considered with how little rationality the world is governed.

Thus I would indeed like to speak once distinctly. The “individualist anarchist” wants no person to be hindered by anything in being able to bring to unfolding the abilities and forces that lie in him. Individuals should assert themselves in a fully free battle of competition. The present state has no sense for this battle of competition. It hinders the individual at every step in the unfolding of his abilities. It hates the individual. It says: I can only use a person who behaves thus and thus. Whoever is different, I shall force him to become the way I want. Now the state believes people can only get along if one tells them: you must be like this. And if you are not like that, then you’ll just have to be like that anyway. The individualist anarchist, on the other hand, holds that the best situation would result if one would give people free way. He has the trust that they would find their direction themselves. Naturally he does not believe that the day after tomorrow there would be no more pickpockets if one would abolish the state tomorrow. But he knows that one cannot by authority and force educate people to freeness. He knows this one thing: one clears the way for the most independent people by doing away with all force and authority.

But it is upon force and authority that the present states are founded. The individualist anarchist stands in enmity toward them, because they suppress liberty. He wants nothing but the free, unhindered unfolding of powers. He wants to eliminate force, which oppresses the free unfolding. He knows that at the final moment, when social democracy draws its consequences, the state will have its cannons work. The individualist anarchist knows that the representatives of authority will always reach for measures of force in the end. But he is of the conviction that everything of force suppresses liberty. That is why he battles against the state, which rests upon force and that is why he battles just as energetically against the “propaganda of the deed,” which no less rests upon measures of force. When a state has a person beheaded or locked up one can call it what one will on account of his opinion, that appears abominable to the individualist anarchist. It naturally appears no less abominable to him when a Luccheni stabs a woman to death who happens to be the Empress of Austria. It belongs to the very first principles of individualist anarchism to battle against things of that kind. If he wanted to condone the like, then he would have to admit that he does not know why he is battling against the state. He battles against force, which suppresses liberty, and he battles against it just the same when the state does violence to an idealist of the idea of freedom, as when a stupid vain youngster treacherously murders the likeable romantic on the imperial throne of Austria.

To our opponents it cannot be said distinctly enough that the “individualist anarchists” energetically battle against the so-called “propaganda of the deed.” There is, apart from the measures of force used by states, perhaps nothing as disgusting to these anarchists as these Caserios and Lucchenis. But I am not as optimistic as you, dear Herr Mackay. For I cannot usually find that speck of rationality that is, after all, required for such crude distinctions as that between “individualist anarchism” and “propaganda of the deed,” where I would like to seek it.

In friendly inclination, yours
Rudolf Steiner

Correction

One of the chiefs of the Communists, Mr. Gustav Landauer, replies in number 41 of the "Sozialisten" to John Henry Mackay's letter contained in number 39 of the "Magazin für Literatur" like someone who can do nothing but parrot his party platitudes and who regards every dissenter as a bad fellow. In Landauer's opinion, Mackay is not an opponent of violence out of principle, but because he lacks courage. Landauer betrays an intimate lack of understanding and unreserved ignorance. Thus he claims that Mackay will replace the verse "Return over the mountains, mother of freedom, revolution!" in the new edition of his "Sturm": "Stay just over the mountains, stepmother of freedom, revolution!" Now the third and fourth editions of the "Sturm" have recently been published (by K. Henckell & Co. in Zurich), enlarged but otherwise completely unchanged and unabridged. I would like to ask Mr. Landauer whether he is brazenly asserting untruths despite knowing the truth, or whether he is just blatantly disparaging people in public opinion without taking the trouble to first check whether his assertions are correct. And what the "courageous" gentleman goes on to write, with complete concealment of everything important in Mackay's letter, only shows that he also edits the "Socialist" in the way that is characterized in Mackay's letters as the most common in the press today.

This translation is Volume 31 of the Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner and from Bn 31.2.21. This is a first English translation, revised as of June, 2016.

We are now living in the time of reformation. The “people” want, from the bottom up, to bring about new conditions of governance from above down. Therefore, one should not be surprised when thoughts of reformation emerge from various quarters regarding the most conservative institutions of our public life: the universities. I am not speaking of such superfluous things as the so-called “Lex Arons.” It will be a harmless law, if not abused. But what law does not give rise to abuse! If one abuses this law, then it will be harmful; if one does not abuse it, then it is unnecessary. But it is futile constantly to pose the question to the legislative assemblies: “Toward what end?” After all, one also had the wish to do something, to speak about something, and ... to need to reform something. I would like to speak about something else, which appears to me important because it originates from a man who has experience in the relevant area, and whose occupation it is to generate improvement in one sphere to which he has devoted himself with all his powers. Ernst Bernheim has just published a pamphlet that deals with the theme of University Education and the Demands of the Present Time. The author knows how to uncover deeply-seated detrimental tendencies. Detrimental tendencies that are known. For he proceeds from the notion that “today” students skip class more often than was the case in any previous time, and that this, measured by the most modest of standards, is desirable. And—certainly in contrast to many of his colleagues—the author does not seek for the cause of this in the students themselves, but rather in the peculiarities of university education. He discovers that the lecture courses for the students have become too uninteresting. He finds the reason for this fact in the trend toward specialization in the sciences, which currently necessitates that the lecturers compose their so-called private lectures from narrow areas of study involving the elaboration of infinite details.

Earlier, such a course would cover, for example, general world history, general history of ancient times, of the Middle Ages, and of more recent times; now hardly anyone undertakes to provide such courses of study; one lectures on the history of the Middle Ages, for example, in particular fragments, such as the history of the migrations of peoples, of the time of the German Caesar, from the Interregnum until the Reformation—indeed, in still shorter fragments; in addition, constitutional history, economic history, church and art history are studied in separate colleges. Now this is very well and good for one who wants to train as a researcher and—to stay with our example—has chosen to take something of the Middle Ages into his field of work; but one who intends to become a teacher and wants to take his state examination in history sees himself so overwhelmed with this kind of lecture course—in which he must get to know antiquity, the modern era, etc., in the same manner—that he does not know which way to turn. At first, he sets out with the confidence of a newcomer—boldly taking on five, six, seven private lectures; but soon his strength does not suffice to be attentive and taking notes for so many hours a day. In the best case, one will be so sensible as to abandon several of the courses completely and limit oneself to the regular attendance of only a few—and thereby hold as a top priority the commitment not to allow the task originally taken up to fall into such complete lawlessness that one ultimately ends up disgusted with the whole thing, discouraged and indifferent.

Bernheim raises these conditions in relation to the question of whether it is at all justified to maintain the establishment of private lectures, considering the now sweeping specialization of the sciences. Today, if the teacher intends to bring forward all the details of his area of expertise, then he has to lose himself to such a great extent in the specific that he has no time left to offer the great, essential vantage-points according to his personal understanding. In addition to this is the fact that it is no longer even necessary to provide this sum of details in the lecture courses. For we currently possess compendiums of these details, which are excellent, and whose current level of comprehensiveness would earlier have been inconceivable to us. On the basis of these considerations, Bernheim comes to the conclusion that one should structure the private lectures differently. They should comprise much shorter periods of time. In them, one should renounce the enumeration and critical evaluation of the particular details, and instead set oneself the task of holding orientation lectures in which one develops an overall understanding of a certain subject, a general point of view. By contrast, [the author further proposes that] the practical exercises at the universities, the work in seminars, should see a greater expansion. Such work should not, as is currently the case, begin only in later semesters, but already at the beginning of university studies. Here the students should learn the methods of scientific investigation; here one should concretely train oneself to become a researcher.

I do not fail to see the benefits to be had from a college education established in the sense of these suggestions. In particular, it seems to me very advantageous to reformulate the private lectures in the sense envisioned by the author. For it cannot be denied that much of what is said today at the lectern is actually easier and more convenient to gain from the existing manuals. And most importantly, such a reform will better allow the personality of the university professor to emerge into the foreground. And nothing works on people more than precisely the personality. A receptive spirit will be more inspired by a peculiar, even if ever so subjectively colored perspective, than by a myriad of “objective” facts.

In contrast, I would not so readily agree with Bernheim's proposal concerning the practical exercises. It may be beneficial for the average student if, under the guidance of a professor, he or she were to learn the method of research, down into the details. But one should not always concern oneself with the average person.One could do so if it were true that the gifted spirit breaks through no matter what, even against all fettering hindrances. But that is not in fact true.The things one does to help the average person hinder the gifted spirit in the unfolding of his individuality. They cause his originality to atrophy. And if the institutional examinations require one to have proof—as is the case for the present writer—of having taken part in a certain number of practical exercises, then for the one who intends to go his own way, such a measure becomes a shackle. The focal point of university education must consist in the personal inspiration brought about through the professor. Thus we see the value of lectures on general themes that are furthermore delivered from a personally-won point of view. As for the exercises, let those partake in them who have the need. But at the time of examination, do not ask someone what he has pushed himself through during his time of study, but rather what he is now able to achieve. How he has attained his competence must be a matter of indifference. One can offer practical exercises for those who need them, but one should not make them into an obligation for those who are able to meet the requirements of the examination without them.

At this point, where we usually talk so often about books and those who write them, I would also like to say a few words about those who read them. The former is more convenient, however. A book is a self-contained whole and can be judged as such. The author is a certain individuality about whose significance we can form an opinion. In both cases, therefore, the object we are writing about is tangible. But if we want to write about the "readers", someone may object: "Readers in general" do not exist at all; the object to be discussed cannot be considered a specific one at all; we can only be dealing with a very nebulous idea. It must be admitted that the expression "So many minds, so many senses" is also fully applicable to the reading public. So my observations will not apply to Mr. Schulze in Oberholzhausen or to the Frau Müllerin in Alt-Gabelsberg. But I am not one of those people who believe that in order to have an opinion about something, one must first examine all the cases under consideration. You couldn't reach a verdict on anything until the end of time and put your reason out of action for the time being.

Whoever has eyes for a peculiarity prevailing in a certain time, a few characteristic phenomena are enough to notice it.

It is basically a general trait of our entire intellectual life, which is also expressed in the choice of what we prefer to read. Many of our contemporaries live with their nerves more than has been the case with any other sex.¹ They are not looking for opportunities for energetic will, not for satisfaction in high thoughts, not for the sublime regions of art in which Goethe's "Iphigenia" or "Tasso" hover, but for exciting impressions, for rare sensations. Schiller's words are still little understood: "The master's true artistic secret lies in overcoming the material through the form." Today, we revel in the impressions made by the raw material. We no longer look at the world with our minds, but with our nerves. It is not what the world reveals to our minds that we seek, but the "secrets" that we find in all kinds of hidden holes. We have no patience to wait until an impression has found its way into the brain, but we lurk to see what processes are taking place on the periphery of our body. The harmony of colors that the eye conveys is no longer interesting, but the excitement that the tickled optic nerve gets into is something you would love to observe.

This life with nerves is also reflected in our audience's choice of reading material. Today, people also read with nerves. What's in a book is less important than the excitement you get from all kinds of stylistic perfumes that don't belong to the subject matter. I love Nietzsche as much as anyone, but his effect on many people seems to me to be due not to the content of his thoughts, but to the mystical effects of his style, which owe their existence to a diseased nervous system. One does not read Nietzsche in order to follow him to the heights of his ideas, but to be excited by the stimuli of his style. Nor do I believe that Dostoyevsky owes his fame to the deep psychology of his characters, but to those "mysteries" that take effect before they reach the brain. A writer must be able to do two things if he wants to have a great effect today: he must lull the mind with narcotic agents and excite the body with all kinds of stimuli.

There are people who see progress in the fact that we have arrived at the art of "secret nerves" and who denounce all those who have not achieved such a culture of nerves as wretched philistines. There is no arguing with such people, because arguing involves judgment; and judgment is not in the nerves.

But where does the real evil lie? Does it lie in the writers who dominate the reading world today? Or is it the public, which is being steered along unnatural paths by a social motor? The answer to the former question is definitely no. Who wants to blame Dostoyevsky's psychological rummaging in his grandiose portrayal, the profound interpretations that Tolstoy gives to human life, for the way they are read by the public? Here, in the: How one reads today, that is where it lies. For those who objectively devote themselves to the problems presented, the artistic form of Zola will also take precedence over the sensual excitement of reading. However, our contemporaries at their advanced cultural level are just as concerned with this as their uneducated fellow human beings are with their robber novels and murder mysteries.

But the readers themselves are even less to be blamed than those they are guided by. A generation of critics has arisen who persuade the public that this is only the right, modern taste.

"True" is what art must be above all else, as one person says to another. These critics really believe that their worn-out copper coins of concepts are enough to put them in possession of what rightly deserves to be called truth. You don't learn such things in coffee houses. I have read them by the dozen, the books of the latest aesthetes, and I never tire of following their views day after day in the newspapers. Over and over again, I keep telling myself: The must must clarify itself. But the new ones are always joined by newer and newer ones that outdo their predecessors in obscurity and illiteracy. Today we can see that people who want to be intellectually productive have only traced German literature back to 1885. They often do so to the applause of the public, which again relies on the critics.

I am always amazed at the sufficiency with which these critics wield their pens. You have to forgive them for having no idea how much they might know, because no one can know what is beyond their horizon. But they must know, and they do know, that they have learned nothing. They know it because they do everything they can to keep better products away from the public. A higher level of education among readers would be dangerous for our critics. No one should realize that there are intellectual products that stand high above what the critic of his favorite newspaper is able to judge. That is why the silence system was invented. A book that becomes uncomfortable is simply put aside.

And this is a second cancer of our time: In this dependence of the public on the after-judgments of often quite inferior people. These judgments are often hair-raising, but they cling to a work like a label. As long as our public does not free itself from the hypnotic influence of the printed word and continues to believe that there must be some meaning in the ink, the evils just discussed will not be eliminated, and we will not have a true public opinion in intellectual matters. Only when the readers rise to the point of view where they listen to the writer because they want to measure and clarify their opinion against another, then the communication between writers and readers will be a satisfying one. The critic should be an advisor, a thought-provoker, not an authority.

• 1. I know that the course of culture on the whole has nothing to do with the mental direction of those of our contemporaries I am talking about here. The height of modern scientific views and the healthy art of our day, the social insights and tendencies determine this course. But I do not want to speak here of the development of the world view, which has to do with the leading spirits and ideas, but of a side shoot that is disturbing for us present-day people and impairs healthy development.

Died on December 10, 1889

Death snatched our two greatest spirits from us Germans in Austria in quick succession. First, Robert Hamerling, the poet of German idealism, who led us up to the heights of world-embracing thought, closed his eyes. A few days ago, he was followed by Ludwig Anzengruber, the great connoisseur and portrayer of the soul of our people.

Our immediate present is almost incapable of coming to a fair, all-round appreciation of both. Party struggle on the one hand, scholarly arrogance on the other are the obstacles that stand in the way of such an appreciation of their greatness. Insensitive to the genuinely artistic, the humanly great in the poet, the party only looks for catchwords in his works to make him one of their own. His writings are only valid to the extent that they are evidence for their party purposes. Contemporary scholarship, on the other hand, which by virtue of the position and task of its bearers should keep its gaze free and open for all that is great and beautiful, contributes less today than ever to the recognition of what the present is achieving that is significant. The most worthless intellectual products of centuries long past, which have never had any influence on humanity, are tracked down and processed in scholarly treatises and academic lectures, but the literature of the present is treated as if it were of no concern to the masters. It will probably be decades before literary historians approach Hamerling and Anzengruber, produce critical editions and write historical appraisals. These circles know nothing of the fact that scholarship actually has the task of helping contemporaries to understand the present, and that all knowledge of the past is only of value if it brings us closer to what is going on around us, touches us directly.

Then there is the mendacity of our daily press, which does not shy away from any shameful act when it wants to distort the image of a contemporary who was either not entirely to its liking or whose achievements go against the grain. We experienced this a few months ago with Hamerling, and now with Anzengruber. The reports about him in the Viennese daily papers testified to an ignorance of his life and his works and were full of deliberate distortions of his work as a person and as a poet. Our experience with Anzengruber was no better. What he really is, what he is for his people and for German poetry, to express this in a worthy manner, one felt absolutely no calling to do so. After all, his fiftieth birthday passed a few weeks ago without any of Vienna's leading daily newspapers running a literary feature on him.

This happens to the greatest sons of our nation! And Anzengruber was one of them. Gifted with an original, naive spirit and strong poetic talent, he conquered a whole new area of German literature. He is a poet of the people, but in the sense that he captures the soul of the people where it rises to the most important questions of humanity, where it is moved by those problems which, in their further development, have led to the most profound works of our generation. The question of right and wrong, of guilt and responsibility, of freedom and lack of freedom of the will, of existence and the goodness of God, insofar as they are reflected in the naïve mind of the common man and stir up the greatest passions in his heart, provoking the strongest conflicts, these are the things that underlie Anzengruber's works. The "Woe to you that you are a grandson" has never been treated more effectively by a classical poet than in Anzengruber's "Fourth Commandment". The fact that all law is a matter of human opinion and that there is no eternal, unchangeable natural law, a question that has occupied the deepest minds, is expressed in her own way by "old Liesl" in "Meineidbauer". How we are the play of fate, how we are dependent on the outside world, which plants the seeds of evil or good in us, so that human responsibility is in a bad way, is the view of "Vroni" as she contemplates her own life's destiny. This is the great thing about Anzengruber, that he portrays the "simple man" as the "whole man", everything human, lives itself out in him. The liberation of the human breast from traditional prejudices, the appeal to the voice of one's own reason, all this takes place in the man of the people no less than in the spirit that walks on the heights of humanity. Everything that takes place on the great plan of world history also spreads its waves into the popular mind. Our poet's works are the sharpest possible proof of this. The great world-historical upheaval that is currently taking place in the religious ideas of mankind has also taken hold of the people with power. Blind faith is giving way to a thinking grasp of the truth. Reason wants to take its place. This trend of the times, as it also appears in the lowest classes of the people, is so masterfully embodied in Anzengruber's "Kreuzelschreibern" and the "Pfarrer von Kirchfeld" that this alone ensures the value of these works for all time.

These poems have been interpreted as tendency poems, but they are by no means so, nor is Hamerling's "Homunculus". If the poet confronts reality and embodies it artistically, then one cannot speak of tendency. For that is his highest task. Anzengruber did not write to say: country clergy, peasants, become this or that, but to show: this is how they are, these country people of today. In him, a whole slice of human life has found its poetic transfiguration.

Goethe sees the poet's perfection in succeeding in bringing his characters to life in such a way that they compete with reality. Anzengruber fulfills this condition like few others. He does not copy reality anywhere, as the school of modern realistic perversity would have it, but he does create characters who, as they appear in the drama, could also exist directly. And that is the task of the true poet. Whatever figure we may take from him, everything is naturally possible, everything psychologically true; nowhere is there a single trait to be discovered that would contradict the nature of the person. Indeed, in the art of characterization Anzengruber is one of the most important dramatists of all time, and this art is precisely the basis of drama, especially modern drama. Here all events, all conflicts are only justified insofar as they flow from the human interior. Fate, which for the ancients was an external force, has been internalized, has become a consequence of the character's disposition. The drama of the present day shows us man insofar as he wants to be the master of his fate and insofar as he himself is the forger of his own happiness. Anzengruber allows everything that happens to follow entirely from the characters. Nothing is left out of this iron consistency, as he imagines it in the human soul. Once we have understood the people who appear, we have understood the entire course of a play. Nothing is sacrificed for the sake of a theatrical effect, a pleasantly touching course of action, etc., as the illusory greats of our dramatic daily literature do. Because of this trait, Anzengruber is a born dramatist. And he is also a dramatist as a storyteller. His great stories: "Der Sternsteinhof", "Einsam" etc., are full of dramatic power and depth; indeed, even his shorter stories are dominated by the same trait. Scholarly aesthetes may rack their brains as to what aesthetic template they can therefore place his prose under; indeed, they may even come to the conclusion that this prose is not significant at all because it does not preserve the character of pure epic representation; but we would like to enjoy the wonderful things that Anzengruber had to produce due to his peculiar nature, even if the traditional terms that could classify it do not apply.

March 20, 1898

Fifty years ago, when the wild storms of revolution roared through Europe, Henrik Ibsen was twenty years old. He greeted the freedom movement with the strongest sympathy. The passion of the revolutionaries was closely related to the feelings that lived in his own soul. Looking back on this time, he later said:

"The time was very turbulent, the February Revolution, the uprisings in Hungary, the Schleswig War - all of this had a powerful impact on my development. I addressed thunderous poems to the Magyars in which I urgently exhorted them in the interests of freedom and human rights to persevere in the just struggle against the tyrants."

The revolution that the twenty-year-old experienced was a harbinger and symptom of a larger one, of the revolutionization of minds. The political revolution could not achieve what the spirits had promised. Movements to reshape the human order are only victorious if they are the expression of new-born world views. Christianity was able to establish a new order of human relations because it emerged from a revolution of the entire emotional life. Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed a new relationship to the world and life. He gave the human mind a new direction. The actual circumstances had to follow the changed direction of the heart. The revolution of the year forty-eight was a purely political one. It was not supported by any new world view.

It was not until ten years after this revolution that Charles Darwin proclaimed to people the gospel that they needed to give content to a new way of life. Goethe already possessed this gospel. He had already come to the great realization of the purely natural, unified entity that brought forth the dead stone, the silent plant, the unreasoning animal, and which also called man into existence, and beside which there is nothing divine in man. He regards man as the most perfect natural being. Nature has the power to bring forth the rational animal at its peak; no divine breath needs to be blown into this rational animal.¹

But Goethe gained his view of life as a spiritual aristocrat. Only through his individual course of development was it possible to read the book of nature in such a way that it made this revelation. Darwin proclaimed the same insight in a democratic way. Everyone could imitate his intellectual steps. It is not what he proclaims that makes a man a prophet, but how he proclaims it.

The great secret was revealed to Goethe at the sight of the Greek works of art in Italy. When he saw these works, he exclaimed: 'There is necessity, there is God. I have the suspicion that the artists, when they produced these works of art, acted according to the same laws according to which nature works, and which I am on the trail of. The work of man is only a continuation of the work of nature: Goethe recognized that at this moment. What man creates does not come to him as a gift of grace from heaven, but through the development of the same forces of nature that are active in plants and animals to a higher level. One would have to emulate Goethe's life if one wanted to arrive at his insight in the same way as he did. Darwin taught the same thing. But he pointed to common facts that express such truth - to facts that are accessible to everyone. He expressed in popular form what Goethe proclaimed for the select few.

It now became an absurdity to attribute to the creative power that comes from above what nature could obviously produce of itself. The entire human emotional life must change under the influence of the new world view. Man sees that he is something higher, something more perfect than that from which he has developed. He used to believe that someone above him had transplanted him into existence. Now his gaze can no longer be directed upwards. He is dependent on himself and on what is below him.

For centuries, the human heart has become accustomed to submitting to this upward gaze. Since Darwin's emergence, it has endeavored to wean itself off such a direction of sensation.

It is relatively easy for the mind to assimilate the new knowledge; it is infinitely difficult for the heart to transform itself in accordance with this knowledge. This is why the most difficult battles between mind and heart took place in the souls of the best minds of the last half-century. Unclear, disharmonious, doubting, searching natures are typical of this half-century.

Most of those who walk among us today with a more serious disposition still feel these struggles within them. And even the best only have the feeling that satisfaction is yet to come, but not that it has already arrived. Countless questions arise from these struggles; we only hope for answers in the future.

The future historian of our time will have to tell of wrestling, of questioning people. And if he wants to describe a single personality in whose soul all the struggles that have moved five decades have been reflected, he will have to describe Henrik Ibsen. All the questionable figures that our half-century had to produce: they confront us in Ibsen's dramas. And all the questions that this time raised: we find them again in these works. And because this time is one of questions to which only the future will provide answers, Ibsen's dramas end with questions; and that is why he had to say of himself:

"I usually ask, but answering is not my office."

One must give the truth its due and admit that Ibsen was not the man who knew the answers to the great questions of his time. He knew how to ask with all his might: he was unable to answer. He felt this himself when he said:

"For my part, I shall be satisfied with the success of my week's work if this work can serve to prepare the mood for tomorrow. But first and foremost, I will be satisfied if it can help to strengthen the spirits for the week of work that follows."

I would like to consider it fortunate that Ibsen is only a questioner. For by not being able to arrive at answers, he is able to question deeply and thoroughly. And because we taste with him the full, deep seriousness of the highest questions, those who follow will arrive at deeper answers. The brokenness and dissatisfaction that we carry within us today when we come from his dramas will turn into happiness for those who will untie what we tie.

This is how I understand Ibsen. To me, he is a nature that is strong enough to feel the problems of our time as its own pain, but not strong enough to realize our highest goals.

I see Ibsen as a master builder who builds the towers from which we are supposed to look out over our world, but who is overcome with vertigo when he himself is supposed to stand on the top of these towers.

I imagine that it must be difficult to be old in our time. Those who are young today believe that they can still keep up with the intellectual culture in which we live. To the old man of today, such a following seems impossible. Ibsen's heart is too deeply intertwined with the sentiments that past centuries have instilled in us for him to be satisfied with the proud tower of knowledge that he helped to create.

In his "Baumeister Solneß", he confessed in the manner of a great man that he was seized by dizziness at his own work.

I think the old master will be pleased if we tell him today, on his birthday, that we have understood him. In fifty years of work, he wanted to lead people to freedom. And we want to preserve our own freedom towards him. Not blind reverence; reverent knowledge is what he should see in us when we greet him on this day.

• 1. We do not consider it superfluous, because today we read quickly and therefore often superficially, to draw attention to the fact that Dr. R. Steiner is not reproducing his own views here, but those of a time that looked at things through Darwin's glasses, which can also be looked at more deeply. Even if it is the same direction in which the modern spiritual researcher looks - the gate of knowledge of nature, it is a different matter to stop in front of the open gate or to walk through it and see new horizons. It is necessary to penetrate through that gate - but then one must go on. (Note by Marie Steiner.)