The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The idea of the Three-Membered Social Organism set forth in my book, The Threefold Commonwealth has grown out of perceptions which have ripened in view of the facts of modern social evolution, such as I attempted to describe yesterday. This idea of the threefold ordering of the social body aims at a practical solution of the problems of life and includes nothing Utopian. Hence, before writing my book, I presupposed that it would be received with a common instinct for actual facts, and that it would not be judged out of preconceived theories, preconceived party opinions. If what I said yesterday be correct and it is correct, undoubtedly, namely, that the social facts in the conditions of human life have grown so complicated that it is extremely difficult to survey them, a new method of dealing with the matters under discussion to-day will be necessary in order to enkindle the general social purpose. In view of this complexity of facts, it is only too comprehensible that there should be, for the time being, no understanding of the economic phenomena, except of such as have come within the experience of individual people; but everything of this nature is dependent upon the whole of economic life, and at the present time not only on the economic life of one country, but on that of the entire world. The individual human being will have, quite naturally and comprehensively, to judge the needs of world-economy from the experience of his own immediate circle. He will, of course, go astray. Anyone who knows the demands of thought that are in line with strict reality knows also how important it is to approach the phenomena of the world with a certain amount of instinct for the truth, in order to gain fundamental facts of knowledge. Such facts play the same part in life as fundamental truths in the knowledge gained at school.

Were we to try to acquaint ourselves with the whole of economic life in all its details and from it to draw our conclusions concerning the social purpose, we should never come to an end. In fact, we should just as unlikely come to an end as we would were we compelled to review all the details, let us say, of the application of the Pythagorean theorem in the technical field in order to recognize the truth of that theorem. We accept the truths of the Pythagorean theorem through certain inner thought-connections with it, and then we know that wherever it can be applied it must hold good. It is also possible to wrestle with the facts of social knowledge, until certain fundamental facts reveal themselves as truths to our consciousness by their inner nature. Our own sense of truth will then enable us to apply these facts everywhere as the occasion demands. In this way I should like my book, The Threefold Commonwealth, to be understood out of its own inner nature, out of the inner nature of the social conditions described. Emphatically, the whole idea of the Three-Membered Social Organism should be so understood. But I will particularly endeavor in these lectures to show that certain phenomena of social life give force to the conclusions arising from the idea of the threefold membering of the social organism. This idea is a result of the necessities of the present day and of the near future of humanity. I will also show how these confirmations may be arrived at.

But first it will be necessary to recall to you, as an introduction to my subject for to-day, the fundamental idea of the threefold membering of the social order. We have seen that our social life has three principal roots or members, from which spring its demands—in other words, that it is a question of culture, of State, law, politics, and of economics. Any one who studies modern evolution will find that these three elements of life, cultural, political, and economic, have intermingled gradually, until they now form a chaotic whole, and out of the amalgamation of these three elements the present evils of society have arisen.

If we thoroughly understand this—and these lectures are intended to help us do so—we shall find that the direction evolution must take in the future will be the ordering of public life and of the social organism so that there will be an independent cultural life, especially as regards general culture, education and teaching, an independent political, legal body, and a completely independent economic body. At present, a single administrative body embraces these three elements of life in our States, and when a three-membering is mentioned it is always misunderstood. It is taken to mean that an independent administration is demanded for the cultural life, another for the political life, and a third for the economic body—three parliaments instead of one. This is a complete misunderstanding of the threefold order, for that idea embodies the determination to do full justice to those demands which have shown themselves in the unfolding of history. Those demands, three in number, have come to be regarded as party cries, but if we look for their true meaning we shall find that there is an authentic historical impulse contained in them. These three demands contain the impulse of liberty in human life, the impulse towards democracy, and the impulse towards a social form of community.

But if these three demands are taken seriously they cannot be mixed up together under a single administration, because the one must always interfere with the other. If the cry for democracy has any real meaning at all, everyone must acknowledge that it can only flourish in a representative body or parliament, where every single man and woman of full age, being placed on an equality with his fellows, with every other adult in the democratic State, can make decisions from his own judgment.

Now, according to the idea of the threefold membering of the social body, there is a great region of life—that of law and equity, the State and politics—in which every adult has the right, out of his own democratic consciousness, to make himself heard. But if democracy is a reality, and all political life is to be entirely democratized, it is impossible either to include, on the one hand, the cultural life or, on the other, the economic life in the democratic sphere of administration. In the democratic administration a parliament is absolutely in its place, but questions belonging to the department of spiritual life, including education and teaching, can never be properly decided in such a democratic parliament. (I will here only touch upon this subject, as I will deal with it fully in my fourth lecture.) The threefold order strives to realize an independent life of thought, especially in public matters and in everything relating to education and the manner of giving instruction, that is, the State shall no longer determine the matter and manner of teaching. Only those who are actually teachers, engaged in practical education, shall be its administrators. This means that from the lowest class in the public schools up to the highest grade of education, the teacher shall be independent of any political or economic authority as regards the subject or manner of his teaching. This is a natural consequence of a feeling for what is appropriate to the life of thought within the independent cultural body. And the individual need only spend so much time in imparting instruction as will leave him leisure to collaborate in the work of education as a whole and the sphere of spiritual and cultural life in general.

I will try to show in my fourth lecture how this independence of thought places the whole spiritual constitution of man on quite a different footing, and how such independence will bring about precisely what is now believed, because of prevailing prejudice, to be impossible of realization. Through this independence, the life of thought will itself gain strength to take an active and effective part in the life of the State, especially in economic life. Independent thought, far from giving rise to hazy, theories or unpractical scientific views, will penetrate into human life, so that out of this independent thought-life the individual will permeate himself not with theories, but with knowledge that will fit him to take his place worthily in economic life. Because of its independence, the intellectual life will become practical, so that it may be said: practical and applied knowledge Will rule in the cultural sphere. Not that the opinion of every It person capable of forming a judgment will be authoritative. Parliamentary administration must be deprived of all authority over the cultural body. Whoever believes that it is intended that a democratic parliament should again rule here quite misunderstands the impulse for bringing into existence the social organism consisting of three members.

The same holds good in the economic sphere. The economic life has its own roots and must be governed in accordance with the conditions of its own nature. The manner in which business is carried on cannot be allowed to be judged democratically by every grown-up person, but only by someone who is engaged in some branch of economic life, who is capable in his branch and knows the links that connect his own branch with others. Special knowledge and special capacity are the only guarantees of fruitful work in economic life. Economic life, therefore, will have to be detached, on the one hand, from the political and, on the other hand, from the cultural body. It must be placed upon its own basis.

This is just what is most of all misunderstood by socialist thinkers of to-day. Such thinkers conceive of some form of economic life whereby certain social evils shall cease in the future. We have seen, as it is easy to see, that under the private capitalist order of the last few centuries, certain evils have arisen. The evils are evident enough: how do people judge them? It is said: It is the private capitalist order which is the cause of these evils; these will disappear as soon as we get rid of the system, when we replace it by the communal system. All the evils that have arisen are caused by the fact that the means of production are in the hands of individual owners. When this private ownership is no longer permitted, and the community is in control of the means of production, the evils will cease.

Now it may be said, socialist. thinkers have acquired certain isolated facts of knowledge and it is interesting to see how those isolated facts already have their effect in socialist circles. People are already saying that the means of production, or capital which is its equivalent, should be communally administered. We have seen, however, to what state-control of certain means of production has led, for instance of European post offices, European railways, and so forth. We cannot say that the evils have been removed, because the state has become the capitalist. Thus, neither by nationalization nor communalization, nor by the founding of cooperative societies by people who all need the same kind of articles, can any fruitful result be attained. According to the views of socialist thinkers, the people who regulate this consumption, and wish to regulate also the production of the goods to be consumed, become in their turn, as consumers, tyrants over production. The knowledge has, therefore, penetrated the minds of these socialists that nationalization and communalization, as well as the administration by cooperative societies, leads to tyranny on the part of the consumer. The producer would be subjected to the consumer's tyranny. Many therefore think that workers' productive associations in which everybody should have a voice in the management might be founded. In these the workers would unite and produce for themselves according to their own ideas and principles.

Here, again, socialist thinkers have perceived that nothing further would he attained than the replacement of the single capitalist by a number of capitalist working-men producers, who would not be able to do otherwise than the private capitalist. Thus, the Worker-Producers' Associations were also cast aside.

But all this fails to convince people that those separate associations cannot lead to fruitful results in the future.

Another scheme was that the whole population of a country, or some particular economic region, might be able to form a great federation in which all the members were to he both producers and consumers, so that no single individual could of his own initiative produce anything for the community. The community itself was to decide how the production should be carried on, how products should be distributed and the like. In short, a great federation embracing production and consumption would be substituted for the private administration now found in our present economic system!

Now anyone with a little insight into facts knows that the idea of founding this great federation in preference to smaller enterprises only arises from the fact that in a larger scheme the errors are less easily detected than in the schemes which propose to nationalize or communalize production and distribution schemes such as the Worker-Producers' Association and Cooperative Societies. In these latter the field to be surveyed is smaller and the faults committed in founding the enterprises are more easily seen. The great federation embraces a vast social area. Plans are made for the future; and no one sees that the same errors, which were easily discernible in the smaller undertakings, must inevitably again appear. They are not recognized in the larger scheme, because in it the promoters are incapable of taking in the whole matter at a glance. This is the explanation. And we must understand where the fundamental error in this kind of thought lies, an error which leads to the foundation of a great federation in which certain persons presume to take the whole administration of the entire production and consumption into their own hands.

What kind of thought leads to the imagination of such a project? This question can easily be answered if we consult the numerous party-programs at the present moment. What gives rise to these party-programs? Someone thinks: Here are certain branches of production; these must be managed by the community; they must then be united in larger branches, in larger administrative districts. Then there must be some kind of central management over the whole, and, above all those, a central board to control the whole consumption and production. What kind of thoughts and representations underlie such an economic scheme as this? Exactly those which are applicable to the political life of modern times. Those who today announce their economic programs have mostly had a purely political training. They have taken part in electioneering campaigns; they know what is expected of them when they are returned to parliament and have to represent their constituents. They are experienced in official and political life. They know the whole routine of political administration and see no reason why it should not be adapted to economic affairs—in a word, economic administration must be altogether modeled on political life.

What we are now so terribly in need of is to see for ourselves that the whole of this routine work, plastered on to the economic system, is something absolutely foreign to its nature. But by far the greater number of persons who now talk of reform, or even of a revolution in economic life, are, as a matter of fact, mere politicians, who persist in thinking that what they have learnt in politics can be applied in the management of economic affairs. A healthy condition of the economic system can, however, only prevail if that system be considered by itself and built up out of its own conditions.

What do these political reformers of the economic system want to bring about? They demand nothing less than that this hierarchy of the central management shall determine what is to be produced and how production is to be carried on and the whole manner and process of production brought under the control of the administrative offices. They demand that those persons who are to take part in the work of production shall be engaged and appointed to their places by the central office and that the distribution of raw material to the different works shall be effected by the central office. The entire production would therefore be subject to a kind of hierarchy of political administrators. And this is really typical of what is aimed at to-day in the greater part of the patent schemes for the reform of the economic system. The would-be reformers do not see that these measures would leave the economic system just where it is now; they would not remove its evils; on the contrary, they would immeasurably increase them. The reformers see clearly that nationalization, communalization, cooperative societies, worker producers' associations, are all alike useless; but what they do not see is that by their program they would only transfer to the communal administration of the means of production the very powers to which they object so severely in the private capitalist system.

It is this, above all, which really must be understood to-day. People must see that such measures and such institutions as those described will of a certainty bring about the conditions we see only too plainly in Eastern Europe to-day. There, certain individuals were able to carry out these ideas of economic reform and to realize them. People who are willing to learn from facts might see from the fate that threatens Eastern Europe and how these measures themselves lead ad absurdum. If people were less dogmatic in their ideas and more willing to learn from actual events, nobody would think of saying that the failure of the economic socialization of Hungary was caused by some unimportant factor or other. They would try to find out why it was bound to fail, and then they would be convinced that every such scheme of socialization can only bring destruction and cannot create anything fruitful for the future. But for vast numbers of people it is still very difficult to learn from facts in this way. This is best seen in things that are really often treated by socialist thinkers as of secondary importance. They say, it is true, that modern economic life has been transformed by modern technical science. But if they were to carry this train of thought further they would have to recognize the relationship between modern technical science and specialized knowledge and expert skill. They could not help seeing how modern technical science everywhere intervenes in industrialism. But they refuse to see it. So they say, in parenthesis, they will have nothing to do with technical science in the processes of production. It can take care of itself. They only wish to occupy themselves with the manner in which those who are engaged in production-processes live socially, what sort of social life they lead.

But if people will only open their eyes to facts, nothing can be more evident than the immense importance of the part directly played by technical science in economic affairs. One example, a really typical one, may be given here. By multiplying machines, technical science has, to put it in a few words, succeeded in providing commodities for public consumption and to the existence of this machinery is entirely due the fact that from four hundred to five hundred millions of tons of coal were brought to the surface per annum for industrial purposes before the War. Now if one calculates the amount of economic energy and power required by those machines, which are entirely the result of human thought and can only be worked by human thought, the following interesting result is arrived at. If we reckon an eight-hour day, we get the startling result that by these machines, i.e. through the human thought incorporated in the machines, through the inventive gift of the mind, as much energy and working force are used as could be produced by seven to eight hundred millions of men!

Hence, if you picture to yourself that the earth has a working population of about 1500 million men, it has gained, by the inventive genius of human beings in the recent periods of modern civilization, seven hundred to eight hundred millions more. Therefore, two thousand millions of human beings work, that is to say, the seven to eight hundred millions do not themselves actually work, but the machines work for them. What works in these machines? The human intellect.

It is of the utmost significance that facts like these, which might easily be multiplied, should be grasped. For they show that technical science cannot be treated with indifference and lightly put aside; but that it cooperates actively and ceaselessly in industrial life and is inseparable from it. Modern economic life is altogether unthinkable without the basis of modern technical science and without special knowledge and expert skill.

To overlook these things is to set out with preconceived ideas, inspired by human passions, and to close our eyes to realities. The idea of the Threefold Order of the Social Body is honest in its endeavors to solve the social problem. For that reason its standpoint cannot be the same as that of party-leaders, with catchwords and programs. The Threefold Order must start from facts. Hence, taking its stand on the realities of life, it must recognize that industry, especially in our complicated life, is based on the initiative of the individual. If we try to substitute for individual initiative the abstract community at large,¹ we give the death-blow to economic life. Eastern Europe will prove this, if it remains much longer under its present rule. It means extinction and death to the economic body when we deprive the individual of his initiative, which must proceed from his intellect and take part in the ordering of the means of production purely for the benefit of human society.

What is the origin of the evils we see to-day? The modern process of production, because of its technical perfection, necessitates the initiative of the individual and therefore necessitates that the individual shall have capital at his disposal, and that he shall be able to carry on production on his own initiative these are the results of the recent development of humanity. And the accompanying evils, as we shall see grow out of very different causes. If we want to know their origin, we must, in the first place, take our stand, not on the company-principle, not even on the great syndicate-principle, but we must take our stand on the principle of Association.

What do we mean by taking our stand on the principle of Association rather than on that of companies? We mean that whoever takes his stand on the company-principle² considers that all that is necessary is for individuals to join together, to confer together, and come to resolutions; then they can control the process of production. Thus the first thing is to join together, and form the company; then from this society, from this community of human beings, to start production. The idea of the Threefold Social Organism starts from realities. It requires, in the first place, that men should be there, who can produce, who have technical knowledge and special skill. On them must depend the business of production. And these experts in technical knowledge and skill must unite and carry on the economic activity founded on the production which springs from individual initiative. This is the true principle of Association. Commodities are first produced and then brought to the consumer on the basis of the union of the producers.

What may be called the misfortune of our age is that the difference, the radical difference between these two principles is not understood; for, as a matter of fact, everything depends on their being understood. Entirely wanting is the instinct to observe that every abstract community which attempts to control production must undermine the process. The associative community can only receive what is produced by the initiative of the individual who offers it to the community, to the consumer.

The most important aspect of these things is not perceived, for the reason which I gave yesterday. I said then that at about the time of the Renaissance, of the Reformation, at the beginning of modern history, the precious metals began to be introduced into Europe from Central and South America, and that this led to the substitution of the financial for the natural system of economy, up till then almost the only prevailing system. By this change, a very significant economic revolution was accomplished in Europe. Conditions then arose, to the influence of which we are still subject at the present day. These conditions have at the same time shut out the view like a curtain which prevents one from obtaining sight of true realities.

Let us look more closely at these conditions. Let us begin with the old system of natural economy, though it is not so much in evidence in our day. The only factor in the economic process is the commodity produced by the individual. This he can exchange for something produced by another; and in this natural economic system, according to which one product is exchanged for another, a certain standard of quality must be attained. For if I wish to barter one commodity for another, I must have something that I can exchange for it and that the other accepts as of equal value. This means that people are forced to produce if they want anything. They are forced to exchange something which has a real, an obviously real, value. In place of this exchange of commodities which have a real value in human life, we have introduced finance, and money has become the medium with which one buys and sells, as one buys and sells with real objects in the natural economic system. We need only recall the fact that money, by becoming a real object in economic transactions, deludes men as to its true nature and, by producing this imaginary effect, at the same time tyrannizes over them.

Take an extreme case. Let us assume that the credit system which I mentioned at the close of my lecture yesterday, makes its way into the economy of finance. As a matter of fact, it has done so of late in many cases. The following example shows the result of this. A government or an individual enterprise has for its object the installation of the telegraph. A very considerable amount of credit can be raised and the scheme is successfully carried out. Certain circumstances demand considerable amounts of money, and interest on these amounts must be paid; provision must be made for the payment of interest. And what do we find in many instances within our social structure especially when the state itself does this business? It happens most frequently in state enterprises that the object for which the money was provided and employed has long since become useless; it is no longer there but the public funds still go on paying off what was once demanded as credit. In other words, the object for which the debt was incurred has vanished, but the money is still an object of economic transaction. Such things have a world-economic significance. Napoleon III, who was completely under the spell of modern ideas, took it into his head to embellish Paris and he had many buildings erected. The Ministers who were his willing tools carried out the operations. It occurred to them that the national income might be applied to pay the interest. The result is that Paris has been very much improved, but the people are still paying the old debt. That is to say, long after the thing has ceased to have any real foundation, manipulations are still going on with the money which has itself become an economic object.

This had, to be sure, its advantages. When business was carried on in the old natural system of economy, the production of commodities was necessary. These were, of course, liable to spoilage; and people had to work, and to continue working, so as to keep up a supply of goods. This is not necessary with money. A man gives over money, lends it, insures himself; that is, money transactions are carried on quite independently of those who produce commodities. Money emancipates man in a certain sense from the actual economic process, just because it becomes itself an economic process. This is extremely significant. For in the old natural economy, one individual depended on another. Men were forced to work together, to bear with one another. They had to agree on certain arrangements, otherwise the economic life could not go on. Under the financial system the capitalist is, of course, also dependent on those who work. But he is quite a stranger to these workers. How close was the tie between consumer and producer in the old natural economy in which actual commodities were dealt with! How remote is the person who transacts business in money from those who work in order that his money may yield interest! A deep gulf has opened between one human being and another. They do not get near to each other under the financial system of economy. This is one of the first things to be considered, if we wish to understand how the masses of workers (no matter whether they are intellectual or manual workers) can again be brought together with those who also make business possible by lending capital. This, however, can only be done through the principle of Association, by which men will again unite with each other as men. The principle of Association is a demand of social life, but a demand such as I have described it, not one resembling those that often figure in socialistic programs.

What else has happened under the ever-increasing influence of modern finance? What is called human labor has become dependent upon it. The regulating of human labor in the social structure is a subject of dispute among socialists themselves, and excellent grounds can be found for and against what is said on both sides. One can understand—especially when one has learnt not to think and feel about the proletariat, but to think and feel with the proletariat—one can well understand why the proletarian says that his labor-power must no longer be a commodity. It must no longer be possible that on the one hand commodities are bought on the market, and on the other hand human labor is also bought on the labor market and paid for in the form of wages.

That is easy to understand. It is also easy to understand that Karl Marx had many followers when he calculated that the workman produces a profit and that he is not paid the full value of his labor, but that the profit produced by him goes to the employer. It is easy to understand that under the influence of such a theory, the workman should fight about this profit. But it is just as easy to prove on the other hand that wages are paid out of capital, and that modern economic life is altogether regulated by capitalism; that certain products create capital and, according to the capital created, wages are paid, labor purchased. That means wages are produced by capital. One argument can be proved as clearly as the other. It can be proved that capital is the parasite of labor; it can also be proved that wages are created by capital. In short, the opinions of either party may be defended with the same validity. This fact ought to be once for all thoroughly grasped. Then it will be understood why it is that, at the present day, when people seek to attain something, they do so preferably by fighting for it, not by progressive thought, and by accounting for circumstances. Work is by its nature so entirely different from commodities that it is quite impossible to pay money in the same way for goods and labor with out economic injury. But people do not understand the difference. They still do not see through the economic structure, especially in this section of it. There are countless economists in our day who say: “If money, the currency, either coin or paper money, is increased ad lib., it loses its value, and the necessaries of life, especially the most indispensable, go up in price.” We observe this and see the folly of simply increasing the currency, for the mere increase, as anyone can see, has only the effect of raising the price of the necessaries of life. The well-known endless screw is still turning!³

But there is another thing not understood: as soon as labor is paid for in the same way as commodities or products, it must happen as a matter of course that at that moment labor begins to fight for better and better pay, for higher and higher wages. But the money which labor receives as wages plays the same part in the determining of prices as the mere increase of the money in circulation. This ought to be understood. You may do as many a Minister of Finance has done and, instead of increasing production and taking care to improve it, you may simply issue banknotes and increase the currency. Then there will be more money in circulation, but all commodities, especially those indispensable to life, will be dearer. People see this for themselves; therefore they see how foolish it is simply to increase the money in circulation. But what they do not see is that all the money that is spent in order to pay labor actually has the effect of raising the price of commodities. For sound prices can only be fixed within an independent economic system. Sound prices can only be fixed when they develop in accordance with the true valuation of human activity. Therefore the idea of the Threefold Order of the Social Organism is to detach labor completely from the economic process. It will be my task especially tomorrow to go into this matter in detail.

Labor as labor has no place in the economic process. It may seem strange, or even paradoxical, to say what I am about to say, but many things now seem paradoxical which we must nevertheless understand. Consider how far people have fallen away from right thinking! For this reason they often find things absurd which must, nevertheless, be said because they are true. Let us suppose that a man gives himself up to sport from morning till evening; that he makes it his occupation. He expends exactly the same labor-force as one who chops wood, and in exactly the same manner. What is important is to use one's strength in working for the community at large. The sportsman does not do this; the most that can be said of him is that he makes himself strong, only, as a rule, he does not turn his strength to account. As a rule, it is of no importance to the community that a man make a profession of sport by which he tires himself as much as by chopping wood. Chopping wood is of some use. That is to say, the use of labor-power has no importance socially, but what results from such use has a meaning in social life. We must look at the result of the application of labor. That is valuable to the community. Hence, the only thing which can be of value in economic life is the product of labor-power. And the only thing with which the administration of economic life can have any concern is the regulation of the comparative values of products. Labor must lie quite outside the economic circuit. It belongs to the department of equity, of which we shall speak tomorrow, in which every adult human being has a right to make himself heard, on equal terms with every other human being. The manner and duration and the kind of work will be determined by the legal conditions prevailing between man and man. Labor must be lifted out of the economic process. Then there will remain to be regulated by the economic system only the valuation of commodities and of the service which one person should receive from another in exchange for his own service. For this purpose certain persons will withdraw from the Associations composed of producers of various things, or of producers and consumers, and so on. These people will occupy themselves with the fixing of prices.⁴ Labor will lie entirely outside the sphere to be regulated in the economic process; it will be banished from it. As long as labor is within the economic system, it must be paid out of capital. This is precisely the cause of all that we call striving for mere profit, the race for wealth in modern times. For in this process the man who has commodities to supply is himself part of the process which ends at last in the market. At this point it is very important that a highly erroneous idea should be corrected by all who wish to see things in their true light, We say the capitalist places his commodities on the market to make a profit from them. For a long time socialist thinkers have been saying with a considerable amount of justice that the moral law has nothing whatever to do with this production, but that only economic thought is concerned with it. Today, however, a great deal is said from the ethical standpoint on the subject of profit and gain. Here we are going to speak neither from an ethical, nor from a merely economic point of view; we speak from the point of view of the whole of human society. And the question must be asked: What is it that arises as gain, or profit? It is something which plays the same role in social economy that the rising quicksilver plays in the tube of the thermometer. The rising of the quicksilver shows that the temperature has risen. We know that it is not the quicksilver that has made the room warmer, but that the increased warmth is caused by other factors. The market profit resulting from present conditions of production is only a sign that commodities can be produced which yield a profit. For I should like to know how any one can possibly discover whether a commodity ought to be produced, if not from the fact that, when it has been produced and placed on the market, it yields a profit. This is the only sign showing that one may influence the economic system by bringing out this product. The only way in which we know whether or not a commodity should be produced is that it finds a sale when placed on the market. If there is no demand for it, there is no profit in it.

These are the facts, without all the rambling talk about demand and supply, which we find in the theories of so many economists. The consideration that lies at the root of the matter in this sphere is that the yielding of profit is at present the one and only thing that enables a man to produce a certain commodity, because it will have a certain value in the community. The remodeling of the market, which to-day operates in this way, will follow as soon as a real principle of Association finds a place in our social life. Then it will no longer be the impersonal supply and demand having nothing to do with the human being, which will determine whether a commodity shall be produced or not. Then, from those Associations, by the will of those working in them, other persons will be brought in, whose business it will be to find out the relation between the value of a manufactured commodity and its price. We may say that the value of a commodity does not come under consideration. It certainly gives the impulse to the demand. But the demand in our present social conditions is extremely doubtful because there is always the question whether there are sufficient means available to make the demand possible. We may want things; if we do not possess the means to satisfy our wants, we shall not be able to create a demand. What is essential is that a connecting link be formed between human needs, which give the commodities their value, and the value itself. For the commodity which we need acquires its human value always in accordance with that need. Institutions must arise out of the social order which form a link between the value attached to the commodities by human needs, and the right prices. The prices are now fixed by the market in accordance with the known purchasing power of potential buyers. A truly social order must be guided by the fact that those who quite justifiably must have commodities must be able to pay for them, i.e. the prices must fit the value of the commodities and correspond to it. Instead of the present chaotic market, there must be an arrangement by which the tyrannizing over human needs and the interference with consumption is eradicated. The methods of the Worker-Producers' Associations and the Cooperative Societies must cease, and research be made into the scope of consumption, and decisions reached on how consumption needs can be met.

For this purpose, and following the principle of Association, it will be possible to produce a supply of commodities corresponding to the needs which have been investigated. That is, arrangements must exist with persons who can study the wants of consumers. Statistics can only give the present state of affairs. They can never be authoritative about the future. The needs for the time being must be studied, and, in accordance with these, measures must be taken to produce what is needed. When a product shows a tendency to become too dear, that is a sign that there are too few workers engaged on it. Negotiations must then be carried on with other branches of production to transfer workers from one branch to another where the need lies, in order that more of the lacking products may be supplied. If a commodity tends to become too cheap, that is to say, to earn too little profit, arrangements must be made to employ fewer workers on that particular product. This means that in the future the satisfaction of the needs of the community will depend on the way in which men are employed in industry. The price of the product is conditional on the number of persons engaged in its production. But, through these arrangements, the price will really correspond to the value attached to the commodity in question by the community in accordance with its requirements.

So we see that human reason will take the place of chance, that as the result of the arrangements which will come into existence the price will express the agreements arrived at, the contracts entered into. Thus we shall see a revolution of the market accomplished by the substitution of reason for the chances of the market now prevailing.

We see, then, that as soon as we detach the economic body from the two other departments, which we shall discuss in the following lectures when we shall also treat of the relationship of the other departments to the economic body and of many things which must now seem difficult to understand—as soon as the economic body has been detached from the two others, the State or rights body and the spiritual or cultural body, the economic body will find itself on a sound and reasonable basis. For the only thing with which it will have to concern itself will be the manner of carrying on business. It will no longer be necessary to influence the prices of commodities by manipulating them so that these prices will determine how long or how much the people should work and what wages should be paid, and so on. The only thing that need be considered in economic life will be the relative values of commodities. In this way economic life will be placed on a sound basis, and this sound basis must be preserved for the whole economic life. Hence, in such an economic life as this there will be a return to a condition which has now almost ceased to exist because of the financial system in which money itself has become an object of economic business, a condition in which economic life will be re-established on its natural and worthy foundation. It will not be possible in future to carry on business by means of money and for money; for economic institutions will have to deal with the respective values of the commodities. That is to say, society will again return to goodness of quality, excellence of workmanship and the capability of the worker. The granting of credit will no longer depend on the condition that money is available or tight, or on the degree of the risk to be taken; it will depend entirely upon the existence of men capable of starting an enterprise or of producing something. Human ability will command credit. And since human capability will condition the amount of credit to be granted, that amount can never be given in excess of human capability. If you merely give money and allow it to be used, the object to which it has been applied may long have ceased to exist, but the money is still the object of transactions. If the money is given for human capability, when that human capability comes to an end the object for which the money is used also ceases to exist. We shall discuss this in the following lectures. Not until the economic body is supported by the two other departments of social life, the independent political and the independent cultural body, not until then can the economic system be established independently in a sound way on its own foundation. But, to this end, everything within the economic system must grow out of the conditions proper to itself. Material commodities are produced out of these conditions. We need only think of an instance in social life, of something which might be compared to a waste product of economic life, and we shall see how, as a result of true economic thinking, many a thing must be discarded which is now reckoned as a matter of course in the social order and is even defended as a progressive measure of social science.

Among all those who at the present day profess to be experts in practical life, there is not a single individual who doubts that an improvement has been made by the transition from all kinds of indirect taxation and other sources of national income to what we call the income tax, especially the graduated income tax. Everyone thinks it is unquestionably right to pay income tax and yet, however paradoxical this may sound to the modern mind, the belief that the imposition of a tax on income is a just measure is only an illusion resulting from the modern financial system of economy. We earn money; we trade with it. By money we detach ourselves from the sound productive process itself. Money is made into an abstraction, so to speak, in the economic process, just as thoughts are in the process of thought. But just as it is impossible to call up by enchantment real ideas and feelings from abstract thought, so it is likewise impossible to bring forth by enchantment something real from money, if that money is not merely a symbol for commodities which are produced. if it is not merely a kind of book-keeping, a currency system of book-keeping, in which every piece of money must represent a commodity. This subject will also be more fully discussed in the following lectures. Today it must be stated that in a period which is only concerned with turning money into an economic object, incomes cannot escape being considered an object of taxation.

But by imposing taxes we make ourselves co-responsible with others for the whole system of financial economy. Something is taxed which is not a commodity at all, but only a symbol for a commodity. We are dealing with an abstraction from the economic life. Money only becomes a reality when it is spent for something. It then takes its place in the circuit of economic life, whether I spend it on amusement, or for bodily or mental necessities, or whether I bank it to be used in the economic process. Banking my money is a way of spending it. This must, of course, be kept in mind. But money becomes a reality in the economic process at the moment it passes out of my possession into the process of economic life. If people would reflect, they would see that it is of no use for a man to have a large income. If he hoard it, it may be his; but it is of no use in the economic process. The only thing that benefits a person is the ability to spend a great deal. In public life to-day, in a life fruitful of results, the ability to spend a great deal is just the sign of a large income. Hence, if a system of taxation is to be created which constitutes a real service of the economic process to the good of the general community, instead of a parasitical growth upon it, capital must be taxed at the moment it is transferred to the economic process. And, strange to relate, income tax comes to be transformed into a tax on expenditure, which I beg you not to confound with indirect taxation. Indirect taxation is often the expression of the wishes of rulers at the present day, because the direct taxes and income tax do not ordinarily yield enough. We are not referring to either direct or indirect taxation, in speaking of the tax on expenditure; the point in question is that at the moment my capital passes into the economic process, and becomes productive, it shall be taxed.⁵

Precisely by this example of taxation, we see how very necessary is a change in our method of thinking, and how the belief that a tax on income is first in importance is an accompaniment of that financial system which has appeared in modern civilization since the Renaissance and Reformation. When the economic system is once placed upon its own basis, the only matter to be considered is that capital actually involved in the production of commodities shall supply the means for the manufacture of the products necessary to the community. It will then be a case of a tax on expenditure, but never one on income.

These are things we must relearn, and we must change our method of thinking. In these two lectures I have only been able to give a sketch of the matter with which I shall deal much more exhaustively in the next four lectures. Anyone who gives utterance to such things knows well that he will arouse opposition on all sides, that at first hardly anyone will agree with him; for all such matters are overlaid by party opinion. But no improvement can be hoped for until they are raised out of the sphere of party passions into that of true thought, resulting from close connection with life. How desirable it would be if people, on first hearing of the Three-Membered Social Organism, instead of judging in accordance with their party programs and opinions, would take their own instinct for truth to aid them in forming their judgments. Party opinions and principles have in many cases led people away from that feeling for truth. Hence, one finds over and over again that those who are more or less dependent on the mere consumption of commodities really find it easy, prompted by their own feeling for the truth, to understand what is the aim of such an institution as the Three-Membered Social Organism. But then come the leaders, especially those of the masses of the socialist party, and it cannot be denied that the leaders show no inclination to enter into consideration of reality. One thing, belonging more especially to economic life, is unfortunately evident, and this is one of the most urgent matters belonging to the social question.

I found, when speaking to the workers on the Threefold Order, that their own instinct for truth enabled them to understand well what was said. Then came the leaders who told them that what was proposed was only a Utopia. It certainly did not agree with their own thoughts or with all that had been working in their brains for decades. They told their faithful followers that these were Utopian ideas, without reality. And unfortunately blind faith has grown too strong in modern times, a blind following, a terrible feeling of subjection to authority in these circles. It must be said that all the respect for authority once shown to bishops and archbishops of the Catholic Church is nothing as compared with that shown by the masses of modern workers to their leaders. This makes it comparatively easy for those leaders to carry out their intentions. What I wish to do is to point out above all things what is honest and not what merely serves cut and dried party interest. If I should be able to succeed in these lectures in showing that what is sought for in the Threefold Organism is really honestly intended for the general welfare of all humanity, without distinction of class, conditions, and so forth, the main object of these lectures will have been achieved.

• 1. The system of collectivist economy developed through governmental administration in Russia since 1917, (these lectures were given in 1919) has proved that the effort of “the abstract community at large” could not he substituted for individual initiative. The latter had to be re-introduced, at least to a limited degree, in connection with the promotion of certain incentives to individual initiative. These incentives were not, nor are they now, drawn from the concept of an abstract community which, because of its very nature, cannot be raised efficiently to the level of a true motive of action. They are to be drawn from quite different sources. The latter can be found partly in the depths of the Russian people's nature, and partly in the old incentives, more or less disguised by opportunistic ideology. These old incentives are, for instance, individual egotism with all its political and economical ramifications, integrated and fostered by the nationalistic accumulation of egotistic tendencies.
  
  The emphasizing of the above is necessary, since the number of people is large who believe that the development and outward political success of the Russian collectivistic system offers evidence provided by history that Rudolf Steiner's statement is wrong. It seems wrong only to a superficial and wishful thinking which has lost the basis of an unprejudiced observation of facts.
• 2. It is necessary to discriminate between what Rudolf Steiner has characterized here as “company principle” and the “principle of association”. This becomes clearer by taking into account the fact that the companies (corporations, big business) start their practice with a method of financing, the aim of which is to increase the amount of monetary capital (by means of profit) with little or no consideration for genuine economic needs. The principle of association is inherent in the incentive for those having the individual capacities to associate in order to provide for the genuine needs of consumers. Investment-capital, placed freely at the disposal of able and trustworthy persons, in conformity with this associative principle, becomes the monetary medium for the realization of a conscious social purpose instead of remaining a purpose in itself.
  
  In accordance with other numerous expositions given by Rudolf Steiner on this subject of capital accumulation, transfer, and administration, without government interference, it can be said that the “company principle” means a maintenance of an artificial, lifeless separation of finance-capital from the human being in his true social relationships, whereas the “principle of association” in the economic sphere starts from the human being with all his a is capacities and abilities, working by means of capital placed at his disposal for really productive purposes for the common benefit of all.
• 3. This was pointed out in face of the postwar condition of European economy which already showed inflationary tendencies but, nevertheless, gave evidence of the possibility of halting them and avoiding the full-scale inflation of later years by following the expert advice given by Rudolf Steiner on many other occasions. This advice supported by every imaginable reason fell on the deaf ears of those who were responsible.
• 4. In his course on World Economy, Rudolf Steiner not only gave the reasons for the inescapable necessity of considering the question of price as the central problem in economy, but also the ideas whose realization is indispensable for the timely solution of this problem on the basis of a threefold membering of the body social.
• 5. Rudolf Steiner's repeated warning that outworn habits of thinking will prove stumbling blocks to many who seek to understand his ideas, refers especially to this recommendation of taxes on expenditure, preferably when applied to the investment of capital. This recommendation can only be rightly appreciated when it is borne in mind that the full realization of this tax principle demands the threefold membering of the social organism as a prerequisite. If this prerequisite is taken fully into account, it becomes evident that taxes on expenditure would not be inimical to the consumer nor to the producer. For it is presumed that the consumer enjoys a sufficient income so that when he is taxed on his expenditures, he will find it fair and equitable to pay taxes to the extent that advantage is taken of society's labor as a whole. He does this by buying goods, and investing money in their production. In any case, the amount of capital put at the unrestricted disposal of the producer will be sufficient for the production of essential gods, because decisions on capital transfer intended for productive investment will come from sources quite different from those to which we are accustomed at present.

The acquisition of right views on social life depends to a large extent on a clear understanding of the relations existing between human beings who, in their life together, organize the social conditions and the institutions under which they live. An unprejudiced onlooker will discover that all the institutions in social life originate in the first place from measures dictated by the will of man. And he who has won his way to this view will come to the conclusion that the factor of decisive importance in social life is the conduct of human beings towards each other, the employment of their forces, their capacities and their feelings towards others in a social or unsocial manner. People imbued with social sentiments and views will mold their institutions so as to make them work socially. And it is true to a very great extent that the ability or inability of any individual to provide himself with the necessities of life out of his income will depend on the manner in which his fellow-creatures furnish him with the means of a livelihood, upon whether they work for him in such a way that he can support himself out of his own means. To put this in the most practical form: the ability of man to procure enough bread for his wants will depend upon the fact that society has taken the needful steps to enable everyone who works, or who performs a service, to have a corresponding quantity of bread in return for his work. The opportunity of really turning his work to account, of bringing it to that point at which he can earn what he needs for his existence, is again determined by the presence of social institutions in his environment, by the aid of which he can find his proper place.

Now it really requires only a small amount of unprejudiced insight into social life in order to recognize what has just been said as an axiom, a fundamental principle of the social question. And whoever does not recognize it will hardly acknowledge the truth of the principle, because he has no inclination to look at life with an unprejudiced mind in order to convince himself, as he might from every occurrence in life, that it is so. It is true that this way of viewing life is particularly unpleasant for the average man. For it is a matter of great importance to him that he should be left undisturbed. He is very willing to hear of institutions being improved and transformed into something better, but he regards it as an infringement of his dignity as a man if it is found necessary to tell him that he ought to change his own outlook on life and his own manner of living. He gladly agrees that institutions should be modeled on social lines. He is not at all pleased, however, with the proposal that he should model his own conduct on these lines. Hence, something most remarkable has entered into the modern history of evolution. In the course of the last few centuries, as I have already shown in the first lecture, economic life has developed far beyond all the conceptions which have been formed of it, especially in the spheres of law and of cultural life. I pointed out in the first lecture that the social criticism of Woodrow Wilson himself amounted to nothing more or less than the statement that the economic system has laid down the law: ‘Economic life has made its demands; it has been advancing, and has assumed certain distinct forms. The legal system and cultural life, through which we seek to govern the economic system, have remained stationary at their old points of view. They have not kept pace.’ In these sentiments Woodrow Wilson has undoubtedly expressed a deeply significant fact of modern evolution.

With the rise of the complicated conditions of technical industry and of the equally complicated capitalist conditions entailed by the former, with the era of big industrial enterprises, economic life has simultaneously put forward its demands. The facts of economic life have gradually eluded us. They go their own way more or less. We have not found the force within ourselves to govern economic life by our thoughts and ideas.

Modern thought regarding the demands of economic life, the consideration of economic matters, as these come under direct observation, have led more and more to adaptation of legal and intellectual conceptions to these immediate facts. Thus we may say that the chief characteristic in the evolution of humanity for centuries has been that the conceptions of law, according to which men strive to live at peace with one another, as well as those of intellectual or spiritual life, according to which they develop and form their capacities, have become to a great extent dependent on economic life. The extent to which in modern times human thought, and the attitude of human beings towards one another, have become dependent on economic matters passes quite unnoticed. Of course, the institutions of the last centuries have been created by human beings themselves, but for the most part they are not based upon new thoughts and ideas; they are, rather, the outcome of unconscious impulses and unconscious instincts. In this way something which we may truly call an element of anarchy has arisen in the structure of the social organism. In the first two lectures of this series, I have described from different points of view this element of anarchy in the social organism. But within this social edifice of modern times, those conditions have arisen which have led to the modern form of the proletarian question. To the workman, called away from his handicraft and placed at the machine, shut up in the factory, what was the most obvious fact as he looked at life around him? Looking at his own life he saw chiefly that all his thoughts, all his rights with regard to other men, in fact, everything is determined by powerful economic conditions, by those economic conditions which he must accept because he is economically weak as against the economically strong. Thus it may be said: In the leading circles, among the governing classes, there is an unconscious denial of the fundamental principle that human institutions should grow out of the conscious life of men themselves. People have forgotten to apply this truth in social life. Gradually these leading, governing classes have given themselves up instinctively to a life in which culture and law are subject to the power of the economic system, even though they may not believe this. This has given rise to a dogmatic conception of life among socialist thinkers and their followers. The conception of life which has resulted from this thought is that such conditions are inevitable in human evolution, that there is no possibility for the individual person to organize legal conditions or a system of culture suitable to himself. They believe that culture and law result naturally as appendages to economic realities, to branches of production and so on.

Thus among large numbers of people the social question has adopted as its starting-point a positive demand. Their fundamental belief was that the economic system conditions the life of rights, conditions too, the cultural life of the people. Therefore the economic life must be reformed so as to bring forth a system of laws and culture corresponding to the needs and demands of the masses. The proletariat has learnt from the life and habits of the leading classes to believe consciously that which the latter had carried out instinctively in their lives; it made this a dogma. Today the social question faces us in the following aspect: Among great masses of people there is a widespread conviction that, if only the economic life and institutions were revolutionized, everything else, law and culture, would evolve of themselves; that economically just, good, socially organized legal and cultural institutions would result. Under the influence of this opinion they have failed to recognize the real crux of the modern social problem. The point on which the whole social question turns has been hidden by this dogma through a great deception, a mighty illusion. The fact is that precisely these conditions—the dependence of law and culture on the economic life—are a historical result of evolution. This must be overcome. While in wide socialist circles the belief is current that the economic system must first be changed and everything else will follow of itself, the truth is that each one must ask himself the question: What conditions within the sphere of equity and of culture must first be created in order that a new cultural and a net legal system may give birth to economic conditions which will satisfy the demands of an existence worthy of human beings? Not the question: How can we bring law and culture more and more into dependence on the economic life? But rather: How can we escape from that dependence? That is the question to be asked before any other.

This is a very important consideration; for it shows us the obstacle barring an unprejudiced understanding of the present social question. It shows us that one of the chief obstacles is a dogma which has grown up in the course of centuries. And this dogma has become so firmly fixed that at present countless educated and uneducated persons of proletarian and other classes ridicule the idea that the system of equity and of culture could be purified in any other way than by the reformation of the economic system itself.

It is my task today to speak of the equity state; the day after tomorrow I will speak of the cultural life. The equity state, due to its particular nature and significance, has often presented to us the question: What is really the origin of rights? What is the origin of that feeling which prompts men to say in their dealings with one another that a thing is just or unjust? This question has always been a very, very important one. Yet it is a strange fact that many social thinkers have entirely lost sight of the actual question of rights. It exists no longer for them. There are certainly many academic-theoretical treatises extant regarding the nature and meaning of law, but what is generally characteristic in the study of social matters is that the question of equity is more or less neglected.

In dealing with this subject, I must call your attention to something which at the present time is becoming more and more evident, although a short time ago it was quite unobserved. People have become aware of the approach of untenable social conditions Even those whose own lives have remained more or less untouched by the present unsocial conditions have attempted to find a solution. And though a comparatively short time ago people laughed at the idea of legal and cultural spheres influencing economic affairs, today we encounter more and more frequently the assertion which seems to come from the obscure depths of consciousness: It is quite true that in the relationships of human beings in social life, questions affecting the feelings, and relating to equity, must also be taken into account. Much of the confusion in social conditions has been caused by the want of consideration given to moral and psychic relationships and to conditions of equity on their own ground. Thus there is now a slight indication—so obvious that it can no longer be overlooked—that an improvement in the present conditions must come from a quarter different from that of purely economic interests. But this has as yet little influence on the practical discussion of the question.

Like a crimson thread running through all the sentiments of the later socialist thinkers is the belief that a social structure must be built up in which human beings can live in accordance with their capacities and needs. Whether these sentiments are developed in the direction of extreme radicalism, or incline more to conservative thought, is not the point. We hear on all sides that the evils of the existing social order are due, in large measure, to the fact that within that order a man is not in a position to use his full capacities. On the other hand we hear that the social order must be so constituted that he can satisfy his wants within its limits.

Here we are brought back to two fundamental elements of human life. Capacities belong to the human power of imagination; for since a man must act consciously, his capacities in the first instance arise out of his power of imagination, his thought-will. Of course, the power of imagination must be continually fired and filled with enthusiasm, by feeling; but feeling alone is powerless, if the fundamental imagination is absent. Therefore, the question of a man's efficiency or practical skill brings us in the last instance to the life of imagination. It became evident to many persons that care must be taken. to enable a man to realize in social life his power of imagination. The other element which has to be allowed free play has more to do with the will in man. Will power, which is connected with desire, the craving for something or other, is a fundamental force in the human being. When it is said that the human being must live within a social structure that can satisfy his wants, it is the will which is under consideration.

Thus, unknown to themselves, even the Marxists, in advancing their social theories, consider human beings while they profess to speak only of institutions. They speak of institutions, but they would like to make their institutions such that human ideas and human faculties find scope within them, and that human needs can be satisfied for all alike as they arise.

Now there is something very peculiar in this view. It leaves quite out of account one element of human life, and that is the life of feeling. If we put forward a claim to build up a social edifice in which people can live in accordance with their capacities, their feelings, and their needs, then we are taking into consideration the whole man. But curiously enough, although the Marxist theory enters into details as to social aims, it very characteristically omits the life of feeling altogether. And to omit feeling in the study of human nature is to leave out all consideration of the actual conditions of equity in the social organism. For conditions of equity can only develop in a community of human beings in accordance with the feelings which have been trained and refined. As people feel towards each other in their mutual intercourse, so will be the system of public law. And because of the omission of this vital element of feeling in the consideration of the social question the problem of equity was necessarily lost sight of. It is, however, essential that this matter of law should be placed in the proper light. Of course we know that law exists, but the desire exists also to represent it as a mere dependent of the economic system.

In what manner is law developed in a community? Attempts have often been made to give a definition of law; but a satisfactory one has not yet been found. Just as little has resulted from the attempt to trace the origin of law, to discover whence it comes. A solution of this problem has been sought in vain. Why is this so? It resembles what would result from an effort to develop language out of human nature alone. It has often been said, and rightly, that a person who grew up on a desert island would never learn to speak; for speech is acquired through communion with other beings within the whole human family.

Likewise, out of the interchange of human feelings in public life the desire for law is kindled. We cannot say that the feeling for justice suddenly awakens in some particular part of the human being, or of the human race. We may say that the feelings which human beings mutually develop in their intercourse with one another bring them into certain relationships, and as these relationships express themselves, laws are established. Thus we discover law as a development within, and out of, human society. Herewith we come right up against what has developed in modern history as the demands of democracy. We cannot understand the nature of the democratic demands unless we look at human evolution itself as a kind of organism. But the modern method of study is very, very far removed from this manner of considering the question. No one would deny that it is reasonable to ask: What is the cause of those forces in human nature which bring about the change of teeth in the child about the seventh year? It is not reasonable to look for the cause of this process in the kind of nourishment the child is fed—whether it be beef or cabbage. In like manner we must ask: What is the cause of the development in the human organism which is manifested at the age of puberty? We must look at the inner nature of that which develops. Search as you may among the present-day modes of thought, you will find none which can apply this method to the history of human evolution. None, for instance, is clear on this point, namely, that in the course of the development of humanity on earth certain powers and capacities, certain attributes developed in the succeeding epochs of time out of the inner nature of the human being himself. He who learns to study Nature in accordance with her own laws can transfer this method of observation to the study of history. If this method be followed, it will be found that since the middle of the fifteenth century the longing for democracy, more or less fulfilled in the various regions of the earth, has been growing out of the depths of human nature. This longing is expressed in the demand that in social life the human being can recognize as valid for others only what he feels to be right and best for himself. In modern times the democratic principle has become the sign and seal of human social endeavor and has grown out of the depths of human nature. The demand of modern humanity for this principle of democracy is an elemental force. He who has an insight into these matters must treat them with the greatest seriousness. He must ask himself: What is the significance and what are the limitations of the democratic principle? I have just defined this principle. It consists in the fact that the persons forming a definite social organism adopt resolutions approved by every individual within the community. These resolutions, of course, can only be binding if they are adopted by a majority. The content of such majority resolutions is democratic only if every single individual is on an equal basis with every other single individual. And these resolutions can only be adopted on any matter when every single individual is in reality the equal of every other. That is, democratic resolutions can only be passed when every adult is entitled to vote because he is an adult and therefore capable of judging.

Herewith we have defined the limitations of democracy as clearly as possible. On the basis of democracy only such things can be determined as are capable of determination through the fact that a person has reached the years of discretion. All such things as are related to the development of human capacity in public life are excluded from democratic measures. Everything in the nature of education and instruction, of cultural life in general, requires the devotion of the individual human being—in the next lecture this will be more fully dealt with—it demands, above all things, real individual understanding of the human being, special individual capacities in the teacher, in the educator, which by no means belong to a person merely because he is an adult. We must either not take democracy seriously, in which case we submit to its decisions regarding human capacities, or we do take democracy seriously, and then we must exclude from it the administration of the cultural life and the economic life. Everything that I described yesterday in regard to the economic sphere is based on the assumption that individuals actively engaged in one or another special branch are possessed of expert knowledge and efficiency. For instance, mere maturity in age, the mere capacity of judgment possessed by every adult, can never be sufficient qualification for a good farmer or a good industrial worker. Hence, majority resolutions must be kept out of the realm of economic life. And the same applies to the cultural life. Thus there arises between these two realms the actual democratic state-life in which every individual confronts every other as competent to form a judgment, because he is of full age and all are equal as human beings; but in which majority resolutions can be carried only on matters dependent on the same capacity of judgment in all adult persons. If we take the trouble to test the truth of these things by the facts of life and not regard them as mere abstractions, we shall see that people deceive themselves, because these are difficult thoughts and because they have not the courage actually to follow up these ideas to their logical conclusion. But the unwillingness to do so and the substitution of very different things for the universal demand of democracy have had, in the evolution of modern humanity, a very concrete significance. I will exemplify these matters from the historical evolution of mankind itself rather than from abstract principles.

During recent years we have witnessed the collapse of a State. We have seen it fall to pieces of itself, we might say, and this State may really serve as an object of experiment in regard to the question of rights and law. It is the old Austria-Hungary, which no longer exists. Anyone who has followed the events of recent war-years knows that at the end the downfall of Austria was brought about by purely military events. But the dissolution of the Austrian State, which followed in the second place, was the result of its inner conditions. This State collapsed and would probably have done so even had the military events in Austria been more creditable. This may be said of the events in Austria by one who has had the opportunity (I have spent thirty years of my life in that country) of following consecutively for decades the conditions there. It was in the ‘sixties’ of last century that the demand for democracy, that is, for a representative Government, arose in Austria. Now how was this representation of the people composed? The representatives of the people in the Austrian Imperial Parliament were recruited from four purely economic sections: 1. The great landowners; 2. The towns, market and industrial centers; 3. Chambers of Commerce; 4. Provincial Councils. But in these last only economic interests were actually represented. Therefore, according to the section to which one belonged, province, or Chamber of Commerce, one voted for the representatives in the Austrian Imperial Parliament. Thus representatives of purely economic interests sat in that Parliament. The resolutions adopted by them were, of course, arrived at by a majority of individual men, but these individuals represented interests which arose out of their identification with the great land-owning class, with the towns, markets and industrial centers, with the Chambers of Commerce or the Provincial Councils. What kind of public measures were adopted by the decisions of a majority? They were legal measures, the result of deliberations by nothing but economic interests in disguise; for when, for instance, the Chambers of Commerce were unanimous with the great landowners about anything that benefited them economically, a majority could be found to vote against the interests of the minority, who were, perhaps, just those most concerned in the matter. When parliaments are composed of representatives of economic interests, majorities can always be found to pass resolutions affecting those interests and to make laws which have nothing whatever to do with that feeling for justice which exists between one man and another.

Or let us call to mind that in the old German Imperial Parliament there is a great party, calling itself the Center, representing purely cultural interests, that is, Roman Catholic cultural interests. This party can join with any other in order to gain a majority, and the result is that purely cultural needs are satisfied by the enactment of public laws. It happened countless numbers of times. This peculiarity of the modern Parliament, which passes for a democratic institution, has often been commented on; but no one has discovered how it might be altered, namely, by a clear separation of political interests from all that is concerned with the representation, the administration, of economic interests. The impulse for the organization of the Threefold Order must, therefore, demand in the most emphatic manner, the separation of politics, and the groundwork of the law, from the administration of economic affairs, of the economic circuit. Within the economic circuit, as I explained yesterday, associations must be formed. Representatives of the different occupations should meet; producer and consumer should come together. The purely business operations and measures which take place should be based upon contracts entered into by the association. In the economic world everything should rest on contracts, everything should depend upon mutual service rendered. Corporations should carry on business with other corporations; expert knowledge and efficiency in particular branches should have the decisive voice. My opinion as a manufacturer, let us say, as to the importance of my particular branch of industry in political life will have no weight when the economic department is independent. I shall have to be productive in my own branch, to enter into contracts with the associations of other branches of industry and they will render me reciprocal services. If I am able to get a return of services for mine, I shall be in a position to carry on my work. An association of efficiency will be formed by means of contract. These are the facts of the case.

In the sphere of law and equity, affairs will be differently arranged. In that domain of life where one man meets another on equal terms, the only thing to be considered is the making of laws which shall regulate the rights of the public by the decisions of a majority. Of course, many will say: ‘What is really meant by public rights? It is neither more nor less than the spirit, expressed in the words and put into the form of laws, which animates the economic conditions.’ In many respects this is true. But the idea of the Threefold Social Organism does not leave this out of consideration; in fact, it leaves no reality out of consideration. That which results as just and equitable from the resolutions taken on the basis of the democratic State is introduced into the economic sphere by those who are occupied in industry. But it is not their work to initiate this spirit and to make laws. They receive the law and carry it into operation in the economic life.

Abstract thinkers raise objections to this Threefold Order. They say that in public life, when one man does business with another, gives a draft to another according to the law of exchange, the whole operation is carried on within the limits of the economic sphere. They ask: ‘Is that not a complete unity?’ and say: ‘The idea of the Threefold Order tries to break up what is already a complete unity, as if there were not many spheres in life in which public opinion is not allowed to function lest it work destructively, many spheres in which forces from all sides meet and form a unity.’ Take the case of a young man. He has various hereditary qualities which cling to him. Then he has other qualities which he has acquired by education. His characteristics come to him from two sides, inheritance and education. Now suppose he does something at fifteen years of age; it cannot be said that such an action is isolated. His action is a unity composed of the result of heredity and education. There is unity in the action just because the forces come together from two sides. Out of the realities of life arises the idea of the Threefold Social Organism. Real unity comes into an economic transaction only in proportion to the conceptions of justice it may contain, through the independent administration of economic measures from an economic standpoint, and through the making of laws by an independent democratic equity state. These two elements are then brought together into one whole. The two work as one. If, however, laws are allowed to arise out of the interests of economic life itself, the laws are turned into a caricature of justice. Law is then like a photograph or an impression of economic interests. There is no equity present. Only when laws are allowed to arise naturally, and from the very beginning on their own independent democratic basis, can they be introduced into economic life.

One might think that this must be so obvious to all, that explanation were quite unnecessary. But it is a peculiarity of this age that the most transparent truths are overshadowed by modern life, and that it is just those clearest facts that are most distorted. Many of the socialist views advanced at the present time make the continuation of the dependence of law on the economic life their basic principle. I alluded yesterday to the idea of founding a kind of hierarchy on political lines, according to which the economic life should be governed and administered. In this scheme it is thought that those who administer economic affairs will also, at the same time, develop the laws. This assertion proves an absolute lack of understanding of real life is not the economic system, in which efficiency above all things is necessary to promote production, that can bring forth suitable legal conditions; legal conditions must arise from their own source, side by side with the economic life. Laws can never be the outcome merely of thought. Side by side with the economic circuit exists a political element in which every single individual meets another on equal terms. The essential point is not that out of some vague primitive consciousness a business man can evolve just laws, but that the soil itself should be first prepared, so that human beings might find themselves, through their feelings, in circumstances which they would transform into circumstances governed by law. The essential is to create a reality side by side with the economic life. Law will then no longer be a mere superstructure above the economic life; law will then take its place in a self-molding, independent existence. Then the fundamental error of the social question, the belief that the economic life need only be transformed in order to attain to new conceptions of law, will no longer be met by a theoretic answer. Then reality will be created in the Threefold Social Organism by the preparation of an independent basis for political life, reality by which, through human intercourse and human relationship, the strong impetus towards a system of law and equity arises, capable of keeping the economic life within its proper limits.

Finally, a consideration of our age from the historical point of view reveals from another side in what manner all that I have said above can be proved. Look back to the period before the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and think of the incentive given to the men of that period in their handicraft and in all other work. Modern socialist thinkers often emphasize the fact that the worker is separated from his means of production. That this is so to such a high degree at present is caused by modern economic conditions. Most of all he is separated from his products. What part has the factory worker in all that the manufacturer sells? What does he know about it? Often not even to what part of the world it goes. His work is a small part of a great complex, which perhaps he never sees as a whole. Think of the tremendous difference between present conditions and the old handicraft, when each man worked at his own product and took pleasure in his work! Anyone who has studied history can testify to this. Think of the personal relation between a workman and his handiwork, such as a door-key, a lock, and so forth. In primitive regions of the country we can still find this feeling of a man towards his work. Where the customs are less simple, this is no longer possible. Forgive me if I mention a personal experience, it is very characteristic of what I mean. I once entered a barber's shop in an out-of-the-way place and was truly happy to see the real pleasure taken by the barber's assistant in cutting a customer's hair nicely. His work was a real pleasure to him. There is, of course, always less and less of this personal tie between the worker and his work. Its absence is a condition of modern economic life, and it cannot be otherwise in the complicated circumstances arising out of the distribution of labor. If we had not the division of labor, however, neither should we have our modern life with all that is necessary to us. There would be no progress. The old connection between the workman and his work is no longer possible. But man needs a relationship to his work; it is necessary that he should feel joy in his work, that he should feel a certain devotion to it. The old devotion, the immediate companionship with the thing he has made, exists no longer; yet it must be replaced by something else. What can this be? It can only be replaced by enlarging men's horizon, by raising them to a level on which they can come together with their fellow-men in one great circle, eventually with all their fellow-men within the same social organism as themselves, in which they can develop an interest in man as man. It must come to pass that even the man who is working in the most remote corner at a single screw for some great machine need not put his whole self into the contemplation of the screw, but it must come about that he can carry into his workshop the feelings which he entertains for his fellow-men, that when he leaves his workshop he finds the same feelings, that he has a living insight into his connection with human society, that he can work even without actual pleasure in his production, because he feels he is a worthy member in the circle of his fellow-men. Out of this impulse has sprung the modern demand for democracy and the new way of establishing public law on democratic lines. These things are related by their inner nature to the evolution of man. Only he who has the will to look deeply into the realities of human evolution in its progress in social life can really understand such things. The feeling must arise within us that the horizon of human beings must be enlarged, that men ought to be able to express their feelings with regard to their work in words somewhat like these: ‘It is true, I have no idea how my work in making this screw will affect my fellow-men; but I do know that, through the living ties which bind me to them by a common law, I am a worthy member in the social order, and have equal rights with other men.’

This is the principle which must lie at the root of modern democracy, and it must work in the feelings of one man towards another as the fundamental principle of the modern public legal code. Only by understanding the inner nature of the human being can we arrive at really modern conceptions of that common law which must now be developed everywhere. Details will be given on this head in the fifth lecture. In conclusion, I will now show how the sphere of justice passes over from the actual department of equity into that of cultural life.

We can see how laws arise on the basis of the democratic state by the refining of feelings among individuals with equal rights; while in the economic sphere of life, contracts are entered into between societies or between individuals. From the moment in which the individual finds himself in a position to seek justice under either civil or penal law, or in a private, or in any other manner, in that moment the decision passes from the purely legal to the cultural domain. Here is another point, similar to that discussed yesterday in dealing with taxation, which will present difficulties. It will take long for modern thinkers to accustom themselves to ideas which would demonstrate their self-evidence, if only their underlying conditions were examined.

Now when a case arises in which it has to he decided how an existing law can be applied to a particular person, we have to do with the exercise of an individual judgment. It must be determined whether the elected judge is really qualified by his mental and spiritual capacities to understand the person in question. Administration of punishment, civil justice, cannot rest on the general basis of law. It must be removed to another sphere, the special characteristics of which I will explain in my next lecture on the cultural life. Justice can only he administered when the judge is really able, by virtue of his own capacities, and out of the relationship between himself and the person whom he is trying, to give a verdict out of his own independent capacity of judging. One might perhaps think that this objective could be gained in various ways. In my book, The Threefold Commonwealth, I have pointed out one way in which it might be attained. In the Threefold Social Organism there is (a) the independent economic organization described yesterday; (b) the democratic political foundation which I have sketched today, and which I will develop more fully in my fifth lecture in regard to its interplay with the other members of the organism. But there is also (c) the independent cultural life which controls, above all things, teaching and education as I pointed out yesterday and which I will amplify in my next lecture. Those who control the cultural sphere will be called upon at the same time to appoint the judges; and every human being will be entitled and able to elect from time to time his own judge, should he find himself accused of an offence against civil or penal law. Thus the accused will be able, out of actual specific conditions, to appoint his own judge, and the judge, who will be no bureaucratic lawyer, but a man chosen out of the cultural sphere, through the circumstances in which he is placed in the social environment will be able out of his environment to determine what judgment he must form of the man whom he is to try. It will be important that no judge shall be nominated for political reasons. The reasons for his nomination will be like those which determine the nomination of the best teacher to a particular post. Becoming a judge will be something like becoming a teacher or an educator. Of course, in this way the judicial finding will differ from that laid down by the law which arises from a democratic foundation. By the example of penal law already cited, we see how the personal disposition of the individual human being is outside the sphere of democracy and can only be judged in an individual way. The framing of laws is eminently a social matter. The moment we apply to a judge it is probably because we are concerned, either in a super-social or an anti-social matter, in a matter which has fallen out of the social life. All individual interests are of this nature. Such cases fall under the administrative branches of the cultural body. The decisions of justice grow beyond and above the limits of democracy.¹

So we see that what we have to do is to establish in reality conditions under which a genuine system of law can exist among men. Justice will then be no mere superstructure of the economic body; but equity will control economic life. We shall never succeed in doing what is necessary in this domain of life by a merely theoretical examination of the circumstances. It can be done in no other way than by a practical observation of life. This will give us the knowledge that a true system of justice with the necessary impetus can only arise on an independent foundation of law. This foundation has disappeared beneath the inundating flood of economic life. Politics and law have become dependent on the economic life, but they must regain their independence, just as cultural life must also be emancipated from the economic system. In order to see clearly in the social question, the great error must be overcome—the great error: that we need only revolutionize economic conditions and then everything will follow automatically. That error has arisen in consequence of the all-powerful modern development of economic life alone. It is as if people were under the influence of an idea, as if they were under the suggestion that the economic life is the only power. As long as this suggestion holds sway they will never find the solution of the social problem. They will give themselves up to illusions, especially in proletarian circles. They will try to extract from the economic system what they call a just distribution of property. But this will only be effected when there are men in the social organism possessing the ability to promote institutions through which the economic needs can be satisfied. That can only happen when it is understood that the revolutionizing of the economic system is not the only thing necessary to satisfy the requirements of social life. People must first answer the question: Must not something else be there alongside the economic body in order that the economic life may be built up continuously in a social manner by men who have grown social in political and in cultural life? This is the truth which we must oppose to error and dogma; and those who look to the economic life for the means of restoring health to the social organism must look instead to the spirit and to justice. There must be no vague dreams of justice growing out of the economic system; we must cultivate right thought in accordance with realities, and we must do so because justice and the consciousness of justice have retreated in later times before the advancing economic flood. For a social construction of society, we need the creation of a genuine political organism with the social impetus necessary for it.

• 1. This paragraph is exposed to the danger of being completely misunderstood. It could be taken as not being in conformity with democracy at all, because Rudolf Steiner's ideas on the appointment of judges by the cultural administration seem to make the judge a representative of the cultural life only, divesting the state and its government of all judicial power and transferring the latter to the cultural sphere.
  
  Such an opinion is only possible to those who continue to hold the traditional static concept of democracy and have failed to learn from the events of this century that only an organic and dynamic idea of democracy will permit the necessary development of the social organism. Such an evolving democracy, by its very nature, calls for the threefold social order as a guarantee of the democratic practice of life and, therefore, for the transfer of the judicial power to the cultural sphere, just as it calls for the re-transference of the economic control from the political government to the economic sphere of life. The legislative function is relegated to the political organism (the state). This function should be concerned only with the democratic preparation, formulation, and acceptance of laws through an adequate representative system as a legal guarantee of equal rights. The executive power should also be left to the state in as far as the government has to care for the upholding of the law and the execution of sentences issued by law courts, independent of political interference.
  
  To what degree and how conscientiously the essence of true democracy is safeguarded by Rudolf Steiner's suggestions can be seen from the fact that they include the proposal that everyone should have the right to choose his own judge from the panel of judges nominated by the spiritual-cultural organism.
  
  Rudolf Steiner's additional suggestion for safeguarding true democracy can be found in the following quotation from his book, The Threefold Commonwealth, pages 177, 178:
  
  “For more detailed acquaintance with points of law, the judges thus appointed and the courts will be assisted by regular officials whose election will also be determined by the spiritual administration, but who will not themselves decide cases.”

When we look over the history of the last few years and ask ourselves how the social problems and needs occupying the public mind for more than half a century have been dealt with, we can find only one answer. Although in the greater part of the civilized world, opportunity to carry out in practice their ideas of reconstructing social life was given to people who, after their own fashion, had devoted themselves for decades to the study of social problems, yet it must be regarded as extremely characteristic of the age that all the theories and all the views which are the result of half a century of social work from every quarter have shown themselves powerless to reconstruct the present social conditions.

Of late years, much has been destroyed and, in the eyes of all observant persons, little, or probably nothing, built up. Does not the question force itself here upon the human soul: What is the cause of this impotence of so-called advanced views, in the face of some positive task? Shortly before the great catastrophe of the World-War, in the spring of 1914, I ventured to answer this question in a short series of lectures which I delivered in Vienna before a small audience. A larger number of hearers would probably have treated what was said with ridicule. In regard to all the assumptions of the so-called experts in practical affairs as to the immediate future, I ventured to say that an exact observer of the inner life of humanity could see in the social conditions prevailing all over the civilized world something like an abscess, like a social disease, a kind of cancerous growth, which must inevitably very soon break out in a terrible manner over this world. Those practical statesmen, who were then talking of the “improvement in political relations” and the like, looked upon this as the pessimism of an idealist. But that was the utterance of a conviction gained by a study of human evolution from the point of view of spiritual science, which I will describe to you this evening. To this kind of research the building known as the Dornach Building, the Goetheanum, is dedicated. Situated in the corner of the northwest of Switzerland, this building is the outer representative of the movement whose object is the study of the spiritual science of which I speak. You will hear and read all kinds of assertions about the aims and object of this building and the meaning of the movement which it is intended to represent. And it may be said in most cases that the gossip about these things is the very opposite of the truth; mysterious nonsense, false and senseless mysticism, many varieties of obscure nonsense are attached to the work attempted by this movement in the building at Dornach representing it. It cannot be expected that anything but misunderstandings without number should still exist regarding this movement of spiritual life. In reality, the meaning of the movement is to be found in its striving with set purpose to bring about a renewal of our whole civilization, as it is expressed in art, religion, science, education, and other human activities; in fact, it may truly be said that a renewal is sorely needed from the very foundations of social life upwards. This stream of spiritual life leads us to the conviction, already indicated by me. in these lectures, that it is no longer of any use to devise net schemes for world-improvement; from its very nature, human evolution demands a transformation of thoughts and ideas, of the most intimate life of feeling of humanity itself. Such a transformation is the aim of spiritual science, as it is represented in this movement. Spiritual science stimulates the belief that the views of society, of which we have just spoken, proceed from the old habits of thought which have not kept pace with the evolution of humanity and are no longer suited to its present life. These views have been clearly proved useless in aiding the reconstruction of social life.

What we need is understanding. What is really the meaning of all the subconscious yearnings, of the demands, which have not yet penetrated into the conscious thought of our present humanity? What do they mean, above all things, with regard to art, with regard to science, religion, and education? Let us look at the new directions followed by art, especially of late! I know well that in giving the following little sketch of the development of art, I must inevitably give offence to many; indeed, what I am going to say will be taken by many as a proof of the most complete lack of understanding of the later schools of art.

If we except a few isolated, very commendable efforts of recent years, the chief characteristic in the development of modern art is that it has lost that inner impulse which should drive it to place before the world that which is felt by humanity as a pressing need. The opinion has grown more and more common that, in contemplating a work of art. we must ask: How much of the spirit and significance of outer reality does it express? How far is external nature or human life reflected in art? One need only ask, what meaning has such a criterion with respect to a “Raphael”, or a “Leonardo”, or to any other real work of art? Do we not see in such great works of art that the resemblance to the outer reality surrounding us is by no means the measure of their greatness? Do we not see the measure of their greatness in the creation of something from within that is far removed from the immediate outer reality? What worlds are those that unroll before us as we gaze at the now almost effaced picture at Milan, Leonardo's Last Supper, or when we stand before a “Raphael”? Is it not a matter of secondary importance that those painters have succeeded more or less well in depicting the laws of nature in their work? Is it not their chief aim to tell us something of a, world which we do not see when we only use our eyes, when, we perceive only with our outer senses? And do we not find more and more that the only criterion now applied in judging a, work of art, or in judging anything artistic, is whether the thing is really true, and “true” here is to be understood in the ordinary naturalistic sense of the word. Let us ask ourselves—strange as the question may appear to the holders of certain artistic views—what does an art confer on life, actually on social life, what is an art, which aspires to nothing higher, than the reproduction of a part of external reality?

At the time in which modern capitalism and modern technical science became a power, landscape painting began to be developed in the world of art. I know, of course, that landscape painting is justified, fully justified from an artistic point of view. But it is also true, that no artistically perfect landscape painting, however perfect, equals in any sense the scene lying before me, as I stand on a mountain side and contemplate Nature's: own landscape. Precisely the rise of landscape painting shows to what an extent art has taken refuge in the mere imitation of nature, which it can never equal. Art turned to landscape painting because it had lost touch with the spiritual world; it could no longer create out of the spiritual and super-sensible world., What will be the future of art, if it is inspired only by the recent impulses toward naturalistic art? Art such as this can never grow out of life, as a flower grows from its roots; it will be a luxury outside life, an object of desire for those only for whom life has no cares. Is it not comprehensible that people who are absorbed in the pressing cares of life from morning till evening, who are shut off from all culture, the object of which is the understanding of art, should feel themselves separated as by an abyss from art? Though one hardly dare to put the sentiment into words now-a-days, because to many it would stamp the speaker as a philistine, it is distinctly evident in social life that great numbers of people look on art as something remote, and unconsciously feel it to be a luxury of life, something that does not belong to every human life, and to every existence worthy of a human being, although, in truth, it brings completion to every human life worthy of the name.

Naturalistic art will always be in one sense a luxury for those whose lives are free from care, and who are able to educate themselves in that art. I felt this when I was teaching for some years in a working-men's college, where I had the opportunity of addressing the workers themselves directly in order to help them understand the socialist theories which were being instilled into their minds, to their ruin, by those who called themselves “leaders of the people.” I learnt to understand—forgive the personal remark—what it means to bring scientific knowledge from a purely human standpoint⁷ within reach of those unspoiled minds. From a longing to know something also about modern art a request was made by my students that I take them through the museums and picture galleries on Sundays. Though it was possible, of course, to explain a great deal to them, since they had themselves the desire to be educated, I knew quite well that what I said did not at all make the same impression on these minds as did the things that I had told them from the standpoint of universal humanity. I felt that it would be a cultural untruth to tell them about the luxury art of the later naturalistic school, so far removed from actual life. This on the one hand.

On the other hand, do we not see, how art has lost its connection with life? Here, too, praiseworthy endeavors have come to light in the last few decades; but these have been by no means decided enough, though much has been done in the direction of industrial art. We see how inartistic our everyday surroundings have become. Art has made an illusory progress. All the buildings around us with which we come in contact in our daily routine are as devoid of artistic beauty as possible. Practical life cannot be raised to artistic form, because art has separated itself from life. Art which merely imitates nature cannot design tables and chairs and other articles of utility in such a manner that when we see them, we at once have the feeling of something artistic. These objects must transcend nature as human life transcends itself. If art merely imitates, it fails in the shaping of practical life, and practical life thereby becomes prosaic, uninteresting and dry, because we are unable to give it an artistic form and to surround ourselves with beautiful objects in our everyday lives.

This might be further amplified. I shall only indicate the decided direction which the evolution of our art has nevertheless taken. In like manner we have moved in other domains of modern civilization. Have we not seen that science has gradually ceased to proclaim to us the foundation which lies at the base of all sense-life? Little wonder that art has not found the way out of the world of sense since science itself has lost that way. By degrees science has come to the point of merely registering the outer facts of the senses, or at most to comprise them in natural laws. Intellectualism of the most pronounced type has over-spread all modern scientific activity to an ever increasing degree, and a terrible fear prevails among scientists lest they should be unable to exclude everything but intellectualism in their research, lest something like imaginative or artistic intuitions should perchance find their way into science. It is easy to see by what is said and written on this subject by scientists themselves how great is the terror they experience at the thought that any other means than the dry, sober intellect and the investigation by sense-perception should find entrance into scientific research. In every activity which does not keep strictly to intellectual thought men do not get far enough away from cuter reality to judge it correctly. Thus the modern researcher, the modern scientist, strives to carry on his work by intellectualism only; because he believes he can by this means get away far enough from the reality to judge it, as he says, quite objectively. Here the question might perhaps be asked: Is it not possible through intellectualism to get so far away from reality that we can no longer experience it? And it is this intellectualism, above all, which has made it impossible for us to conquer reality by science, as I have already indicated in these lectures and into which I will enter more fully today.

Turning to the religious life: with what mistrust and disapproval is every attempt to penetrate into the spiritual world by means of spiritual science received by the religious communities! On what grounds? People are quite ignorant of the reason of their disapproval. From official quarters we learn of a science which is determined to keep to the mere world of the senses, and we hear that in these official quarters the claim is apparently allowed that it is only in this way that strict and true scientific knowledge can be attained. But the student of historical evolution does not view the matter in this light. To him it appears that for the last few centuries the religious bodies have more and more laid claim to he the only authority in matters relating to the spirit and soul, and have recognized as valid only those opinions which they themselves permit the people to hold. Under the influence of this claim to the monopoly of knowledge by the Church, the sciences have neglected the study of everything except the outer sense-perceptions, or at most they have attempted to penetrate into the higher regions with a few abstract conceptions. They believe they are doing this purely in the interests of exact science, and do not dream that they are influenced by the Church's pretension to the monopoly of knowledge, the knowledge of the spirit and the soul as contained in their religious creeds. What has been forbidden to the sciences for centuries, the sciences themselves now declare to be an absolute condition for the exactness of their research, for the objective truth of their work. Thus it has happened that the religious communities having failed to develop their insight into the world of soul and spirit, and having preserved the old traditions, now see in the new methods of spiritual research, in the new paths of approach to the soul and spirit, an enemy to all religion, whereas they ought to recognize in these new methods the very best friends of religion.

We shall now speak of these three regions of culture, art, science, and religion. For it is the mission of Anthroposophy or spiritual science to build up a new structure in these three regions of culture. To explain what I mean, I must indicate in a few words the vital point of spiritual science. Its premises are very different from those of science as it is commonly known today. It fully recognizes the methods of modern science, fully recognizes also the triumphs of modern science. But because spiritual science believes it understands the methods of research of modern science better than the scientists themselves, it feels compelled to take other ways for the attainment of knowledge regarding spirit and soul than those which are still regarded by large numbers of people as the only right ones. In consequence of the enormous prejudice entertained against all research into the higher worlds, great errors and misunderstandings have been spread abroad regarding the aims of the Dornach movement. That here is truly no false mysticism, nothing in any way obscure in this movement, is plainly evident in my endeavors in the beginning of the 'nineties, which formed the starting-point for the spiritual-scientific movement to which I allude, and of which the Building at Dornach is the representative. At that time I collected the material which seemed to me then most necessary for the social enlightenment of today in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Whoever reads that book will hardly accuse the spiritual science of which I speak of false mysticism; but he may see what a difference there is between the idea of human freedom contained in my book and the idea of freedom as an impulse prevalent in our modern civilization.

As an example of the latter, I might give Woodrow Wilson's idea of freedom; an extraordinary one, but very characteristic of the culture, the civilization of our age. He is honest in his demand for freedom for the political life of the present day. But what does he mean by freedom? We arrive at an understanding of his meaning when we read words like the following: ‘A ship moves freely,’ he says, ‘when it is adapted to all the forces which act upon it from the wind, from the waves, and so on. When its construction is exactly adapted to its environment, no hindrance to its progress can arise through the forces of wind or wave. Man must also he able to motive freely through life, by adapting himself to the forces with which he comes in contact in life, so that no hindrance may ever come to him from any direction.’ He also compares the life of a free human being with a part of a machine, saying: ‘We say of a part, built into a machine, that it can move freely when it has no connection with anything anywhere; and when the rest of the machine is so constructed that this part runs freely within it.’ I have just one thing to say to this; we can only speak of freedom with regard to the human being when we see in it the very opposite of such an adaptation to the environment, we can only speak of human freedom when we compare it, not with the freedom of a ship on the sea, perfectly adapted to the forces of wind and weather, but when we compare it with the freedom of a ship that can stop and turn against wind and weather, and can do so without regarding the forces to which it is adapted. That is to say, at the bottom of such an idea of freedom as this lies the whole mechanical conception of the world, yet at the present day it is considered to be the only possible one. This world-conception is the result of the mere intellectualism of modern times. In my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I have felt compelled to take a stand against views of this kind. I know very well—forgive another personal remark—that this book has fragments of the European philosophical conception of the world, out of which it is born, still clinging to it, as a chicken sometimes retains fragments of the eggshell from which it has emerged. For the book has. of course, grown out of European philosophical world-conceptions. It was necessary to show in that book the erroneous thought in those world-conceptions. For this reason the book may appear to some to be pedantic, though this was by no means my intention. The contents are intended to work as an impulse in the immediate practice of life, so that, through the ideas developed in that book, the impulse thus generated in the human will may flow directly into human life.

For this reason, however, I was obliged to state the problem of human freedom quite differently from the usual manner of doing so wherever we turn, throughout the centuries of human evolution, the question regarding the freedom of human will and of the human being has been: Is man free, or is he not free? I was under the necessity of showing that the question in this form was wrongly framed and must be put from a different standpoint. For if we take that which modern science and modern human consciousness look upon as the real self, but which ought to be regarded as the natural self, then, certainly, that being can never he free. That self must act of inner necessity. Were man only that which he is held to be by modern science, then his idea of freedom would be the same as that of Woodrow Wilson's. But this would be no real freedom; it would be only what might be called with every single action the inevitable result of natural causes. But modern human consciousness is not much aware of the other self within the human being where the problem regarding freedom really begins. Modern human consciousness is only aware of the natural self in man; it regards him as a being subject to natural causality. But those who penetrate more deeply into the human being must reflect that man can become something more in the course of his life than that with which nature has endowed him. We first discover what the human being really is, when we recognize that one part of him is that with which he is born, and all that which he has inherited; the other part is that which he does not owe to his bodily nature, but which he can make of himself by awakening the real self slumbering within him. Because these things are true I have not asked: Is man free or not free? I have stated the question in the following way: Can man become a free being through inner development, or can he not? And the answer is: He can become free if he develops within himself that which otherwise slumbers, but can be awakened; he can only then become free. Man's freedom is not a gift of nature. Freedom belongs to that part of man which he can, and must, awaken within himself. But if the ideas contained in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity are to be further developed and applied to external social life, so that these truths may become clear to a larger circle of people, it will be necessary to build a superstructure of the truths of spiritual science on the foundation of that philosophy. It had to be shown that by taking his evolution into his own hands, man is really able to awaken a slumbering being within him. I endeavored to do this in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, and in the other books which I have contributed to the literature of spiritual science. In these books I tried to show that the human being can indeed take his own evolution in hand and that only by so doing, and thus making of it something different from that to which he is born, can he rise to a real knowledge of soul and spirit. It is true that this view is considered by a large part of humanity at the present day to be a most unattractive one. For what does it presuppose? It presupposes that we attain to something like intellectual humility. But few desire this today. I will explain what I mean by this quality of intellectual humility, to which we must attain.

Suppose we give a volume of Goethe's lyric poems to a child of five. The child will certainly not treat the book as it deserves; he will tear it to pieces, or spoil it in some other way. In any case he does not know how to value such a book. But suppose the child to have grown ten or twelve years older, that he has been taught. and trained; then he will treat Goethe's lyric poems in a different manner. And yet there is no great difference externally between a child of five and one of twelve or fourteen with a book of Goethe's poems before him. The difference lies within the child. He has developed so that he knows what to do with such a volume. As the child feels towards the volume of Goethe's lyrics, so must the man feel towards nature, the cosmos, the whole universe, when he begins to think seriously of soul and spirit. He must acknowledge to himself that, in order to read and understand what is written in the book of nature and the universe, he must do his utmost to develop his inner self, just as the five-year-old child must be taught in order to understand Goethe's lyric poems. We must acknowledge with intellectual humility our impotence to penetrate the universe with understanding by means of the natural gifts with which we are born; and we must then admit that there may be ways of self-development and of unfolding the inner powers of our being to see in that which lies spread out before the senses the living spirit and the living soul. My writings to which I have referred show that it is possible to put this in practice. This must be said, because intellectualism, the fruit of evolution of the last few centuries, is no longer able to solve the riddles of life. Into one region of life, that of inanimate nature, it is able to penetrate, but it is compelled to halt before human reality, more especially social reality.

That quality which I have called intellectual humility must be the groundwork of every true modern conception of the impulse towards freedom. It must also be the groundwork of all real insight into the transformation necessary in art, religion, and science. Here intellectuality has plainly, only too plainly, shown that it can attain no real knowledge which truly perceives and attains to the things of the soul and spirit. As I leave already pointed out, it has confined itself to the outer world of the senses and to the combining and systematizing of perceptions Hence it has been unable to prevail against the pretensions of the religious bodies, which have also not attained to a new knowledge of matters pertaining to the soul and spirit, but have on this account carried into modern times an antiquated view, unsuited to the age. But one thing must be conquered, that is the fear I have already described, the fear that we might become too much involved in the objects of the senses, in our endeavors to gain a spiritual knowledge of them. It is so easy to call oneself a follower of intellectualism, because, when we occupy ourselves merely with abstract ideas, even of modern science, we are so far removed from the reality that we only view it in perspective, and there is no danger of our being in any way influenced by the reality. But with the knowledge that is meant here, which we gain for ourselves when we take our own evolution in hand, with such knowledge we must descend into the realities of life, we must plunge into the profoundest depths of our own nature, deeper than those reached by mere self-training in intellectualism. Within the bounds of intellectualism, we only reach the upper strata of our own life. If with the help of the knowledge here spoken of, we descend into the depths of our own inner nature, we find there not only thoughts and feelings, a mere reflection of the outer world, we find there happenings, facts of our inner being, from which the merely intellectual thinker would recoil in horror; but which are of the same kind as those within nature herself, of the same kind as those which happen in the world. Then, within our own nature, we learn to know the nature of the world. We cannot learn to know that life of the world if we go no further than mere abstract conceptions or the laws of nature. We must penetrate so far that our own inmost being becomes one with reality. We must not fear to approach reality; our inner development must carry us so far that we can stand firm in the presence of reality, without being consumed, or scorched, or suffocated. When we stand in the presence of reality, no longer held at a distance by the intellect, we are able to grasp the truth of things. Thus we find described in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, the inner development of the human being to the stage of spiritual knowledge at which he becomes one with reality, but in such wise that, being merged in reality, he can imbibe from it knowledge which is not a distant perception by means of the intellect, but is instead saturated with reality itself and for this reason can merge with it.

You will find that one characteristic feature of the spiritual science which occupies us here is that it can plunge into reality, that it does not merely speak of an abstract spirit, but of the real, tangible spirit, living in our environment surrounding us just as the things of the sense-world surround us. Abstract observations are the fruit of modern intellectualism. Take up any new work, with the exception of pure natural science or pure philosophy, and you will find the conception of life it contains, often a would-be philosophical view, is far removed from actual life or from a real knowledge of things. Read what is said about the will in one of the newer books on psychology, and you will find that there is no profound meaning underlying the words. The ideas of those who devote themselves to such studies have not the power actually to penetrate to the core, even of nature herself. To them matter is a thing outside, because they cannot penetrate it in spirit. I should like to elucidate this by an example.

In one of my last books, Riddles of the Soul, Von Seelenraetseln, I have shown how an opinion of long standing, prevailing in natural science, must be overcome by modern spiritual science. I know how very paradoxical my words must sound to many. But it is just those truths which are able to satisfy the demands—already making themselves heard and becoming more and more insistent as time goes on—for a new kind of thought which will often appear paradoxical, when compared with all that is still looked upon as authoritative. Every modern scientist who has occupied himself with the subject maintains that there are two kinds of nerves⁸ in human and animal life (we are now only concerned with human life, one set, leading from the sense organs to the central organ, is the sensory nerves, which are stimulated by sense-perceptions, the stimulus communicating itself to the nerve center. The second kind of nerves, the so-called motor nerves, pass from the center out to the limbs. These motor-nerves enable us to use our limbs. They are said to be the nerves of volition, while the others are called the sensory nerves.

Now I have shown in my book, Riddles of the Soul, though only in outline, that there is no fundamental difference between the sensory and the so-called motor nerves or nerves of volition, and that the latter are not subject to the will. The instances brought forward to support the statement that these nerves are obedient to the will as is shown by the terrible disease of locomotor ataxia really prove the exact opposite, which can easily be shown. They, indeed, prove the truth of my contention. These so-called voluntary nerves are also sensitive nerves. While the other sensitive nerves pass from the sense organs to the central organ, so that the outer sense-perceptions may be transmitted to it, the voluntary nerves, as they are called, which do not differ from the other set, perceive that which is movement within ourselves. They are endowed with the perception of movement. There are no voluntary nerves. The will is of a purely spiritual nature, purely spirit and soul, and functions directly as spirit and soul. We use the so-called voluntary nerves, because they are the sensory nerves for the limb which is going to move and must be perceived if the will is to move it. For what reason do I give this example? Because countless treatises on the will exist at the present day, or may be read and heard, in which the will is dealt with. But the ideas developed have not the impelling power to advance to real knowledge, to press forward to the sight of will in its working. Such knowledge remains abstract and foreign to life. While such ideas are current, modern science will continue to tell us of motor nerves, of nerves of volition. Spiritual science evolves ideas regarding the will which at the same time show us the nature of the physical human nervous system. Spiritual science will penetrate the phenomena and facts of nature. Instead of remaining in regions foreign to life, it will find its way into reality. It will have the courage to permeate material things with the spirit, not to leave them outside as things apart. For spiritual science everything is spiritual. Spiritual science will be able to pierce the surface and penetrate into the social order, and will work for a reality in social life, which baffles our abstract, intellectual natural science. And thus, spiritual science will again proclaim a spiritual knowledge, a new way of penetrating into the psychic and the spiritual in the universe. It will proclaim boldly that those spiritual worlds, represented in pictures envisioned by artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci, can no longer suffice for us. In accordance with the progress of human evolution, we must find a new way into the spiritual world. But if we learn to understand the spiritual world anew, if we penetrate into that world, not in the nebulous manner of pantheism, by a continual repetition of the word “spirit”, a universal, abstract, vague spirit which “must he there”: if we pierce through to the real phenomena of the spiritual world not by spiritualism, but by the development of the human forces of spirit and soul in the manner described above, then again we shall know of a spiritual world in the only way adapted to the present development of humanity. Then the mysteries of the spiritual world will reveal themselves to us, and then something will happen of which Goethe spoke. Although he was only a beginner in the things which modern spiritual science goes on developing in accordance with his own spirit, but of which he had a premonition, Goethe beautifully expressed that which will happen in the words: “He to whom nature begins to reveal her open secrets, experiences a profound longing for her worthiest exponent—art.” Once more will the artist receive a revelation from the spiritual world; he will then no longer be led astray in the belief that his portrayal of spiritual things in a material picture is an abstract, symbolic, lifeless allegory; he will know the living spirit and will be able to express that living spirit through material means. No longer will the perfect imitation of nature be considered the best part of a work of art, but the manifestation of that which the spirit has revealed to the artist. Once more an art will arise, filled with spirit, an art which is in no way symbolical, in no way allegorical, which also does not betray its luxurious character by attempting to rival nature, to the perfection of which it can never attain. It demonstrates its necessity, its justification, in human life by proclaiming the existence of something of which the ordinary, direct beholding of nature, naturalism, can give us no information. And even if the artist's attempt to give expression to something spiritual be but a clumsy effort, he is giving form to something which has a significance, apart from nature, because it transcends nature. He makes no bungling attempts at that which nature can do better than he. A way opens here to that art in which a beginning has been made in the external structure and the external decoration of the Goetheanum at Dornach.

The attempt has been made there to create a University of Spiritual Science for the work to be carried on within it. In all the paintings on the ceilings, the wood carvings, etc., an attempt has been made to give form to all that spiritual science reveals in that building. Hence the building itself is a natural development. No old architectural style could be followed here, because the spirit will be spoken of in a new way within it. Let us look at nature and consider the shell of a nut; the kernel within determines the form of it; in nature every sheath is formed in accordance with the requirements of the inner core. So the whole of the building at Dornach is formed in consonance with that which as music will one day resound within it; with those mystery dramas which will one day be presented there; with those revelations of spiritual science which will one day be uttered within its walls. Everything described here will echo in the wood carvings, in the pillars, and in the capitals. An art as yet only in its beginnings, which is really horn of a new spirit, altogether born of the spirit, is there represented. The artists who are working there are themselves their own severest critics. In such an undertaking one is, of course, exposed to misunderstandings; this is only natural. Objections are raised against the Dornach Building by visitors, who say: “These anthroposophists have filled their building with symbols and allegories.” Other visitors who increase in number from day to day, understand what they see here.

Now the characteristic of the building is that it does not contain a single symbol or allegory; in the work attempted here the spirit has flowed into the immediate artistic form. That which is expressed here has nothing of symbolism, nothing of allegory, but everything is something in its own form. Up to the present we have only been able to build a covering for a spiritual center of work; for external social conditions do not yet permit us to erect a railway station or even a bank building. For reasons, which may perhaps be easily comprehensible to you, we have not yet been able to find the style of a modern bank or of a modern department store; but they must also he found. Above all things, the way must be found along these lines to an artistic shaping of actual practical life.

Just think of the social importance of art, even for our daily bread; for the preparation of bread depends on the manner in which people think and feel.

It is a matter of great and social significance to men, that everything by which they are immediately surrounded in life should take on an artistic form; that every spoon, every glass, should have a form well adapted to its use, instead of a form chosen at random to serve the purpose; that one should see at a glance, from its form, what service a thing performs in life, and at the same time recognize its beauty. Then for the first time large numbers of people will feel spiritual life to be a vital necessity, when spiritual life and practical life are brought into direct connection with each other. As spiritual science is able to throw light on the nature of matter, as I have shown in the example of the sensory and motor nerves, so will art, born of spiritual science, attain to the power of giving direct form to every chair, every table, to every man-created object.

Since it is plainly evident that the gravest prejudices and misunderstandings come from the churches, we may ask: What is the position finally reached by the religious creeds? If they have any justification at all, they must have a connection by their very nature with the spiritual world. But they have preserved into our period of time old traditions of these worlds, grown out of very different conditions of the human soul. Spiritual science strives to advance to the spiritual world, in accordance with the new mode of thought, with the new life of the soul. Should this be condemned by the religious sentiment of humanity, if it understands itself aright? Is such a thing possible? Never! What is the real aim of religious sentiment and of all religious work? Certainly not the proclamation of theories and dogmas pertaining to the higher worlds. The aim of all religious work should be to give all men an opportunity to look up with reverence to higher worlds. The work of religion is to inculcate reverence for the super-sensible. Human nature needs this reverence. It needs to look up in reverence to the sublime in the spiritual worlds. If human nature is denied the present mode of entrance, then, of course, the old way must still be kept open. But since this way is no longer suited to the thoughts of our day, it must be enforced, its recognition must be imposed by authority. Hence the external character of religious teaching as applied to modern human nature. An antiquated outlook on the higher worlds is imposed by the religious teachers.

Let us suppose that there are communities in which an understanding exists of the true nature of religion consisting in reverence for spiritual things. Must it not be to the highest interest of, such communities that their members should develop a living knowledge of the unseen world? Will not those whose souls contain a vision of the super-sensible, whose knowledge gives them a familiarity with those worlds be the most likely to reverence them? Since the middle of the fifteenth century human evolution has taken the line of development of the individuality, of the personality. To expect of anyone today that he should attain a vision or an understanding of the higher worlds on authority, or in any other way than by the force of his own individuality or personality, is to expect of him something which is against his nature. If he is allowed freedom of thought with respect to his knowledge of the super-sensible he will unite with his fellow-men in order that reverence for the spiritual world, which everyone recognizes in his own personal way, may be encouraged in the community. When men have attained freedom of thought to approach knowledge of the spiritual world through their own individuality, then the common service of the higher worlds, true religion, will flourish.

This will show itself especially in the conception of the Christ Himself. This conception was very different in earlier centuries from that even of many theologians of the later centuries, especially of the nineteenth. How greatly has humanity fallen away from the perception of the true super-sensible nature of the Christ, who lived in the man Jesus! How far is it removed from the understanding of that union of a super-sensible being with a human body, through the Mystery of Golgotha, in order that the earth in its development might have a deeper meaning! That union of the super-sensible with the things of the senses, which was consummated in the Mystery of Golgotha, how little has it been understood even by theologians of a certain type in recent times! The man of Nazareth has been designated “the simple man of Nazareth”, the conception of religion has become more and more materialistic. Since no one was able to find a way into the higher worlds, suited to modern humanity, the super-sensible path to the Christ-Being was lost. Many who now believe that they are in communion with the Christ, only believe this. They do not dream how little their thought of Christ and their words concerning Him correspond to the experiences of those who draw near to the great Mystery of Humanity with a spiritual knowledge that is suited to our time.

It must be said that spiritual science makes absolutely no pretension of founding a new religion. It is a science, a source of knowledge; but we ought to recognize in it the means for a rejuvenescence of the religious life of humanity. As it can rejuvenate science and art, so can it also renew religious life, the very great importance of which must lie apparent to anyone who can appreciate the extreme gravity of the social future. Much, very much has been said recently on the subject of education, yet it must be acknowledged that a large part of the discussion does not touch the chief problem. I endeavored to deal with this problem in a series of educational lectures which I was asked to deliver to the teachers who are to form the staff of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded last September [1919], in conformity with ideas underlying the Threefold Social Order.

At the foundation of the school I not only endeavored to give shape to externals, corresponding to the requirements and the impulse of the Threefold Order; I also strove to present pedagogy and didactics to the teaching-staff of this new kind of school in such a light that the human being would be educated to face life and be able to bring about a social future in accordance with certain unconquerable instincts in human nature. It is evident that the old-fashioned system of normal training, with its stereotyped rules and methods of teaching, must be superseded. It is true nowadays that many people agree that the individuality of the pupil ought to be taken into account in teaching. All sorts of rules are produced for the proper consideration of the child's individuality. But the pedagogy of the future will not be a normal science; it will be a true art, the art of developing the human being. It will rest upon a knowledge of the whole man. The teacher of the future will know that in the human being before him, who carries on development from birth through all the years of life, a spirit and soul element is working through the organs out to the surface. From the first year of school, he will see how every year new forces evolve from the depths of the child's nature. No abstract normal training can confirm this sight; only a living perception of human nature itself. Much has been said of late on the subject of instruction through observation and, within certain limits, this kind of tuition is justified. But there are things which cannot be communicated through external observation, yet which must be communicated to the growing child; but they can only be so communicated when the teacher, the educator, is animated by a true understanding of the growing human being, when he is able to see the inner growth of the child as it changes with every succeeding year; when he knows what the inner nature of the human being requires in the seventh, ninth, and twelfth years of his life. For only when education is carried on in accordance with nature, can the child grow strong for the battle of life. One comes in contact with many shattered lives at the present day, many who do not know what to make of life, to whom it has nothing to offer. There are many more people who suffer from such disrupted lives than is commonly known. What is the reason.? It is because the teacher is unable to take note of important laws of the evolving human being. I will give only one instance of what I mean. How very often do we hear well-meaning teachers say emphatically that one should develop in the child a clear understanding of what is being offered him as mental food. The result of this method in practice is banality, triviality! The teacher descends artificially to the understanding of the child, and that manner of teaching has already become instinctive. If it is persisted in, and the child is trained in this false clarity of understanding, what is overlooked? A teacher of this kind does not know what it means to a man, say thirty-five years of age, who looks back to his childhood and remembers: “My teacher told me such and such a thing when I was nine or ten years old; I believed it because I looked up with reverence to the authority of my teacher, and because there was a living force in his personality through which I was impressed by his words. Now, looking back, I find that his words have lived on in me; now I can understand them.” A marvellous light is shed on life by such an event, when through inner development we can look back in our thirty-fifth year at the lessons we have learnt out of love for our teacher which we could not understand at the time. That light, which is a force in life, is lost when the teacher descends to the banality of the object-lesson, which is praised as an ideal method. The teacher must know what forces should be developed in the child, in order that the forces which are already in his nature, may remain with him throughout his life. Then the child need not merely recall to memory what he learnt between his seventh and fifteenth years; what he then learnt is renewed again and again, and wears a new aspect in each successive stage of life. What the child learnt is renewed at every later epoch of life.

The foregoing is an effort to place before you an idea of the fundamental character of a system of pedagogy which, if followed, may truly grow into an art; by its practice the human being may take his place in life and find himself equal to all the demands of the social future. However much people may vaunt their social ideals, there are few who are at all capable of surveying life as a whole. But in the carrying out of social ideals, a wide outlook on life is indispensable. People speak, for instance, of transferring the means of production to the ownership of the community and believe that by withdrawing them from the administration of the individual human being, much would be accomplished. I have already spoken on this point, and will go into the subject again more thoroughly in the following lectures. But assuming for a moment that it is possible to transfer the means of production to the ownership of the community at once, do you suppose that the community of the next generation would still own them? No! For even if the means of production were transmitted to the next generation, it would be done without taking into account the fact that this next generation would develop new and fruitful forces, which would transform the whole system of production, and thus render the old means useless. If we have any idea of molding social life. we must take part in life in its fullness, in all its phases. From a conception of man as a being composed of body, soul, and spirit, and from a real understanding of body, soul, and spirit, a new art of education will arise, an art which may truly be regarded as a necessity in social life.

Arising from this way of thinking, something has developed within the spiritual movement, centered at Dornach, which has to a great extent met with misunderstanding. There are a number of persons who have learnt in the course of years to think not unfavorably of our spiritual-scientific movement. But when we recently began, in Zurich and elsewhere, to give representations of the art known as eurythmy, an art springing naturally out of spiritual science itself, but, as we are fully aware, as yet only in its infancy, people began to exclaim that after all, spiritual science cannot be worth much, for to introduce such antics as an accompaniment to spiritual science only shows that the latter is completely crazy. In such a matter as this, people do not consider how paradoxical anything must appear which works towards reconstituting the world on the basis of spiritual science. This art of eurythmy is a social art in the best sense; for its aim is, above all things, to communicate to us the mysteries of human nature. It uses the capacities for movement latent in the human being, bringing to expression these movements in a manner to be explained at the next representation of the eurythmic art. I will only mention here that eurythmy is a true art; for it reveals the deepest secrets of human art itself by bringing to evidence a true speech, a visible speech expressed by the whole human being. But beside the mere movements of the body, founder on physiological science and a study of the structure of the human form, eurythmy presents to us at the same time a capacity of movement through which man, ensouled and inspired, yields himself up to movement. The purely physiological, gymnastic exercises of our materialistic age may also be taught to children, and they are now taught in the Waldorf School of which I have spoken. Ensouled movement, however, actually employs the whole being, while gymnastics on physiological, merely material lines employs only a part of the whole nature of the human being, and therefore, unless supplemented by eurythmy, allows much to degenerate in the growing human being Out of the depths of human nature spiritual life in a new form must enter into the most important branches of life.

It will be my task in the next few days to show how external life may really be given a new form in the present and for the future, when the impulse for the change comes from such a new spirit. Many people of all sorts, noteworthy people, feel today the necessity of understanding spiritually the modern pressing demands of social life. It is painful to see the number of people who are still asleep as regards these demands, and the many others who approach them in a confused way as agitators. We find faint indications of a feeling that none of the mere superficial programs can be of any use without a change of thought, of ideas, a new mode of learning from the spirit. But in many cases how superficial is the expression of that longing for a new spirit! We may say that the yearning for a new spirit is dimly and imperceptibly felt here and there in remarkable men, who most certainly have no idea of that which the Dornach Building represents in the outer world. But the expression of a longing for this new spirit can be heard. I will give one out of many examples of this.

In addition to the numerous memoirs published in connection with the disaster of the World War just ended, those of the Austrian Statesman, Czernin, will soon appear. This book promises to be extremely interesting. It is difficult to express what I wish to say without the risk of being misunderstood; I mean that it is interesting, because Czernin was a good deal less pretentious than the others who up to now have given expression to their opinions on the War, and he should therefore be leniently judged. In this book of Czernin's we may read something like the following passage:

‘The War continues, though in another form. I believe that coming generations will not call this great drama which has held the world in thrall for five years, the World-War; they will call it the world-revolution and they will know that the world-revolution only began with the World-War. Neither the Peace of Versailles nor that of St. Germain will create a lasting effect. This peace contains within it the destructive germ of death. The conflicts which shake Europe are not yet on the wane. As in a mighty earthquake, the subterranean rumbling still goes on. Now here, now there, the earth will continue to open and hurl fire towards heaven. Again and again events of elemental vehemence will sweep over the lands, bringing destruction in their train, till everything has been swept away, reminiscent of the madness of this War. Slowly, out of: unspeakable sacrifice, a new world will be born. Coming generations will look back to our times as to a long, terrible dream. But the darkest night is followed by the dawn. Generations have sunk into graves, murdered, starved, victims of disease. Millions have died in the effort to annihilate, to destroy, their hearts filled, with hatred and murder. But other generations will arise, and with them a new spirit. They will build up, what war and revolution have destroyed. Every winter is followed by spring. It is an eternal law in the circuit of life that resurrection follows death. Happy those who are called upon to cooperate as soldiers of labor in the work of rebuilding the world.’

Even this man speaks of a new spirit, but this new spirit is only a shadowy conception, a dim presentiment in heads like his. In order that this new spirit may take hold of the hearts, of the minds, of the souls of men in a really concrete form, the spiritual science and the art of education of which I wished to speak today in connection with human evolution, will labor for the social future of humanity.

• 7. or a deeper understanding of this, the reader is referred to Rudolf Steiner's The Story of My Life, page 274:
  
  “It is my impression that if the workers' movement had been followed with interest by a greater number of unprejudiced persons, and if the proletariat had been dealt with understandingly, this movement would have developed quite differently. But we have left the people to live in their own class, and we have lived in ours. The conceptions of each class of men held by the others were merely theoretical. There was discussion of wages when strikes and the like forced it; and all sorts of welfare movements were established. These latter were exceedingly creditable.
  
  “But the submerging of these world-stirring questions into a spiritual sphere was wholly lacking. And yet only this could have taken from the movement its destructive forces.”
  
  >We offer this quotation in order to show that the many remarks made by Rudolf Steiner in these lectures, characterizing the proletarian movement and its Marxian ideology, should not give the impression that he was hostile toward the proletariat. Quite the contrary was the case. His untiring efforts in 1919 and later were deeply concerned with the need of establishing a mutual understanding between the two classes—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—which were fighting one another for political power.
  
  In 1919, when the workers were in power in Central Europe—in Russia since 1917—Rudolf Steiner continued this effort by offering a cultural, instead of a political-economic viewpoint. In doing this, he found it necessary for an understanding of the problem to make clear to the proletariat the nature of the destructive forces at work in their midst, embodied in an erroneous materialistic ideology. It must be emphatically stressed, too, that Rudolf Steiner made it clear that the same destructive forces were at work with an equal degree of fatality in the egotistic and unintelligent attitude of the members of the other class—the bourgeoisie—toward life and its world problems.
• 8. The original statement about the nature of the nerves can be found in the appendix of Rudolf Steiner's previously mentioned book, The Riddles of the Soul, (Von Seelenraetseln, Riddle of the Soul (1996).
  
  This most important statement shows how Anthroposophy solves the crucial problem of modern physiology and psychology, that is to say, it explains the relation between body and soul. The reader will learn that the human body functions in a threefold way, or one may say, there are three systems of organic activity: (a) the nervous system, including the senses; (b) the metabolic system, in connection with the limb-system; and (c) the rhythmic system, i. e., blood circulation and breathing.
  
  The important discovery made by Rudolf Steiner reveals the fact that the human soul in her entirety is not limited to a mere relationship with the nervous system, for this is only one of her several special functions, manifest in thinking, in so far as this activity depends on sense perception. Another function of the soul—feeling—is supported by the bodily rhythmic system, and a third soul function—willing—finds its bodily counterpart in the metabolic system. All this means that the human soul, as a whole, with her three functions is connected with the bodily organism as a whole. She functions through three systems which are intimately interwoven and mutually interplaying.
  
  Rudolf Steiner's statement shows further that by devoting herself to a certain training, the soul is able to detach herself, bond by bond, from the connection with the body and to turn her perceptions with transformed thinking, feeling, and willing toward the spiritual world.
  
  It must be emphasized, however, that the discovery of the threefold physiological and mental organism of man did not lead Rudolf Steiner to develop forthwith the idea of the three-fold social organism. The threefold structure of the body-social was discovered by him through independent research without taking the human organism into account. To quote the words of Rudolf Steiner:
  
  “The present comparison is not an attempt to take some natural science truth and transplant it into the social system. Its object is quite different: namely, to use the human body as an object lesson for training human thought and feeling to a sense of what organic life requires, and then to apply this perceptive sense to the body social.” (The Threefold Commonwealth.)
  
  >Bernhard Behrens.

In the second of this series of lectures I have sketched for you the method of constructing the spiritual, the political, and the economic life. I have then endeavored in the succeeding lectures to describe in detail these three members of the body social and disentangle what has heretofore been considered a strict unity. (a) All that related to law, politics, and affairs of state should be administered in a democratic parliament. (b) Everything relating to the spiritual and intellectual department of life should be detached from the political or equity state, and the spiritual organization should be independently administered in freedom. (c) The economic organization, separated from the political and legal body, should form its own administration, instead of its own conditions and necessities, founded upon expert knowledge and technical capacity and skill.

Now the objection is always raised that such an arrangement of the social organism denies the necessity of building up social lilac as a unity. For every single institution, every separate work which can be achieved by the individual within the social organism, should endeavor to attain to such a unity; and this unity would be broken up, it is said, if any attempt were made to split the social organism into three parts.

This objection is quite reasonable and comprehensible, judged by the habits of thought of the present day. But, as we all see today it can by no means be justified. Yet it is comprehensible, because in the first place we need only glance at economic life itself in order to see how to the smallest details spiritual, political, and purely economic affairs overlap. In view of this state of things it may well he asked: How could a splitting-up, a dismemberment, bring about any improvement? Let us begin by taking the problem of the origin of merchandise, of actual commodities. We shall find that the value of a commodity, of merchandise, is already possessed of a threefold nature, in that the commodity is produced, distributed, and consumed within the social organism; yet this value gives the appearance of a unity bound to the commodity, as we shall see.

What determines the value of a commodity which can satisfy our requirements? In the first place we must have some personal need for the commodity in question. But let us examine how the need is determined. To begin with, it has, of course, to do with our bodily nature. For the bodily nature determines the value of the various material commodities. But even material goods are variously valued, according to the kind of education and requirements of the individual person. But where spiritual and intellectual products are concerned—and these are often inseparable from the sphere of the material, physical goods—we shall find that the method of valuing any commodity whatever is absolutely determined by the whole make-up of the human being, and the amount and kind of work he is willing to perform in order to possess that commodity. Here we see that it is the spiritual or intellectual element in man that determines the value of a commodity, or of any sort of merchandise.

Secondly, we see that the goods being exchanged between one man and another are limited by the conditions of ownership. and that means neither more nor less than that they are limited by legal conditions. Whenever one man tries to obtain a commodity from another, he touches in some way the other's rights to the commodity in question. So that economic life with its circulation of commodities is permeated throughout by all sorts of legal conditions.

And in the third place, a commodity has not merely the value which we attach to it through our requirements and the personal importance we give to these requirements, which is then transferred to the commodity, it has also an objective value in itself. It has an objective value, to the degree that it is durable or the reverse, lasting or perishable; to the degree that by its nature it is more or less serviceable, plentiful, or scarce. All these things condition an objective, actual economic value, the determination of which demands an objective expert knowledge, and the production of which requires an objective technical capacity. But these three determinations of value are brought together into a unity in the commodity. Hence it may be said with reason. How can that which is united in the commodity be separated and come under the administration of three departments, all concerned with the commodity and interested in its circulation?

Looking merely at the idea, it is certainly true that in life things can and do unite which are administered from the most diverse directions. On the one hand, why should not the subjective value which a man personally attaches to a commodity be determined by his education which has its own independent administration? On the other hand, why should not legal conditions be given a place in the economic organizations? And why should not all the objective value that accrues to the commodity from expert knowledge and technical skill be added to the rest and unite in the object, in a unity? But all this is idea only and has no special value. That which the threefold order of the social organism aims at in this direction must have a much deeper foundation. Here it must be said that the threefold order of the social organism is not an idea conceived out of personal inclinations by one or more persons; it is an impulse resulting from an impartial observation of the historical development of humanity in modern times. We may say that actually for centuries the most important impulses of humanity have been tending unconsciously in the direction of this threefold membering; only they have never gained sufficient force to carry it through. The failure to develop this force is the cause of the present state of things, and of the misery in our surroundings. The time is ripe to say that the work must now be taken in hand for which preparation has been made for centuries, the work of bringing order into the social organism. The first thing we see is that the really free spiritual and intellectual life has broken away from the political and economic bodies. For that spiritual life which is dependent on the economic, legal-political organizations is by no means free. It is a portion of the spiritual life, torn away from the really fertile, free life of the spirit. It would be more exact to say that at the beginning of the period in which capitalism appeared with its division of labor on a grand scale, the really free spiritual life in certain spheres of art, of philosophy, and of religious conviction tore itself away from the economic organization and the political life, and was to a certain extent carried on unnoticed. That free spiritual life, forming only a part of all spiritual life, acts creatively only out of man's own impulses. In my lecture of yesterday I claimed that freedom for the whole of spiritual life. Detached from the free spiritual life, which is the outcome of man's own impulses, exists all that man finds necessary for the administration of the economic life, and for the administration of law and order. What is necessary for the administration of economic affairs has become dependent upon the economic forces themselves. In the positions and circles in which economic power exists, the possibility also exists to train the next generation in economic science, so that it may be able in its turn to attain economic power. But the science which has arisen out of economic life itself is only a part of all that might flow into the economic organization, were the whole of spiritual life to be drawn upon for economic life. But actually, it is commercial risk alone, and everything resulting from it, that is made the object of study; this is worked up into a science of economics.

In regard to political life, the state requires functionaries and even learned men to fill its appointments, and these have been educated according to the stereotyped pattern prescribed for them by the state. The state, in its appointments, wishes and expects that qualities should be cultivated in individuals which can be used to its own advantage. But that brings about intellectual and spiritual enslavement, even if a man imagines himself to be free. He is not aware of his dependence, does not see that he is confined within the limits of the stereotyped model held up to him. But the truly free spiritual and intellectual life has won for itself a certain position in the world, independent of the economic and the political organizations. What is this position? I have already characterized it in part. That spiritual and intellectual life which has preserved its independence has become foreign to life; in one sense it has acquired an abstract character. We need only glance at the content of the philosophies of the free spiritual life, whether aesthetic, religious, or even scientific, in order to see that although very much is said, it amounts to little more than admonitions to society. This content is there merely to appeal to the understanding and to feelings; it is there to play a part in the inner life of men, to fill the soul with inner comfort and well-being. But it has not the power or the impetus actually to enter and influence external life. Hence the unbelief in that spiritual life, to which I have already referred, proceeding from socialist quarters and expressed in the words: No social idea however well-intended, if it is a purely spiritual one, can ever transform social life. To transform social life, real forces are necessary. But this abstract spiritual life is not reckoned as a real force. How far are the things that make up the inner life of the business man or civil servant in his religion, or even his scientific convictions, removed from the laws which he applies in business, in his position in life, in the administration of public affairs! It is absolutely a double outlook on life. On the one hand, principles which are entirely the outcome of economic and political life; on the other, a remnant of freedom, of spiritual life, condemned to impotence as regards inner affairs.

Thus it may be said that a unitary, free, spiritual life came into being centuries ago, but because this was not recognized in the ordering of public life, it has become abstract, devoid of reality. Now, because the influence of the spirit is needed in external social life, spiritual life reclaims its might, its power. That is the situation which now faces us. Political life has followed another direction. Whereas spiritual life has partly emancipated itself, the political organization has completely merged itself in the course of recent centuries in the powerful interests of the economic body. It has happened unnoticed, but in reality the two have become one. Economic interests and needs have found expression in public laws, and these are often held to be human rights. But when scrutinized, they are found to be only economic and political interests and wants in the guise of laws. While, on the one hand, spiritual life demands its power, we find, on the other, that confusion has arisen in regard to the relation between legal and economic conditions. Large masses of the population throughout the civilized world include in their demands for the solution of the social problem a further fusion of the legal and economic organization. The whole of economic life is to be molded according to political and legal conceptions. If we examine today's favorite catchwords, what do we find but the last consequences of the fusion of political and economic life. We find that the radical socialist party, which influences wide circles of the population, demands that a political system, centralized, and graded as to administration, be tacked on to the economic life, and the economic life be hedged in on all sides by legal measures. The power of the law is to extend over economic processes.

This is the other aspect of the crisis which has arisen in our time, and we may say: Through the demands for the increase of political and legal power over the economic life, tyranny of the state, of the legal system, over the economic system will arise. We see that the changes demanded for the recovery of economic life are not such as arise naturally out of economic conditions themselves; rather this demand arises out of the quest for political power, which aims to take possession of and dominate economic life. Proletarian dictatorship—what is it but the last consequence of the fusion of legal and political with economic life.

Thus we see the necessity of thoroughly investigating the connection between law and politics, and the economic life at present On the one hand, free spiritual life has partly emancipated itself and demands restitution of its original powers; on the other hand, if the legal system continues to be more and more closely bound up with the economic system, the whole social organism will be thrown into disorder. The subordination of thought to the suggestion that the state is a unity, and therefore the social body is also a unity, has lasted long enough. The time has now come for us to realize the consequence of that thought in the social chaos existing over a large part of the civilized world. Economic conditions demand complete separation from legal control, because of the evident abuses which the political system would bring into economic affairs, were the developments of the last centuries to be carried to their final consequence. The impulse of the threefold social organism takes cognizance of these facts; and I should like to give you a striking example of something which ought to work as a unity in life, but which is torn asunder owing to these very facts. It is said now that the aim of the threefold order is to break up the unity of social life. In the future, however, it will be said that the threefold order truly lays the foundation for that unity. A striking example will show us that an abstract endeavor to bring about unity has had just the effect of destroying unity. At present there are some superficial people who are extremely proud of the theoretic distinction they draw between law and morality. These people say that morality is the valuation of human action judged purely from the inner stand-point of the soul; that the judgement of an action, whether good or bad, is guided only by that inner stand-point; and precisely in questions of philosophy the moral judgment is very carefully distinguished from the legal judgment, which belongs to outer, public life, and should be determined by the decrees and measures of political and social public life.

Of this separation of morality and law nothing was known up to the time of the rise of modern technical science and the later capitalism. Only within the last few centuries have the impulses of law and morality been torn asunder. And why? Because the moral judgment was diverted into that free spiritual life which has emancipated itself, but which has become powerless with regard to external life. The free spiritual life might be said to exist only for the purpose of exhortation or judgment. It has lost the power really to lay hold on life. Those maxims which might lay hold on life require economic impulses, because they can no longer find purely human impulses, these having been relegated to the sphere of morality. These economic impulses are then turned into laws. Thus the activities of life, the determination of justice and the warmth infused into it by human morals are torn asunder. That which ought to be a unity is torn apart into a duality.

A close study of the development of modern states will show that by insisting on the unitary character of the state, we have hastened the disunion of those very forces which should combine to produce a unity. The impulse of the three-membered social organism is in opposition to this separation. If we regard in its true light the actual principle of that impulse we shall see there can be no question of any splitting up of life. The spiritual life should have its own administration. And has not every human being a connection with it, when it develops—as I have described it—in perfect freedom? Everybody is educated in that free spiritual life, our children are brought up in it, we find our immediate spiritual interests in it, we are united with it. And the very people who are thus united with that spiritual life and draw their strength from it, those very same people live within the legal and political life, and determine the legal order governing their relations with one another. They establish that legal order by the help of the spiritual impulses which they take in from the spiritual life; and this legal order is the direct result of what has been acquired through contact with the spiritual life. Again, the tie which is developed, binding man to man democratically on the basis of the legal order, the impulse which he receives as the basis of his relationship to other men, he carries into economic life, because there are again the same human beings who have a connection with the spiritual life, occupy a legal position, and carry on business. On the one hand, the measures which the human being takes, the manner in which he associates with others, the way in which he transacts business, all that is permeated with what he has developed in his spiritual life, and with the legal order he has established in economic life; for they are the same men who work in the threefold organism and the unity is not effected by any abstract regulation, but by the living human beings themselves. Each member of the community, however, can develop his own nature and individuality in independence and can thus work for unity in the most effective manner. This applies to every member. On the other hand, we can see how, under the suggestion of the state as the principal of unity, precisely what is inseparable in life becomes separated, even what is so intimately connected as law and morality.

Therefore the impulse to establish the threefold social organism is not to bring about the separation of what belongs together, but actually the cooperation of factors which ought to work together.

The spiritual life can only develop on its own free and independent basis. But when allowed to develop in this way, and granted an equal right to subsist side by side with the two other departments of the social organism, it will no longer be an abstract formation, like the spiritual life which has actually been developing for centuries apart from the realities of life; it will develop an impetus to play a direct part in the active, real life of the legal-political and the economic organizations. It might seem to be an absurd contradiction, a paradox, to assert, on the one hand, that spiritual life should be fully independent and develop from its own foundations, as I showed yesterday, and, an the other hand, to claim that it shall play a part in the practical fields. But precisely when the spirit is left to itself does it develop impulses capable of embracing all spheres. For there is no reason why the free spirit in man should defer to any stereotyped pattern in the interest of the state; it is not to be limited by the condition that only those shall receive education who can command economic resources; but it will he able to develop human individuality in any generation through the observation of human capacities. The force, however, which strives to find expression in any one generation will not only embrace the phenomena and facts of nature; it will include, especially, human life itself, because the spirit extends its interests over all life. We have been condemned to be unpractical in the sphere of spiritual matters, because only these regions were left to the free spiritual life; we were denied the right to enter into external reality. As soon as the spirit is allowed not only to register parliamentary measures, but of itself to determine the laws of the state in freedom, in that moment it will make the legal code its own creation. The spirit will enter into the machinery and into the order of the law, as soon as the present mechanical system, which functions without thought according to certain maxims and points of view for the economic life, has been relinquished. As soon as the human spirit is free to play its part in the economic life it will at once prove its capacity in the practice of life within the economic circuit. All that is needed is to admit its power to enter actively into the practical realm. Then it will play its part. This true view of reality is a necessity. The spirit in man must not be hermetically sealed up in abstractions; it must be allowed to influence life. Then at every moment it will fructify the economic sphere, which otherwise must remain sterile, or must be dependent on mere chance for its fructification.

Now all this must be taken into account, if we wish to arrive at a clear understanding of the manner in which the spiritual, the legal-political, and the economic system should work together within the threefold social organism. There are very clear-sighted persons to whom these things are still quite obscure. They often see that under present economic conditions, from which, we may say, the spirit has been banished, circumstances have arisen which are now socially untenable. There is, for instance, a highly respected economic thinker whose opinion is as follows. He says: Looking at economic life today, what strikes us most is a system of consumption by which social evils are promoted in the highest degree. Those who possess the economic means today consume various things which are really only luxuries. He points out the role played by what he considers luxuries in the life of society and in economic life. Certainly this is not difficult. We need seek no further than the common occurrence of the purchase of a string of pearls by a lady. Many people would regard this as a very harmless luxury. They do not consider the actual present economic value of a string of pearls. On the equivalent of its value, five working-class families can live for six months. Yet this is hung by the lady in question round her neck! Anybody can understand this, and in the present-day attitude of mind one can seek a remedy for such things. The esteemed thinker whom I have in mind thinks it necessary for the state (of course, everybody is now under the obsession of the state) to impose high taxes on luxuries; so high, indeed, that people would cease buying them. He does not admit the validity of the argument that if luxuries were taxed in this way, they would decrease, and the state then would lose the benefit of the taxation. He argues that this is just what should happen, and that the taxation has a moral aim. Taxation would then have the effect of promoting morality!

Such is the way of thinking today. So small is the belief in the power of the human spirit, that it is proposed to establish the morality, which should spring from the human soul and spirit, by means of taxation, namely, by law! No wonder that here, at any rate, no unity of life can be reached.

The same thinker points out that the acquisition of property is a wrong, for the reason that monopolies are possible in our social life; that, for instance, social life still labors under the burden of the right of inheritance. And again he proposes to regulate all these things by taxation. If inherited property were taxed as highly as possible, he thinks that justice as regards property would result. It would also be possible to oppose monopolies and other evils of the same kind by law, by legal promulgations of the state. What strikes one in this thinker is that he says it is not of such importance that all these proposals should be determined by state laws, taxation, and so on; for it is plain that the value of such measures is by no means beyond dispute, because state laws do not always produce the intended result. But then he says: ‘The essential point is not that these laws should actually raise the level of morality, or hinder monopolies; what matters are the feelings which prompt such laws.’

But this is an absolutely complete example of turning in a circle! A famous political thinker of our day does almost exactly the same thing. He proposes to call forth an ethical mode of thought and feeling by legislation; but, he says, it is not necessary that this legislation should actually be in force; the main thing is that people should have a feeling for such legislation. It is a clear case of the Chinaman who tries to catch himself by his own pigtail! It is a strange closing of the circle; but one which works most effectually in our present social life. For public life is now molded under the influence of this mode of thought. And no one sees that all these things must lead in the end to the recognition of the fact that the basis for a really new construction of social life is the activity of the spiritual life in complete independence; likewise, the independence of the legal organization and its detachment from the economic system; and, finally, the untrammeled development of the economic organization.

Such things strike us very forcibly today when we see how people, who are more than commonly well-intentioned, whose ethical sense for the need of a reconstruction of social life is beyond doubt, show at least a faint indication in their works of the absolute necessity for a spiritual foundation to the social edifice, and yet give evidence everywhere of a lack of understanding of the means by which that spiritual foundation can be attained.

Such a person is Robert Wilbrand, who has just written a book on the social problem. Robert Wilbrand is no mere theorist. In the first place, he speaks from a warm heart and enthusiastic for social things. Secondly, he has traveled all over the world in order to acquaint himself with social conditions, and in his book, which appeared a few weeks ago, he faithfully depicts the terrible misery of the human being that prevails everywhere today. He gives graphic pictures of the misery of the proletariat, the wretchedness of the civilized world. He shows also from his own standpoint how, in the most diverse regions in which the social question has now become acute, people have striven to build up a new social structure, but how they have been, or must be, frustrated, as may be plainly seen in present-day Middle Europe (1919). And Robert Wilbrand is quite certain that every attempt made in the temper of the present day must fail. Having given expression to this sentiment in various cadences in the course of his book, he concludes in the following remarkable manner. He says: ‘These attempts which are being made must fail; they will never succeed in any reconstruction, because the social organism lacks a soul, and until it has a soul, it can accomplish no fruitful work.’ The most interesting part is that the book doses on this note, but does not indicate how this soul is to be found. The aim of the impulse for the threefold social organism is not to announce theoretically that the soul is lacking, and wait till it appears of itself; but to point out how it will develop. It will develop when the spiritual life has been liberated from the political and economic organizations. The spiritual life, if it can only follow the impulses which man evolves from his spiritual nature, will then be strong enough to take its part in all the rest of practical life. Then spiritual life will take that form which I endeavored to describe yesterday; it will contain reality. We can say that in the present and in the future this spiritual life will be strong enough to bear the burden laid upon it, which, for example, is mentioned in my book, The Threefold Commonwealth. It is true, we can now point out, as it has been clone in my second lecture, the way in which capital works today in the social economic process. But those who simply say that capital should be abolished or transformed into common property have no idea how capital works in the economic system, especially under the present conditions of production. They do not know that accumulations of capital are needed in order that through the control of capital men may work for the public good. For this reason in my book, The Threefold Commonwealth, the administration of capital was made, on the whole, dependent on the spiritual organization in cooperation with the independent political and legal organization. Whereas we now say that capital makes business, the impulse for the threefold order of the social organism requires that, although it should always be possible to accumulate capital, provision must be made for capital to be administered by some one who has developed out of the spiritual life the necessary capacity for business; and that this accumulation of capital may be administered by the person to whom it belongs only as long as he is able to administer it himself. When the capitalist can no longer put his own capacities into the administration of the capital, he must see—or if he should feel himself incapable of such a task, a corporation of the spiritual organization must assume the responsibility of seeing—that the management of the business shall pass to a highly capable successor, able to carry it on for the benefit of the community. That is to say: The transference of a business concern to any person or group of persons is not dependent on purchase or any other displacement of capital, but is determined by the capacity of individuals themselves; it is a matter of transfer from the capable to the capable, from those who can work in the service of the community to those who can also work in the best way far the common good. On this kind of transference the social safety of the future depends. It will not be an economic transference, as is now the case; this transference will result from the impulses of the human being, received from the independent spiritual-intellectual life and from the independent legal-political life. There will even be corporations within the cultural organization, united with all other departments of the cultural life, on. which the administration of capital will devolve.

Thus, instead of handing over the means of production to the community, we transfer it from one capable person to another equally capable, that is, the means of production is circulated within the community; this circulation depends on the freedom of the cultural life by which it is effected and upheld. So that we may say: the main factor in the circuit of economic life is the impulse which is at work in the spiritual, and in the equity life. It would be impossible to imagine any unity more complete than that effected in economic life by such measures. But the stream which unites itself with the economic organization flows from the free spiritual and the free political organizations. No longer will society be exposed to the chance which is expressed in supply and demand; or in the other factors in our present economic organization. Reasonable and just relations between man and man will enter into this new economic life. So that the spiritual, legal, and economic organizations will work together as one, even though they are administered separately; man will carry over from one sphere into another—since he belongs to all three—what each one needs. It is true that we must free ourselves from many a prejudice if these things are gradually to be brought to pass. Today we are absolutely convinced that the means of production and land are matters belonging to economic life. The impulse of the threefold order requires that only the reciprocal values of things shall come under the economic administration, and that prices shall approximate values, so that ultimately what finally proceeds from the economic administration is merely the determination of price.

But it is impossible to reach a just determination of price as long as the means of production and land function as they now do within the economic system. The disposal of land, systematized in the laws relating to its ownership, and the disposal of the finished means of production (for example, a factory with its machinery and equipment), should be no matter for the economic organization; they must belong partly to the spiritual and partly to the legal. That is to say, the transference of land from one person or group of persons to another must not be carried out by purchase or through inheritance, but by transference through the legal means, on the principles of the spiritual organization. The means of production through which something is manufactured—a process which lies at the basis of the creation of capital—can only be looked at from the viewpoint of its commodity-cost while it is being built up. Once it is ready for operation, the creator of it takes over the management because he understands it best. He has charge of it as long as he can personally use his capacities. But the finished means of production is no longer a commodity to be bought and sold; it can only be transferred by one person or group of persons to another person or group of persons by law, or rather, by spiritual decisions confirmed by law. Thus, what at present forms part of the economic life, such as the laws relating to the disposal of property, to the sale of land, and to the right of disposal of the means of production, will he placed on the basis of the independent legal organization working in conjunction with the independent spiritual organization. These ideas may appear to the present-day world strange and unfamiliar. But this fact is just what is so sad and bitter. Only when these things find entrance into the minds and souls and hearts of men, so that the human being orders his social life accordingly, only then can be fulfilled what so many try to bring about in other ways, but always without success.

It is a truth which must now at last be recognized, that much which at present appears paradoxical will seem a matter of course when social life is really on the way to recovery.

The impulse for the three-membered social organism makes no social demands on the basis of passion, or impelled by motives and emotions which often underlie these social demands. It puts forward its demands from a study of the actual evolution of humanity in recent times up to the present day. It sees how, in the course of long centuries, one form of social life has given place to another. Let us go back to a time before the end of the Middle Ages. We find a condition of things extending into the latter part of medieval times, especially in civilized Europe. We find society in a condition which we may call a social order of might. This society of might or despotism arose in the following way, to give one example of the manner in which such changes are brought about. Some conqueror, with his train of followers, settled in some locality and these became his workmen. Then, since the leader was looked up to an account of his individual qualities, his abilities, a social relationship was brought about between his power and that of those whom he had once led, and who afterwards became his servants or his workmen. Here the model for the social organism, which took its rise in one person or in one aristocratic group, passed on to the community at large, and lived on in that community. The will of the community was to a certain extent only the reproduction or the projection of the single will in that society of might, of despotism.

Under the influence of modern times, of the division of labor, of capitalism, of technical culture, this despotic order of society gave place to the system of trade, of exchange, which, however, carries on the same impulses among individuals and in the whole life of the community. The commodity produced by the individual becomes merchandise, which is exchanged for something else. For financial economy is, in reality, so far as it consists in a transaction between individuals or groups, neither more nor less than a system of trading. Social life is a system of trading. Whereas under the old despotic system, the whole community had to do with the will of a single individual, which it accepted, the system of trading, under which we are still living, and from which a great part of the population of the world is striving to extricate itself, has to do with the will of one individual opposed to the will of another. And only out of the cooperation of one single member with another arises, as if by chance, the collective will of the community. Springing from intercourse between one individual and another the economic community takes shape, together with wealth, and the element which we recognize in plutocracy. In all this there is something at work which has to do with the clashing of individual interests with one another. It is no wonder that the old despotic order of society could not aspire to the smallest emancipation of the spiritual life. For on account of his superior capacity their leader was also recognized as the authority in the spiritual, and in the legal order. But it is quite comprehensible that the legal, the state, the political principle has gained the upper hand, especially in the trading system of society, for have we not seen on what foundation law actually wills to rest, even though that will does not find its true expression in the present social order?

Law is really concerned with all that the individual man has to regulate with other individual men who are his equals. The trading system is an order in which one person has to do with another. It was, therefore, to the interest of the society based on the trading system to transform its economic system, in which one person has to do with another, into a legal system; that is to say, to change economic interests into legal statutes. Just as the old despotic system was transformed into a society of trading, this latter system now strives, out of the innermost impulses of human evolution, to take a new social form, especially in the domain of economies. For the system of trading, having appropriated to itself the spiritual life, having enslaved it and turned it away from real life, has gradually grown into a mere economic system of society, the form demanded by certain radical socialists. But, out of the deepest human impulses of our day, this trading system strives to pass, especially in the domain of economic life, into that form which I might call, even if the term is inadequate, the Commonwealth. The Society of Traders must be transformed into the Commonwealth.

What form will the Commonwealth take Just as the individual will, or the will of an aristocracy, which is also a kind of individual will, continues in a sense to work in the whole community, so that the impulses of the individuals only represent an extension of the will of the one; just as the trading system had to do with the clashing of one individual will with another, so the economic order of the Commonwealth will have to do with a kind of collective will, which then in reverse fashion works back on the individual will. I explained in the second lecture how associations of the various branches of production with the consumers will be called into existence in the sphere of economic life, so that everywhere there will be a combination of the producers with the consumers. These associations will enter into contracts with other associations. A kind of collective will then arises, within larger or smaller groups. This collective will is an ideal for which many socialists yearn; but they visualize the matter in a very confused, by no means reasonable, manner. Just as in the society of despotism, of power, the single will worked in the community, so there must work in the future Commonwealth a common will, a collective will.

But how will that be possible? As we know, it must arise through the cooperation of single wills. The single wills must give a result which is no tyranny for the individual, but within which everyone must be able to feel himself free. What must be the content of this collective will? In it must he contained what every soul and every human body can accept, something with which they are in agreement, with which they can grow familiar. That means that the spirit and soul which live in the individual human being must also live in the collective will of the Commonwealth. This is possible only when those who build up the collective will carry in themselves of their own will, in their intentions, in their feelings, and in their thoughts, a complete understanding of the individual man. Into that collective will must flow all that is felt by the individual man, as his own spiritual, moral, and bodily nature. This is imperative.

This was not so in the society of might, which acted instinctively, in which a single person was looked up to by the community, because the individual persons forming the community could not make their individual will felt. Nor was it so in the trading system of society, in which a single individual will clashed with others, and a chance kind of common life arose from it. But it must be otherwise when an organized collective will influences the individual. Then, no one who shares in the forming of that collective will must lack understanding of what is truly human. There no one who is equipped only with abstract modern science, which applies merely to external nature, and which can never explain the whole man, must presume to decide questions on the philosophy of life. Men will approach the philosophy of life with spiritual science which embraces the whole man, body, soul, and spirit, and provides understanding in regard to the feeling and will of every single person. Hence. it will only be possible to establish an economic order of the community, when the economic organization can be inspired by the independent spiritual life. It will thus not be possible to bring about a sound future unless what is thought in the free life of the spirit is reflected back from the economic life. That free spiritual life will not prove itself unpractical, but on the contrary, prove itself very practical. Only he who lives in an atmosphere of spiritual slavery can be content just to reflect on Good and Evil, on the True and the False, the Beautiful and the Ugly within his own soul. But anyone who, through spiritual science, has learnt to behold the spirit as a living force, and who grasps it by the aid of spiritual science, will be practical in all his actions, especially in everything relating to human life. That which he absorbs from his spiritual vision passes immediately into every function of life; it actually puts on a form which enables it to live in the immediate practice of life. Only a spiritual culture that has been banished from practical life can become foreign to life. A spiritual culture which is allowed to influence practical life develops in the practice. He who really knows what spiritual life is, knows how close to practical life that spirit element is, when it is allowed to follow its own impulses unhindered. The man who desires to found a new philosophy, and who does not know even how to chop wood, should the occasion arise, is no really good philosopher. For he who would found a philosophy, without the ability to turn his hand to anything in the direct practice of life, can found no philosophy of life, but only one foreign to all life. True spiritual life is practical. Under the influences which have made themselves felt for centuries, it is comprehensible that there should be persons belonging to the present civilization—among them the leaders of our intellectual life—who are of the same opinion as Robert Wilbrand. In his book on social reconstruction, with the best intentions, from a feeling prompted by true ethics, he says: “No practical work of reconstruction can be accomplished because the soul is lacking.” But people cannot bring themselves to ask about the reality of soul-development, of soul-building, they cannot make up their minds to ask: What is the effect of a truly free spiritual life on the political and economic life? That free spiritual life will, as I have shown, rightly cooperate with the economic life. Then the economic life, which can cooperate with the political and spiritual life, can at all times train men who will in their turn give stimulus to the spiritual life. Through the three-membered social organism a free, absolutely real life of the community will be brought about. Then those persons who now, out of instinct rather than out of a true courage in life, seek a vague something which they call soul or spirit, may be answered in these words: Learn to recognize the reality of your spiritual nature. Give to the spirit the things of the spirit, and to the soul the things of the soul; and it will then be plain also what belongs to the economic life.

It is quite possible that to some among my audience my manner of dealing with the subject of these lectures may have appeared somewhat singular. Singular, inasmuch as it might possibly be said that these are isolated ideas and thoughts on a possible way of building the social structure, and that the catchwords so common in the social movements of today are noticeably lacking in these lectures. Certainly, thoughts and ideas must be a foundation, but I think it has been made clear that these thoughts and ideas differ considerably from much else that has been said on the subject. For instance, we often hear it said that there is no equal distribution of wealth, and that some evil is the cause of this; that such evils must be abolished, and so on. We often hear such remarks at the present day. It appears to me more important to act in this sphere just as in practical life. If we have to do with some commodity needed by human beings, and produced by a machine, it is not enough to draw up a program and announce that a meeting must be called and an organization founded in order that the commodity in question may be produced. This is the way modern social programs come into being. It seems to me far more important to indicate the way in which the machine, in the present instance the social organism, should be put together and utilized in order that it bring forth something which will meet the more or less conscious social demands of the present day.

And I think no one can say that these lectures have not dealt with the means by which bread, coal, or other necessities are produced. In my opinion they have dealt with such matters. They have dealt with the actual foundations of the social organism, with the manner in which men must live and work together within that social organism, in order to bring about the fulfilment of social demands. I wish to preface my lecture with these remarks, because such a reproach might possibly be made in regard to this, my concluding lecture.

Only those who see why the price of bread which appears on every table is connected with the economy of the entire world, and why the events taking place in Australia or America and the commodities these countries produce are related to the price paid here for bread or coal, will recognize the presence of an international problem which involves the whole social question. In view of the many prevailing opinions and prejudices, however, it is not exactly easy to speak of the international problem at the present moment. Have we not seen to what unheard of conditions international intercourse has led us during the last five years? Did not the belief prevail within the widest circles—pre 1919—that international feeling, international understanding had been established in modern humanity? To what has this international feeling, this international understanding led? It has led to the fact that over a large part of the civilized world the people have torn one another to pieces! (Twenty-six years later—1945—finds the condition even worse. Ed.) And even those ideas and idealistic aims whose greatest value lay in their international character have proved a failure, as their promoters themselves acknowledge. We need only recall the words, the pronouncements and views of international Christianity, for this is what it claimed to be, as it joined in so many cases in the chorus of international chauvinism. And we might cite many an instance of the shipwrecking of international impulses in late years. Also, when we speak of the international life of mankind, perhaps more particularly in reference to its economic aspect, we shall find it necessary to revise our thoughts and our judgments in this respect. It will be necessary to penetrate to these sources of human nature which can only be found when we look towards the spirit and the soul. To do so, to avoid the mere repetition of the words ‘spirit’ and ‘soul,’ to give heed instead to the actual dominance of the spirit and soul, this, in my opinion, has at least been attempted in these lectures.

All over the world the relations existing among human beings in their common work are governed by two impulses, about which it is of the highest importance that the truth should prevail among us, a true unvarnished conception, not disfigured by hackneyed phrases. Two impulses dwell in the human soul, which are related just as the north and south poles of a magnetic compass are related to one another. These two impulses are egoism and love. It is a widespread opinion that ethical law requires that egoism be conquered by love, and that in the progress of human evolution pure love should supplant egoism. This claim is put forward by many on the ground of ethics, and to-day also as a social need. But an understanding of the kind of opposition which actually exists between the two forces of egoism and love is certainly less evident in our day. In speaking of egoism, we should recognize that it begins with the bodily needs of the human being. We cannot understand that which arises from the bodily needs of the human being, unless we regard it as belonging to the sphere of egoism. The needs of the human being proceed from egoism. Now we must believe that it is possible to ennoble the feeling of egoism; and, therefore, it is not a good thing to form one's opinions from the phrases current on this subject. To say that egoism must be overcome by love does not help us much to understand egoism. For the point is, that he who meets his fellowmen with a purely human interest and understanding acts differently from one whose interests are narrow, and who gives no thought to all that fills the hearts and souls of his fellow creatures, and who is without interest for his surroundings. On this account, the former, who is truly interested in his fellowmen, need not be less egoistic in life than the other; for his egoism may be precisely his desire to serve human beings. It may call forth in him a feeling of inner well-being, of inner bliss, even of ecstasy, to devote himself to the service of his fellowmen. Then, as far as the outer life is concerned, deeds which are absolutely altruistic to all appearance may proceed from egoism; in the life of feeling they cannot be appraised otherwise than as egoism.

But the question of egoism must be extended much further. We must follow it through the whole life of the human soul and spirit. We must see clearly how the spirit and soul-nature arise out of man's inner being in various manifestations, just as the bodily wants arise. Thus, everything in the nature of creative fantasy, of imaginative creation arises out of the inner being; likewise all creations in the sphere of art. If we proceed in our investigations without bias and seek a right understanding of such things, we shall find that which is the creator of man's imagination. All that rises out of the unknown depths of his being has the same source, but at a higher stage than the bodily wants. The life of imagination, of fantasy, which is developed in art, viewed subjectively, reposes on a feeling of inward satisfaction, more refined, nobler than the satisfaction of hunger, for instance, but not different in quality for the individual himself, even if what is produced thereby may have a different significance for the world.

But all human egoism is directed by the fact that man must agree with his fellows, that he should live and work together with them. Egoism itself requires that he should live and work with other men. Much of what we carry out in common with other men is absolutely founded on egoism, and still may be credited to the noblest human virtues. If we contemplate maternal love, we find that it is absolutely founded on the egoism of the mother; yet it manifests itself most nobly in the common life of humanity.

But that which is actually founded on egoism, because man needs his fellowmen for egoistic reasons, extends over the common family life, over the common life of the tribe, over the common life of the nation, of the people; and the manner in which a man conducts himself among his people and in his nation is nothing but the reflection of his own egoism. In the love of country, in patriotism, egoism doubtless rises to a high level; it is ennobled; it takes the form of an ideal and rightly so. But that ideal is, nevertheless, rooted in human egoism. Now this ideal must spring from human egoism, and it must be realized in order that the productivity of a people may be able to pass on something to humanity. And so we see how from that single impulse of the human soul—egoism, all that ultimately finds expression in nationalism is developed. Nationalism is egoism experienced by the whole nation in common. Nationalism is egoism carried into the spiritual region of life. Nationalism, for instance, is saturated with, glows with, the imagination of the people in which it finds expression. But this life of imagination itself is the higher spiritual development of all that constitutes human wants. We must go back to this root, in order to gain a clear understanding of it by right contemplation.

Of a very different species is that characteristic of human nature which develops as internationalism. We become national, because the feeling of nationalism arises out of our own nature. Nationalism is a blossom on the growth of the individual human being who is of the same blood as his tribe, or is bound by other ties to his people. Nationalism grows with the man. It grows into him as a certain bodily growth. He does not possess internationalism in this way. Internationalism is rather comparable to the feeling we acquire when we contemplate the beauties of nature; through this contemplation we are impelled to love, to reverence, to understanding, because it has become a reality to us, because it impresses itself on us, because we give ourselves up to it freely. Whereas we grow into our own nation because we are, so to speak, members of it, we learn to know other nations. They work on us indirectly through our knowledge of them, our understanding of them. We learn little by little to love them with understanding; and in proportion to our learning to love and to understand mankind in its different peoples in their various countries, does our feeling grow for internationalism. There are two absolutely distinct sources in human nature from which arise, respectively, nationalism and internationalism. Nationalism is the highest development of egoism. Internationalism is that which permeates us more and more, as we give ourselves to a wide understanding of human nature. We must regard the common life of human beings all over the civilized globe in this light, especially if we wish to come to a clear understanding of the conflicting element in these impulses, nationalism and internationalism.

Even if the economic life were governed by its own conditions, and an attempt were made to understand it, it would still be necessary to point to the two impulses in the human soul just mentioned. What we have called the threefold human life element in these lectures leads us back to these two impulses in the human soul. Think of the economic system, for instance; consider how it pervades the whole national and international life of humanity. Let us examine this economic system. We are compelled to recognize its origin in human wants, in consumption. The satisfaction of these wants is really the whole task of economic life. Production and distribution of commodities, administration, human intercourse, and so on, are necessary to supply human requirements. And here again we may ask: What element of human nature lies at the root of requirement, of consumption? Egoism is at their root. And it is important that this fact should be properly understood. If it is understood, no one will feel impelled to ask with regard to the economic life: “How can we overcome egoism?” but rather: “How is it possible for altruism to meet the just demands of egoism?” Perhaps this question may sound less idealistic, but it is the true one.

When we turn our attention to production by which consumption is satisfied, we see at once that something else is necessary, The producer is of course at the same time the consumer. He whose business it is to produce must have an understanding not only of the process of production, but also of the life of his fellowmen, so that he can devote himself to the work of production in a manner corresponding to their needs. The producer must be able, indirectly or directly through institutions of which we have spoken, to see what men need for their consumption. He must then devote himself unselfishly and with understanding to some kind of production for which he has the capability. It is only necessary to describe this, and people will be forced to see that the real motive-power of production is self-sacrificing love towards human society, even though the sphere in which it manifests may appear dry and uninteresting. And nothing constructive will ever be said regarding the actual solution of the social problem, until it is understood that production can only be regulated in a social manner by the creation, through the spiritual and equity organizations, of a source from which unselfish love for the various branches of production can flow into the human soul, because of the producers' interest in their fellowmen and in life.

Between these two—consumption governed by egoism, and production in which love is the ruling principle—there is the distribution of commodities, holding the balance between them. Today this is brought about through the rise and fall of the market, through supply and demand, but in future times an association of men will substitute intelligence for the fluctuation of the market. Men will be there who will make it their task to regulate production in conformity with their observation of the needs of the consumer. So that the market will consist in commodities which the associations, already mentioned, will be able to produce; these associations having first studied and observed intelligently the needs of consumption. All catchwords in this department of life will be discarded, and the attention will be wholly given to realities. Who has not seen that in modern times something has arisen which was bound to appear as a result of the continual widening of man's horizon all over the world? Instead of the former national economy, limited to small territories, we have a world-economy. It is true that so far this world-economy is only in the stage of a sort of demand; though it has developed to such an extent that in almost every part of the world commodities are consumed which are produced in other parts of the world. Here again human ideals and the feelings of the human soul have not kept pace with the world requirements which have become evident. Everywhere we see how urgent is the demand of modern times for a world-economy, for arrangements by which a world-economy could be rendered possible.

What are the conditions under which world-economy (Cf. World Economy, by Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophic Press, New York.) is alone possible? Of a truth, this question can only be answered after we have first turned our attention to the form which the social order of the future must take from the present time on, if the order of the Commonwealth takes the place of the old despotic order—that of might—and of the present method of trade. The Commonwealth is the social order in which production will be carried on by associations, through contracts with other associations.

If this should really come about, where would the real difference lie between such a community, and the mere trading system of society, the ruling system today?

The difference shows itself in the fact that in the trading system the individual or the single group has, for the most part, to do with another individual or another group. What are the common interests of individuals or groups in their mutual relations? At present, whether they are producers or consumers, their production and consumption are divided from one another, as if by a chasm, by the chances of the market. And the chances of the market are the means of bringing about the distribution of commodities and of facilitating commerce. Whatever may be our opinion as to the justification or otherwise of the domination of capital, or of labor, and the like; as to the significance of capital and the significance of labor; it must be admitted that the essential fact in our system of exchange is that the distribution of commodities should be the ruling factor. Distribution is the link between production and consumption; when these are sundered from each other by the abyss of the market, there is no means of communication between them through the exercise of intelligence.

What will take the place in the Commonwealth of the system of distribution now prevailing? The whole domain of economic life will be drawn into the sphere of interest of every producer. Whereas it is now the interest of the producer to find out how he can procure and dispose of his products, which, however, he does out of self-interest, it will be necessary for every producer in the Commonwealth to have a full interest in consumption, distribution, and production. That is to say, it will be necessary that the entire economic process be reflected in the economic interests of the individual man. This must be the essential point in the social order of the Commonwealth.

Let us see what would be the position of this commonwealth, (which also in the single State today is undoubtedly a demand of the future,) with regard to the international problem. How does this international problem present itself to us, especially with regard to the economic system? We can see that though a universal demand exists for a world-economy, the single nations stand separate within the circuit of the whole world-economy. These separate nations, apart from the other historical causes of their existence, are held together for a time by the feelings arising out of the egoism of the community. Even in the highest part of the life of a nation, in literature, art, science, religion, it is the imagination arising out of egoism which holds the groups of people together. The groups thus held together take their place in the sphere of world-economy, and in the course of the 19th century they have asserted themselves with particular energy, and ever more and more decidedly up to the beginning of the 20th century, when the climax was reached. We might describe what really happened by saying that while other interests which bore a much greater resemblance to those of the old despotic order of society formerly prevailed between the nations, the principle of exchange and barter became even more prominent, precisely in the mutual intercourse of nations. This condition of things, therefore, reached its height at the beginning of the 20th century. Just as production and consumption were carried on in the various states, so what was supplied, to other states or was derived from them was absorbed into the egoism of the various states. Thus value was attached only to that in which the single state, as a nation, was interested. The reciprocal economic relations established between the states were absolutely dependent upon the commercial principle, ruling the system of trade in regard to the distribution of commodities. In this sphere, but on a large scale, it was especially evident how the, mere system of trade must lead ad absurdum; and the fact that this actually came to pass was one of the chief causes that led to the disaster of the World-War. (World-War I. Ed.)

That this great opposition existed between the demand for a world-economy and the influence of the various states against its realization is now becoming ever more and more evident. Instead of promoting a world-economy, these states closed their frontiers, shut themselves off by imposing customs and duties and by other measures, and laid claim to every advantage that might result from a world-economy, seizing all for themselves. This led to the crisis which we call the catastrophe of the World-War. There were, of course, other causes of the disaster but this is one of the chief causes. Therefore it is important to understand that the very first step towards the improvement of international relations is to be able to carry on commerce across, frontiers, but on different principles from those on which the present system of exchange is based.

Just as every single person, if he wishes to share in the work of the community, must take an interest in production and consumption wherever it is carried on, just as every member of the community must be interested in the whole sphere of economy, consumption, production and distribution, so in every country in the world impulses must prevail which would lead to a genuine interest in every other country; so that nothing resembling the chance conditions of the present market could prevail among the peoples of the earth, but a real inner understanding would prevail among them.

And here we come to the deeper sources of that which is bring sought through the abstract ideals of the so-called League of Nations, the avowed object of which is the correction of certain evils in the common life of nations. But the principle underlying it is the same as that on which many other schemes are now founded. Many of those who at the present day ponder over the evils of life seize upon the first means at hand to carry out some reform or other. Some one sees that a certain luxury has wide distribution and feels impelled to impose a tax on it, and so forth. Such a reformer never thinks of going to the source of the evil in question, of devising a social structure for the community in which an undesirable luxury could not come into existence. But this is precisely what is necessary in the life of nations. Therefore we shall never attain sincere international social relations by regulations of a merely corrective character. There is no other way than by finding the source of a common understanding among the various peoples.

There can be no understanding of other nations as long as we keep to one thing which is as natural to the human being as his growth, so long as we look only to that which must lead to nationalism, to the division of peoples among themselves. What is there in the spiritual life of our day which is the only thing that bears an international character, and alone has not been lost during the War because it was impossible for men to take this character away from it? (For had this been done, the field itself would have been annihilated.) What is there that is truly international on the earth? Nothing but the field of modern science which is concerned only with the outer world of the senses.

Abstract science has acquired an international character. It has been easy to see in these times, when there has been so much falsehood in the world, that, whenever anybody did science the injury of misusing it in the service of nationalism, he robbed it of its true character. On the other hand, do we not see by this fact which I have quoted that this kind of spiritual life which expresses itself in intellectualism was not able to establish international understanding? I think it may be seen clearly enough that the powerlessness of this abstract trend of thought, which I have described from so many different points of view, has shown itself most distinctly in the relation of this abstract spiritual life to internationalism. Science was not able to pour into the human soul international impulses deep enough to resist the terrible influences of these last years. And where science attempted to evoke social impulses, such as those in the international socialist movement, it was found that international socialism was also unable to hold its own, and that it mostly flowed away into national channels. Why did this happen? Just because from among the old heirlooms of humanity it had only inherited intellectuality, and intellectuality is not powerful enough to work creatively in life. Thus we see how, on the one hand, this new scientific mode of thought, which arose simultaneously with capitalism and technical science, contains within it an international element, and yet at the same time proves its impotence to establish a true international relationship among men. In contrast to this, we must call to mind and apply here what I said in my fourth lecture regarding the mode of thought known as spiritual science, which is founded on perception and knowledge of the spirit.

This spiritual perception does not rest on outer sense perception; it is the result of the individual development of human nature. It springs from the same soil as imagination; but it is rooted in profounder depths of human nature. For this reason it rises not only to subjective, imaginative forms, but reaches to the objective knowledge of the realities of the spiritual world. This kind of spiritual perception is today very often misunderstood. Those who have no knowledge of it say what can be found in this way by spiritual perception is merely subjective, and cannot be proved. Mathematical truths are also subjective and incapable of being proved! No agreement among individuals can confirm the truths of mathematics. Anyone acquainted with the Pythagorean theorem knows that it is true, even if a million others contradict it. Thus, spiritual science is also presented as an objective aim. It takes the same way as imagination, and rises higher; it is rooted in the objective depths of human nature, and ascends to objective heights. Hence this spiritual perception rises above all that which, as imagination, inspires the nations. It is sought equally by one people or another, in one language or another. It is one and the same in the experience of all human beings all over the earth, if it is only sought deeply enough. Hence that spiritual perception which, as I have indicated, can actually enter into and inform practical social life, can, at the same time, enter actively into international life and form a bond of union between one people and another. The poetry of a people, its peculiarities in other branches of art, will be produced by it in its own individual way. To spiritual perception something arises out of the individuality of a people which is similar to that which arises elsewhere. The roots from which things spring are in various places. The final source of all results is the same over the whole earth. Many people speak of the spirit today who do not know that the spirit must be interpreted. When the spirit is understood, it is found to be something which does not separate, but unites men, because it can be traced back to the inmost being of man, and because one human being brings forth the same as another, and because he fully understands that other.

So that when we actually spiritualize that which otherwise finds expression as individualism in the imagination of one people, the single peoples will become simply the manifold expression of that which, to spiritual perception, is one. Then, over the whole earth, people will find it possible to tolerate the different national peculiarities, because there will be no need for an abstract uniformity everywhere; the concrete one, found through spiritual perception, will find means of expression in manifold ways. By this means the many will be able to understand each other in the spiritual unity. Then, from the many kinds of understanding of the unity, they will be able to frame articles for a League of Nations, and then, out of the spiritual conditions, out of the spiritual understanding, legal statutes can arise which will unite the nations. Then in the individual peoples that will appear which is possible to every people, namely, interest in the production and consumption carried on by other peoples. Then through the spiritual life, the legal and judicial life of the peoples, one nation will really be able to develop an understanding of other nations and peoples over the whole earth.

People must make up their minds to recognize the spirit in this department of life, or they will be obliged to renounce all hope of bringing about any improvement, no matter how well-intentioned their statutes may be. It is true, large numbers of people now express their disbelief in the working of this spiritual element; this is comprehensible, because they have not the courage to approach this spiritual truth. It is truly hard for the spirit to gain a hearing; but when it can unfold, even in a small circle, in spite of hindrances, it shows itself to be all that I have just said of it. If only the feelings of the people in some of the belligerent states could have been known, if their thoughts about their enemies, their hatred towards each other, could have been seen, and the absence of international feeling existing in the countries at war been realized, you would understand why he who now addresses you returned again and again to the place which he has already mentioned in these lectures, in north-west Switzerland, where spiritual science has erected the Goetheanum, the University of Spiritual Science.

What sort of place was that during the years of the War? It was a place where, during the whole War, people of all nations worked together without intermission, without any lessening of understanding each other, in spite of many a discussion which may or may not have been necessary. This mutual understanding, since it was the result of a common grasp of a spiritual conception of life, has already become a reality, even though for the present only in a small circle. We may say that we have been able to make the experiment in this sphere. We have been able to show that those who met there from time to time were able to understand others. This understanding must not be sought by vague allusions to the spirit. It must be sought through the most intense, sincere self-conquest, by means of the impulse of the spirit. Men and women of today do not wish to hear that the spirit must be striven for by each one personally. There is much talk nowadays about the spirit, that the spirit must come and must permeate the purely materialistic social demands; but, beyond this appeal to the spirit, we hear little! If such people, who in other respects are well-meaning, full of insight and permeated by social ethics, would only reflect that we have indeed had the spirit! Can we appeal today to that same spirit which has been with us? It is that very spirit which has brought us into our present circumstances. Therefore, what we want is not a new situation created by the old spirit. An old spirit cannot bring us anything new! This has been proved to us. We need a new spirit. We must strive for this new spirit and it can only be won in an independent spiritual life. Therefore, if we picture to ourselves how the demand for a world-economy will be fulfilled—for fulfilled it will be, out of its own inner necessity—we shall find that within its scope one social form will take its place beside another, everywhere producing spiritual and legal conditions out of the human beings who live together in those social bodies. That which is brought forth in this individual manner will be precisely the means for the understanding of other social bodies, and will thus become the means by which true world-economy will be carried on. Unless such means are created, the old so-called national interests will arise again and again in world-economy, and will claim for themselves all that they can extract. And as every social body has the same desire, and will be void of understanding for the others, disharmony must of necessity again make its appearance. How, then, can a world-economy be carried on? Only in so far as political and intellectual organizations do not dominate the individual forms of the economic system; for they must have an individual form. They attain universality and unity in spiritual understanding alone, which over the whole earth is the other unity. In order that the earth may be freed from individualism that other unity must be everywhere recognized.

Even as it is true that, if we only descend deeply enough into human nature, we may develop to objective heights in which we find, as a spiritual perception, that which may also be found by anyone of any other nation, so it is also true that the needs of human consumption all over the earth are not affected by variations in nationality. Human wants are international; only they are the opposite pole of that which is spiritually international. The internationality of the spirit must furnish the understanding, must permeate with love that understanding of other nationalities, and must be able to expand that love to internationalism, in the sense already indicated. But egoism is equally international. Internationalism will only be able to establish a connection with world-production when the latter springs from a common spiritual understanding, from a common spiritual conception of unity. Never out of the egoism of the peoples will understanding of universal consumption arise. From a universal spiritual perception alone can that develop which proceeds not from egoism, but from love, and which, therefore, can govern production. What is the cause of the demand for world-economy? Owing to the growing complexity in the conditions of human life everywhere, and the consequent increasing similarity of human needs, it becomes ever more evident that human beings everywhere have the same wants.

How can a uniform principle of production be created to meet this uniform demand, one which will actively promote a world-economy? It can be created through our upward striving to the spiritual life, to a true spiritual perception, which is powerful enough to create a common world-production, for the common world-consumption. Then the balance can be struck, because unity in the spirit will work towards unity of consumption, towards unity of substance. Then the balance will be struck in the distribution of goods as mediator between production and consumption. Thus we must be able to look into the human soul, if we would understand how, over the whole civilized world—in reality out of many organisms—one uniform organism may arise. In no other way can this uniform organism be built up, this uniform organism which must be such that, in accordance with social demands all over the world, a true organic bond may be created between production and consumption, so that the piece of bread, or the coal required for the single household, or for the single person, may truly correspond with the social demands which are now making themselves felt in the subconsciousness of the human race.

I know very well that when such subjects are raised to this sphere of observation, many will say: But this is the height of sheer idealism! Nevertheless, in that sphere alone is to be found the impelling force for manifold things outside that sphere. And it is just because men have not sought that driving force, which can only be found in this way, that the present social and political conditions now prevail over the whole civilised world. People must come to realize that those who make it their task to create the inner impelling forces for the single social organism, such as the state, and for the social organism of the world, are the truly practical workers. They must come to see that many workers who are often called “practical” have only a rudimentary and merely abstract knowledge of their true sphere. Not until these two facts are recognized will the social question be placed on a healthy foundation.

One of those to whom all this has been a matter of most serious thought for a long time, when he was lecturing on a particular aspect of human life, pointed out that the so-called idealists are by no means the most ignorant concerning the connection of ideals with real life. He was conscious of the folly of those who call themselves practical, and who consider that the thoughts of the idealist are very beautiful, but that practical life demands something quite different. The truth is that practicality actually demands these ideals, if it is ever to become true practicality. And the would-be practical people hinder the realization of these ideals, because they are either too lazy to understand them or have an interest in preventing their realization. The same man of whom I have spoken said: The idealist knows just as well as anyone that ideals are not directly applicable in practice; but he knows too that life must be shaped in conformity with those ideals. People who cannot convince themselves of this truth only show that their help has not been called upon in the shaping of events! One can, therefore, only wish them rain and sunshine in due season and—if possible—good digestion!

This is intended to show the relationship between idealism and actual practical life, which is called into service, for example, in the building of a bridge. The art of engineering which brings a bridge into being is certainly not controlled by ideas which originate in matter. As the finished bridge must first exist ideally and can only become a real practical bridge after it has been well worked out in thought, so must idealism be something practical, springing from inner practical perception. We must have the instinct, the feeling, which will enable us to carry into actual practical life such objective laws, for instance, as govern the art of engineering. Then it will no longer be asked: ‘How can these things be carried out in practical life?’ For when enough people understand these ideas, they will forthwith put them into practice in actions and deeds. We often hear people say that these ideas are beautiful in many respects, and if realized would be very fine; but humanity is not yet ready for them. The masses, they say, are not yet ripe. Let us see what is really meant by such an assertion. He who knows the relationship of idea to actuality, who understands practical life according to the character of its reality, judges the masses differently. He knows that there are enough people now who, if they only go deeply enough into their own inner nature, can bring full understanding to bear on the matters with which we have dealt. The greatest hindrance is the lack of courage. The energy is lacking to urge them forward to what they might attain, if they could only develop in themselves full self-consciousness. Above all,. we need to correct something within ourselves; of this practically every human being is capable, if he only gives heed to reality. While, on the one hand, people fall into materialism and even take a delight in it, on the other hand, they fall a prey to abstractions, and will not penetrate to reality. Even in external life people are convinced that they are of a practical turn of mind, but they take no trouble to see things so as to recognize their real character.

For instance, suppose that someone comes across a new assertion and believes it. He accepts only its abstract content, and in doing so he may become estranged from life, instead of understanding it better. The writing of a fine editorial presents no great difficulty nowadays. For there is so much commonplace in modern civilization that only a small amount of routine is required to enable a person to write phrase after phrase. It is not the point whether or not we agree with the literal meaning of an article nowadays, but it is important that we should be able to judge the extent to which this meaning accords with reality. In this respect there is much to be corrected in the present day. One is impelled to say: That which people should demand today above all things is truth which they should courageously unite with reality. Here are two examples of what is meant.

You may read statistical reports, perhaps of the Balkan States; for it has become usual to acquaint oneself with the conditions prevailing in the world, to pass judgments on political situations, and similar matters. We can judge of the way in which people gain their information by reading statistics, let us say, of the Balkan States. We read that there are so many Greeks, so many Bulgarians, and then we can calculate how far the claims of the various elements, Greeks, Bulgarians, or Serbians, can be justified. If we then examine more closely into the details, and compare what we have gained through abstract knowledge about the number of Bulgarians, Serbians, and Greeks in Macedonia, we often find that the father of a family is registered as a Greek, one son as a Bulgarian, and another as a Serb. Now one would like to know how this agrees with the truth. Can the family be really so constituted that the father is a Greek, one son a Bulgarian, and another a Serb?^* Can we learn anything as to the reality from statistics made in this way? Most of the statistical reports in the world are made after this fashion, especially in commercial life.

Because people do not always feel the necessity of pressing forward through the actual words to the truth of what they hear, they commonly misjudge things. They do not examine closely enough into facts. They are content with the mere surface of life, which is only a covering for the true reality. Today, the first necessity is not to waste time in discussing whether humanity is ripe or unripe, but to point out where the principal evils lie. Once discover and take the trouble to disclose these evils and indicate with sufficient energy the way to deal with them, then people will realize them quickly enough!

A second example: At the beginning of June 1917 the world could read the speech pronounced by the then Emperor Karl of Austria, on his accession to the throne. In that speech from the throne there was a great deal said, very appropriately at that time, about democracy. Again and again democracy was the theme. Now I have read a good deal about this speech, about the enthusiasm with which it was received by the people, and how splendid it was to proclaim democracy to the world at such a time. Taking this speech from beginning to end and looking merely at its literal content, from the journalistic standpoint it was a fine achievement, if we confine ourselves to the style and composition of the sentences, calculated to call forth feelings of he pleasure and gratification. Very good! But let us look at the truth! Let us place this speech in its milieu. Then we must ask: Who is speaking thus and in what surroundings? There we may see standing in the medieval splendor of his coronation robes, glittering with jewels, the despotic ruler of bygone days, making no attempt to hide his magnificence, surrounded by his brilliant gold-laced paladins. The Middle Ages, complete in all the ceremonial, which, had it spoken truly, would have chosen another subject than democracy!

What is a speech on democracy, however beautiful the words, delivered in the midst of such medieval magnificence? A world-historical lie. From the literal content of the things of the present, we must go back to a perception of the reality. It is not enough to grasp things with the intellect; one must see things as they really are. This is just what spiritual science demands. We cannot deceive ourselves as to the outer reality without paying the penalty. He who would know the spiritual reality in the true sense of spiritual science, as it is taught here, he who would behold the spiritual world, must, above all things, accustom himself to the most absolute truth in the world of the senses; he must yield to no deception regarding all that takes place around him in the world of his five senses. Especially he who would penetrate into the spiritual world must use his five senses in a true and sane manner, and must not give himself up to fantastic thought, as do the many business men, the so-called practical people, so much admired, to whom the whole world defers. What we want is not a lamentation over the immaturity of the people, but to show them that we must be true in our inmost soul. Then we should cease to hear continually that untrue talk about the spirit, the spirit. Then will these falsehoods about the difference between right and might be no longer heard throughout the world, but we shall hear of work being done which consists in striving to attain the spirit. Then we shall hear that the spirit so striven after has been won and that men are living together a common life, in which they find equal rights for everyone. Only then can we speak of the manner in which an economic system, spiritualized throughout and pervaded with the spirit of equity, will be able to establish the true and real Commonwealth.

It is much more essential that we should recognize the fact that a sufficient number of people are here who at least look within and take themselves in hand, who can have an inner understanding of such hints as I have given. We must never weary of emphasizing these things. We must not, however, think that the mere repetition of phrases to the effect that the spirit must govern the world will bring about, as by enchantment, the coming of the spirit. No! By the work of the human spirit alone can that spirit come into the world. In this respect also we must be true. We must not allow the falsehood to ring through the world, that the spirit must come. The truth must be proclaimed that the spirit will not appear until there are places in which not only the materialistic study of outer nature will be carried on, but in which a spiritual conception of life will be striven after.

Out of that spiritual conception of the world must proceed a real social understanding of the habits of life of all humanity in the present and the near future. Everything depends on the fact that people become true with regard to the spirit and to their spiritual endeavor. For the spirit can only be found on the path of truth. It is no excuse, or, rather, it is only an excuse, to say that people are ignorant. In spiritual striving it is important to know that a lie, unconsciously persisted in, causes just as much harm as a lie, consciously repeated. For it is the duty of man at the present day to elevate his subconsciousness, in order to root out falsehood in every realm, even in that of the subconscious. For this reason I should like to conclude with words that are, indeed, truly and earnestly meant. I can well imagine that even after I have attempted to describe the structure of the social organism from the most varied points of view, as it must appear to the eye of the spiritual scientist in its relation to its threefoldness, I can well imagine that there may still be people who will say: ‘these are only ideas.’ How is it possible, they ask, that people can now rise to such ideas? A gulf yawns between these ideas and those generally understood at the present day. I would only remark that, with regard to such opinions, our answer must be: It need not concern us how advanced or otherwise people are. We need only speak out over and over again what we hold to be the truth, and what we think is likely to bear fruit, and then wait till they have understood. If we do so, if we never tire of repeating this again and again, then people will advance more rapidly than if they are continually told of their individuality. I believe that the world may very soon be ready for such things. I would, therefore, never tire of repeating over and over again that which I believe would hasten the advancement of humanity to maturity.

• *. The truth of this is to be found in the fact that in the Balkan States the blood tie is often not the thing that makes a man a Greek, a Bulgarian, or a Serbian, but his church-affiliation. Greek Church, Bulgarian Church, Serbian Church. (Ed.)

In 1935, under the title, The Social Future, six lectures delivered by Rudolf Steiner at Zurich, Switzerland, in October, 1919, were published in English translation. This series summarized and supplemented the thoughts which Rudolf Steiner had earlier presented in his book, The Cardinal Points of the Social Problem in View of the Necessities of Life in the Present and the Future, Die Kernpunkte der Sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart and Zukunft.^*

After the first edition of The Social Future had been out of print for a long time, the Anthroposophic Press decided to publish a second, newly revised, edition, enlarged with an introduction and some clarifying appendices.

In view of the present confused mental state of the world, it can certainly be viewed as a commendable undertaking to do everything possible by publishing new and out-of-print English translations of Rudolf Steiner's writings, in order to keep open the avenues to the life work of this man who is recognized as the greatest spirit of the age by those who know his untiring battle to save western civilization.

At a time, however, when overwhelming events and inner decay of the soul nature so weaken the human will that it continually loses the power to permeate this nature with unsullied ideas, the holding open of these avenues of approach, as far as possible through publication of essential literature, signifies something more: it means the bringing forward of the proof that Europe, in spite of her catastrophic development during recent decades, has still today something decisive to say and give to the world.

Not Europe's corpse, which is much more the tragic result of soul-suicide than of continuous bombing; what is meant here is Europe's living spirit. This living and indestructible spirit has received in the life work of the Austrian thinker, Rudolf Steiner, its universal human form of expression, far removed from nationalism and dogmatism, alien to life. In this life work, and through its effectual working out over decades in human groups—still small but increasingly active—the spiritual and cultural substance of Europe is saved and lives on as seed of the future.

In consequence of this we now stand, in the midst of turbulent outer events in the political and economic fields, before a spiritual fact which America cannot bypass if she does not wish to perish in the miasmas which arise from the European corpse, and which poison the atmosphere of the entire civilized world. Those who cannot see the present unsolved economic and political problems as primarily problems of pure humanity, not yet recognized in their full import, will not notice this danger. But a glance at current literature and the daily press suffices to show that the growing threat to what remains of cultural relationships is perceived by a majority of responsible citizens. Do these thoughtful people, however, have the vital ideas which can serve as a foundation for a new way of life in the cultural, political, and economic spheres, and which will permit control of the threatening danger? The life work of Rudolf Steiner leads the way to the source of such ideas.

The republication of this book can be considered as a meritorious undertaking in yet a third respect: it requires courage. By, courage is meant here that special courage springing from an unshakable trust in truth, and the recognition of the duty to reveal it, although under most unfavorable outer circumstances. Whoever would undertake to make Rudolf Steiner's ideas for a social rebirth accessible to wider circles must courageously take upon himself, first, the stigma of Utopian, cast upon him by so-called “practical people”; secondly, the danger that comes from arousing the enmity of egotistical interests; and, thirdly, the danger coming from exposure to the destructive wills of the enemies of freedom. These are the hindrances which would prevent recognition of the ideas received into the will to freedom as impulses for the solution of the social problem, but which instead seek to realize dogmatic programs by means of power. Those who promote these hindrances are, in fact, the enemies of true democracy, although they seek to conceal their wolfish nature under a democratic sheepskin.

For a deeper understanding of this book still another observation may be useful: Rudolf Steiner never pursued the accomplishment of his task by the use of political or economic means. He limited himself entirely to the renewal of cultural life as the spiritual source of a social transformation of politics and economics. But he was at the same time an untiring observer of political events, economic relations, and conscious and unconscious emotions and will impulses which were brought to expression in the political and economic spheres. With very special intensity he undertook research into the thought habits of our times which in their interplay had become a fateful automatism. Rudolf Steiner saw as his highest task the freeing of the modern human being's consciousness from the customary modes of thought affecting him out of the subconscious, and its guidance into the free creative understanding of the spirit. But he had to clothe his communications in the forms of scientific thought which is, for our age, authoritative and justified.

In this book we experience how successfully Rudolf Steiner mastered this task. Yet the reader should not overlook the fact that both the spoken word of these lectures and the written word of Rudolf Steiner's books on the social rebirth were subject to still another, entirely different form element: the perception of the particular world situation between 1914 and 1919. As far as its nature is concerned, this situation, right up to the present, has not changed in the least. The degree of destructive might, however, has changed. The second world catastrophe should not be considered apart from the first. They merely represent the various stages of one grandiose destructive process. Therefore, only those readers of this book will know how to value its content in the right way who arouse an inner activity in themselves. They must so forcefully develop the thoughts presented here that their power of illumination is not lost in face of the eminence of modern facts grown to gigantic proportions. In regard to the writings and lectures of Rudolf Steiner on the renewal of the social life, it will be fitting to quote what he especially emphasized in the year of his death (1925) in the Preface to his chief work on cosmological subjects.¹

“I have quite consciously endeavored not to offer a ‘popular’ exposition, but one which makes it necessary for the reader to study the content with strict effort of thought. I have thus impressed upon my books a character which enables the reader to find himself, even as he reads, at the beginning of spiritual training.”

In our case, this spiritual training must include the effort to employ these social ideas upon the changed world situation of 1945.

Coincident with the first edition of the already mentioned fundamental work in 1919, The Threefold Commonwealth, Rudolf Steiner published his Appeal to the German People and the Cultural World. He began with the words:

“Resting on secure foundations with the assurance of enduring for untold ages—that is what the German people believed of their empire founded half a century ago. Today they can only behold its ruins. Deep searching of the soul must follow from such an experience.”

The answer of destiny to the neglect of this searching of the soul and the admission of the powers of soul-destruction is for the German people the repeated demolition of their political and economic organism. Who would doubt that these words in the present world situation, if rewritten, would sound somewhat as follows:

“Resting on secure foundations with the assurance of enduring for untold ages—that is what the progressive, intelligent man of the nineteenth century believed of the edifice of man, built up in the course of historical evolution. Today the man of the twentieth century can only look at the ruins of this edifice. There must be a deep searching of the soul after such an experience.”

If the republication of these lectures makes a contribution of positive ideas to such searching of the soul which can be fruitful for the social future, this book will have fulfilled its task.

It should be said that these remarks and the appendices at the end of the book are limited to the smallest possible compass. Their object is merely an attempt to protect the spoken word from misunderstanding and misinterpretation since these lectures were taken down by shorthand with its unavoidable shortcomings. Any overdoing of this attempt at “clarifying” would do violence to them and overlook the reverence due such a spiritual original performance.

Bernard Behrens.
August, 1945.

• *. Published in English translation under the title, The Threefold Commonwealth. by Allen, Unwin Co., London, 1921; now by Anthroposophic Press, New York.
• 1. Rudolf Steiner, Occult Science, an Outline, Anthroposophic Press, New York.

In the morning, Rudolf Steiner was visited by Emil Molt, Hans Kühn and Roman Boos in the “Gruppe” workroom.

Rudolf Steiner: It is quite terrible how little understanding there is in Germany of foreign policy. Even social policy must be treated as foreign policy today, because if the foreign policy is bad, all the fruits of a good social policy would only go to the Entente. - At all costs, further bloodshed should be avoided in Germany through rapid intervention. This will hardly be avoidable in Berlin anyway. For me, the most important task at the moment is to give the four lectures in Zurich. There is an international audience there. I will send these lectures to print immediately afterwards.

January 25, 1919, in the afternoon, at Hansi's house

Roman Boos begins by reporting on the socio-political commission of the “Federation of Intellectual Workers” in Stuttgart and the draft of the “memorandum”, and Emil Molt on the previous socialization efforts in Württemberg and the fact that belonging to the Anthroposophical Society has been perceived as compromising.

Rudolf Steiner: The most important thing is foreign policy. Above all, things like what is happening in Paris should be prevented. Poincare's speech, for example, has gone unchallenged. It is absolutely necessary to give a presentation of the outbreak of war from a suitable place. (Rudolf Steiner asks about Professor Wilhelm von Blume, but suggests that he does not expect much from this approach.) It is an absurdity that Ebert, Scheidemann and Erzberger are making peace. They let everything happen. The necessity to speak about the actual causes of the war is of the utmost importance.

Emil Molt asks: Would something be possible with Eisner?

Rudolf Steiner: Eisner has begun to address the question of guilt, but has not pursued it further. It would be possible to approach Eisner. He is a bit of a fantasist, but he is receptive. Graf Lerchenfeld would not be the right person; there are class prejudices. He also has a habit of playing hide and seek. He does not say anything about spiritual science being behind it, and then you notice it anyway.

Emil Molt reports on Heydebrand's attempts in Berlin, also concerning] Prince Leopold.

Rudolf Steiner: Heydebrand is unsuitable because of his name. Prince Leopold was considered a great personality, but when I saw him, I thought he was a bit of a fool. As for Heise's book: Heise is not a writer. You would have to sift through the material. Heise also presents it one-sidedly. Regarding Mrs. Kautsky (with whom Heydebrand was): I knew her when she was still a young aunt, now she will be an old aunt. A publication of the war genesis by the Foreign Office would be done by Kautsky. But he can't do that. He writes in a style that only party members can understand. It would have to be discussed in a way that is understandable to an international audience, especially from the German side, about the causes of the whole catastrophe.

Without considering foreign policy, especially the question of guilt, we will get nowhere. It is disastrous that there is no interest in foreign policy in Germany. One must describe where it leads when nothing is done in this regard. One can calculate this in numbers, as Rathenau did in “Zukunft”. This appeal by Rathenau should be distributed in leaflets. One should tell people: This is what happens when you do not take up the spiritual impulses!

Roman Boos notes that Carl Unger wants to publish a lecture. Rudolf Steiner does not address this. He points to the signature under “The Guiding Thoughts of the Federation of Spiritual Workers” and says:

Rudolf Steiner: “Federation of Spiritual Workers” is a Bolshevik method.

In response to a question from Emil Molt, he explicitly confirms that it is not right to distribute these ideas anonymously and not to keep the magazine in his own hands.

Emil Molt suggests to Rudolf Steiner that they work out “something we can all sign”. He suggests founding a federation where Rudolf Steiner could appear.

Rudolf Steiner: There should already be a backing.

Emil Molt: The Anthroposophical Society is not suitable for this; it is not supposed to deal with politics.

Rudolf Steiner: Why? Who says that?

The three (in unison): The draft statutes.

Rudolf Steiner: But these are from 1911 and were long ago wiped out by the war. The Anthroposophical Society can certainly deal with politics. I always talk about politics too.

The three of them: Dr. Unger as well. But not the Society as such.

Rudolf Steiner: Why not?

The three of them: Otherwise a situation could develop like the one with the politicized Entente Freemasonry.

Rudolf Steiner: It would have been very good if German masonry had embarked on such great political plans.

Hans Kühn: Could the Society act as a party?

Rudolf Steiner: It is not an association, only a society. The individual has complete freedom. One does not need to choose this name for a party. Non-Anthroposophists should also be accepted as members.

Addendum

Rudolf Steiner: What am I supposed to do in Berlin? There is no point in giving lectures. The threads will not be picked up after all. Mrs. Kinkel, for example, is a very nice lady. But when people come to inquire after a lecture and she takes them around the branch house and tells them something, it is of no use.

We have to wait until people see that they can't do anything. They will prove that they can't achieve anything, they will run themselves into the ground.

When Roman Boos' draft of the memorandum was handed over:

Rudolf Steiner: “We will talk about it then.” Not so much about the content as about the way it is presented. It's easy to make a mistake with this.

The discussion ties in with the memorandum written by Roman Boos, “Principles of an Objective Development Policy”.

Rudolf Steiner: People are demanding something more specific than is given in the memorandum, at least in political terms. When I wrote my memorandum on the threefold order, it would still have been possible to maintain the old conditions to some extent and simply to expel the economic and spiritual conditions from the political part. Today, however, one has to reckon with the fact that basically everything old has gone. The rights that still exist today will disappear, including private rights. One will have to reckon with an absolute carte blanche. Even today, there are no realizable rights left. The whole system of councils, which is a provisional arrangement but nevertheless plays a role today, has come about through generatio aequivoca, it has sprung up, it cannot be derived from old rights. What rights are there today? Private rights to land, to the means of production, patents, monopolies. That is there. But it cannot be realized. At present, only twelve express trains are to run in Germany. That means that so and so much is not available in the way of real transport documents. The entire state right to build railways thus exists only on paper. The rights of the state have been reduced to absurdity. All these things should have been anticipated under the old conditions. Nothing remains of them.

The following approach should be taken: when calling for democracy as a political system, one should not rely too heavily on the democracy of foreign countries. Rather, the following must be expressed: the major damage has actually only occurred in the course of the last five, six, seven decades, by usurping what does not belong to the state. The idea of universal suffrage, which was only adopted by Bismarck, came from a completely different state system. At the time, this right was not conceived incorrectly. Today, with regard to the structure of the state (political system), one could go back to it. One could draw attention to a modern reform of this right to vote. It would have to be pointed out that under all circumstances, when the economic and spiritual organism are integrated into the state, universal suffrage will not work. If you throw that out, however, then the state really only has those tasks that everyone can help decide. Only then is the possibility of a general right to vote created. - Likewise, it would have to be said that the state has the full right to make demands of its officials. The state must be able to say: I will only accept into my organization those who meet these and these conditions. But it must not train the people itself for this. It could organize examinations for its civil servants. The scholastic training would fall to the spiritual culture. The state would only have rights of claim. It does not employ those who have no knowledge. The right to vote would also have to be restricted in this way. Those who have not gone through elementary school are not allowed to vote. One need only tell the leaders that this would not make a practical difference in Germany. It would only be a rearrangement of the circumstances. (The fact that so many votes were cast for the Center Party is a positive damage that cannot be underestimated.) One must insist on the same, general right to vote (that it be secret is not essential); but the illiterate must be excluded. The Social Democrats will also agree to this.

It must be said that these very practical things can be traced back to anthroposophical spiritual science. People need to realize that either they will accept this or they will suffer shipwreck.

Regarding the details of the “principles”

p. 1: “If we look unclouded at the present-day scene of devastation, we see that we have succumbed to the superior strength of the enemies because we have not been able to counter their physical and spiritual weapons with weapons of equal caliber.

Rudolf Steiner: We would have had the weapons. Our weapons would have been superior if we had countered the Wilson program with our own. Our physical weapons would not have been unequal if we had had spiritual weapons. It is no use saying: Wilson is wrong and the Entente is lying. — We have been defeated because faith in our own spirit has disappeared.

It should also be said that the spiritual weapons of the West are often corpses of thoughts.

Principles: Quote Balfour: “The Germans win the battles, we win the war.

Rudolf Steiner: The battles were only seemingly won. The war could not be won by battles.

Principles: “... the awakened powers of the fully thinking, feeling and willing human being must set about the work of building up, not to surpass others, but to strengthen Germanness within themselves in such a way that they cannot be thrown into economic or spiritual bondage by any power in the world.

Rudolf Steiner: Is there any possibility at all of preventing this enslavement? You can always conquer Germanness, purely in a military sense. You can't promise that. You have to work towards something else: when the tripartite division has been carried out, the other states will be in such a relationship that they will harm themselves if they attack such a state. Today, because the tripartite division has not been carried out, the most nonsensical comparisons are made. For example, it is said that the siege of Paris and the blockade of Germany are to be valued equally. This is like saying that the head and the leg are the same weight. It is necessary to differentiate; because only in this way do differences in value become apparent. One should not say, “to consolidate Germanness in such a way that...” but rather, “to bring Germanness into such an economic and intellectual interrelationship with all the other powers that no other power would want to enslave it because it would thereby harm itself.” If one limits the matter to a single country in the real conditions of life, then one remains in a shell. What is urgently needed today, but is not even being considered, is that Germany should enter the real peace negotiations as a tripartite entity. A manifesto should be issued declaring that we are not acting as representatives of 'Germany', which no longer exists, but as representatives of:

1. a political entity that wants to form,

2. an economic organism, with which opportunistic talk is to be held,

3. an intellectual organism.

One should not put politicians forward, but one should select people according to the principle of threefolding and then put them forward.

Question: How can this be realized?

Rudolf Steiner: You would have to have a number of personalities from the whole of Germany. They would have to issue a proclamation of the German people, so that foreign countries would know what the will of the German people is. It would have to be known that this is the answer to Wilson's program. It is important to have a following, even if it is small.

Emil Molt: Should this matter not be dealt with in Stuttgart in the form of a meeting, with the intellectual originator himself explaining the whole matter? It is beyond our strength to do the matter from the beginning.

Rudolf Steiner: I expect a great deal from having a certain following behind me, which first has to be created. I want to draw your attention to a phenomenon: if you have followed the mood in the Entente in recent years, you will have seen the enormous role played by the manifesto of 93 intellectuals. Today, all you need is to have a good 90 people signed up to such a thing. I would like to be able to say in Zurich that so and so many people are behind me, for example 90 men.

In 1916, I told the man who was Ludendorff's right-hand man that he should give me the opportunity to work for official Germany in Switzerland. This was thwarted at the last moment by Ludendorff because I am not German. At that time, it was enough to be able to say: official Germany is behind me. Today it would be good to be able to say: so-and-so many people are behind me. You need 90 signatures from different parts of the Reich. Then sensible people abroad will say to themselves: at last there are some people who want something real. Because they know that they themselves are facing a short reprieve.

I could give you a kind of draft by the end of the week. Based on this rally, a meeting could then take place in Stuttgart.

They should not feel like amateurs (in reference to a comment by Emil Molt), but like the first masters. Today, it takes more than one person to advance such a cause, but a hundred can do it.

I am convinced that people could be found among the less compromised labor leaders who would be open to such ideas. But I didn't want them for abroad. Labor leaders would be good inside Germany. Among the 90 to 100 should also be simple people: “N.N., previously active in the printers‘ union, the metalworkers’ union, etc. in X.” Our member Fischer in Hanover, a Social Democrat, would certainly be elected. There will only be those among the nameless who can be found.

Ehrenberg wrote confused articles in the “Vossische Zeitung”, but they do show good approaches. Eisner would be favorable. Lerchenfeld would no longer have to try to play hide and seek. Foerster would work well. Rade and Rittelmeyer would be good. As few professors as possible.

Principles: “In the field of political life, realistic thinking demands the unreserved recognition of the fact that the political forms of the West have won the decisive victory...”

Rudolf Steiner: The actual fact is this: in the West, or in the English-speaking areas, victory in this field has been achieved by the fact that, due to the peculiarity of the population, economic life has absorbed the political. They are economic entities, not states. Because today the economy plays this role, these states have had the opportunity to push through their political form because economic life predominates in them. They are economic entities in the guise of state entities. This should be reflected in the wording. — We must not base our political structure on Western democracy, but on Lassalle's ideas. It is only because Lassalle erroneously conflated everything that nothing came of it.

Principles: “... in the course of the last century, there was an increasing overgrowth of production compared to consumption...”

Rudolf Steiner: This is contestable. It is not a question of an overgrowth of production over consumption, but of the fact that pricing and the formation of the value of the goods have been based on production and not on consumption.

“Principles” deal with the concepts of “private property” and “free labor contract”.

Rudolf Steiner: If we think realistically in this area, we only need to create external recognition of what is there. In reality, the correct approach in the world economy is for each person to own that part of the land and the means of production that results when the total amount of land and the means of production is divided by the population. It turns out that the wealth of the people does depend on the population, in that a piece of land is better utilized when it is smaller. When the population in a territory increases, each person ideally becomes the owner of a smaller piece of land. Private property cannot be eliminated from the world, but only masked. I do not want all to become proletarians, but everyone to be a proprietor, of what belongs to him. Private property should not be abolished, but put on such a basis that its beneficial effect works collectivistically. The entrepreneur must have the private profit. The rest comes into consideration at the tax. The “right to the full yield of labor” eliminates all free movement. It is necessary that the entrepreneur has a certain added value. The fact that private property has an effect on the whole in terms of its utility is achieved through tax regulation.

Only expenses are taxed. Determining the tax is the responsibility of the political authority. The entrepreneur does not pay according to his property, but according to his expenses. If, for example, he has 100 workers, he pays tax for each quota he pays to them. The tax on expenses must be implemented radically. No tax on income or property, only tax on expenses. Then all the harm of private property will be eliminated. The harmfulness of profit will also be eliminated if the person in question is forced to pay a certain amount of tax to hire 100 workers. Then the fact that he is able to hire 100 workers will benefit the community. It must be necessary to have, so to speak, a reserve fund for the progress of civilization. Then it is also not necessary for the spiritual workers to join the trust organism, as proposed in the “Principles”. This organism, like everything merely economic, leads to a dead end. Spiritual production, including factory management, is in the realm of the free spiritual life. This must have the possibility of having the proceeds, which remain when everything else is taken care of, at its completely free disposal. Only by allowing complete freedom in the spiritual realm can you create the possibility of true progress. Every economic body leads to a dead end. The only way out of this is through freedom in the spirit. We must always admit this to ourselves. In the realm of spiritual production, I can do no other than create for the general good.

Question Emil Molt: But what if the entrepreneur uses his benefit for himself?

Rudolf Steiner: This danger is easy to prevent. Such action is not isolated. There is taxation of expenses for such expenditures, for example, for rent. Taxes must be kept very liquid, for example, large rent taxes for larger rental claims. The harmfulness arises only at the moment when the expense is made. Example: In the time when there is still primitive exploitation of the sea, someone invents a boat with which ten times more can be caught; that is entirely based on his invention. He thereby increases the prosperity of all those who work in the area where he utilizes the invention. He can only become harmful if he is not bought out, if he exploits. If he only leaves what he earns, it will never be economically harmful. The misers are the least dangerous social boarders. All those who hide countless money in their straw bag do no harm.

Interjection Emil Molt: What happens after the miser's death?

Rudolf Steiner: Money undergoes the same process as goods. You can no longer wear a coat in 14 to 15 years. Simply because the money bears the stamp “1903”, it must become worthless in 1918. This should become law. The important thing is the many consequences that arise from the tripartite division. Money is only the representative value for goods.

Emil Molt: Gold and silver?

Rudolf Steiner: There is no need for metallic money any more. At least it has no advantage.

Interjection Emil Molt: Would the metal money also have to bear the stamp?

Rudolf Steiner: When the matter is beyond the first stages, it will be a matter of creating a comparative scale for the goods. Today everything is corrupted because we have an ideal comparative scale. We need a real one, the covetous value of which is indisputable. For example, a banknote means so many loaves of bread. It would then be necessary to have an agreement between the three areas, between the economic and state bodies, that what is a sign for goods, what is money, is just as stinky as the goods themselves.

Such an economic system would initially be suitable for Central Europe and the East. The West would not accept it. One has to reckon with the fact that one only deals with the West as a whole, on the basis of treaties. But I cannot imagine that it will be any different. We will only deal with the West through goods. Because they will take away our money, for example the gold treasure.

Taxation today is based on the completely wrong premise. When people talk about expenditure taxes, they think of indirect taxes. I, however, think of expenditure taxation. The most important necessities of life should be taxed less, the less important ones more. A bank deposit is an expenditure.

Hans Kühn: Wouldn't all the money then flow into the state, jeopardizing cultural endeavors?

Rudolf Steiner: It is a matter of being specific. The spiritual worker will need certain things for his work. They will be taxed at a low rate. Those who are also industrial entrepreneurs will have to pay high taxes on everything they need for their industrial enterprises. Spiritual production will be able to live from itself. It just needs to be allowed to do so and not hindered by the state interfering. If it can develop freely, then everyone must pay tribute to intellectual production out of what they earn in the other spheres. The other two spheres need specialists, who must be educated. This entire education must be paid for by the other two spheres. The economic viability of the intellectual sphere will also be left entirely to its own devices.

Question: Who pays for intellectual services if expenses are taxed?

Rudolf Steiner: Those who receive them. Those who create intellectually are remunerated for their achievements, not for their work. The others pay. It is likely that less will have to be paid for intellectual services than is the case today. There is a great difference between material and spiritual economic goods. The spiritual ones can be multiplied to infinity. Books! Words addressed to many! Therefore, this must be placed under completely different laws. The loaf of bread must always be produced again by human labor. For the individual book, there is no need to produce it spiritually again and again.

(Inserted from a later private conversation: The economic value of material goods consists in the labor crystallized in them, that of spiritual goods in the labor saved by them.

Hans Kühn: Would it not be right to finance a school through the “trust”?

Rudolf Steiner: Only if it turns out that a class or a class does not pay. It would always have to be kept so that the individual would have to pay for it in the books. You could then always take what you want from this individual, including this service, by having a trust agency step in for him. The teaching profession must support itself, not be maintained by the “trust agency” or the state. The teaching profession as such will undertake to maintain the other things (i.e. teaching materials in the broadest sense) from its earnings. It must have free rein in this. There must be no socialization in the field of teaching. If a free university is set up somewhere out of a teaching post, there is nothing to be said against it.

Principles: “It is a sleepy aberration to think that a factory needs to be socialized in the first place; a factory is a social entity, despite ghostly concepts of ownership and employment contracts...”

Rudolf Steiner: Here we would anticipate an objection from the contemporary social writer, the objection that it does not depend on something being a social entity, but rather on the individual human being being understood as a social being. Through Marxism, it has become clear to people that it does not matter that something is a social entity, but rather that it matters how the share is distributed. It is no exaggeration to say that the only change brought about by Trotsky is that a large ledger is set up for the entire business community. Only the bookkeeping is done differently. Even in foreign countries, only the unified accounting system is used. You can't nationalize either production or intellectual life, only the bookkeeping.

Roman Boos: Is it correct to understand the social carcinoma as a proliferation of production (growth) over consumption (reduction), which characterizes the disease of usury?

Rudolf Steiner: One should not compare production with building up, but only with inhalation. The overgrowth of inhalation over exhalation leads to cancer. This is how the image becomes correct.

Principles: “... the right of co-determination of the untrained worker in entrepreneurial matters, ... the workforce that is not yet mature enough to become self-employed...”

Rudolf Steiner: The worker may not be able to tolerate being told that he is untrained in entrepreneurial matters. The concept of “mature” must be treated esoterically today.

Principles: “A trust organism in the sense of the preceding statements would place itself with such physical and moral power in the midst of the turmoil of the world that a guarantee of life would be created for the incorporated German people.”

Rudolf Steiner: This reference to Germanness should be avoided. Especially in the economic sphere. The economic part has nothing at all to do with the German character. This leads too strongly into Wilsonism.

Principles: “The spiritual core of man, unhindered by all the creatures he has made, unfolds his creative power - demanding nothing more from his creatures (law and economics) than protection and a livelihood: state protection and economic fulfillment of needs.”

Rudolf Steiner: The state and economic life should not demand anything of the spiritual part of the social body. They should only be required to support the individual. The spiritual life should not be prevented from living itself out. Care should be taken to ensure that spiritual life is not suppressed anywhere. And care should be taken to ensure that it can circulate freely. The state has only the task of releasing spiritual life from all compulsion. It is only a policeman towards spiritual life. It maintains itself, also economically. One should not speak of “state protection” and “economic satisfaction of needs”. The state must ensure that spiritual goods reach their consumers. In parliaments, it will be mentioned quite naturally that there and there is spiritual life.

If the intellectual production turns into harm (for example, black magic), the state must take action against the effects.

Regarding the appendixes to the principles:

Rudolf Steiner: A “restriction of the private share of the production profit to a fixed or profit-based annuity”,

as proposed by Boos, is not feasible. The tax must remedy this.

In response to a question from Emil Molt, Rudolf Steiner explains:

Rudolf Steiner: It is not a “share of the profits”, but a “share of ownership”. When someone enters a business, a portion of ownership is attributed to them, regardless of whether they are a worker or an entrepreneur. However, earning is completely independent of this. The minimum subsistence level must arise out of the economic process. It is not to be regulated by law or contract. What is necessary is to take into account the fact that, in the process of piling up, more and more of the pure manual labor approaches intellectual performance. From this point of view, the entrepreneur's profit is transformed into payment for intellectual performance. The three spheres merge completely. In the company, the entrepreneur has his entrepreneurial profit from intellectual performance.

In answer to a question from Emil Molt:

Rudolf Steiner: If the workforce were to elect the entrepreneur, freedom would be suppressed. What must be absolutely guaranteed is this: you must give me what I consider necessary for my spiritual work. The entrepreneur receives his full income for being the spiritual leader.

Emil Molt: Who decides who becomes an entrepreneur?

Rudolf Steiner: In practice, continuity is maintained. Entrepreneurs remain to a certain extent. The entrepreneur will be removed from office if the state is harmed. The entrepreneur must be protected from removal as long as he does not do anything that harms the general public. The three spheres do not stand side by side. The state organism is superior to all of them. In the economic body there are only economic workers, in the spiritual body only spiritual workers. The removal of the entrepreneur would have to take place through legal channels.

We must first found free schools out of the money we still have in order to teach people what they need.

Regarding what was said about the unions:

Rudolf Steiner: The unions are not organized by profession, but by abstract contexts. One would have to study the transition of the old professional associations into the modern unions. In the modern class associations, it is no longer the profession that is essential, but the position of the property-less worker in relation to the entrepreneur.

The trade unions particularly support you (Boos). But the biggest philistines are in the trade unions.

Instead of saying that the cheapening of food is more important than the increase of wages, it should be said that consideration for consumption is more important than the increase of wages, which is also related to production.

January 27, 1919, afternoon

Rudolf Steiner: I am not authorized to simply publish the story of the outbreak of war. Mrs. von Moltke is also not fully authorized. It is not certain that she will give her consent. The notes are testamentary, with the proviso that they are written only for Mrs. von Moltke.

However, I can relate almost everything that is important, because Moltke told me the same.

A publication of this kind would be sufficiently covered by 90 men, who would have to be scattered across Germany. One would have to have support. An order from the Foreign Office, Rantzaus, would not be a particular recommendation. Rantzau is certainly not well regarded. They would have to be people whose name works; even if only so that one comes across a respectable person when making inquiries. But these people who sign should not be united in a league. They should be people who are completely independent of each other. A party can develop from that.

What needs to be said about the genesis of the war is, so to speak, finished.

Question: Is there no fear of the Entente marching in?

Rudolf Steiner: Because this is possible, I think it is perhaps important that this matter be at least somehow centered from Switzerland outwards. It would be important to me to be able to say in Zurich that there are people behind me. If this matter is done from Switzerland, it would not be a hindrance if the Entente were to invade.

Question: Could the Council of Intellectual Workers or the Commission for Social Policy of this Council be used to decentralize the socio-political work?

Rudolf Steiner: My freedom of disposition must not be compromised. I must retain the possibility of being able to direct the matter myself. I must always have the matter in hand. It must always be apparent that the matter comes from me.

Whether you use the advice of spiritual workers depends entirely on whether you believe that there are people in the advice whom you can rely on in a certain sense, and whether you think you can do it alone. But it is better to do it without these people. The councils will disappear in some time, and in a gruesome way. As long as they are there, you have to deal with them on real ground. I would not give such an organization such important things. I am not opposed to lectures being given at the council. But to hand it over to it, in the belief that it can be realized by it, I consider that to be utopian. It would be more favorable to have a memorandum signed by the “90”. But this would have to be shorter. It could be initiated by an ad hoc committee, which could also work towards the founding of a federation. Dr. Unger's lecture could also be initiated by this committee.

An understanding with the Russians is only possible on the basis of these ideas.

Question: How do we get close to the proletariat?

Rudolf Steiner: It is necessary to “eliminate” the leaders. This is the only way with the independents. The followers of the independents seem to me to be the easiest to win over. You have to talk to the people.

Emil Molt presents Rudolf Steiner with the guidelines of the [Württemberg] socialization commission (Fritz Elsas).

Rudolf Steiner: I can't really do anything with today's concept of socialization. When I read these rubber paragraphs, I ask myself: What is real about them?

Regarding point I, 1 by Fritz Elsas:

Rudolf Steiner: “Something depends on this, not something else, that the worker truly wants.” If you run the economy solely “for society”, it is only a change in the economic system, but there is no increase in productivity. Because today only a few people are the profit-takers, it makes very little difference what is taken from these people. How should the workers benefit from this? If I were on this commission, I would calculate how much is gained in the profit interest of private capital and how many workers there are. Then I would show people how little the status has increased.

You have to propagate such thoughts that nothing is gained from this stuff. I will answer the guiding principles that are here in about the same length.

Emil Molt: Should socialization be tackled immediately?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, in the sense that socialization means a kind of preparatory work to put the economic body on its own feet. Socialization would have to begin by first creating associations between producers and consumers, between employers and workers.

Question: Promotion of workers in the company?

Rudolf Steiner: This will play a role in the future. It is necessary to detach any kind of remuneration from the work. What needs to be remunerated is the position, the place where one stands. And it is necessarily linked to this that everyone has the hope of advancing. In principle, this is very important for later. But at the moment it is particularly important that a common social body is formed from the company, so that even the last worker is informed about the whole process of his work, from raw material to consumer. This is the most urgent thing: that the worker does not work as an animal or as a machine, but as a human being. He must be interested spiritually. Everyone must know: “What am I actually?” It is the greatest omission of the bourgeoisie that it has failed to do so. It is a completely false principle to prevent competition by keeping things secret.

Question: Is there not a danger of the creative intelligentsia migrating abroad?

Rudolf Steiner: What harm would it do? But it won't happen at all. People won't earn more abroad than in Germany. The objection only applies if socialization is carried out in the sense of Dr. Elsas. If you implement our ideas, those who are capable will not be worse off. Of course, we have to bear in mind that we are in an exceptional situation due to tribute and war reparations. For example, implementing our ideas will not put people with technical training at a disadvantage.

The only thing is that inefficient entrepreneurs will be somewhat restricted. But the efficient entrepreneur who is able to make his business flourish will not be at a disadvantage compared to anyone in the Entente simply because he is the one who employs the workers. The idea of “electing” the entrepreneur will not even arise. People will gather under some human being who has initiative. In England, the people who will profit are the entrepreneurs. With us, they will have the corresponding benefits. They will have the benefits because the economic body supports each other. Entrepreneurial sectors balance each other out so that the lower-level sectors receive something from the higher-level sectors. You have to imagine this in reality: the activity changes somewhat. You are then never a one-sided entrepreneur. You are, as such, in a certain relationship with your own consumers. This brings you a compensation. The consumer cooperative honors you. This is in addition to the entrepreneur's fee. The economic body is an interweaving of associations. The leading entrepreneur is no worse off than the entrepreneur is today.

Setting the subsistence level is one of the most complicated things that only arises from the economic organism. To do this, it is necessary for all economic organizations within a territory to come to an understanding. The subsistence level cannot be reduced to a formula. It arises as a result.

Private property remains, but private capital ceases to exist. I will never be able to deprive the community of any income. It would be of no use to me to accumulate capital without introducing it into the circulation process.

Everyone has an equal say in the physical work. But in addition, there is what you achieve spiritually by being here in this position. It goes without saying that if you are a leader in a larger workforce, you must be able to do more.

Emil Molt: Socialization of banks?

Rudolf Steiner: This is only fruitful if we think of socialization in terms of our ideas. The bank is nothing in itself. It is only an expression of the rest of socialization.

Emil Molt: There is a danger that the banks will crush us. They will terminate the credit of those who work in the spirit of your ideas. The bank will only give money if the people suit them.

Rudolf Steiner: If you socialize, as Dr. Elsa wants, then the bank cannot lend and therefore cannot exist. But why should the bank refuse to lend to industrial enterprises that arise under the influence of our ideas?

Emil Molt: There are no more profit-making securities, no more speculation.

Rudolf Steiner: Speculative transactions will cease.

Emil Molt: But the big bankers will resist that.

Rudolf Steiner: Among the ideas on which my cause is based, the only one that comes into question is what someone deposits as their property at the bank. All the lending business can be left to run itself. They don't need any money at all. They only need workers.

Emil Molt: The bank has 200 shares in Waldorf. It would then have to lose them.

Rudolf Steiner: Why do you need the shares? You can force the bank to lose the shares. You can reclaim your own shares. If the bank is the owner of the shares, it is simply a pensioner. This is a matter that can only be decided by goodwill. The people who live as drones depend entirely on goodwill. That will simply stop.

Emil Molt: Don't you then have to pay them a pension for a certain number of years?

Rudolf Steiner: But that depends on goodwill. Let's assume you don't give anything at all.

Emil Molt: Then the bank will go bust and thus harm those who have given their money.

Rudolf Steiner: It can only be a matter of goodwill to compensate people. But you cannot agree to postpone something that does not belong in our thoughts. The banks will not be able to work at all under our thoughts. You will not win over the bankers to a social reform.

Hans Kühn: There are private capitalists who depend on rents.

Rudolf Steiner: They would have to be replaced. It would be a matter of goodwill.

Hans Kühn: How would the workers benefit from their participation in the business?

Rudolf Steiner: Property as such has a moral value. You can only make a profit from what the means of production yields, only from the service. The fact that you are the 'owner' has only a moral value: it is a step forward if, in the economic process, you progress from nomadization to rooting. To get into a state of being interested at all, you have to create a similar bond between the worker and the means of production. This cannot be done through communism, but only through individualism. I am not opposed to freedom of movement. What I mean has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the fact that every person has an interest in the means of production on which they work. By entering the factory, you make him a person who is as involved in his business as a farmer is in his estate. The worker must be able to say to himself: Nothing can be changed there without my consent. In real terms, only services bring income. Property has only a moral value. You should not be able to sell land so easily. That is not something that man achieves. According to our ideas, you can only transfer land from one owner to another by means of an economic corporation, and only if the individual transfers his property rights to a corporation by contract. Land is continuously in individual ownership. However, this does not prevent the contractual establishment of large-scale farming operations in individual places. Through contractual assignment. This assignment cannot be inherited. When it comes to running the business, if someone leaves the business, they lose their ownership rights. These are tied to the location. This is something that is self-evident. In practice, the consequence of ownership is that someone who can sell a factory today will be restricted in the future. Everyone would have to agree to the sale. The individual cannot simply leave his post because it does not suit him. Otherwise, the individual is completely free. If he wants to leave, he has to leave his post. But he cannot sell the company. Tell the people: You see, with the current system, as with a nationalization, you are only tools. Today, the entrepreneur sells his entire company with his company and with it all the workers. But if everyone is a co-owner, that cannot happen.

Emil Molt: How are inactive shareholders treated in the company?

Rudolf Steiner: They have different positions in ascending order. Manual workers – foremen – technical managers – commercial managers – at the top a director. Now you can put together those from the top three levels of the hierarchy who are today the “supervisory board”. There can no longer be people who are only drones. Pure pensioners - like Taube, the mute - must be maintained by pure goodwill.

If you set up a purely socialist program today, you can feign, you can satisfy the opinions of many people. Likewise with a pure entrepreneurial program. But it all leads to impossibilities. Only with our program can you satisfy the person who understands the inner nature and essence of the matter, regardless of whether he is an employer or an employee. These concepts simply cease to exist. People will see for themselves what they belong to, whether they are manual laborers or technical managers and so on.

Roman Boos: Is it important for workers today to move up in the company?

Rudolf Steiner: Socialists are not concerned with getting into leading positions, but with gaining political power in subordinate positions. People just want to restructure. But five people can rule 1000, but not 1000 people five.

Emil Molt: Who will collect the tax when it is spent?

Rudolf Steiner: Everyone is obliged to buy a certain number of revenue stamps at the beginning of the month. When you then make an expense, you have to hand over the stamp. These stamps must then be redeemed again, like train tickets. The tax is not paid by the producer. It is paid before the expenditure is made. Categories of tax rates will be established. The system will be very simple. But human judgment will come into play everywhere. Questions will always arise. When a new need arises, a new production arises. Now the new question arises: how should such an article be taxed? There will never be a production detached from human judgment.

At the beginning of February [1919]

When the socialization program was presented (response to Elsa Kohl):

Rudolf Steiner: This program is so different from others that it is necessary to create common ground first. We must first make it clear to people that they achieve nothing with their bungling. Elsa's program is Bolshevist. Bolshevism is everything that uses old forms to pour in new content. Lenin wants to use the old form of dictatorship to pour in new content.

Regarding taxes on spending:

Rudolf Steiner: Money that goes abroad should have to pay tax at the border.

From a later conversation (Boos with Rudolf Steiner)

Rudolf Steiner: Labor law will never arise from economic life alone, but only from the legal system. However, a certain form of modern socialism seeks to perpetuate the disease. The political state must set economic life straight, as breathing does the other systems, so that the human being is not consumed. (NB.: Compare what was said earlier about carcinoma! Carcinoma through over-inhalation! B.)

Question: Payment of war reparations by Germany:

Rudolf Steiner: There are two ways to raise the money: either it can be imposed directly on the economic body or on the political body, which must then raise it from the economic body. It would be good in all circumstances if the war reparations were discussed with the representatives of the economic body.

Question: How can influence on the peace negotiations be gained?

Rudolf Steiner: We must wait to see what the Entente says about the appeal. Everything formulated by Germany has no basis. The arguments about the necessity of the structure of the peace negotiations will be included in the brochure.

Question: What is your opinion of the council system?

Rudolf Steiner: It is impossible for the same council to have a political and economic effect. It is possible for the same people to sit on the two councils. As soon as the competencies are separated, it turns out - it happens naturally - that the interests of the workers go hand in hand with those of the managers. Then the workers can sit next to the manager in the constitutional state. Even the difference between the liberal and conservative parties will disappear because people will only talk about facts.

An important thing that will arise in labor law: there will not be a normal working day, but a maximum and minimum working day. Workers in heavy jobs will work less than others. That will happen naturally.

Question: How can we respond to the objection that the system of associations in economic life hinders or even prevents free trade with its undeniable advantages?

Rudolf Steiner: The associations I have in mind can have a membership of anything from one to infinity. Coalitions will arise between such production associations and such consumer associations. And everything is oriented towards consumption. Rainer started with the production of bread at the consumer level. I said to him: gather so many consumers that you can produce the bread! The Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press does the same. It is based solely on the fact that people want the books. Here the Anthroposophical Society itself is the association that brings about production. The ideal association is one in which a leading personality can find a circle of consumers for a particular production. But because economic life is so complicated, there must be a system of associations.

Question: But if the aim is to create demand, then surely advertising will be needed, which you otherwise decry?

Rudolf Steiner: In the threefold social organism, it will automatically follow that advertising will only be possible as product advertising. Agencies will be in place. If I want to manufacture a new shoe, I have to turn to a shoe agent who has an independent agency. He will take my shoe on his journey. Such a product advertisement will always be financially viable.

Question: But won't people who want to get ahead faster resort to suggestive advertising again?

Rudolf Steiner: That will not be the case. When I answer such a question in detail, I do not take the answer from a purely logical consideration, but I see the whole threefolded social body concretely before me. And from this it follows that mere suggestive advertising will not be financeable. There will simply be no money available for it.

I would very much like to discuss all the details, for example, regarding liens, mortgages, bonds and so on, especially regarding those matters in which it is not clear today what needs to be clarified; the confusion of capital interest and land rent is having a disastrous effect today.

Question: So it would be our job to travel with your brochure and, as agents, draw attention to the fact that the brochure contains things that could be covered in detailed lectures and so on?

Rudolf Steiner: That's right.

Boos: Next Monday I will meet with the people who have registered for your last Zurich lecture. Can you give me guidelines for this meeting?

Rudolf Steiner: The people must be won over to do something for the brochure. It would not be a bad thing if people came together and provided clarification that the social question cannot be solved in any other way than through the thoughts of the lectures. As soon as you have enough people who have this opinion, the matter will take care of itself.

It would be of the utmost importance to determine the state of the social movement in Switzerland today by setting up a committee on Monday that would have to determine the nature of the relationship between the old Social Democracy and the Bolsheviks in Switzerland. We should have material to show exactly how many people, for example, support the Basler Vorwärts.

Boos: I recently put together: law - salt, economics - mercury, spiritual culture - sulfur.

Rudolf Steiner: One has to be careful here. It means:

Salt: in the head of the individual human being, in the social body of the economy,

Mercury: in the chest of the individual human being, in the social body of law,

Sulfur: in the lower human being of the individual human being, in the social body of spiritual culture.

Furthermore, we must consider the relationship between the individual human being and the social body, and here

salt means social body, sulphur means individual, and mercury is in between.

The social body is upside down. The productions of the individual human head are to the social body what food and drink are to the individual. Primary production is to the social body what talents are to the individual. Through his head system, the human being feeds the spiritual limb of the social organism. The legal system corresponds to the chest human in that it acts as a regulator between the other two - albeit not rhythmically.

From a later discussion

Roman Boos requests some guidelines for a lecture on spiritual science to students, which is meant as preparation for the lecture by Rudolf Steiner planned for eight days later.

Rudolf Steiner: It should be made clear to people that ordinary knowledge and anthroposophical knowledge are different in nature. The latter can only come from an awakening. It is experience, not speculation. In Theosophy, I speak of body, soul and spirit. The objection was raised: How can one make such a distinction? Answer: One must only consider the human life cycle in its reality:

Child – more body

Adult – more soul

Old age – (decline of the body) more spirit

It would be good to clarify the concept of intuition in such a way as to show that “justice” is precisely the opposite of intuition. In justice, man loses himself completely in external objectivity. Turn that around: man loses himself completely in the spirit, and you have intuition. From there you could start: if you grasp the concept of the human being who loses himself in the physical world, if you turn it around, you have the concept of the prenatal and post-mortal human being.

Question: Does such a definition of the law not coincide with the formulation “The spirit in its otherness”? (Hegel)

Rudolf Steiner: Yes. Rightness is spirit in its otherness, its being outside of itself. If Hegel had said it like that, he would have been right. But he didn't call rightness rightness, he called it nature. And nature is not spirit in its otherness, but spirit in its very corresponding negativity. Nature relates to spirit as debt relates to capital. Nature is a hole in spirit. Hegel knew spirit only as ideology with the last breath of life. For Hegel, it is precisely the ideologies that are the objective spirit. Therefore, he did not arrive at a destiny of the soul.

Boos: Ehrenberg (Heidelberg) is working on a critique of German idealism in which he proceeds in a similar direction. He calls idealism “paganism in Christianity”.

Rudolf Steiner: Much nonsense is done today with such abstract concepts. The essence of paganism is that the divine is not grasped in its connection with the human I. In Judaism, the I is grasped. Other beings are included in the I.

Address by Rudolf Steiner before his Departure for Stuttgart

My dear friends! Since my departure has been delayed a little, I am now able to say a final farewell to you. You are aware, of course, that I am now leaving behind the care here in Switzerland for the publication of the essay on the social question, which has just been completed and which I hope will appear quite soon. After what I said here last Monday, I would like to once again strongly recommend this essay to you. I have indeed expressed the hope that here in Switzerland, in particular, something can be done in the sense intended by this writing, and in a particularly fruitful way, for the reason that in Eastern and Central Europe what has to happen first, what is an urgent necessity, has already been challenged, so to speak, by the immediate pressure for the very near future. Here in Switzerland, traditional conditions will continue for a while. Here, therefore, people are still able to do of their own free will many things that others are forced to do.

Now it so happens in our present human development that only that which happens out of free will, out of the free initiative of people, can be particularly fruitful, truly fruitful. If only people could pull themselves together in places where it is still possible without being forced by the terrible facts of the matter, if only they could be roused to do of their own free will what can ultimately only be recognized in a spiritual-scientific way, something tremendously significant could be achieved through this initiative of free will. For this reason, it may now be said, even on Swiss soil, that very special hopes are possible here.

Now, my dear friends, you know that what has been striven for as anthroposophical spiritual science for almost two decades has experienced many, many trials. It is to be assumed that what is expressed in this social writing will initially be met with strong opposition from many who are unable to rethink, because it still appeals to a broader, much broader public. People will find all sorts of objections: impracticality, fantastic flights of fancy, contradictions. People will take particular issue with the latter because the writing is taken from life and real practice, and life and practice themselves have contradictions, so it is easy to find contradictions in them. The philistines, the philistines, all those who like to grovel for contradictions, will have a rich pickings; all those things that, as you have often heard and also otherwise know, come from originate from gossip, which are actually such that one would not want to deal with them at all, and only has to deal with them again and again because there are always members of our society who cannot take the right view of things. I am always amazed, though, that – while my coherent literary work of world view has been available since the beginning of the 1980s and its most essential features can be examined by anyone in terms of its value and content – there are always people, even among the members, who cannot find the right point of view to naturally reject all the stupidities that arise when, for example, it is said here or there, as is now being said from a particularly foolish side, that what I have taught comes from this or that source, from this or that mysterious place or from this or that person; that not all our members are clever enough to object: Yes, the works have been available since the 1980s. And what kind of foolish, stupid things do you gossip about? It is not necessary to judge by gossip what has been publicly available for decades; the fact that not all of our members have already become so clever is something that could fill us with a certain bitterness. Because what is to be judged here is quite obvious to everyone, it is available to everyone. And when people still come to me and keep asking: “Is it true? Is it true?” and so on, there is a channel where this and that is said. All the material to refute the things is there. They have been around for a long time, in printed form. These are things that naturally, my dear friends, will also be attached to what is really coming out of the revelations of humanity right now, through this social intention that is emerging in this book. And so I would like to add a few words here today, that there should at least be a certain number among our members who understand what is being put into the world in the right way and really take it in terms of its content, not according to all kinds of mysterious ideas and suggestions and so on. It is not necessary, my dear friends, that we always color our things from mysterious hints, but our real task is to step forward boldly and fearlessly with what results from the deepest demands of the present, and to stand up for it in such a way that today only the anthroposophist can actually stand up for these things. For anthroposophy should not only give people something that they can think in one way or another. However strange it may sound, my dear friends, what is a major demand of the present day is that people become wiser. And anthroposophy should help people in all areas of life to become wiser, to make them more agile in their thinking, to give them what people today so sorely lack: the possibility of being convinced of something.

Yes, my dear friends, consider in this area what is perhaps one of the most necessary things in the present day. In response to that appeal, which appeared some time ago, which could have been read by thousands of people, which has been much discussed, even in response to this appeal, some characteristic personalities have said that they cannot understand what is in it. Yes, my dear friends, that is precisely the most saddening thing, that people who for years, in the last difficult, catastrophic years for humanity, have believed everything, have been able to understand everything that they have been ordered to believe, that people who are quite willing to accept what have nothing but an order from above, that they welcome that which appeals to their freedom, to their free understanding, simply when it does not run in the usual lines of thought, so that they say, 'Yes, there you need more detailed explanations, you can't understand that'. That is already one of the saddest things in the present, this resistance to being convinced, this brutal response arising from the most terrible lack of understanding of the demands of humanity: “You can't understand that, it's abstract, or something like that. It is precisely those people who, under the terrible straitjacket of censorship, or the censorship of different countries, have accepted everything, who have parroted every word that has come from above, no matter how idiotic it was, who cannot understand that which appeals to their free minds, to their free souls.

But today we have reached a point where only that which people allow to approach their free understanding will be decisive, only that which people do not allow to be commanded to be understood, but what people want to understand from their innermost being. That is why what a man of the local community recently said to me about the social lecture I gave here is very true: Yes, some people say that they have not understood it: these are just the people who did not want to understand. They did not want to understand. We must always keep this in mind, that must be our strict, straight direction, what is said with these words. That is what it is about. What is needed for the future is not a change of institutions based on old, familiar ideas. What is needed for the future is new ideas, new impulses and, in particular, the awareness that what we have been thinking in the old way is no longer useful.

And the present faces a momentous decision. You of all people should not keep coming back with: But that has already been said, that has been said, that has been said. Of course, many things have been said. But that is not the point. What it is about is summarizing from a broad perspective, from the perspective that follows from the demands of the immediate present. If we as anthroposophists can stand on this ground, then we will be able to place our personality here or there in the turmoil of the times, so that you can really throw something meaningful, no matter how small, into the present.

In particular, I would like to see anthroposophy bear fruit in this social work. I would not like you to regard these two areas as separate entities, but to see how one can support the other and you are aware that people who have never wanted to listen to any spiritual deepening of the world view in recent times are of course at first as unsuitable as possible to understand those social impulses that are given here. But all the more reason to remember our obligation, once we have the anthroposophical basis, to do something to make things understandable to people. Today, my dear friends, it is not a matter of asking for details at every opportunity. Those who ask for details at every opportunity only want to continue in the old tracks. Today, it is truly not a matter of having things worked out in the most specific details. What is at issue is the great, significant lines of a reorganization of things that extends across the world. And much of what still seems to people today as if they could not do without, much of it will no longer be talked about at all in some time, so it will be swept away.

This sense of being attuned to the times will have to provide the basic nuance for what the ideas and ideals and impulses that have grown on anthroposophical soil have to permeate. From this point of view, I would like to urge you not to take this matter lightly, not to take it lightly. As I said last time, it is not a matter of distorting these things into sectarianism, but it is a matter of thinking these things on a large scale, above all, of thinking that it is important to find as many people as possible who understand the matter. It is not so much the institution that matters today: it is people who understand that matter today. For everything that people think who do not want to understand what today's times demand must first go and will go. You can be quite sure: it will go. It must first go. Only that which those who really want to work with new human feelings strive for has validity. The greatest resistance will arise precisely among the so-called intellectuals, among the so-called educated. They are the least able to think outside the box. This is something we are experiencing again today. There is an example, an example that can illustrate what I am talking about here: a little book about a particular person's mental illness has recently been published in Germany. Of course, there are plenty of “academically trained” doctors who accuse such a booklet of amateurism, contradictions, and insufficient foundations - not well researched by an expert. They claim that you can only judge mental illness if you have observed a person for a long time, if you have been in their environment.

Now, in this case, we are dealing with a person whose actions were laid bare for the whole world to see, discussed daily in the newspapers and so on. The fools who have their academic years, their clinics and their specialization behind them do not consider that the case must be judged quite differently. One must have the courage to look into such things without prejudice today.

That, my dear friends, is anthroposophy, not the mere parroting or inward parroting of the individual content: when you go beyond what is today the ballast of humanity, in the so-called professional world - one could better say, in the professional talk - that gives off the worst impulses. If you can penetrate to an unbiased judgment of these things, then you will have done something tremendous for your soul. Because that is what it is about, that is what we need. Above all, we need a courageous penetration through the wild prejudices that come from science, intelligence, scholarship, and their institutions. Because that is what holds us back the most. Do you believe that all the things that have been dreamed of here and there in terms of social structure can be true? Now, however, people are no longer dreaming because they have experienced not construction but destruction wherever it was discussed. But what has been done? Somehow a few people at the top have been replaced by others – and the whole apparatus, the whole vast apparatus, has remained. Yes, my dear friends, what is the inner basis of this whole apparatus in human nature? During the last four hundred years, people have been educated in their youth – but on what basis? They are brought up by the “All-holder, All-embracing, does it not grasp and hold you, me, itself?” - from the state or from that which is in some way connected to the state: to get a job, to live from this job, to let what is necessary for life be passed to you as passively as possible, and then, from this public institution, I mean, from this res publica, to draw a pension for the time after you have worked, until you die. After all, pensionable or insured positions are particularly what people love. And when death comes, the church assures eternal bliss, to which one comes without having really established an inner connection with the divine that flows and weaves through the world. This life, as it has increasingly taken hold of humanity in recent centuries: to be educated as passively as possible for a job that one does on the orders of this or that public institution, then to receive a pension from the very institution one , and finally, after death, eternal bliss, without knowing how to connect with the soul to the eternal in any way, has educated those people who today face the terribly speaking facts so passively. We must rise above this passivity with a pension and an eternal claim. We must find that which is divine substance within ourselves, we must find the impulses that place us in eternal life. We must place ourselves in this, not in some external institution to which we slavishly surrender. Man must become active, find within himself the impulses that are world impulses. This is what is ultimately most necessary and what underlies the question that may be raised: Yes, but how do people come to arrange their lives comfortably? And so on. That will no longer be possible in any case. And unless you first seek the God in your heart, anthroposophy will not grant you any bliss. Hegel's words remain true: Man is not only eternal after his death, man must be eternal - here in this physical body. That is, he must have truly found that which is eternal in him. These things are all already in anthroposophy; these things also underlie the healthy social ideas, which are now being expressed in writing and which I commend to you. And with this heartfelt recommendation, I would now like to suggest to you, since we have to leave, that we stay together in thought. We should have learned that. Therefore, until we meet again, in whatever way, we will stay together in thought, my dear friends.