The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Do not think that I wish to take the floor this evening for the purpose of speaking of an understanding between the various classes of the present population, in the same way that the ruling classes, the hitherto ruling classes in particular, so often speak of reconciliation and understanding. I would like to speak to you this evening about a quite different kind of understanding, about the understanding that is being challenged by the social facts that are speaking loudly today and by the great historical forces that are currently entering the course of human development. I would like to speak of what seems to me to be demanded of the proletarian movement in particular, of these historical forces that are today, one might say, revolutionizing the world.

To speak of a different understanding is forbidden by almost the whole of modern life, the life that certain people call modern civilization. What voices have we heard within this modern civilization over the last few decades! Let us remember how the hitherto ruling classes have perceived this modern civilization, one might say, right up to the terrible catastrophe of war which has come as a horror to mankind in recent years. How often has it been said how far we humans have come in creating, in producing! How we have brought it about that thought can be sent far across the earth in a short time, how connections have been created between the most distant countries, how spiritual life in all its forms has gained a tremendous expansion. Well, I could go on singing the praises of modern civilization for a long time, not the way I want to sing them, but the way they have been sung by this ruling class. But let us now look at things from the other side. How was this modern civilization, to which so many songs of praise have been sung, actually possible? It was only possible because it was, so to speak, undermined by those who, from the innermost essence of their humanity, could not agree with what the bearers of this modern civilization were doing. And so, alongside all this, which one could also call a kind of luxury culture, one could hear the voices coming from the other side, which essentially always ended with the words: It can't go on like this! As wonderful as your civilization may be for you, it is impossible for it to go on any other way than for the vast majority of the earth's population to have no direct share in it. They have to feel excluded from this civilization, they have to watch from the outside, so to speak, but on the other hand they have to work hard for this civilization!

Has anyone on the other side shown any understanding in recent decades for the reasons and background from which such a call has emerged? You can't say that. In general, certain people today speak a very strange language. Over the last few days, I have witnessed some of what has taken place here in Bern at the League of Nations Conference. You could hear all kinds of beautiful speeches, that is, speeches that the gentlemen thought were very beautiful. But anyone who is able to look a little deeper into what is being expressed in the world-changing deeds that are going through Europe today could hear, above all, in what was said there, that the most important question of the present, the question that is of ever-increasing concern to a large part of humanity, was being talked and thought past. The actual nerve of the social question was talked and thought past! This conference showed extraordinarily little understanding for this question, and one was reminded of something else, namely the weeks of the spring and early summer of 1914, when one could hear many a strange speech from the hitherto ruling circles and their leaders. One could cite many similar speeches, such as the one made by a leading statesman in a Central European country to a parliament in 1914, in which he said: “Thanks to the energetic efforts of the European cabinets, we can hope that peace among the great powers of Europe will be secured for the foreseeable future. - This was still being said, with all possible modifications, in May and June 1914.

And then? Then came what killed millions of people, what crippled millions of people. So well foreseen was that which also asserted itself alongside that to which one sang such hymns of praise as modern civilization!

I myself, if I may make this personal remark, had to speak differently from these statesmen at the time. Before a meeting in Vienna in the spring of 1914, I had to say: Anyone who looks at the life of contemporary European humanity sees in it something like a creeping cancer that must break out. - Well, we can leave it to the judgment of mankind today as to who was a better prophet: the one who spoke of a cancerous disease that broke out so terribly in the so-called world war, or those who thought that, thanks to the efforts of the cabinets, a longer peace was in prospect. Just as in those days these gentlemen talked past what was gathering as a black cloud in the political sky of Europe, so today certain people talk past what is most important: the social powers and forces entering the life of the nations of the earth. Since things are like this, there is really very little prospect of bringing about an understanding through reason, so to speak. But an understanding on the other side, as I have already said, can be sought. And this understanding seems to me to arise if we take the following starting point.

Until our time, the proletarian population was basically in a completely different situation than it will be from now on. Anyone who has not only thought about the proletarian movement from a certain theoretical point of view, but who has experienced this proletarian movement in such a way that he has lived with it, knows that what the modern proletariat experienced was the great, penetrating criticism of what the institutions and maxims of the hitherto leading circles have done for centuries, for three to four centuries. What the modern proletarian experienced was the living, world-historical critique of everything they believed they had to impose on humanity. And basically, what was going on within the proletariat was a great, powerful critique. While the hitherto leading circles lingered within their bourgeois culture, to which they sang such hymns of praise, while they could hear in their lecture halls that which served their state, while they heard in their theaters the illusory world of their affairs, while they did many other things, what they perceived as such a salutary modern civilization, the proletarian masses came together in the hours they could spare from the heavy, arduous work of the day to reflect on the serious questions of human development, the serious questions of world history. After all, modern technical development and the capitalist development connected with it had taken the modern proletarian away from all other human contexts, which, for example, the old craft had provided, had placed him next to the machine, harnessed into the capitalist world order and thus excluded from the immediate feeling of what the leading, leading circles were doing. Then the proletarian's spiritual gaze turned to the general and, from a certain point of view, the highest interest of humanity. And in the proletarian assemblies that was driven which then always had to sound out again in the cry: It can't go on like this!

But what developed there was also a powerful, magnificent criticism of the previous policy, the previous economic management of the leading circles. This has now entered a new stage. And to really follow this entry into a new stage with attention seems to me to be one of the most necessary social tasks today.

How has the modern proletarian felt about the social order that has developed over the last three to four centuries, since the time when modern capitalism and modern technology entered the development of mankind? How did the modern proletarian feel about all this, which he had to look at as if he were standing on his feet, which he, as far as he could use it, wanted to absorb with his intimate share, so that he would also have something for his soul? The old leading circles spoke to him of various powers and forces at work in the historical development of mankind; they spoke to him of all kinds of moral world orders and the like. But he, the modern proletarian, who looked up to what these ruling classes were doing, felt little of the power, of the inner originality of such moral world orders; He felt that the actions, the thoughts, the feelings of the leading, governing circles are essentially shaped by the way they can live by virtue of their economic forms, their economic order, through which they are able to establish their civilization as a kind of superstructure on the misery, on the oppression of larger masses of humanity who had to work for them.

And so there arose in the modern proletariat what was the truth in relation to the reality of these newer thoughts about the development of mankind. The modern proletarian felt a truth about what the others fantasized about in a certain lying way; they spoke of a moral, of a divine world order, through which people are brought into mutual social relations on earth. The proletarian felt this to be a profound lie. And he felt that the truth in all this is that people live as they can by exploiting economic life for their own convenience, for their own benefit. And so the materialistic conception of history arose - and one must now say, as the proper inheritance of what was bourgeois science - the conception which did not admit that the actually effective forces in the historical development of mankind were anything other than economic forces. And that became the belief that everything that is human religion, human science, human spirituality, rises above the economic forces like a kind of “superstructure”, and that below it the economic forces reign as the only reality on which at most the superstructure acts back. The modern proletariat was right in the face of what the bourgeois world order has made of social life - a mere economy.

The second thing that emanated from Karl Marx's power of thought and spread into the proletarian assemblies, into the proletarian souls, is not the intellectual question, as I have just characterized it in the materialist view of history, but the legal question. This culminates in the one word that you all know, but which had an electrifying effect within the modern proletarian movements, which evoked understanding in the innermost feelings of the modern proletarian souls when it was presented to these proletarian souls by Marx and his successors: it is the word of surplus value. And behind much of what has been said around this word of surplus value, what the modern proletarian actually feels to be his most important human question, lies the question which is more or less consciously or unconsciously, more or less merely felt or posed with the intellect, but which is deeply felt. What sense does my work actually have within the modern social order? And it must be said that Karl Marx's various answers are brilliant. - But today we live in a time in which we must go further than even Marx went, especially if we understand Marx in the right way, not in the direction of the opportunist politicians, but in a completely different direction, as we shall see in a moment.

When the modern proletarian raised the question of the meaning of his labor and this became for him the question of his position within modern society, of his human dignity, he was repeatedly confronted with the problem that his labor was, as it were, absorbed by the capitalist economic process. He experienced that his labor had become something that it could only appear to be, namely: a commodity. The modern proletarian, who can only acquire his labor power anew as his only “possession”, experienced that he must also carry his labor power to the market, must have his labor power treated according to the rules of supply and demand, as otherwise objective commodities separated from man are treated on the commodity market.

Now the peculiarity of human life is that things can occur in this human life which are real, but which are not truths, which are lies of life. And one such lie is that human labor can ever become a commodity. For human labor power can never enter into any comparisons, any price comparisons with commodities. It is something fundamentally different from commodities. It is therefore a lie if that which can never become a commodity is nevertheless made into a commodity. Even if this is not expressed in such a clear manner, it is nevertheless something that is perceived as, I would say, the center of the proletarian question of modern times. Because human labor power has become a commodity, the legal relationship that should exist between the entrepreneur and the worker over work has become a purchasing relationship. And modern bourgeois national economists do indeed talk as if it were possible within economic life to exchange commodity for commodity on the one hand, and commodity for labor on the other.

The fact that a so-called labor contract exists in the modern sense of the word does not change the matter; for a legal contract can only be concluded about the relationship between entrepreneur and worker in the sense that we shall see later. Human labor could only be liberated from its commodity character - and it must be liberated - if the only contract possible between the employee and the employer were not the contract for the work performed, but the contract for the distribution of the jointly produced goods or services in a way that serves the healthy organism in the right sense. This is the demand that lies behind the Marxist theory of surplus value. At the same time, this is the way in which one must go beyond the merely Marxist conception. And the question must be asked: How does the wage relationship end? How does a commodity distribution contract take the place of the labor contract?

But with this we have indicated the second thing that repeatedly ran through the soul of the modern proletarian and which was hurled at the leading circles as a powerful criticism.

And the third, that was the conviction that everything that takes place in modern life and which has led to these conditions into which we have now got, does not consist in a harmony, not in a work of modern men arising from a common purpose, but in a struggle between groups of men in which one of them has the advantage at first; that is the class struggle of the modern proletariat with the leading classes.

Truly, these three points: the materialist conception of history, the theory of surplus-value and labor-power, and the theory of class struggle have been studied with more contemporary force than anything that has been written within bourgeois society in recent times. For it was recognized that what human development has come to in the last centuries is merely a result of economic forms. All other interpretations are basically a great lie of humanity.

And so the whole intellectual life, as it had become a kind of cultural luxury for the ruling class, became an “ideology” for the modern proletariat, a word that was heard again and again. It became a mere fabric of thoughts and feelings and sentiments, which were expressed as smoke emanating from the true reality of economic life.

But one does not understand the matter if one only understands it in this way. One only understands the matter correctly if one knows that in the face of this desolating ideology, this soul-killing ideology, which is essentially a legacy of the thinking of the hitherto ruling class, in the modern proletarian soul, which had time to think about human dignity and about truly becoming a human being on the machine and in the enclosure of the capitalist economic process, a real longing for a true spiritual life, not for a spiritual luxury, not for abundance, awoke. One can still often hear in bourgeois circles today how the modern proletarian question, viewed from this or that side, is actually a bread-and-butter question. Certainly, it is a bread-and-butter question; but there is really no need to talk about the fact that it is a bread-and-butter question in an assembly where proletarian understanding prevails. For it is not a question of thinking in the same way as a bourgeois sociologist and pedagogue, for instance, who now travels about a great deal in many regions, and who, among other things, recently coined the words: You only have to really know modern poverty once, then you will already come to the longing for a humanization of human society. - Behind such words there is usually nothing more than the question: How can one continue in the delusion of the old life of the ruling circles and how can one in the best way let chunks fall off for those who should not participate in this life of the ruling class? How can labor be dealt with while maintaining the existing social order? - It is not a question of bread. If it is a question of bread, then it is above all a question of how bread is fought for, out of which soul motives.

This has to do with much deeper historical forces than those who often talk about history from this perspective even suspect. And today the three questions which I have just characterized have reached a new stage in that there is much in them which one is not yet able to express clearly, but which can be heard by those who have an ear for the workings of historical forces, for the sounds which herald the great world-historical upheavals. Today the proletarian movement is no longer a mere criticism, today it is that which is called upon by the world-historical powers themselves to take action, to raise the great question: What must be done? - And here it seems to me that what I characterized earlier must be transformed somewhat, transformed in such a way that, in contrast to the purely material life as it has developed up to now, another life should develop that allows the oppressed part of humanity to have an existence that is truly humane in soul as well. That is the first question, the question of spiritual life: How can we transform the luxury ideology, the affluent spiritual life, into that which, from the innermost nature of man, man must really experience for an existence worthy of man?

The other thing that has developed, apart from this spiritual life, is precisely that which has turned the proletarian's human labor power into a commodity in the field of legal life. This could only develop because in the social order that emerged under capitalism and modern technology, law became a prerogative in many respects. How can the prerogative be replaced by law, within whose order the human labor power of the proletarian is stripped of the character of a mere commodity?

And the third question is: how can what has developed as class struggle continue to develop in other forms? The proletarian has felt very well that what must happen in life can only develop in this mutual struggle. But he perceives the struggles that have taken place in the course of modern history as those that must be overcome. And so the question of the necessity of class struggles will now, at the present stage of development, be transformed into the question: How do we overcome class struggles? - The question of surplus value, which has moved into the realm of privileges within the social order as it has developed over the last few centuries, this question of surplus value gives rise to the other question: How to find in human society, in the true sense of the word, a state of law satisfactory to all men?

With regard to the first question, the spiritual side of the social question, one only has to see how deep the abyss is between the hitherto ruling classes and those on the other side who are striving for a new world and social order. And here it must be said that what fills the modern proletarian with spiritual life has basically been inherited from the bourgeois class, which has been able to cultivate science, art and so on. - But this spiritual life had a different effect within the proletariat, for the proletarian was in a different position in relation to what he had inherited in the way of science and the like than in relation to what arose as modern spiritual life among those who were bourgeois, the leading circles. One could be a very convinced follower of modern intellectual life, one could consider oneself very enlightened, but one stood as a member of the ruling class within such a social order, which was not at all organized according to this modern intellectual life. One could be a natural scientist like Vogt, a scientific popularizer like Büchner, one could believe oneself to be completely enlightened - that was perhaps good for the head, for the intellectual conviction; but it was not suitable for understanding the position of man in real life. For the way these people stood in life could only be justified by the fact that the social order derived from quite different powers, from religious, from outdated moral world views, or at any rate from other powers than those which had presented themselves as scientifically certified powers to these ruling, leading classes. Therefore, that which is the modern scientific spirit and to which the proletarian simply brought himself from the culture of modern times had a completely different effect on the proletarian soul.

I may recall a small scene that illustrates this particularly well, this different effect of modern spiritual life on the proletarian, who was compelled to grasp this modern spiritual life not just for the head, but for the whole person, for his entire position within humanity.

Many years ago, I once stood on the same podium in Spandau with Rosa Luxemburg, who has now come to such a tragic end. At that time she spoke about science and the workers, and as a teacher at the workers' education school I had a few things to add to her words on the same subject. This topic, “Science and the workers”, gave her the opportunity to express precisely that which is so characteristic of the intellectual life of the modern proletariat. She said: “The sentiments - despite the conviction of the head - the sentiments of the modern leading class of humanity are still rooted in views as if man came from angelic beings who were originally good; and from this origin, in terms of feeling and sentiment, these ruling classes justify the differences in rank and class that have emerged in the course of development. But the modern proletarian is driven in a quite different way to take bourgeois science seriously. He must take seriously when he is taught how man was not originally an angelic being, but climbed about on trees like an animal and behaved most indecently. Looking back to this origin of man in the sense of the modern world view does not justify differences in life, class and status in the same way that others believe it to be justified, it justifies a completely different idea of the equality of all people.

You see, that's the difference! The proletarian was compelled to take what the others took as a head conviction, which did not go very deep, no matter how enlightened they were, he was compelled to take it up with his whole person, to take the matter with the bitterest seriousness of life. As a result, however, it wove itself into his soul in a completely different way. One must simply become attentive to such things, then one will already recognize in what sense the modern social question is above all a question of spiritual life and strives for the development of a spiritual life that satisfies all people.

Then, if you look into the causes of everything that I have only been able to describe today, I would like to say, in a stammering manner, because if you really wanted to describe it in detail, it would require too much elaboration, if you research the causes and then ask yourself: what development must be striven for? - then we can say the following: today it is really not a question of whether materialistic culture is the real foundation of spiritual life, but of how we can arrive at a spiritual life that can truly satisfy the human soul, the soul of all human beings. Today it can no longer be about a critical interpretation of what surplus value is, what human labor power represents itself as within the capitalist world order, but today the question arises: How can human labor power be freed from the character of a commodity and how can we ensure that “surplus value” does not remain a prerogative but becomes a right? And if there must be struggles within the human social order, can they be class struggles, can they be the struggles that have gradually emerged over the course of recent centuries?

Today we are at a stage of development where criticism alone is no longer decisive, but where the question is decisive: What is to be done? - For those who look at the foundations of life, the answer is, I would say, very radical. It may look less radical to some than it is, but it is a radical answer. Because proletarian thinking is in many respects only the legacy of bourgeois thinking, because proletarian habits of thought are the legacy of bourgeois habits of thought, the first questions to be considered are: How can the damage caused by capitalism be eliminated? How can the oppressive nature of the commodification of human labor power be eliminated? How can the class struggle be overcome in a humane way?

These questions must be asked from a much deeper perspective today. And great demands are made today by the historical facts themselves on the habits of thought, on the thoughts of the proletarian. For it is up to him to be equal to the times, to ask himself: How can we get beyond the unhealthy foundations of today's material historical life? How can we get beyond the devastation that the cycle of surplus-value production has wreaked on life, on legal life? How do we get beyond the devastation of modern class struggles? The three most important modern social questions are transformed from the negative into the positive.

If we look at the causes of current living conditions, we find that there is actually a tendency to continue what the bourgeois world order has brought about. Many people are asking themselves today: How can we overcome capitalism? How can we overcome private ownership of the means of production? - And they then come to the ancient order of human social institutions, that of the cooperative and the like, that is, they come to regard a common ownership of the means of production as an ideal.

This is understandable, and truly, it is not out of any bourgeois prejudice that these things should be discussed here, but solely from the point of view of: Is it possible to achieve what the modern proletarian wants in the way that some socialist thinkers believe they can achieve it today? Is it possible, by resorting to the framework of the old state and inserting into this old state what is the economic order, only in a different form, to bring about a redemption from the oppression brought about by the past?

Let us look at the modern state. It came into being because at a time - in the 16th and 17th centuries - when modern technology and modern capitalism were also developing, the leading circles, who then had to call the proletariat more and more to the machine, found that their interests were best satisfied within the framework of the state. And so they began to allow economic life to run into the state in those branches where it was convenient for them. And especially when modern achievements came along, large parts of economic life, such as the postal, telegraph and railroad systems, were taken over into the economy of the state, which had been handed down from time immemorial. At that time, intellectual life was also incorporated into the modern state structure!

And more and more this fusion of economic life, the legal life of the state and intellectual life took place. This fusion not only led to all the unnatural conditions associated with the oppressive conditions of modern times, but this fusion also ultimately led to the devastating effects of the world war catastrophe.

Those who think today from the historical facts will not ask: What should the states do? - on the contrary, they may be forced to ask: What should states refrain from doing? - For what they do and thereby bring about, we have indeed experienced in the killing of ten million people and in what crippled eighteen million people.

And so perhaps the question does come to mind: What should states refrain from doing? - This is what I can only hint at here, but what can truly be asked from the deep foundations of a true social science. If you look at certain political and social conditions as they have, I would say, typically developed, but also as they have typically led to their well-deserved end, then you need only look at Austria, for example, which in the 1960s turned towards a common constitutional system in the Austrian Reichsrat.

What had emerged at that time - I spent three decades of my life in Austria, got to know the conditions thoroughly, got to know what developed as constitutional life in the Austrian state at that time - truly fitted the mishmash of different nations like a glove. And for anyone who can really follow historical facts, it is clear that it was precisely what was founded in Austrian constitutional life at that time, what became Austria's policy in the sixties and seventies, that contributed to the end to which the present years have led.

Why? Well, at that time an Austrian Imperial Council was founded. Initially, the purely economic curia, the curia of the large landowners, the curia of the markets, the cities and industrial towns, the curia of the rural communities were elected to this Austrian Imperial Council. They had to represent their economic interests in the state parliament. And they made rights, they made laws out of their economic life. Only rights that were a transformation of economic interests were created. With regard to the law, however, we are not dealing with the same thing that we are dealing with on the ground of economic life. On the ground of economic life one has to do with human needs, with the production of goods, the circulation of goods, the consumption of goods. In the field of legal life, however, one has to do with that which, apart from all other interests, concerns man, in so far as he is purely only man, in so far as he as man is equal to all other men. Judgment must be based on quite different grounds when the question is asked: What is right? - than: What must be done in order to introduce any product into the cycle of economic life? - The unnatural coupling of the economic curia with legal life is what is eating away at the so-called Austrian state as a cancer.

These things could be illustrated by many examples throughout the modern states. It is not a question of merely studying these things, but of finding the right point of view from which one can gain an insight into true reality, into that which lives and weaves, not into that which people imagine to be the right thing politically or economically.

And again, look at the German Reichstag, of blessed memory, at this democratic parliament with equal voting rights, in which there could be a representation of interests like the Farmers' Union, but in which there could also be a representation of a mere spiritual community, like the Center! There we see something welded, melted into purely political life that belongs only to intellectual life. And to what unnatural conditions has this led! Again, one could cite many examples in addition to this one. If one wants to get to know the life of modern mankind, one must be able to approach it radically from this point of view. One must really have the courage to look such things in the face, then one will come to something that modern people do not yet want to admit, I would even like to say that people of all parties do not want to admit it. But what alone can be the impulse for a recovery of our social organism is the recognition that from now on there can no longer be a welding together, a coupling together of the three areas of life - spiritual life, legal life and economic life - but that each of these areas has its own laws of life, that each of these areas must therefore also give itself its social formation from its own sources.

In economic life only the interests of commodity production, commodity consumption and commodity circulation can prevail. The fundamental laws of this economic life must be decisive for administration and legislation. In the field of legal life that must prevail which springs directly from the human consciousness of law, that in which all men are really equal as men. In the field of spiritual life, that which can flow from the natural human endowment in full free initiative must prevail.

Modern Social Democracy has made inroads - I would like to say, from a completely different point of view, but that cannot affect us here today - in a single area, in that it has the proposition in its views: Religion must be a private matter. - The proposition must be extended to all branches of spiritual life. All spiritual life must be a private matter in relation to the rule of law and to the cycle of economic life. That spiritual life alone which is directed to its own powers, that spiritual life alone which always proves its reality out of its own impulse, that will not be a spiritual luxury, that will not be a spiritual abundance, that will be a spiritual life which must be longed for by all men in the same way. In looking at medieval spiritual life, for example science in relation to religion and theology, the following sentence has often been uttered: Philosophy, the wisdom of the world, is trailing behind theology. - Well, it was also believed that this had changed in more recent times. It has changed, but how has it changed? The secular sciences have become the servants of secular powers, of states, of economic cycles. And they really haven't gotten any better as a result. And why have they not become better? When one sees that there is basically a unified current, a unified force, from the highest branches of spiritual life down to the utilization of man's individual abilities, as they are carried by capital and capitalism, then one sees to the bottom of the question that arises here. Anyone who does not separate the functions and activities of capital in the modern social order from the rest of spiritual life is not looking at the bottom of the matter. Working on the basis of capital is only possible in a society in which there is a healthy, emancipated intellectual life, from which the development of such abilities based on capital can also grow.

What has happened in more recent times need not always be as grotesque as it once was when a modern, very important researcher, a physiologist, wanted to characterize what the Berlin Academy of Sciences, that is, the learned gentlemen of this Berlin Academy of Sciences, actually were: he called them, these learned gentlemen, “the scientific protection force of the Hohenzollerns”. You see, things had changed. Science was no longer the servant of theology; but whether it had risen to a higher dignity by becoming the servant of the state is another matter.

I would have to speak a great deal if I wanted to offer you the well-founded, well-reasoned truth in all its parts that only the reversal of that movement which has occurred in recent times, namely the liberation of spiritual life in all branches from state life, can lead to the recovery of our social organism. How differently will the lowest teacher feel if, in all that he has to represent, he knows himself to be dependent only on administration and legislation, which is built on the basis of spiritual life itself, than if he has to carry out the maxims, the impulses of political life! The teaching profession was once supposed to develop. It is precisely in this area that the servant class has developed. And this servant state in this field truly corresponds to what has developed in the field of economic life. In antiquity it was called the “nourishing state”. The exploitative and exploited classes have developed in more recent times. However, the two went hand in hand. One is not possible without the other.

All that which relates to the personal relationship between man and man - and this personal relationship from man to man also relates to what employees and employers agree with each other - all this can only be administered by that part of the social organism which is organized independently on the basis of spiritual life. Everything connected with rights, and with rights above all the labor relationship, must remain the domain of the political, the constitutional state. But that which is connected with commodity production, commodity circulation and consumption must become a separate member of the social order, in which only the laws of life of this organism are active.

Thus, by entering into the foundations of these things, one arrives at the radical view, which for some will prove uncomfortable, that for the health of our social relations three independent social organizations must develop side by side, which will work together in the right way precisely because they do not have a uniform centralization, but are centralized in themselves: a parliament which administers spiritual affairs, an administration which serves only these spiritual affairs; a parliament and an administration of the constitutional state, the political state in the narrower sense; a parliament and an independent administration of the economic cycle for itself; like sovereign states side by side, so to speak. Through their coexistence, they will be able to realize what the modern proletarian soul wants, but which cannot be achieved by a mere centralist nationalization of the social order.

Just take economic life for example. Today it is attached on the one hand to the natural foundations. One can also improve these natural bases by improving the soil and the like, then the working conditions can become more favorable by improving the working bases; but there is a limit beyond which one cannot go. Such a limit must also be reached on the other side. Just as economic life is attached to nature, which is outside, so on the other side must stand the rule of law. From this constitutional state, rights and laws are determined in such a way that they are separate from economic life. Just as the judge has to judge separately from his family or human relations when he judges according to the law, just as he allows his human will to function from a different source than in everyday life, so, even if it is the same people - for it will be the same people who rule through all three areas of social organization - when they judge from the modern constitutional state, they will judge according to quite different principles. For example, to cite just one, the measure of work that a person can perform, the time in which a person can work, will result precisely from the human demands of life. All this must be independent of the price formation that prevails in economic life. And just as, on the one hand, nature imposes pricing on economic life, so, on the other hand, free, independent humanity must always first decide on labor out of a sense of justice. And from the political state, which stands outside economic life, labor must be placed within economic life. Then labor is price-forming; then the character of a commodity will not be imposed on labor, then labor participates in the formation of the price, is not dependent on the price formation of the commodity. Just as nature acts on economic life from without, so must law, which is embodied in human labor, act from without.

It may be - for this may be objected - that the prosperity of a social organism becomes in a certain way dependent upon it, when labor first asserts its right; but this dependence is a healthy dependence, and it will lead to a healthy improvement in the same way as, for example, the improvement of the soil by technical means, when it is necessary or expedient or proves possible. But labor will never be able to set prices in the same way that it must set prices in accordance with human dignity if economic life is placed within the framework of the modern state as in a large cooperative. Economic life must be removed and left to its own devices. Legal life, political life, security life must be taken out and placed on its own. People have to speak from the most democratic basis about that which affects all people. Then this will have the right effect on economic life and what must come from it. This will never be able to happen from a cooperative or state institution of any kind. We will see that, if things remain the same as the present oppressors have developed from other, historical foundations, the new oppressors will also develop in the same way if real democratic foundations are not created outside of economic life.

Just as the legal life of the state must stand outside economic life, so must the entire intellectual life from the lowest school up to the university. Then that which develops out of this spiritual life will be able to be a real spiritual administration of the other two branches of life. Then it will be possible for that which is formed as profit in economic life to be genuinely supplied to the community from which it is taken. Then it will be possible for something similar to take place for the material goods, as today only for the beautiful spiritual goods. For the spiritual goods of modern society are actually the most precious of all. It is so: with regard to this spiritual good, it is true that what is produced is given to the general public at least thirty years after death, becomes free property, can be administered by everyone. People today truly do not put up with this with regard to material goods

Possession in social life is not what these or those social economists so often dream of in a strange way; it can only be understood in this way for social life: Possession is the exclusive right of disposal over a thing; possession in the productive sense, in the sense of land, is a right. And this right can only be made into a right, instead of a privilege, which corresponds to the legal consciousness of all men, if the formation of judgement takes place on a ground where only the right is determined, if it becomes possible that that which has resulted as profit can be transferred through the rule of law into the disposal of the spiritual organization, so that the spiritual organization has to find the right individual abilities for that which is no longer used for production, that is, for human service, but becomes mere profit. In this way it will become possible to bring ever new individual abilities to mankind.

But in order that there may really be a power which leads in the right way, not into bureaucratism, but into the free administration of the individual mental faculties of men, that which must be taken as property from one side, it is necessary that the constitutional state should supervise property, that is, the right of property, and that it should not itself become the owner, but that it should be able to hand over free property to that intellectual circle from which it can best be administered. From this you can see that from such backgrounds one arrives today at radical views which will surprise even you; but for my part I am convinced that the facts of world history demand such things of men today. I am convinced that what the modern proletarian wants cannot be achieved in any other way than by extending his hand to the separation of powers. That is the only possible “foreign policy” today. And strangely enough, each individual territory can carry it out for itself. If Germany were to take up this idea for itself today, as I recently expressed in an “Appeal to the Germans and the Cultural World”, which has attracted many signatures, if the Germans were to take up this tripartite division today, then perhaps they could negotiate with the others in a different way than they can today, when they stand there as a unified state that has been completely overcome, completely overcome precisely by its former centralization, and is basically incapable of doing anything.

I do not mean to take sides, but only to say that what I am saying can become the basis not only of all domestic policy, but also of true foreign policy, for the reason that each individual country, each individual people can carry it out for itself alone. Today, if one considers the enormously telling facts, one is led to the conviction that it is no longer merely a matter of changing some of the conditions according to the old ideas, but that it is necessary to base them on new ideas, new facts. In recent years we have heard quite often that there have never been such terrible events as those of the last four and a half years as long as mankind has had a history. You can hear that more often today. But what should be the echo to this assertion is not heard so often today, namely: Never before have people had such a need to rethink, to relearn as they do today, when the social question points to what most needs to be relearned, points to what is most talked and thought past.

Today it is clear that it is the people who have to act. You don't have to come up with ready-made programs! What I have developed here is not a program, is not a social theory. What I have developed here is a realistic theory of humanity. I do not imagine that I can draw up a program for all the conditions that are to arise; the individual cannot do that on his own. For just as individuals cannot form language, which is a social phenomenon, on their own, but just as language is formed in the coexistence of people, all social life must develop in the coexistence of people.

For this, however, people must first be in the right relationship to one another. [The same person can be in the economic parliament, in the democratic parliament, in the spiritual parliament at the same time; he will only have to see how he always has to find the judgment from the objectivity of the circumstances from the different sources.

How people will administer legal, economic and spiritual life when they are properly related to each other, what people will say about the social, that is what one should fathom; not put forward an abstract, theoretical program about what is right in all cases! To bring people into such a relationship that they work together in the right way - one might think - is something the modern proletariat in particular would understand, and this for the simple reason that the modern proletariat has seen how the various interests, the legal, the economic and the spiritual interests work against each other. In this way they are brought into such mutual action that they produce, out of their own forces, a humane existence for each, a viable organism for the whole. Even if it is radical, I believe that nothing else is needed than good will and insight to translate this social program, which is not a program in the common sense - it has to be called that because there are no other words - into life. However, this will make the social question appear to be what it really is. There are certain people who believe that the social question that has arisen will be solved if we do this or that, [...] no, the social question has arisen because people have reached a certain stage of development. And now it is there and will always be there and will always have to be solved anew. And if people are not prepared to accept ever new solutions, the forces will ultimately lead to such disharmonies that they must increasingly lead to revolutionary upheavals of the social order. Revolutions must be defeated step by step on a small scale; then they will not occur on a large scale. But if one does not defeat that which enters into life day by day as legitimate revolutionary forces, then one need not be surprised if that which one does not want to be aware of discharges itself in great upheavals. Rather, in a certain sense, this must be seen as something understandable.

So I believe that it is precisely in the proletariat that an understanding could develop for a truly far-reaching overview of the social question as it arises in this tripartite organization of the social organism. And I am convinced that if some understanding develops, the proletarian will only then realize how he is the true modern man in the true sense of the word. He, who has been torn out of the old legalities, placed next to the barren machine, harnessed into the soulless economic process, has the opportunity to think about what is worthy of man, about what makes human life truly worthy of man, alongside this killing and destroying of man; he has the opportunity to think about it from the fundamental bases and to consider man as a pure human being. That is why one can also believe that if what is hidden in the modern proletarian class consciousness, what lies behind it, develops out of it: the consciousness of human dignity - “an existence worthy of man must be granted to all men” - then with the solution of the proletarian question, with the liberation of the proletariat, the solution of a great world-historical question of humanity will take place. Then the proletarian will not only redeem himself, then the proletarian will become the redeemer of all humanity in humanity. Then, with proletarian liberation, the whole of humanity, that which is worth liberating in this humanity, can be liberated at the same time.

Do not think that I wish to speak to you today about understanding between the different classes of people of the present day, as is so often the case now from certain quarters, where it is said that it is necessary to talk about understanding. I would like to speak of a quite different kind of understanding, as we shall see shortly. To speak of that understanding is out of the question when we look at how this life has developed over the last decades, perhaps even longer and right up to our own day, how it has now run its course into loudly speaking facts, which are, however, quite frightening for some people who would not have dreamed of these facts a short time ago. What good would it do to speak of understanding in this way compared to what can be heard on the site where this understanding is so often longed for today?

A few days ago you could hear all sorts of things from one such side, in Bern, at the so-called League of Nations Conference. What was said there about the desirable and, as people believe, possible international life of the near future truly reminded one of the speeches of certain statesmen, speeches that were always made from the same basic tone in the spring and early summer of 1914. Let us quote a few words from one such speech by a former statesman of the later belligerent powers. They went something like this - he said this to his Reichstag -: “Thanks to the efforts of the cabinets of the governments of the major European powers, we can assume that European peace will be secured for a long time to come. - In May 1914! That was the peace that was spoken of, that then came, and that caused at least ten million deaths and crippled eighteen million people! That is how people knew what lay dormant at the time.

I myself, if I may make this personal remark, in the spring of 1914, in the face of what one could see approaching, if one was not blind and deaf to the realities, had to speak the words in a meeting that I was able to hold in Vienna: We are suffering from a creeping cancer in the social organism of the present, which must break out as a mighty ulcer in a very short time. - You could talk like that back then.

Now, I think the facts have shown that one was more right when one spoke of the creeping cancerous disease in the social order of the present than when one spoke as the statesmen of that time spoke to anesthetize, to awaken illusion in the people. And so now, again, very, very many people are talking about what is to come between the peoples in terms of international life. And they are talking past and thinking past what is and will be the most important and essential thing and what is already being announced today by loudly speaking facts; they are talking past the actual true social demands of the present.

How did some people describe the life of so-called modern civilization until the terrible years that began in 1914? One could hear again and again how enormously mankind had progressed, how compared to earlier times it was possible to travel quickly over long distances of the earth to do business, how thought flew across the earth at lightning speed, how science and art - what is called science and art in certain circles - were spreading and so on. Song after song of praise was sung for this modern civilization. And the last four and a half years? What has become of this modern civilization in Europe in the course of it? How could it come about? Only because this modern civilization, to which such songs of praise were sung, rested on a foundation that was undermined, not by anything hostile to humanity as such, but by the most justified demands of a large part of the present population of the earth in the most diverse directions. They did not perceive what this civilization has brought us as an existence worthy of humanity.

But this civilization was only possible because it rose like a superstructure on the substructure, which consists in the fact that countless people did not have an existence worthy of a human being. And the thing that must be regarded as the worst is that a deep gulf had opened up in terms of understanding, a gulf between those who, on the one hand, sang the praises and those who, on the other hand, had to call out again and again from the meetings that they had taken from their hard work: it can't go on like this!

There was little inclination in the leading, leading circles to reach the kind of real understanding that should have been sought for decades, indeed for perhaps more than half a century. For this half century, the proletarian movement has been growing more and more. And it is growing in such a way that one can say: Up to now the life of the proletarian population has stood there like a powerful world-historical critique of what the ruling and leading classes had done in world history, in the development of mankind. Today the facts speak this language of criticism, which has been held up to these ruling classes so and so often. How have the hitherto ruling classes very often responded to the cry: “Things cannot go on like this”? It was only necessary - I would like to cite examples - not to go so far as, for example, a characteristic personality who stood out from the ruling classes of the immediate past, such as the German Emperor, who said with reference to the proletarian masses, insofar as they acted as socialists: “These animals that undermine the soil of the German Empire must be exterminated. Or another time he said - these are his own words: These people are the enemies of the divine world order. - They are not merely the enemies of other people, but the enemies of the divine world order. - As I said, there was no need to go that far, but people did have strange ideas. In the German Reich, for example, for certain reasons which I do not wish to criticize here, the Social Democrats had voted in favour of war credits, at least a large proportion of the Social Democrats had voted in favour of war credits, and had also - again for reasons which I do not wish to discuss - done their military duty, had generally behaved in a certain way towards the so-called world war. Do not believe that the opinion of people from bourgeois intellectual circles was so rare that, when they saw how patriotic the Social Democrats behaved, they seriously believed - that is a fact - that the soldiers of the future would actually be all men who would dutifully allow themselves to be used for what they would have been quite gladly used for, especially in the previous empire, if things had turned out differently, but very differently, than they did. They would have been very gladly used to approve taxes in the Reichstag of blessed memory.

Now, even some socialists did not dream of the loudly spoken facts that have now come to pass. Even on the socialist side it has often and repeatedly been emphasized: After this world war, the government will not be able to deal with the proletarian population in the same way as before; it will have to take their will into consideration. Well, the facts have changed quite a bit, haven't they? This government, at least a large part of it, cannot take much account of the will of the proletarian population today.

If you look at both sides, you can see on the one hand what the Austrian socialist Pernerstorfer characterized the attitude of certain bourgeois circles during the World War as saying: These millions, in so far as they belonged to the belligerent states, would gladly make their peace with Social-Democracy; but they would like a peace on the condition, for instance, which would correspond to that to which the other, to whom one offers lifelong friendship, accepts it, but that the person concerned hangs himself afterwards. - But if we look at the other side, there was also no possibility of evoking much understanding. I may well speak from personal experience here, for I worked for years as a teacher at the workers' educational school founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht, helping to develop the world view that had formed in proletarian souls. Anyone who knows what developed in the proletarian soul also knows what proletarian demands were contained in what resounded through the souls of the proletarians again and again in those meetings, which they often took away from their working hours and from their physical health. This was expressed again and again in three different ways. Some, however, did not speak with a full and broad understanding of what was revealed in these three things, but there was a deep feeling in the proletarian souls about what was interwoven in these three demands, even if they did not seem to be expressed as demands. The first was clothed in the words: materialist conception of history; the second was clothed in the word, in the word of surplus value, which is of great importance to the proletarian; and the third was what the proletarian has meant for decades, even if he spoke from his understanding, from his conception, by the class struggle, which indicated how in recent times the proletarian has become within the class struggle what one can call the class-conscious proletarian.

What is actually clothed in these three words? At first it looks quite theoretical, quite scholastic, when one says: one is committed to the materialist science of history; but today we want to speak in practical terms and not theoretically. What was actually meant by what the proletarian wanted and wants to express in relation to his world view when he speaks of a materialist view of history? Since that time, since modern capitalism has developed simultaneously with modern technology in the course of modern history, he has been able to hear an old song from the leading, leading circles. But the proletarian, when he looked at the leading circles, noticed very little of what is claimed today to be stimulated in the human soul by this old song. Then the people of the leading circles spoke: Man lives in a certain social order from generation to generation. Just as historical life develops, so lives mankind; and it lives according to laws which correspond to a divine world order. It was called a moral world order, it was perhaps also called the ideas, if one wanted to be enlightened, which govern the historical life of mankind.

The proletarian looked at those circles who spoke as if their lives were conditioned by spiritual and moral powers that walk and weave through the world. But he, for his part, had nothing of these moral powers; he probably saw even less of a divine world order working itself out in the facts. One spoke of a divine world order, but one did not see it, this divine world order. Above all, he did not see it in the actions of people, in the behavior of people towards each other. After all, he had been - and this had been developing for centuries - locked into the capitalist economic order, the soulless, desolate capitalist economic order. It had come up at the same time as modern technology, which had called many people away from the old craft, which was said to have a golden bottom - it had a golden bottom in a certain way - but it had no golden bottom, which the modern proletarian experienced at the machine in the factory. For him, this social order was expressed in his standing at the machine, in his being harnessed into the capitalist economic order. And he saw, as this newer technical and capitalist life emerged, how the leading circles had set up as a modern state according to their interests what they had taken over from a certain social organism from ancient times. Above all, he saw how the leading circles, from what they had as income through the modern economic order, through the modern state, how they employed their so-called spiritual leaders, how they employed their teachers, their lawyers, their physicians and so on. And, as I said, he noticed little of the fact that a divine, moral world order was at work in this spiritual leadership. Rather, because he was used to looking at the dependence of man on the economic order, he noticed how these leading circles were also dependent on the economic order. Capitalism, modern technology, the system of exploitation, he saw that they placed the spiritual leaders in the places where they stood. When this modern spiritual life emerged in the modern state, it was often said in certain circles of this spiritual life: “Oh, this distant Middle Ages, philosophy, worldly wisdom - and by that they meant science in general - was in a certain sense the handmaiden of theology. However, it was less emphasized from this side that in more recent times science had truly not become something that was a free science on its own, but that it was a faithful servant of the modern state system. Again, there was no need to go as far as a famous modern physiologist who once said of a learned body, the Berlin Academy of Sciences: those scholars who belong to this Berlin Academy of Sciences are the intellectual protection troops of the Hohenzollerns. As I said, there was no need to go that far; but one could see, for example - and it all came to a certain height during the World War - one could see strange things during this World War. Certainly, the mathematicians, the chemists, one cannot immediately prove how they obey orders from above; on the other hand, their science shines less brightly, is less conspicuously connected with what pulsates through life. History is more closely related to that which pulsates through life. Anyone who has followed what has been produced as history, especially by those who have worked and ruled as civil servants in this area, could probably form a more unbiased judgment than many others, for example, if he looked at everything that was said about the historical significance of the Hohenzollerns during this world war and even before, truly long before. Truly, the history of the Hohenzollerns will look different when it is written in the future! It can be said that what these gentlemen produced in this field was a faithful reflection of what those in power actually wanted; it was really not a free intellectual life, it was nothing more than a spiritual superstructure over the economic order of the last centuries and especially of more recent times. What wonder, however, if the proletarian, looking at all these conditions, said to himself: Oh what, all moral world order, all ideas in history! What has divine world order to say! Every human being is dependent on the economic foundations. As these economic foundations are, so he spreads out his thoughts, so he lives out his feelings, so he ultimately thinks in relation to his religious ideas: all an ideological superstructure! What is truly real is the economic order!

As I said, one can understand that which arose as an impression from the immediate life in the soul of the proletarian. This proletarian was compelled - the ruling class itself had to call him to a certain education, it could no longer use the old uneducated, the old illiteracy in its economic order - this proletarian was compelled within the education he wanted to receive, which he longed for, to accept what had come up as science, as the whole scientific thinking about the world in the newer times.

But this proletarian was also compelled to do something else than absorb science in the same way that the ruling circles, for example, absorbed this newer science, which arose at the same time as modern technology and capitalism. I would like to cite again and again an example that I already brought here the other day to illustrate this question. I have just spoken about this area. One could be such a daring natural scientist as Karl Vogt, the fat Vogt, one could be a scientific popularizer like Büchner, one could be quite free-thinking, quite enlightened in the manner of both; one could say to oneself: away from me all the old prejudices. But the effect that this modern scientific attitude had on these classes was quite different from the effect it had on the soul of the modern proletarian. The leading circles spoke of the fact that human beings are descended from animal creatures. I don't want to say now whether this doctrine is nonsensical or in any way justified, but they did say so, I just want to state the facts. But this doctrine was conceived by the ruling classes in such a way that it only got into people's heads. It was possible to gain a head superiority. But in social life, in the social order of life in which one stood, laws prevailed that were truly not derived from the basic view that all men descended in the same way from some animal or other. And people found it convenient not to set up the social order, not even to think about it in terms of this modern scientific view.

I once stood, as I said, I mention this fact once again here in this city, on a joint podium with Rosa Luxemburg, who recently met her tragic end. She and I were speaking about science and the workers to a large working-class audience near Berlin. In her particularly unique way, in her calm and composed manner, she spoke at that time above all from the spirit of modern science; but she was speaking to modern proletarians. She spoke to these modern proletarians like this: Just look at science today. It is said that man does not have his origin in some primordial spiritual state, for, she said - and I quote her words almost verbatim - man was originally a quite indecent being who climbed trees, and from such beings we are all descended. Of course - she then said - there is no reason to make distinctions of rank between people, as we do in today's social order. - Yes, you see, one could be an enlightened person and be in the circle of the leading, ruling class, one could have a head conviction, but that which was spoken in this way had a different effect on the modern proletarian. The modern proletarian approached this - it must be said - bourgeois science with great, with enormous confidence, for he believed that it contained the absolute truth. And because he had been called away to the machine, into the factory, into the capitalist economic order, because he had been torn out of everything that had gone before, because he no longer had any traditions, because he could not remain in a completely new relationship to life, he was compelled to take what this bourgeois science gave him as directed at the whole person and to ask himself: Is this the way the world is in the eyes of this modern science?

This is the main direction of the spiritual life of the modern proletarian. That is what compels him again and again to feel in his soul that things cannot go on like this. And behind this lies one of the demands.

The second of the demands, one could hear it again and again and again if one did not merely belong to the leading circles and thus thought in a certain way about the proletariat, but if one, living among the proletariat, could think and speak with the proletariat - one could feel and sense it again and again and again. Anyone who lived within these circles knows that Karl Marx and his successors threw something into the working class in a theoretical way with the concept of “surplus value” and everything connected with it, which had an igniting effect. For in this modern working class there was something that understood, deeply and painfully understood, from the living conditions of modern times, what surplus value is.

This is the point where one must say: Today we stand at a turning point in historical development. That which lived in the modern proletariat was a criticism of what the leading circles have done so far in the historical development of mankind. Today the modern proletariat is called upon to act. This action will only be possible if, precisely on this point, which follows on from the word surplus value, we have the courage to go beyond what Karl Marx meant when he spoke of surplus value and what is connected with it, wherever we want to make progress in human life itself.

What was it, then, that evoked such a deep, sensitive understanding in the soul of the modern proletarian in connection with this surplus value? It was that which touched the basic nerve of the whole modern economic system. What is economy? Economy, on the basis of which we all live materially? What is commodity, production, circulation, consumption? Into this cycle of economic life, in which only commodities should circulate, there has entered, in a certain form since ancient times, that which can only be characterized by saying: within the modern capitalist economic order, the labour-power of the modern proletarian continues to live in the same way as a commodity. It is bought, it is exchanged like a commodity for other commodities. - This is what the modern proletarian feels. Whatever has happened in small chunks to divert his attention from this fundamental fact, so to speak, we are deep in a context in which proletarian labor is nothing more than a commodity. Here the modern proletarian feels much more than one has actually been compelled to express in theoretical words, even in socialist science; here the modern proletarian feels the whole inhumanity of his existence. He sees in his existence only the continuation of the old slave existence, of the medieval system of serfdom. The slave is sold as a whole person; the modern proletarian, because he owns nothing himself, must carry his labor power onto the labor market, which is bought from him. But can one carry one's labor power to the labor market without carrying oneself? Are we not so bound up with it as human beings that we suffer the fate that our own labor power suffers? That is what matters: Not only a different form of remuneration, which is nothing more than a purchase of labor power as a commodity, but the disrobing of labor power from the commodity character in modern economic life must be striven for. This is precisely the more or less clearly expressed question of the modern proletariat: how can it happen that man, even if he has nothing else to contribute to the social organism but his labor power, can be given an existence worthy of a human being? What does it actually mean that his labor power, which can in no way be compared to any commodity, is no longer a commodity? What is that actually? That is the great lie of life: that which can never in reality become a commodity, labor power, is turned into a commodity in modern life. This makes it an experimental lie, a lie of fact thrown into reality; it must be transformed into truth - this is how one could radically formulate the demand on this point.

And the third thing is what the modern proletarian sees: It is struggle. He looks at modern economic life; he has a feeling in the depths of his soul that in economic life salutary things can only blossom out of public spirit. How would this public spirit express itself in a particular case, for example? Well, one can say in a special case: the entrepreneur, the employer and the worker, they produce together. The commonality, the public spirit, should therefore consist in the fact that they have the same interest towards the social organism. Instead, the entrepreneur buys the worker's labor power like a commodity, while they produce the product together. He gives him nothing more from the product than the purchase price for this commodity. The employment contract, however more or less disguised it may appear, does not help to overcome this. As long as this labor contract is concluded for the use of the proletarian's labor, this contract must always turn labor power into a commodity. The only thing that must be possible is that the contract between what is now called the worker and what is now called the entrepreneur need not be concluded, must not be concluded about labor, but must be concluded about the division of the product between the worker and the manager of labor. There is no other justice in this field. There is no other real expression of what is called public spirit in this field. But what does the modern proletarian see instead of such a public spirit? Well, he sees the class struggle. He sees his class producing out of physical labor-power in struggle with the entrepreneurial class, and he sees surplus-value flowing into the entrepreneurial class without his having any share in the “destinies” which this surplus-value has within the social organism.

The proletarian is really not so stupid as to believe that surplus-value need not be produced. If everything produced by manual labor were eaten up, then there would be no schools, no spiritual culture at all, then no state system could exist; there would be no taxes and so on; for all that is in these things, which the proletarian also knows to be necessary for the development of mankind, flows from surplus value. But the proletarian wants something else. And those who regard the modern proletarian question merely as a question of bread conceal the facts. Certainly, it is a bread question; but it depends on how this bread question is felt. The modern proletarian today feels it from a completely different background, from the feeling of an inhuman existence. That is what matters. And instead of a sense of community, he feels the class struggle between himself and the one with whom he jointly produces for the social organism.

What, then, is the experience of this modern proletarian in modern life? By posing this question, appropriately enough, one can already arrive at the practical measures by which the proletarian demands of modern times can be satisfied in the future. One can say: Yes, so far it has proved to be in a certain way a truth, a truth of the last centuries, that spiritual life is only something like a superstructure, like an ideology, like a smoke that comes out of what the mere economic system is. But deep down the proletarian feels a longing for a real spiritual life, for a spiritual life that is there to satisfy every human existence. Even if he says that all spiritual life comes out of the economic order, in his unconscious he wants precisely a spiritual life that does not come out of the economic order, he wants a free, self-sufficient spiritual life, he wants a true spiritual life. That is one thing.

The second is that he looks at the modern state. What does he see in this modern state? He sees the class struggle in this modern state, and he has the feeling that where the class struggle prevails, something does not prevail that arises from every human consciousness as a necessary demand of life. In a social order in which the class struggle can prevail, privilege prevails; for whence would the struggle of the leading circles against the propertyless circles come if not from privilege? But privilege must not prevail - so says the soul - justice must prevail. That is the second demand. It is the one that can be expressed in something like this: The modern proletarian sees in the modern state the embodiment of the class struggle. But he demands justice on the ground where the class struggle prevails. And on the ground of the modern economic order he sees the development of that which turns his labor power into a commodity. He sees himself caught up in this economic process. Certainly, theoretically the proletariat has hitherto established as a science that everything is dependent on national economic life. But in the depths of the soul, there it rummages: I want to become independent of the economic life that now prevails; I want a completely different life from that which is dependent on this economic life.

If we look from this point of view at the great, widely spoken facts of the present, which are troubling Europe and will continue to do so more and more, they speak like this: A spiritual life has arisen out of the purely material interests of the leading, leading circles. That is not what gives all human beings an existence worthy of a human being. What the leading circles have made of the modern state through the development of technology and capitalism has resulted in a community of privilege, not of right. And class struggle must cease; legal life must take its place. In economic life it has resulted that labor power has been harnessed to the circulation of commodities; human labor power is brought to the commodity market. Human labor power must be taken out of the pure economic cycle. That is what is expressed in the present world-historical facts. How did all this come about?

Well, you need only look at a few facts, which could be multiplied a hundredfold, from the point of view of a particular question. It will perhaps surprise you that we are talking here about the very point of view I am now suggesting. However, today we are at a decisive turning point in the social movement. In recent times we have often heard the phrase, more or less wittily expressed, but it is certainly not, not merely a phrase: that which brought about this world war catastrophe has not been there since mankind has had a historical memory. This has been repeated often and often. But the sentiment is less often emphasized: Well, if this is the case, if people have managed to kill ten million people and cripple eighteen million in a relatively short time, if this has happened in an incomparable way, why do people not perhaps feel comfortable asking themselves: in order to make such things impossible, must we not resort to new thoughts, to thoughts that are just as impossible compared to the previous habits of thought as this world war is compared to the previous experiences of human history? You will have to excuse me if I express the thoughts meant here somewhat radically to one side or the other. Let us look at individual facts which, as I said, could be multiplied a hundredfold. Austria is a very characteristic example of how a state lived under the conditions of the past era. I can talk about it right now because I have spent three decades, half of my life so far, in Austria. It is precisely in this Austrian state that one can study what actually lies at the heart of what can, indeed must, destroy a social organism in our time. When, in the sixties, a so-called bourgeois constitutional life began to develop out of the old Austrian patriarchalism and despotism, deputies were elected to the Austrian Imperial Council according to four curiae: firstly, the curia of the large landowners; secondly, the curia of the Chamber of Commerce; thirdly, the curia of the towns, markets and industrial towns; fourthly, the curia of the rural communities. The latter were not elected directly, but indirectly, because the rural communities were not considered so secure. The representatives of these four curiae were now in the Austrian Imperial Council and made laws, made rights. But what does that mean? It means that they were purely economic representatives, representatives of pure economic life in the parliament, and they made laws. What must come out of that? The interests of economic life must simply be transformed into laws, into rights, into rights over labor, into rights over property. Strange as it may seem, many a bourgeois national economic speech has been made about property: Ownership is a right, ownership of the means of production, ownership of land is a legal relationship. Because everything else that you will define about property has no meaning in the economic process. Only that which establishes ownership, the right to make exclusive use of an object to the exclusion of others, is significant. Having the right to dispose of it is what constitutes the basis of the national economy. In the existing state, we are dealing with a privilege rather than a right.

There is one example that could be multiplied indefinitely. Where this was not determined by an electoral law in the old order, it could do so by itself. The association that called itself the Association of Farmers was, for example, a purely economic representation of interests in the German Reichstag. Let's take another example. In the German Reichstag there was also the so-called Center, a purely religious community. Spiritual life was carried into legal life. Spiritual interests were expressed in legal life. All this is connected with what the interests of the hitherto leading circles gradually became in the modern state. When modern times came along with their technology, with capitalism, this state, as it had emerged from the Middle Ages, was found as a framework. First of all, the intellectual life was incorporated into this state, theology was trained, theologians, as they wanted them in the state, lawyers, physicians, especially schoolmen; all this was trained. The entire intellectual life was incorporated into the state. People were hypnotized by the idea that the state would serve our interests, so let's teach in it, let's administer intellectual life in a way that suits our interests, in a way that can emerge from the state itself.

And on the other hand, it was believed that progress would be served by incorporating certain branches of the economy, the postal system, the telegraph system and the railroad system into this modern state. That is the tendency: to merge everything into the modern state. That is a bourgeois tendency. Socialism, too, is basically nothing other than the inheritance of the bourgeoisie, which it has inherited by taking up again the ideas of the old cooperative system, thereby taking up the capitalist economic order, which must rightly be overcome on the basis of its demands. But the fact that he now wants to turn the social organism into a large cooperative, using the framework of the state, is the bourgeois legacy. A healing, a real recovery of the social organism can only come about if one has an eye for how the damage under which we live has arisen precisely because three areas that have nothing to do with each other have been merged together, and that the modern state had to absorb everything because more and more was being asked: What should the state do? - We have seen what it can do in the devastation and destruction of Europe over the last four and a half years! Today it is more appropriate to ask: What should the state actually refrain from doing? What is better if it does not do it? - This is the question we should be asking today. If you look at the whole circle of debates as we have conducted them so far, you will not be surprised when I tell you that on the basis of the most conscientious consideration of social life, really with equally good science, which only cannot be presented in all details in the course of a single lecture, one comes to the demand to make the most necessary practical demand today for the satisfaction of proletarian needs, namely: To take the road back with regard to nationalization, with regard to welding together three things that are quite different from each other in life.

To help us understand each other better, let me remind you of those three fundamental ideas of modern times that emerged at the end of the 18th century from the innermost needs of humanity, from the French Revolution, like a motto of modern times: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. - Well, it was by no means stupid people in the 19th century and right up to the present day who have shown again and again that these three ideas are not compatible with each other, that freedom is not compatible with equality and so on. Nevertheless, anyone who can feel that, feels that these ideas themselves are healthy stages of human life, even if they contradict each other. And why do they contradict each other? They only contradict each other because they have been raised as a demand more and more within what can never be a single centralization in itself, but which must divide into three independent members developing side by side. In the future the social organism, if it is to work healthily, must first of all divide itself into a spiritual organism, where all spiritual life has its own legislation and its own administration, where from the lowest teacher onwards man does not listen to the orders of a state, is not forced into the power of economic life, but lives solely and exclusively in an organization founded on spiritual laws themselves, where he knows himself to be completely within a spiritual world, a purely spiritual world. It is not a question of our being tied more and more into an official organization, into a bureaucracy; for spiritual life can only develop if the heart and mind develop for individual initiative, for that which lies in the personal, in the individual abilities of man. If they are cultivated in a free spiritual life, then such a spiritual life will develop which can offer every human being an existence worthy of a human being. For then that which develops as spiritual life will not be based on economic compulsion, not on state compulsion, but will spring solely from the impulses that underlie free humanity. He who produces spiritually will speak to all men and the spiritual organization will have the sole interest of cultivating spiritual individualities. Individual human abilities are a unity, a unity in schools, secondary schools, universities, a unity in art and science. These more purely spiritual branches, however, work in unity with those individual faculties which flow into capital in the social organism.

Capitalism can only be placed on a sound basis by becoming the bearer of a free spiritual life. That alone would make it possible to fulfil the demand that is usually made today for the socialization of the means of production. For only a free spiritual life can give rise to social understanding, and only in a free spiritual life is it possible to constantly transfer to the general public that which comes about with the help of the means of production and the land. This first of all with regard to the free spiritual life.

What is the constitutional state, the actual political state, must also develop as an independent organization in the healthy social organism. It has to do, for example, with the regulation of the administration of leadership relations. But above all it has to do with the regulation of human labor, which must be lifted out of the mere economic process, not by abstract laws, but by people themselves.

How must the economic process proceed? On the one hand, the economic process is dependent on what is at its limit, on the natural basis, on the available raw materials of an area, on the yields of the soil and so on. One can improve the yield of the soil to a certain extent through technology; but there is a limit to this, a limit which is erected for prosperity, a limit on which prices depend. That is one limit. In a healthy social organism there must be a second limit. This second limit is the legal and political organism, which develops independently alongside the economic organism. In the political organism, that which affects all men equally, that which democratically concerns every man, where every man must come to an understanding with every man, is at work. This is the ground on which the measure and nature of human labor must be decided on the basis of the interests of this humanity. Only then, when the measure and nature of human labor is decided on the legal ground independent of the economic ground, then this labor flows into the economic process, then the labor power of man is price-forming. Then no one dictates the price to labor power, then it is as price-forming as the land with its yields and so on is price-forming itself. That will be the great economic law of the future, that economic life will be caught between two boundaries, so that the measure and price of human labor will not be determined by the economic forces themselves.

And the third independent area will be economic life itself. For the sake of brevity, I can only hint at the significance of this transformation of economic life. I will give you a concrete example so that you can see that I am not presenting you with complicated theories here, but with what can be read from practical life and can be incorporated into practical life. You only have to name one word, and then every man and his thoughts are immediately involved in this word in economic life - well, one in a different way than the other - you only have to name the word “money”. But you see, most people know money; some know it from the abundant quantities in which they have it, some from the small quantities in which they have it; but they believe they know it. But what money actually is in the social organism, not only do everyday people have no real idea, but our learned economists of today have very little idea of what money actually is. Some are of the opinion that money is based on the metal value of the gold or silver on which it is based; others are of the opinion that it is a mere stamp, depending on whether the state stamps more or less thin instructions on goods and so on. One speaks of a metaphysical process of money and so on, as all things are; one always has the need in science to choose quite learned words. But none of this matters; on the contrary, the most learned gentlemen today agree that there must be something for money as a means of exchange. That which must be there is the treasure of gold, to which one must always return in order for money to have value.

Now, of course, since England is the world power and insists on gold, the gold currency cannot be overcome overnight in international trade. But the question must be raised precisely with regard to the recovery of economic life: What about the fact that people say that circulating money, regardless of its form, must always be related back to the amount of gold that is available in any state, because, they say, gold is a popular commodity, a commodity that does not change its value for a long time. - You can read up on all these theories. They refer to the excellent properties that gold has in order to be represented by money.

Now, what is it that money actually refers to, as national economists believe that money refers to gold? Here a greater advance in science is necessary. An answer is needed which people will not believe in today. I will speak of this in more detail in my forthcoming booklet on the social question. People today still claim not to believe in this answer. But if you take an unbiased look at economic life, you will get the answer when you ask: What is the real, actual equivalent value of circulating money? - He receives the answer, however strange it may sound to people today: gold is only an illusory value, wherever it may be. - That which in truth corresponds to money is the sum of all the means of production existing in a social territory, including land. Everything that is only expressed by money refers to this. All the beautiful qualities which the national economists ascribe to gold, so that it can give the currency, all these qualities, they are in truth to be ascribed to the means of production. Hence the question must arise precisely from the circulation of commodities with the aid of money: How can that which, though in ever-continuing transformation, in ever-continuing reorganization, but as a best value, underlies all national economy, how can it become such a uniform basis of economic life as money itself, which is only the representative? All that lives in the means of production, as common as money is in its nature, so common must the means of production be. That is to say, their circulation must be such as corresponds to the fact that no one can work on the means of production except by the cooperation of the whole social organism.

There are two things to be considered. First, that the social organism would lose an infinite amount if individual abilities were excluded. Man should work for the social organism through his individual abilities as long as he has them and as long as he wants to use them. But the moment he ceases to work for the social organism, the means of production which he administers must be transferred by the rule of law to the generality of the social organism.

I need only point to one branch of our modern life, and the matter is settled. It is that branch which modern man must regard as the most insignificant, the most insignificant, the most insignificant, because it is so treated in modern capitalism: that is spiritual life. What one produces spiritually is certainly connected with one's individual capacity; but thirty years after death it passes into the public domain and no longer belongs to one. - This most insignificant good, this most insignificant good, is treated in this way today. People are looking for a way to transfer what the individual produces into society. It is about this transition. It is also quite fair in the spiritual field. For what one has on the basis of one's individual abilities is nevertheless owed to the social organism, and one must give back to the social organism what one has gained on the basis of one's individual abilities.

So in the future, through the rule of law, what is produced with the help of material means of production must also be transferred to the general public. It is not necessary to think about how the means of production can be socialized bureaucratically, as in the previous social order. Those who oppress have grown out of capitalism. Thus, in the future social order, the oppressor will be recruited from within bureaucratism, from the ranks of those who today call themselves socialists, if one would only work towards a cooperative socialization of the means of production. But a just development of what the individual produces out of his individual abilities, a just transition is that into socialization. That is what we have to strive for. Then, if you think this through, you will realize: Many have said from an old economic organization and state order, spiritual order: if we want to keep humanity together, then we need what supports each other, throne and altar. Well, in modern times the throne is often a presidential chair and the altar a Wertheim cash register. But the attitude is often very similar in both cases.

The only question is whether things would be much better if the throne and the altar were merely transformed into an office and a machine and a factory, and if everything became mere bookkeeping instead of the previous administration. What is demanded as a social demand is deeply justified; however, we are living in a historical turning point. We need ideas that thoroughly transform the old. And just as intellectual life, economic life and political state life have striven towards each other under the influence of the bourgeois circles of modern times, so the modern proletarian should understand that the way back must be taken. After all, has this modern proletarian acquired an understanding of the organization by studying how the individual economic and life circles must interact with one another, has he studied the class struggle, has he really become acquainted with the economic circles in their relationship to one another? He would have to understand that the unity of the social organism is not disturbed, but on the contrary promoted, if not a mere uniform centralization, in which everything is muddled up, is sought, but if the three branches, spiritual organization, legal or state organization, economic organization, are separated from one another with their own administrations, with their own laws.

Don't tell me it's complicated, how sovereign states should interact! It will all happen in a much more intensive way, in a much more harmonious way than now, where everything is chaotic and confused. If the modern proletarian, looking and feeling his demands, strives for really practical solutions to his life's questions, for the fulfillment of his hopes, then he will turn to this organization, which may still sound strange today. And I do not believe that in other circles there could ever be so much understanding for the newer historical things as in proletarian circles. Oh, I have seen it, because in the last four and a half years I have often and repeatedly made suggestions to people in this direction, I have told them: what is demanded by this threefold structure is not an abstract program, not a figment of the imagination that arose in one night, it is based on life, it is what will be realized in the next ten, twenty, thirty years, especially in Europe. And it will be realized whether you like it or not; you only have the choice of either accepting reason now and realizing some things out of free choice, or you will be faced with revolutions of the most monstrous kind. - Well, the revolutions are coming soon!

Therefore I believe that he who has been placed by the external conditions of life in that which at first says nothing humanly, in the lifeless machine, has been harnessed into the desolate capitalism, I believe he must have an understanding for such ideas which differ from the old, but which are intimately related to the new, the emerging, the becoming. And I have the conviction and believe that they will gradually sink into the hearts and souls of the newer man, the modern proletarian in particular, I have the conviction: If the proletarian understands these demands and the possibility of their solution in the right sense, then, by becoming a class-conscious proletarian who works towards his liberation, he will liberate his class, and thus at the same time liberate man, then he will put something else in the place of the class: the tripartite healthy social organism. He will then not only become the liberator of his class, but the liberator of all humanity, that is, of everything that deserves to be and should be liberated as truly human in humanity.

Discussion

The organizer expresses his astonishment in deeply felt words that the workers' movement is being met with understanding from a hitherto unknown side. He expresses his thanks not only for the lecture, but also for the intellectual work that preceded it.

1st speaker (Dr. Schmidt): Agrees with Steiner's objective, asks about the path to realization. This had been mapped out by the socialist movement to date: Party, trade union, cooperative movement. As today, the three areas of life will remain interlinked in the future, but will be shaped by the supporters of the socialist movement. The first goal must be to change the economic order in the sense of equality.

2nd speaker: It will be easy to agree on the content of the objective. Threefolding is a utopia (reference to Fourier). The path to it is predetermined by the development trend of the time: the class struggle.

3rd speaker: The intellectual movement must also be taken into account. Every revolution has been prepared by ideas.

4, Speaker: The experience of war has confirmed the materialist view of history. Contradicts the statement that socialism adopts the bourgeois belief in the state. The dictatorship of the proletariat has no other purpose than to prepare for the abolition of the state. Spiritual freedom will only be possible in a community of freely producing people. Only the proletarian mass movement has a chance of success.

Rudolf Steiner: What the honorable speakers have said will not actually offer much opportunity to go into detail on one or the other, for the reason that it is quite natural that the objections made are based on the common views. I would like to say that I have been able to anticipate in every detail the things that have been said. I would just like to take up a little more of your time with regard to a few points that seem important to me.

First of all, I would like to draw your attention to the following. When something like what I have said this evening is said, one can always hear a kind of objection, which consists in the fact that it is said: I can't really imagine how things will turn out in reality. And on the other hand, it is almost demanded that one should not give utopia. I do believe that it will take some time before people realize that what I have said this evening really relates to a utopia in the same way that black relates to white: it is the opposite of a utopia. Things are a little bit connected. What I wanted to say really cannot be characterized in any other way than as I have already said to some people: That lies in the development trend of the next ten, twenty, thirty years. And whether we like it or not, we will have to implement it, either through reason or through revolution. There is simply no choice not to carry it out, because time itself wants it. And the development of mankind has already at times really followed guidelines which it has taken, and has apparently taken them back again, and of course it is not a question of a real return to earlier conditions, but of course the way back is then a way to a completely new form. It is true, of course, that we know that trade union life, cooperative life and political party life have achieved tremendous things in recent times and that we owe a great deal to them. But on the other hand, it must be said that in all the things that have been achieved there must be something unsatisfactory, something not yet finished. Today we are not convinced that there are new facts. But there is indeed something there that finally demands a different kind of orientation than we have had up to now! When people say that I have overestimated the power of the idea - I was not talking about ideas at all! I have just said the opposite of what could be described as the power of the idea. What did I actually put forward as a demand? I put forward a possible social organization. I pointed out how people should relate to each other so that they can find the right thing. A utopian always starts from the idea that this is how the social order should be organized. Basically, he thinks he is smarter than everyone else; you have to wait for him, and once he has spoken, you have nothing more to say. If he can't make contact, he sits in his attic and waits. It never occurs to me, not in the least, to wait for a millionaire, nor to believe in any way that I know better about this or that than another person.

You see, there is a very general social phenomenon that man as an individual cannot achieve, that is human language itself. It has been said countless times that if a person lives on a desert island, grows up alone, without hearing other people speak, he himself will not be able to speak. Language develops from a social phenomenon in people, through other people. It is the same with all social impulses. We cannot arrive at anything social except by people interacting in the right way; that is why I had to develop an idea. It does not occur to me to believe that one can reform anything with an idea. I tried to answer the question: How will people develop if they relate to each other in the right way, if they manage economic life on the one hand, legal life on the other, and spiritual life on the third? Associations will preferably be set up in the economic state, composed of producers and consumers, of professions and so on; if they live in the democratic constitutional state, the ideas, the impulse of the equality of all men before reality will grow out of quite different conditions. When they are inside the spiritual organization: How will they interact there? You see, you only have to look at reality. A judge can have aunts, uncles, grandfathers, grandchildren and so on, he can love them very much, love them tenderly, and that is good. But if someone steals, and he is supposed to judge as a judge, he will have to condemn it in exactly the same way, from the other source, as he would have to condemn a complete stranger.

I have often been told by professors that I want to divide humanity into three classes. I want the opposite! In the past, people were divided into the nurturing class, the teaching class and the military class. But today's doctrine teaches nothing. The nurturing class is nothing more than a class of force, and the military class is given the task of telling the dispossessed what the haves want! Yes, you see, that is precisely what is to be overcome: the estates, the classes are to be overcome precisely by dividing the organism as such, separately from man. Man is the unifying factor. On the one hand, he will be part of the economic organism, and on the other hand, by being part of the economic organism, he can also be a member of the representation of the political state; he can also belong to spiritual life. This creates unity. I want to liberate man precisely by dividing the social organism into three parts. One only has to understand what this is about: It is the opposite of a utopia, it is a real reality. It is about calling on people not to believe that some tricky utopia is being thought up, but to ask: How should people be organized so that they can find the right thing on their own by working together? That is the radical contrast to everything else. All the others start from the idea; here we start from the real social division of people, here we really point out that all differences are wiped away by the fact that man himself, as a mere human being, forms the unity. And therefore I would be sorry if precisely that view made an impression which declares the opposite of all utopianism to be a utopia! That is what I am actually sorry about, because it has not hit the nerve of my arguments. That is the important thing, and I would like to draw particular attention to that.

So it's not about overestimating any power of the idea. There is no emphasis here on the power of utopia, but on what people will say and think and feel and want when they are placed in the social organism in a humane way. Precisely because the thinking here is real, it is of course difficult to point out details. It is possible; but anyone who gets into the habit of thinking in real terms knows that if you really let people judge, let them judge from within themselves, they may even judge a concrete case differently, and both ways can be right. Let me give you the following example:

You see, one will naturally have to make use of the means of production in the future through one's individual abilities; for he who can manage any business will not have to manage production for his own sake, but because those who work for him enter into a free contract with him, because they realize that their work will prosper better if it is well managed. This is something that absolutely must be taken as a basis in the future, something that will arise of its own accord. Then you have to say: something new will actually emerge under the conditions that are being created here; there will no longer be any ownership, but only administration. We will then only know one administration. For I have pointed out that material property can be treated in a similar way to what is regarded today as the most precious thing, spiritual property. This means that after a certain period of time - and we don't mean “after death”, but when the business is no longer working productively with the means of production - the means of production are transferred to another management. This is very complicated in detail, but precisely because the thinking is realistic and not utopian, it can only be pointed out: People will find the right relationship with each other if they are in the right position. That is what matters.

You see, after such decisive facts have occurred, after the world war has just happened, one can have the opinion that new ideas really must come, but one cannot always emphasize again: We must stand still with our demands! That is what has been proclaimed for decades. We won't get anywhere by saying: we want a society that develops freely, we want a free social society for people - but how? - I have said that up to now it has been a kind of policy, now it is a matter of fact. The previous speaker quite rightly referred to Russia. That is quite right. At the moment when such decisive facts really emerge, we can no longer just grope around in uncertainty. Yes, it is a matter of being able to imagine something quite definite. And that, I believe, is what can be seen from what I have presented: it is not a program, but a direction. You can continue the present conditions from their present starting point wherever you want, if you only want to. Just take the reconstruction of the former conditions as it is in Russia. You can at any time in any field, when state administration has begun, throw off this spiritual life by first establishing free schools, by establishing free cooperatives in economic life, and so on. You can continue to work on any point, whatever the starting point may be. You must not imagine all this according to Swiss conditions. Life is becoming more and more international. In Germany, for example, something completely different is needed today than a few years ago. You can continue to work from any starting point; it will just be a matter of continuing to build. And I am counting on it, whether in a cooperative, in a trade union, in any party, there is already the possibility that something will emerge; wherever you sit, you can organize things in such a way that these three parts emerge in all areas. Then we will arrive at an organization that is truly appropriate and demanded by a healthy social organism, and not at a utopian or utopian socialization.

Avoiding any utopia is what we should strive for above all else, to eradicate any belief that we can do anything with abstract ideas. You can only do something in social life with people who know what they want in the very specific situation in which they find themselves. It is not a question today of a struggle between those who are still to be called the dispossessed and the haves. If they work, as is the direction of movement that I have outlined today, if the haves and the have-nots work in the right way, things will turn out in their favor. If the haves resist, they will soon have lost their property. But the point is that the masses have a knowledge of what is to happen. And you see, in this respect, one might say, it is even worse with social impulses than with medical and technical materials. If someone knows nothing about building bridges and yet wanted to build one, it would collapse. If someone cures someone, well, you usually can't prove whether the patient died despite the cure or perhaps even as a result of the cure; that's where things get tricky. And when it comes to the social organism, that's where things get the most tangled, because you usually can't prove what's a cure and what's a cure, which is why people usually talk in vague terms. You see, I heard a speaker who also talked about social things; he mainly wanted to prove that you don't really need anything else, just Christ, then everything will be fine in social life. Well, you shouldn't think that a debate about this is being started now. But I have experienced the following. I had to remind myself of something I read in my schoolboy days, I think almost forty-five years ago. It said that Christ was either a hypocrite or a fool, or he was what he described himself as: the Son of the living God. - As I said, I am not criticizing, neither in one direction nor in the other; I only remark: I was in Berne the other day, and a gentleman made a speech there after the League of Nations Conference, in which he said that the whole League of Nations is wrongly organized - I believe myself that it is wrongly organized - but he said that it will be wrongly organized if it is not dealt with: Christ was either a fool, or a hypocrite, or he was the Son of the living God, as whom he described himself. - In short, everything that was in my textbook forty-five years ago was presented by the Lord to his faithful congregation. And that is the most important thing to note: In between lies the world war! The people, after having had two millennia to bring their things to the world, have come so far that the world war has nevertheless come. Doesn't all this indicate that something has to be learned from the world war? Is it not socially better and healing for the social organism if something new is really learned in the socialist field, in the field of socialist knowledge, as a result of the world war? Do we have to say that we are conservatively sticking to the old ideas, which have also been shipwrecked in many respects by the world war? That is what I particularly want to emphasize: it really was foreseeable and it is very important to me - I say this without any rejection - and I am very glad that things have been said as they have been said. But I would like to emphasize that much damage has been done in the world by the conservative standstill, by the rigid emphasis on what has been said over the centuries and what has now been said for decades, by this rigid emphasis, by this standstill in this conservatism! May socialism not cause damage to itself through this conservative standstill! For this damage would be very, very great, perhaps much greater than that which has already been done elsewhere.

You may have heard from what I said at the end of my lecture that it is precisely out of socialism, and even more so out of the proletariat, that the liberation of that which is to be liberated in man can take place. So it is not a question of an idea, it is not a question of overestimating an idea, and I have also said nothing about socialism having to unite with the state enterprise and the like; rather it is a question of solving a problem of humanity!

And because I believe that the individual is quite indifferent to what he demands of himself, he should demand something in common with other people. One cannot help but fail with socialist demands if one wants to make them as an individual. You have to make them in the human community.

So what I demand is not some idea, not some utopia, but what people will be able to say of their own accord when they are inside the social organism.

Don't think that I want to take the floor here today to talk about that cheap understanding with regard to the social question that so many people would like to talk about today and who would like to be heard by name. I would like to speak of a completely different kind of understanding, the kind of understanding that seems to me to be called for by the loud, loudly speaking facts that are spreading across a large part of Europe today: understanding with the historical forces at work in the present and in the future, which call for a very specific, clear and energetic approach to what has been called the social question for more than half a century. How can we speak today of that other understanding mentioned at the beginning? Has not too much been lost for this understanding? Has not a certain part of modern humanity taken a long time to seek such an understanding? Today, a deep chasm is opening up between those who have been the leading classes of humanity up to now and those who are pressing forward with newer demands that have necessarily arisen from the times, i.e. between the leading classes of humanity up to now and the proletariat with its justified demands.

Let us take a look at recent life in order first of all to gain a judgment on the impossibility of easy understanding today. Much has been said for decades about this modern civilization, about this civilization which is supposed to have brought about such great and mighty things for mankind. How we have heard it again and again, the praise for modern technology, for modern transportation! Have we not heard them, all the phrases about how it is possible for people today - yes, which people are possible! - to traverse vast distances of land in a relatively short time, how it has become possible for thoughts to cover almost any distance, how it has become possible to expand so-called intellectual life? Well, I don't need to go into detail about the whole song of praise that has been heard so and so often. But what has all this, to which such a song of praise is sung, risen above? Without what would it not have been possible? It would not have been possible without the work of the greater part of mankind, that part which was not allowed to participate in all that has been so praised, that part which had to provide for these comforts of life under physical and mental privations, without being able to participate in any way in all the achievements of modern civilization.

Let's take a closer look at how, for more than half a century, we have come to the point where we still have to say that the abyss exists today. And if there is much talk of understanding today, it is precisely because people are afraid, because they are afraid of the facts that are looming so threateningly for some people. What, for example, has the moral world view of these leading classes been particularly preoccupied with - to start with a favorite subject of the leading classes since then? The world-view, the moral world-view of these leading classes has been particularly fond of dealing with, in endless speeches, in unctuous expositions, in words that seemed to overflow with feeling, with how men must develop love for one another, how men must see to it that brotherhood spreads, how men can only conquer the spiritual world by entering into such brotherhood. Such speeches, seemingly dripping with deep feeling, have indeed been made quite often by the leading spiritual circles of the hitherto leading class of mankind. Let us put ourselves in the place of such speeches in halls of mirrors or the like, and think how they preached about love of man, about charity, about religiosity, preached over a furnace heating provided by coal - I would like to draw attention to this in order to characterize a little the course of the present facts - which was extracted from those coal mines about which an English inquiry at the beginning of the newer labour movement brought quite strange things to light. Down there in the shafts of the earth, nine-, eleven-, thirteen-year-old children worked all day long in the shafts, children who never saw the sunlight except on Sunday, for the simple reason that they went down into the pits when it was still dark, and were only brought up again when it was no longer light. Men stood down there, completely naked, next to women who were pregnant and who also stood half-naked down there and had to work.

That was the first time that a government inquiry was held to draw attention to what was actually going on among the people, that such experiences were made, about which thoughtlessness had never wanted to enlighten itself, despite all the preaching of humanity, charity and religiosity. Admittedly, that was at the beginning of the modern proletarian movement. But it cannot be said that what has at least to some extent improved the situation of wide circles of people stems from the understanding that would have been gained in the hitherto leading classes of mankind. A large part of these leading classes of mankind are today just as uncomprehending of the true demands of the time, which follow from such facts, as they were fifty or more years ago.

There is no need to go as far as a hitherto leading, or at least seemingly leading, personality of humanity has gone: the former German Emperor, who called the socialist-minded people: Animals that gnaw at the foundations of the German empire and are worth exterminating. These are his own words. As I said, there is no need to go that far, but the judgments that are still made in certain circles today are not so very different from this particularly characteristic judgment just mentioned.

If we now look at what has taken place in the course of the last five to six decades, since what is now called the social question came into existence, we see on the one hand the thoughtless lack of understanding with regard to everything that has come up in the development of humanity, and on the other hand we see the onslaught, the justified onslaught of the broad proletarian masses, which has always been crowding into the words: It cannot go on like this. But today the facts speak a completely different language than they have in recent decades. And how do the judgments that some people make compare with the facts? The terrible catastrophe we have lived through in the last four to five years is a good lesson in this.

Please allow me to make the following personal comment. That which I have had to form for decades as a judgment on European political conditions, I had to summarize it in a lecture which I gave in the spring of 1914 in Vienna to a small circle - a larger one would probably have laughed at me at the time - I had to summarize that which was then woven among the people of Europe, among those people of whom one could say that they had something to do with the shaping of political destiny in Europe. At that time one had to say, if one looked at the times with an unbiased eye: With regard to the political and state relations of Europe, we are suffering from a creeping ulcer, a cancerous disease that will have to break out in a terrible way in the very near future. The time when this cancer broke out came very soon. But what did the “practitioners” say? What did the “statesmen” say? Today, when we talk about statesmen, we are always tempted to put quotation marks around the word. What did the “statesmen” say? What the leading foreign secretary of state in the German Reichstag said back then was the following. He said: “Thanks to the efforts of the cabinets, we can say that European peace will be secured for the foreseeable future. - That was said by a leading statesman in May 1914. This peace was so secure that since then twelve to fifteen million people have been shot dead, three times as many have been crippled. Just as in those days these statesmen spoke about what was in the political sky, so today many people speak about what is being said by the whole educated world through facts of the most significant and energetic kind. This is how people often speak about the social question. There is no idea in many circles of what must come and what will certainly come, and of what every reasonable person must be able to judge.

What I have to say on this matter is truly not based on any theoretical view. For many years I was a teacher at the workers' educational school founded in Berlin by Wilhelm Liebknecht, the old Liebknecht, I taught in the most diverse branches, and from there I also worked within the educational system of the modern proletariat in trade unions, in cooperatives and also within the political party. It is precisely when one has lived among and worked with those who have endeavored to carry the modern workers' movement forward from real thoughts, from real intellectual foundations, that one can perhaps say that one can form a judgment, not as one who thinks about the proletariat. Such judgment has no value today. Today, only a judgment formed with the proletariat, formed from the midst of the proletariat itself, can have any value.

In the hours that the workers spent after the hard work of the day, in which they went to the theater or played skat while other classes - I don't want to list all the nice things - in the hours in which the proletarian tried to enlighten himself about his situation, in those hours one could learn how the modern proletarian question has become and will become something quite different from a mere wage or bread question, as many still believe today, namely a question of human dignity. A question of a humane existence, that is what lies behind all proletarian demands, and has done for a long time.

Today's proletarian demands can be said to rest on three foundations. The one foundation is very often described by the proletarians themselves by referring to the great teacher of the proletariat, Karl Marx, as the existence of so-called surplus value. Surplus value, it was always a word that penetrated deep into the soul of the modern proletarian; it was a word that had an incendiary effect on the feelings of this modern proletarian. What word did the hitherto leading classes oppose to this surplus value? One will perhaps be surprised if I contrast the following two things.

The leading classes opposed this surplus value with the word of the great, important spiritual life which the civilization of mankind has brought forth. What did the proletarian know of this spiritual life? What was the great question of humanity for him? He knew that the surplus value he produced was used to make this spiritual life possible and to exclude him from this spiritual life. For him, surplus value was the very abstract basis of spiritual life. What kind of spiritual life was that? It was the intellectual life that arose in the dawn of the modern bourgeois economic order. It is often said, certainly not unjustly, that the modern proletariat was created by modern technology, by modern industrialism, by modern capitalism, and we shall speak of these things in a moment. But at the same time as this modern technology, with this capitalism, something else arose which we can call the modern scientific orientation. There it was - it was quite a long time ago - that the proletariat placed the last great trust in the bourgeoisie in the face of what the modern bourgeoisie brought up as the modern scientific orientation. And this last great trust, world-historical trust, has been disappointed.

What was the actual situation? Well, out of old worldviews, the justification of which we really don't want to examine today, what is today an enlightened, scientific worldview was formed. The proletarian, who has been called away from the medieval craft to the soul-killing machine, has been harnessed into modern capitalism, could not accept what the old classes had absorbed in their spiritual life. He could only accept, so to speak, the most modern product, the most modern outflow of this spiritual life. But for him this spiritual life became something quite, quite different from that of the leading classes. One need only visualize this with reference to all the depths of the proletarian soul. One must imagine how people from the hitherto leading classes, even if they were such enlightened people as the naturalist Vogt or the scientific popularizer Büchner, how they could be enlightened people with their heads, with their minds, in the sense of today's science; but they were such enlightened people only because they lived with their whole human being inside a social order that still came from the old religious and other world views in which the old still lived on. Their life was different from the one they professed, however honest they were in theory. The modern proletarian was compelled to take what remained to him as the legacy of the bourgeoisie in the fullest human seriousness. One need only have seen what it meant to the modern proletarian when he was told, as Lassalle once was, about science and the workers.

I stood - if I may also make this personal remark - more than eighteen years ago in Spandau, near Berlin, on the same speaker's platform with Rosa Luxemburg, who recently met her tragic end. We were both speaking to a proletarian assembly about science and the workers. At the time, Rosa Luxemburg said words that you could see had a powerful effect on the souls of these proletarian people who had come on a Sunday afternoon and had brought their wives and children with them; it was a heart-warming meeting. She said that, under the influence of modern science, people can no longer imagine that they have come up from conditions that were like angels, from which the modern differences of rank and class would be justified. No, she said almost literally: man, the physical man of today, was once highly indecent, climbing around on trees, and if one remembers this origin, then one really finds no reason to speak of today's class differences.

This was understood, but differently than by the leading circles. It was understood in such a way that the whole man wanted to be placed in this world view, which was to answer the question of the proletarian languishing in the barren machine: What am I as a human being? What is man in the world at all?

Now, however, the modern proletarian could gain nothing from this whole science other than what he could call a mirror image of what has emerged as the modern capitalist economic order. He felt that people speak as they must according to their economic circumstances, according to their economic situation. They had placed him in this economic situation; he could only judge from it. The leading circles said: the way people live now is a result of the divine world order, or a result of the moral world order, or a result of historical ideas and so on. The modern proletarian could only feel all this by saying to himself: “But you have put me into this economic life, and what have you made of me? Does that show what you have made of me, this divine world order, this moral world order, these historical ideas?

And so the concept of surplus value - the surplus value that he produced, that was extracted from him, that made this life of the leading classes possible - ignited in his emotional world and the opinion arose in him that everything that is produced by the leading circles in terms of spiritual life is only the reflection of their economic order.

Finally, for the last few centuries the proletarian theoretician was undoubtedly right in this view. The last few years have amply demonstrated this in the most diverse areas. Or can one believe that the people who taught history, for example, or wrote about history in the various schools - I don't want to say mathematics and physics, there's not much you can do in world views - can one say that they ultimately expressed anything other than a reflection of what the state-economic order was? Just look at the history of the states that entered the world war. The history of the Hohenzollerns will certainly look different in the future than the German professors have written in recent years and decades. It will, however, be made, this history, by people who have been told - yes, it is also a word of the German emperor - that they are not only enemies of the ruling class, but enemies of the divine world order.

So what was the spiritual life of the ruling classes became for the proletarian a dull ideology, a luxury of humanity, something for which he could muster no understanding. Nevertheless, his deepest longing was to find something that told him what human dignity, what human worth was. That is why the first proletarian demand is a spiritual demand. And one may say what one likes here or there, the first proletarian demand is a spiritual demand, the demand for such a spiritual life in which one can feel what one is as a human being, in which every human being can feel what human life on earth is worth. That is the first proletarian demand in the spiritual sphere.

The second proletarian demand arises in the field of legal life, of the actual political state. It is difficult to talk theoretically about what the law actually is. In any case, law is something that concerns all men, and one need only say the following about law: just as one cannot talk to a blind man about what a blue color is, but one does not need to theorize much about the blue color with one who sees, so one cannot talk about law with those who are blind to law. For the law rests on an original human awareness of the law. On the commandments of the political state, which the ruling classes have so finely carved out for themselves in recent centuries, the proletarian sought his right, his right above all in relation to his field of labor. What did he find? At first he did not find himself harnessed to the constitutional state, he found himself harnessed to the economic state. And there he saw that in contrast to all ideas of humanity, in contrast to all ideas of pure humanity, there remained for him a remnant of old inhumanity, a terrible remnant of old inhumanity. That, in turn, is something that Karl Marx so passionately impressed on the souls of the proletariat. There were slaves in ancient times. The whole human being was bought and sold like a commodity. Later there were serfs. There was less buying and selling of people than in the old days of slavery. Even now, people are still bought and sold like commodities. What Karl Marx and his successors have repeatedly and again so understandably expressed for the proletarian soul is that human labor power is sold. In the modern commodity market, where there should only be commodities, labor power itself is treated like a commodity. This rests in the depths, albeit often unconsciously, of the proletarian soul, so that it says to itself: the time has come when my labor power may no longer be a commodity.

This is the second proletarian demand. It springs from the legal ground. In drawing attention to this relationship, Karl Marx was once again speaking one of his most incendiary words. But we must be even more radical in this area than Karl Marx himself was in his approach. It must become clear: a world order, a social order must emerge in which man's labor power is no longer a commodity, in which it is completely stripped of the character of a commodity. For if I have to sell my labor power, I can also sell my entire human being. How can I retain my human being if I have to sell my labor power to someone else? He becomes master of my whole person. Thus the last remnant of the old slavery, but truly not in a lesser form, is still there today in this “humane” age.

So the proletarian, with his labor power and its sale, found himself thrust out of legal life into economic life. And when it is said, well, the labor contract exists, it must be countered that as long as a contract can be concluded between the employer and the worker about the labor relationship, the slave relationship with regard to labor power exists. Only then, when the relationship with regard to labor between labor manager and physical workers is transferred to the mere legal ground, only then is there that which the modern proletarian soul must demand.

However, this can only be the case when a relationship is no longer concluded only about wages, but only about what is produced jointly by the physical and the intellectual worker. There can only be contracts about goods, not about pieces of people. Instead of knowing that his labor relationship is protected on the basis of law, what did the modern proletarian find on this legal basis? Did he find rights? When he looked at himself, he really did not find any rights. Certain people had gradually become accustomed to perceiving this modern state as a kind of deity, as an idol. Almost as Faust spoke to Gretchen about God in the first part, so certain people spoke about the modern state. One could well imagine a modern labor entrepreneur instructing his workers about the divinity of the modern state and saying of this state: “The all-preserver, the all-embracer, does he not grasp and sustain you, me and himself?” He will probably always think: especially me. - Rights awaited the consciousness of humanity on the soil of the state. The modern proletarian found the privileges of those who had gained them from economic life, especially in recent times. Instead of that which must be demanded in regard to all rights - the equality of all men - what did the modern proletarian find? If one looks at what he found there on the ground of the constitutional state, one comes to his third demand; for he found on the ground on which he was to find the right, namely the right of his labor and the opposite right, the right of the so-called owner, he found the class struggle. For the modern proletarian, the modern state is nothing more than the class-struggle state.

Thus we designate the third proletarian demand as that which aims at overcoming the class state and replacing it with the constitutional state. Labor and labor management are objects of law. What, after all, is property? In the course of modern times it will have to become something that belongs to the old rusty things; for what is it in reality? In the social organism we need only the concept which says: possession is the right of any man to make use of any thing. Possession is always based on a right. Only when rights are regulated on the basis of a true democratic social order will workers' rights stand in opposition to so-called property rights. Only then, however, can that which is the legitimate demand of the modern proletarian be fulfilled.

If you look at the facts of today, which speak so loudly, then you come to the conclusion that what has gradually emerged as a social organism under the influence of modern technology, under the influence of modern capitalism, must be looked at more closely. - And one need only look at the three demands of the modern proletariat just characterized, then one will also see what is necessary for the recovery of the social organism. A spiritual, a legal and an economic aspect - these are the three aspects that must be looked at. But how have these three aspects been treated in the modern historical order, which is currently under the influence of technology and capitalism?

This is where we come from the critique of what has been formed by the ruling classes of the present, to what emerges today as a historical demand. I can imagine that some people will not fully agree with me in what I am about to say. But do not the facts that have developed show that people's thoughts have often lagged behind these facts? That is why it is perhaps justified to listen when someone says: “We not only need all kinds of talk about the transformation of conditions, no, today we need to move forward to completely new thoughts. New thoughts must enter the human brain, because the old thoughts have shown what they have made the human social order into. Rethinking and relearning, not just trying things out, is necessary today. And if what I have to say differs in some respects from the usual thoughts, I ask you to take it in such a way that it is taken from the observation of the facts of life and is just as honestly meant as many other things that are honestly put forward for the recovery of the newer social conditions.

I see, for example, how in recent times, precisely under the influence of the bourgeois social and economic order, economic life has increasingly grown together with legal life, how the political state and the economic state have become one. Let us take a very characteristic example of the present. Let us take the example of Austria, which has just succumbed to its fate. When, in the sixties of the 19th century, this Austria finally decided to establish a so-called constitutional life, how was the Imperial Council, this old blessed Imperial Council - because they wanted to have such a clear and short name, they called this Austrian state, apart from Hungary and the lands of the so-called Holy Crown of St. Stephen, “the kingdoms and lands represented in the Imperial Council”, - short name for Austria! - was elected? Elections were held for this Imperial Council according to four curiae, firstly the large landowners, secondly the chambers of commerce, thirdly the cities, markets and industrial towns, fourthly the rural communities. The latter were only allowed to vote indirectly. But what are all these curiae? They were economic curiae. They had to represent purely economic interests, and they elected their deputies to the Austrian Imperial Council. What was to be done there? Rights were to be established, political rights. What ideas did they have about political rights by basing the Austrian Imperial Council on these four curiae? Well, they had the idea that in the Imperial Council, where the law was to be decided, economic interests were merely transformed into rights. And so it was, and still is, that basically the state representations include, mostly openly or covertly, the mere economic interests. Look at the Farmers' Union in the German Reichstag; you can refrain from giving me closer examples. Everywhere we see how the tendency of modern times has been to merge economic life with the political life of the state proper. This was called progress. They began with those branches which were particularly convenient to the ruling classes, the postal, telegraph and railroad systems and the like, and extended them more and more. That is one thing that was welded together. The other thing that was merged, that was welded together, was intellectual life and the political state.

I know that I am to a certain extent treading on ice when I speak of this fusion of intellectual life with the political state, when I speak today of the fact that this fusion has led to the disadvantage, to the harm, to the illness of the social organism. Certainly, it was necessary for the ruling classes in the last centuries, and especially in the 19th century. But one must not merely believe that the administration, the operation of science and other branches of intellectual life has been corrupted, impaired by the state administration, but the content of science itself. Here, too, there is no need to go as far as the famous physiologist Du Bois-Reymond, who once called the members of the Berlin Academy of Sciences “the Hohenzollern's scientific protection force” in a beautiful speech - gentlemen always speak very, very beautifully when they talk about such things.

In an enlightened age, there was a lot of mockery about how in the Middle Ages external science and worldview, the handmaiden, was the servant of theology. Certainly, we will never want to return to those times. Anyone who looks at things today with unbiased judgment knows that a later time will judge ours in a similar way. In many cases, scholars no longer carry the train of theology, well, I don't want to say that they clean the boots of the states concerned, but in many respects the bearers of the train of the states concerned have already become the bearers of the train. That is what one must keep in mind again and again if one wants to talk about what it has actually brought about that in recent times, on the one hand, economic life has merged with political state life, and on the other hand, intellectual life has merged with precisely this political state life. Anyone who looks into these things does not now ask, as so many people ask: What should the League of Nations do, which is now to be founded from one point of view or the other? The other day in Berne I heard a gentleman who considers himself particularly clever say: The League of Nations must establish a supranational state, it must create a supra-parliament. Yes, you see, anyone who looks with an unbiased eye at what the previous states have achieved in these four terrible years really does not want to ask with regard to the League of Nations: How should the various measures and institutions of the previous states be transferred to this League of Nations? What should be done to make this League of Nations as similar as possible to the state? - He will probably ask differently. He will perhaps ask: What should this state refrain from doing? - After all, what it has done in the last four years has not really borne much fruit. Gradually, if you really look into the workings of modern social life with a healthy mind, you come to say what the historical powers and forces really demand in modern times.

While the world war was raging, I spoke to many people about what I am also saying here. I preached to deaf ears. I said to quite a few people: You still have time now; as long as the cannons are thundering, it is advisable that those states that want to end this war sensibly speak words into the thunder of the cannons, words that are demanded by the times, words that will definitely be realized in the next ten or twenty years. Today you have the choice of either accepting reason and realizing it through reason, or, if you don't want that, you will face cataclysms and revolutions. Like sound and smoke, that went past our ears.

What the times demand of us is that we really make up our minds to create independent social entities: a free, self-reliant intellectual life, a political state to which we leave only legal life, and an economic life that we place on its own foundation. - How dreadful it is for some who, in the sense of the old habits of thought, consider themselves practitioners, that one should now approach the complicated, three juxtaposed social organisms, a special spiritual organization, a special legal organization and a special economic organization! Just think what effect this will have on economic life, for example. On the one hand, economic life is limited by the natural basis, climate and soil conditions. On the one hand, nature can be dealt with by making all kinds of technical improvements, but there is a limit beyond which we cannot go. The natural basis forms one limit of economic life. One need only recall extreme examples. Think of a country where many people can feed themselves from bananas. It takes a hundred times less work to bring the banana from its place of origin to consumption than it does to bring our wheat in our regions from sowing to consumption. Well, such extreme examples clear things up. But even if things are not so extreme in a closed social territory, the natural basis is there. It is one limit of economic life. There must be another boundary. This is the one formed by the state, which stands independently alongside economic life. Within this state, which must stand on a purely democratic basis, because it deals with what applies equally to all men, what all men must agree upon, because it must emerge from the consciousness of right which is rooted in the soul of every man, in this constitutional state, measure, time and many other things relating to human labor will also be determined quite independently of economic life. Just as the seed is not already part of economic life in relation to the forces that grasp it under the earth, but just as these natural forces determine economic life itself, so labor law must also form the basis of economic life on the part of the independent state. The price of the commodity must be determined, as by the natural basis on the one hand, so on the other hand by the labor law independent of economic life. Commodity prices must be dependent on labor law, not, as is the case today, labor prices on commodity prices.

That is what every real worker secretly, in the depths of his soul, basically expects, that the regulation of labor power and also the regulation of so-called property, which will thus no longer be property at all, will be separated from economic life, so that in the economic field there can no longer be a compulsory relationship between employer and employee, but merely a legal relationship. Then there will be in economic life only that which belongs solely to economic life: the production of goods, the movement of goods, the consumption of goods. And what can be realized is precisely what socialist thought strives to realize, that from now on production will no longer be in order to profit, but that production will be in order to consume. This can only happen if the rules are made about labor and work performance just as independently as the rules themselves are made by nature for the economic order independently of this economic order. Only then will that come into its own in the field of economic life which is today developing as the cooperative system, the associative system; this must find a proper administration on the ground of economic life. Production life must be regulated in associations, in cooperatives, according to the needs of consumption. Above all, the entire regulation of currency must be taken away from the political state. Currency, money can no longer be something that is subject to the political state, but something that belongs to the economic body. What will then be that which is the representative of money? No longer some other commodity, which is really only a luxury good and whose value is based on human imagination, gold, but what will correspond to money - I can only hint at this, you will find it explained in my book on the social question, which will appear in a few days' time - what will correspond to money will be everything that is available in the way of useful means of production. And these useful means of production, they will be able to be treated as they should actually be treated in the sense of modern social thought, they will be able to be treated in the same way as today only that which is regarded in our time as the most abominable property is treated.

What is considered to be the worst property in our time? Well, of course the intellectual, the spiritual property. In our time we know that we have it from the social order. Yes, no matter how clever a person is, no matter how much he can achieve, no matter how beautiful things he produces, it certainly corresponds to his talents, and to some other things as well, but insofar as it is utilized in the social organism, insofar as one has it from the social organism. It is therefore just that this intellectual property should not remain with the heirs, but should, at least after a number of years, pass into the social organism, become common property, to be used by those who are suited to it by their individual abilities. This most precious property, intellectual property, is treated in this way today. This is how all so-called property will be treated in the future. Only it will have to be transformed much earlier into common property, so that those who have the abilities for it can in turn contribute these abilities to this property for the benefit and purpose of the social organism. Therefore, in the book that will be published in a few days, I have shown how it is necessary that the means of production remain under the management of one person only as long as the individual abilities of this person justify the management of these means of production, that everything that is profited on the basis of the means of production, if it is not again put into the production itself, must be transferred to the community. Through the spiritual organism, we can seek out those who, in terms of their individual abilities, can pass this on to the social community.

If one has really come to know this social organism from life, it is not so easy to fulfill this modern demand that the means of production no longer be transferred to private ownership so that they remain in this private ownership. But the means must be found by which this private property loses all meaning, so that the so-called private owner is then only the temporary leader, because he has the ability to manage the means of production best for the good of the community through his skills.

When, on the one hand, workers' rights are regulated in the political state, when, on the other hand, property thus becomes a property cycle in the true sense of the word, only then will a free contractual relationship between worker and labor leader concerning communal production be possible. There will be workers and labor leaders, entrepreneurs and employees no longer.

I can only briefly outline all these things. Therefore, please allow me to point out that, in addition to the independent economic area, which on the other side will have the independent political state, the constitutional state, which will stand independently and sovereignly next to the economic area, like nature itself, there will be spiritual life. This spiritual life can only develop according to its own, true, real forces when it is placed on its own ground in the future, when the lowest teacher up to the highest leader of any branch of teaching or education is no longer dependent on any capital group or on the political state, but when the lowest teacher and all those who are involved in spiritual life know: what I do is only dependent on the spiritual organization itself. Out of a good instinct, even if not exactly out of a special appreciation of religion, out of a good instinct, modern social democracy has coined the word with regard to religion: religion must be a private matter. In the same sense, as strange as it may still sound to people today, all spiritual life must be a private matter and must be based on the trust that those who wish to receive it have in those who are to provide it. Of course, I know that many people today fear that we will all, or rather our descendants, become illiterate if we can choose our own school. We won't become illiterate. It is perhaps precisely members of leading circles, hitherto leading circles, who today have quite a lot of cause to think this way about education; they remember how much trouble it has been for them to acquire the little bit of education that secures their social position. But that which the tripartite social organism demands of people will certainly not lead to illiteracy in a free intellectual life, especially under the influence of the modern proletariat.

I am completely convinced that if one is able to realize in this way the completely democratic constitutional state, which secures workers' rights, in which every person has a say in what is the same for all people, then the modern proletariat in particular will not be preoccupied with preaching illiteracy, then it will demand of its own accord, even in a free intellectual life, that people should not be led to the ballot box in the way that can now sometimes be heard from individual regions of a neighboring state, where the monks and country priests have cleared out the asylums for idiots and lunatics in order to lead those people who did not even know what their names were to the ballot box.

Whoever wants to believe in these things and hope for these things must, however, have faith in real human power and real human dignity. Anyone who, like me, has been independent of any kind of state order all his life, who has never submitted to any kind of state order, has also been able to preserve his impartiality for that which can be built up as a spiritual life that is independent of the state and stands on its own. This spiritual life will not cultivate the individual human faculties in the way that the luxury spiritual life, the ideology of the previous spiritual life, has done. The spiritual life that is built on itself will also not be a philistine, bourgeois spiritual life, it will be a humanity spiritual life, a spiritual life that will reach down from the highest, very highest members of spiritual creation into the individual details of human work and its management; the leaders of the individual economic areas will be pupils of the free spiritual life and will not develop out of this free spiritual life what has today become the entrepreneurial spirit, the spirit of capitalism.

There are labor contracts, but no real contract can actually be made about labor. What is today a labor contract is a lie, because in reality labor is not comparable to any commodity. Therefore one must say: if any contract is to be concluded in the future, it will be concluded about the jointly performed product, and then one will feel all the more: What was this previous employment contract actually about? What was it based on? - It was not based on any right, but on an abuse of personal, individual abilities. Basically, it was an overreaching. But overreaching, where does it come from? From the cleverness that today's intellectual life has often displayed. The spiritual life that I imagine, which is left to its own devices, will not produce this cleverness, it will not produce the lie of life, it will produce the truths of life. There will no longer be protective troops for any thrones and altars, but the spirit itself will administer the individual abilities of man right down to the individual branches of mankind. Capitalism is only possible if the spiritual life on the other side can be enslaved. If the spiritual life is liberated, then capitalism in its present form will disappear. I wanted to think about how capitalism can disappear. You can read in my book on the social question in a few days' time that this capitalism will disappear when spiritual life is truly emancipated and the truths of life are put in the place of the lies of life.

In essence, what I have outlined to you today in a brief sketch has been resounding through humanity for a long time. At the end of the 18th century, the words “liberty, equality, fraternity” rang out like a mighty motto in France. - In the course of the 19th century, very clever people repeatedly proved that these three ideas contradict each other in the social organism. Liberty, on the one hand, demands that individuality can move freely. Equality excludes this freedom. Fraternity, on the other hand, contradicts the other two.

As long as one was under the hypnosis of the dogma: The All-holder, All-embracer, does he not embrace you and me, himself? As long as one was under the hypnosis of this idol of the unitary state, these three ideas were contradictions. At the moment when mankind will find understanding for the threefold healthy social organism, these three ideas will no longer contradict each other, for then freedom will prevail in the field of the independent, sovereign spiritual organism, and equality of all in the field of the state organism, the legal organism, the equality of all men, and in the field of the economic organism, fraternity, that fraternity on a large scale which will be based on the cooperatives of production and consumption, which will be based on the associations of the individual professions, which will administer economic life in an appropriately fraternal manner. The three great ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity will no longer contradict each other when the three areas - spiritual, legal and economic - have come into their own in the world. Take this today as something that is still little thought of, but it is not a utopia, it is not something that has somehow been thought up, but something that has been gained from decades of observation of modern political, economic and spiritual conditions, something that can be believed to rest in the womb of human development itself like a seed that wants to be realized in the near future. And one can perceive in the loudly speaking facts of today, one can perceive in the demands of the proletariat, even if much is still expressed differently, that the longing for such realization is already present today.

Many people call what I am saying a utopia. It is taken from a reality-friendly, reality-appropriate way of thinking. This idea of a tripartite division is not a utopia. It can be tackled immediately everywhere from any social condition if one only has the good will, which is unfortunately so often lacking today. If you believe that what I am saying is a utopia, then I would like to remind you that what I am saying here about the healthy social organism is not what is usually said. People who otherwise speak of social ideas are setting up programs. I am not thinking of a program, I am not thinking of wanting to be cleverer than other people and to know the best about everything, how to do it and so on, but I am only thinking of structuring humanity, which should decide for itself what is true, what is good, what is expedient, in the right way. And it seems to me that if it is organized in such a way that people stand within it firstly in a free spiritual life, secondly in a free political legal life, thirdly in an economic life properly administered by economic forces, then people will find the best for themselves; I am not thinking of legislation about the best, but of the way in which people must be called upon to find through themselves that which is pious for them. Nor am I thinking, as some have believed, of a rebirth of the old estates and classes: The teaching class, the military class, the nurturing class - no, the opposite is what I am talking about here. People should not be divided into classes. Classes, estates, they are to disappear by dividing up life outside man, objective life. Man, however, is the unity that belongs in all three organisms. In the spiritual organism his talents and abilities are cultivated. In the state organism he finds his rights. In the economic organism he finds the satisfaction of his needs.

I believe, however, that the modern proletarian will develop a true consciousness of humanity out of his class consciousness, that he will find more and more understanding for what has been pointed out here: for the true liberation of humanity. And I hope that once the modern proletarian's soul will clearly realize how he is called to strive for the true goal of humanity, that he will then become, this modern proletarian, not only the liberator of the modern proletariat - he must certainly become that - but that he will become the liberator of everything human, everything that is truly worth liberating in human life. That is what we want to hope for, that is what we want to work towards. When it is said: Words are now spoken enough, let us see deeds - I wanted to speak today in such words that can really turn directly into deeds.

Discussion

1st speaker (Mr. Handschin): Spoke very spiritedly of the oppression of the worker by the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie imposes violence on the proletariat. The private property of the propertied classes has been created by the workers. Only communism would bring peace.

2nd speaker (Mr. Studer). Points to the ideas of free money and free land, which should enable the liberation of economic life.

3rd speaker (Mr. Mühlestein): Shows how in Germany the old powers are re-emerging and nothing has changed. Criticism of Social Democracy and the Center. Criticism of the threefold structure: it removes the law from economic and intellectual life; but justice must prevail in all three areas, not just in the constitutional state.

4th speaker: Wants to report on a “Swiss Federation for Transitional Reforms”; but is interrupted and the discussion is closed.

Rudolf Steiner: You will have noticed that the first two speakers in the discussion have basically not put forward anything against which I would need to argue, since, at least in my opinion, what has been put forward by the two gentlemen essentially shows - at least to me - how very necessary it is to take seriously what I have tried to do in a perhaps weak but honest way to contribute to the solution of the social question in the present serious times, as far as it is humanly possible. And that this is necessary, that today is the time to do so, you will at any rate have been able to gather from what the first speaker in the debate has just said to you from a soul that is certainly warmly felt.

Since the time is already well advanced, I would like to address just a few points here. The word “free land, free money” was used by the honorable second speaker. You see, this hints at something that is like a lot of things in the present day, if you want to approach the social question in precisely those ways, as I said, in real ways, as I tried to do in my presentation. On such occasions I have very often been in the situation of having to say: I am in complete agreement with you; the other person just usually, or at least very often, doesn't say it to me! The thing is, if I believed that my ideas were simply plucked out of the air from somewhere, then I wouldn't bore you with them, I would believe that they had long since not matured. That is precisely what I believe, that there is something essential about the ideas presented to you today. You will find the material, the building blocks everywhere. I gave a similar lecture in Bern the other day. A gentleman came to me then, not only in the discussion, but the next day for a conversation, and also spoke about “free land, free money”. After an hour, however, we were able to agree that what is actually wanted in the regulation of the currency question, in the creation of an absolute currency, will simply be achieved if this tripartite division that I have spoken of today is carried out properly - properly indeed - if the administration of values, the administration of money, is simply taken away from the political state and transferred to economic life. As I have said, I will show in my book “Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft” that the basis of the currency will then be quite different from what it is today, and that it will also become international. As long, of course, as the leading state, England, clings to the gold currency, the gold currency will have to apply in foreign policy; but internally, those who now really have the one true currency will no longer need gold in the social organism; for the only real true currency will consist in the means of production, which will then be there to be the currency for money. Money is completely misunderstood today. Money is only understood if it can be grasped as the complete opposite of the old natural economy.

What is money for today's social organism? It is the means of conducting a common economy. Just imagine the whole function of money. It consists simply in the fact that for what I work myself I have an instruction for something else that someone else works. And as soon as money is something other than this instruction, it is unauthorized in the social organism.

I could go on at length to confirm this, but I will only say briefly that this is what money must become! It will become so when all other machinations that play a part in the circulation of money cease. For only money is the common index which is there for the common comparison of the mutual values of commodities. That is what can also be achieved through the nature of this tripartite division, and what is partially, individually sought by the free-money movement; that is why I have said in such a case: I am in complete agreement with this movement - because I always try to see the individual movements in their justification, and I would like to lead them into a common great stream, precisely because I do not believe that one person, or even a group of people, can find what is right, but because I believe democratically that people together in reality, working together, properly organized alone, will only find what is right.

This is what I have described as a view of reality, not as some objective development. But I believe that the real human being will find what is right for the social organism out of his healthy human experience in association with other people.

We have one thing that everyone knows is only possible in social life - today's egoists would probably also like to have it for themselves - and that is language for a closed organism. Again and again it is preached in schools: If man had grown up on a lonely island, in solitude, he would not be able to speak; for speech can only be formed in social life. One must recognize [...] that all those things which are hidden behind private capital, property, which are hidden behind the mastery of some kind of work and the like, that all these things, including human talents, individual gifts, just like language, have social functions, that they belong to social life and are only possible within it. There must come a time when it becomes clear to people in schools what they are through the social organism and what they are therefore obliged to give back to the social organism. So what I am counting on is social understanding, which must come, just as the multiplication tables are taught in schools today. We will also have to relearn this. There were times when people learned something completely different in schools than they do today; just think of the Roman schools. There will come a time when children will be taught social understanding in schools. Because this has been neglected under the influence of modern technology and capitalism, we have ended up in today's conditions, in the pathological conditions of the social organism.

As far as Mr. Mühlestein is concerned, I must say that I am also in a position to have nothing against what he has put forward; I only believe that if his ideas continue to develop, they will then lead to what I have said.

For example, he has not at all considered that I am not - of course not! - want to take law out of economic life and intellectual life. No, on the contrary, I want to keep it in. And because I want it inside, I want to have developed an independent social science in which it can really be developed, created. When it has been generated, then it can have an effect on the other areas. Comprehensive thinking will show you this. If you consider the following, for example: Today, even scientific thinking does not yet really think logically and appropriately in relation to the natural human organism. People today think: the lungs - a piece of meat; the brain - also a piece of meat, and so on. Science says otherwise, but it does not say much else; for it regards these individual members of the human organism as parts of a great centralization. In truth, they see nothing else. The human being as a natural organism is a tripartite system: we have a nervous-sensory organism. The one is centralized and has its own outlets at the sensory organs. - We have a rhythmic organism, the lung-heart organism; it has its own outlets in the respiratory tract. - We have the metabolic organism, which in turn has its own outlet to the outside world. And we are this natural human being precisely because we have these three limbs, these three centralized limbs of the organism.

Can anyone now come along and say - if I say, as I have now done in my last book, “Of Riddles of the Soul”, that simply the proper scientific observation results in these three members of the human natural organism - can anyone come along and say that nature should not have developed these three members, because what matters is that all three members have air? - Of course all three limbs have air! - When the air is first inhaled through the lungs and processed accordingly, the metabolic members and the brain have their air, so that this air is drawn in and processed, and can therefore also be treated with all natural care in a specially separated member of the human natural organism. I do not want, like Schäffle, or like Meray or others, to play this analogy game between physiological and social concepts, that does not even occur to me; I only want to draw attention to the fact that a thoroughly formed thinking does not understand man as a natural organism if one only thinks: everything is centralized into one - but one understands man if one understands his three organ systems centralized in themselves.

It is precisely because man is perfect that he has these three centralized organ systems. This will be a great advance in natural science when we realize this! And the thinking that thinks so healthily about the human being also thinks healthily about the social organism, and feels healthily about the social organism. Spiritual life will be freest and best organized when it is emancipated. For in the field of emancipated spiritual life the people are already to be found who will provide for this free spiritual life. There will arise those who will actually bring the necessary dominion to this spiritual life. Those who do not bring it are those who are servilely dependent on capitalism or other things. Those who will be free as spiritual administrators will also be able to bring the blessings of spiritual life to the other two members.

And so, if justice is really produced in a state of law existing for itself, really centralized in itself, one will not have to worry that the other two members will not have justice, certainly in favorable distribution; in all the things that have been touched upon by Mr. Mühlestein, there must be justice; that will come in when it is first produced.

So it is not in order to have justice in one separate organ and not in the other that I take these three parts, but precisely in order to have justice in all three, I see the necessity that it should first be produced.

I would like to know if anyone can say: In a house, there are father, mother, children, the maidservants; but now you divide this house into father, mother, maidservants, and two cows that give milk, but all need the milk, so all must produce milk, not just the two cows? - No, I say: the cows must produce the milk so that everyone in the house can be properly supplied with milk. And so the constitutional state must have the law according to plan, produce the law, then the rights will be where they are needed. And that is precisely when they will be - forgive the somewhat trivial comparison - when they can be milked by the rule of law!

That is what I would like to emphasize; that what is important today is not to somehow pursue favourite ideas, but precisely to summarize that which pulsates in many hearts as a demand, that which is already present in many minds, even if more or less unconsciously, out of the forces of the times, and to really grasp that in the impulses that are there as the great forces of the times, which want to be realized, which we should now realize through reason. But if we do not want to realize them through reason, this will not prevent them from entering into reality.

Dear readers, we either have the choice to be reasonable or to wait in some other way for the realization of that which must be realized because it wants to realize itself out of the forces of history.

In this sense, however, I believe that proletarian consciousness is capable of grasping these demands, which lie in history itself, and thus of really striving for and achieving what I said at the end, insofar as it is possible for human beings: the liberation of everything in humanity that is worth liberating.

A powerful movement is developing out of the catastrophe of the world war, a movement borne by proletarian demands, and which speaks to people today through significant facts, through facts that have already seized a large part of Europe, through facts that undoubtedly have to be overcome by certain new social institutions of humanity. The question may arise, especially when one considers the initial course of these loudly speaking facts: Is there already a reasonably sufficient social will emerging somewhere, a social will that arises from a deeper understanding of our current historical world situation? For it seems that it depends on such social will.

Therefore, it filled me with great satisfaction that today, at the invitation of local students, I was able to express the relationship between the proletarian demands and the necessary social will from a certain point of view, which I, wanting to serve the present, have explained in my soon-to-be-published work: “The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Present and Future Life

That we are dealing with a profound world-historical phenomenon in the movement mentioned, seems to follow from the fact that what is happening today shows something like a realization of that program that went around the world seventy years ago and is known as the Marxist Communist Manifesto. Whether one understands what is expressed by these two milestones of our more recent historical development, by the statements of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 and by what is now sweeping across Europe, whether one understands it in one way or another, according to one's circumstances, one's views on life, that is of little importance today. What is important is that we are faced with loud facts, facts that must be taken into account. And we will have to take a stand on what may arise in the coming years, in the coming decades, precisely from that transformation of scientific and ideological thinking that will become necessary, like many other things, under the influence of this loudly spoken fact of the present.

That is why I am particularly keen to address this question to students who want to be supporters of what can develop out of our current scientific and ideological thinking into thinking, into recognizing the future.

Just as what is usually referred to as the social question appears today, so it can be said that it initially arises in two significant demands. Both demands, as they arise, actually point to phenomena in our economic life. One can say: the first demand culminates in the rejection of the management of the economic life of the civilized world, which has emerged in the course of modern times through private capital. And secondly, it can be said that a new attitude to human labor in social life is demanded by the proletariat.

Now, even if it is initially these two significant economic phenomena in which the social movement is playing out today, it is not yet said that only economic impulses can provide what is necessary to overcome the social question today and in the near future. However, the way in which the life of civilized humanity has developed in recent times shows how human energies and all human endeavor have been primarily absorbed by what has resulted from economic development. And so it is not surprising that the most significant thinker of the proletarian world – for that is what it still is today – Karl Marx, directed his attention above all to economic life.

We may devote a few minutes of our attention to him, Karl Marx, not because I believe that the modern proletarian demands have arisen from what the proletariat has learned from Karl Marx, but because that which has slowly emerged in the innermost feelings, in the basic impulses of the soul life of the modern proletariat over the course of the more recent centuries, then quickly over the course of the 19th century, because that has found the most intense expression to date in the views of Karl Marx, because he is the interpreter of that which, more or more or less consciously lives in millions of people today.

Now, precisely because in the last seventy years those impulses that Karl Marx prophetically expressed in the first half of the 19th century and then later have matured more and more in the souls of these millions of people, precisely for this reason his view seems so plausible to the leading personalities of the proletarian masses. It appeared to him, Karl Marx, that what must happen in modern times is emerging – this is well known in the broadest circles from the development that economic life has taken in recent centuries, through the development of modern technology and industry, and through the management of these industrial and technical operations, activities by private capital. To him, the whole process of human development appeared to be such that, in the course of historical epochs, economic forms always replace each other. The economic form that has developed on the basis of capitalist ideas in modern times thinks itself, as Karl Marx sees it, pressing towards its own dissolution; so that this economic order, which has more and more need to proletarianize large masses of humanity, will call this proletariat against itself, because the forms of economic life that have emerged must find their resolution through the productive forces that are formed within these economic forms. The productive forces are constantly changing. The economic forms strive to remain conservative. Eventually the point is reached when the productive forces are no longer able to fit into the old economic forms.

Marx believes he sees such a point in time approaching, having recognized how the proletariat will tear apart the economic order in which this proletariat itself has been harnessed, with its productive forces.

What is characteristic here is that Karl Marx sees in economic development itself, so to speak, the driving forces that will bring the proletariat forward to those points which will then bring about a new economic order, but for him this means a new world order.

Now, of course, the transformation of everything that makes up the scope of state life and the transformation of everything that makes up intellectual life is also connected with what Karl Marx imagines the transformation of modern economic life to be. Karl Marx thinks about the development of humanity entirely in the sense of modern scientific thinking. He has completely abandoned the view of older socialist thinkers, who at the time believed that the most important thing is the human will, which intervenes in the structure of human social life. Karl Marx believes that people basically have to want what is determined for them by the necessity of the economic order. And from the economic order itself, from the way in which people produce, from the way in which people manage their economic affairs, the state orders are formed, as are the law, morality and so on. And today, knowing what goes on in the minds of proletarian people, we can say that this view is widespread. Man is harnessed to economic life, and economic life, the way he feeds himself, how he can lead the rest of his life, determines how he is satisfied with the legal order, which legal order can form at all. Economic life also determines how he thinks, how he feels, what he produces in art and what he produces in science.

This is how it has become for broad circles; in the broadest leading circles of the proletariat, in particular, what is considered intellectual life is regarded as an ideology. This word ideology is heard again and again and again when the proletarian wants to describe precisely what he regards as intellectual life. On the one hand.

On the other hand, the proletarian turns his attention to state life. But in this state life he finds what he calls – again according to the approach of Karl Marx – the all-dominant class struggles. And finally he turns his attention to economic life, which is closest to him because he is directly involved in it. And because he finds his whole life completely absorbed by this economic life, he develops what he calls the “Marxist conception of history”. He develops this out of his conviction that basically the whole historical development of mankind consists of economic struggles, is shaped by forms of economic life, and that everything else depends on this material life. And this, in turn, is connected with his perception of the culture of the leading and guiding circles, into which he cannot penetrate with his soul, and which often seems to him to be a kind of luxury culture, even in its scientific rigor, and which he perceives as an ideology.

Today we stand at a turning point in European culture, where we must ask deeper questions than have been asked in socialist and non-socialist circles for the last seventy years. We must ask deeper questions such as: What is actually the basis of this view of the proletariat, this view that all intellectual life is an ideology, that all state life is a class struggle, that all real history is only a result of material development? It was precisely the thinking of modern humanity that was led into materialism in its most diverse forms, into which Karl Marx was also led with his ideas, with all his impulses.

Now one can ask: Why is it precisely the direction of ideas of these important, these incisive thinkers that has been steered in the direction of looking solely at economic life as the decisive factor for all human development? How then has the thinking of the modern proletarian himself been pushed onto the same path?

Anyone who studies the development of modern times not according to conventional history, but according to what a deeper historical view can already provide today, will indeed find a very, very strange phenomenon that can bring him close to the solution of the question just raised.

One could say that economic life in modern times has taken a course that can be understood if one tries to understand it in the same way as one understands scientific facts. It cannot be said of this economic life that it has not been subject to a certain scientific necessity, as it has developed; one cannot even say, when one examines things properly, that this economic life as such could be different. But then, if one wanted to stop at that, one would come to an extraordinarily pessimistic view of life.

But other questions arise. I would say that people's gaze and energies were restricted, as if hypnotized, to economic life.

Other areas of life have developed in a way that must be viewed very differently today from mere economic development. It was part of the whole way of looking at things in modern times to regard the economy, so to speak, as the source of the other two main branches of human life: political and intellectual life.

One might say that, influenced by natural science prejudices, it became clear to Karl Marx and his followers that economic life contains the causes. Out of these causes, the shaping of state or legal life develops, as does intellectual life. But is that so? This is the big question. Today we have already reached the turning point where it is necessary to recognize that this whole fundamental view is radically wrong, that it is impossible to understand the other two branches of human life as arising from economic life, just as it is impossible to understand state or legal life as arising from economic life, and it is impossible to understand intellectual life as arising from economic life.

This is precisely the peculiarity of modern times, that in its world and life view, this newer time has had nothing that would have made it possible for it to go beyond this prejudice that economic life underlies all other human life.

Three sides of a deeper, more fundamentally human nature present themselves as spiritual life, legal life and economic life. They stand side by side. This is what we must begin to understand. We must do away with the error, resulting only from natural science and from natural-scientific prejudices, that the economic order is the basis for the other two spheres of life, for the sphere of law and for the sphere of the spirit.

Anyone who wants to understand this must, above all, focus on one thing. Look at the way in which modern thinking, the modern way of looking at the world, has developed. This thinking, this way of looking at the world, is more connected with scientific knowledge than one might think. If I were of the opinion that practical life, the outer practice of life, were somehow dependent on theories, on views, on concepts and ideas, as can be imagined from a one-sided philosophy, then I would not make the remark I just made. But that is not how I view the historical process. What is expressed in the whole sphere of life, shaping this life, impelling this life, seems to me to be expressed more or less only symptomatically in the way of thinking of a time; so that I would never want to deduce practical life from the way of thinking, but I would like to assert that the way of thinking , the way of looking at things, is a clear symptomatic expression of what is going on in the depths of the human soul and ultimately shapes the outer, including the practical and economic, life.

What could be called scientific thinking has been incorporated into this way of thinking in all walks of life. But what is the sole focus of scientific thinking? There are still many prejudices regarding this question today, and I believe that those who live in this way of thinking today will be very surprised at the changes in today's way of thinking that they will grow into. What is today considered to be axiomatic, absolutely valid, will most certainly be challenged; it will most certainly undergo significant, powerful metamorphoses. What do rationally thinking natural scientists think today in a broad area? How do they think in a particular area? They think: We do not really understand life or the soul today; basically, we only understand everything that is inanimate in the order of time, well, let us say, what is dead. But it is seen as an ideal that something like the understanding of the living will also develop from the ever-increasing understanding of the dead.

But one must realize that the whole way of looking at things, as we have developed it in the last three to four centuries, as it is the nerve of scientific thinking, that this whole way of looking at things is only suitable for understanding the dead. The reason why natural science has become so great is precisely because this way of thinking is suitable for grasping the dead, all the dead that is embedded in plants, animals, humans, in all living things. Through natural science we understand only the dead that is present in everything.

This way of thinking, which has made natural science so great, ruins and corrupts everything that is social thinking and must be the basis of the social will, for the simple reason that the social will must be directed towards the viable social organism. But if we do not even understand the living forces in nature, how can this thinking be suitable for bringing about the viability of the social organism in any way? It is connected with the innermost structure of modern thinking that man must admit his helplessness, his awkwardness, in relation to social life. Above all, a metamorphosis of the innermost human outlook, of the innermost human thinking, must take place so that man no longer faces things so helplessly and awkwardly.

Those who today look without prejudice at all that that is asserting itself here or there as something socially new, actually has the feeling that in another area what Goethe so dramatically embodied as medieval superstition in the second part of “Faust” in his homunculus scene is coming to life. In the Middle Ages, people believed that the human organism itself could be created by combining dead substances and dead forces according to a human intellect, which itself actually only rules over the dead.

We have moved away from this as a superstition; but it is as if a human superstition wanted to be transplanted from one area to another. And what is often asserted today as a social view seems to us to be a homunculus theory, as if one had no concepts of what should take shape as a living social organism, as if one only wanted to put this social organism together in the way that the medieval alchemist wanted to put the homunculus together from what one had penetrated with the scientific way of thinking, which only deals with the dead. Above all, this is what must be overcome.

Alongside the economic development of humanity, there is the development of the state, which, among other things, consists primarily in the development of the law, and there is the spiritual life. As I said, economic development can be understood in scientific terms. But can the other two branches of human life also be understood in scientific terms? Can it be the legal life? Can it be the spiritual life? This question can be answered by taking a brief look at the development of these two branches of life in modern times. When, three to four centuries ago, at the same time as the technical and capitalist development, the newer world view also emerged, the whole thinking of the circles that were the leaders was such that it pushed to include more and more of the spiritual life in the life of the state, on the one hand, and the economic life, on the other.

The spiritual life has, in fact, already been incorporated into the life of the state to a high degree. One can see the actual progress of the newer development of humanity in the fact that the branches of spiritual life, which used to be more or less independent, have been harnessed into the state legal order. How proud one is of this, to mention just one example, that one has managed to squeeze the entire school system into the state legal system.

It did not happen so quickly with economic life; but it was still seen as a significant step forward that the major transport institutions, the post office, the telegraph and railways; and in accordance with the interests of the ruling and leading circles, they have increasingly forced more and more of economic life into state life.

Because the gaze has been hypnotized on this economic life in modern times, and because the proletariat is primarily involved in this economic life , the ideal arose for the proletariat to take over the state for itself in the same way as the leading circles took over the state in their interest in the past, and to use the state, as it has developed out of all possible old forms, as a framework to squeeze the entire economic life like a huge cooperative into this modern state.

One can show how more and more of the modern proletarian question has also developed under this economic hypnotism. One only has to look back to the 1880s, to the 1870s of the 19th century! What was the situation in the classes of social democracy in Germany, what was the ideal of this social democracy?

Well, the two main points of this social-democratic ideal were, until well into the 1890s, firstly: the abolition of all social and political inequality; secondly: the abolition of the actual wage relationship, of wage labor. These were two demands that emerged, I would say, from a general consciousness of humanity. These two demands are not yet fully imbued with the nuance that is oriented only towards economic life. In the 1890s, these two ideals, which I have just mentioned, are replaced by two essentially different ones: firstly, the transformation of all private ownership of the means of production into common ownership; secondly, the transformation of commodity production into socialist production, guided and led by and for society. The social-democratic demands have been completely reduced to a purely economic program.

Thus, I would say, in its present economic program, social democracy shows itself to be the ultimate executor of what the bourgeois world view has developed over the last few centuries.

Only those who realize that the demands of the proletariat are nothing more than the logical consequence of the bourgeois world order and the bourgeois economic order that has been developed to date can see what is at stake in the right way.

But it went even further.

What I just characterized as the newer world view, which is completely permeated by the impulses of science, is also what

But it went even further.

What I have just characterized to you as the newer world view, which is completely permeated by the impulses of science, is also what has repeatedly formed within bourgeois circles over the last few centuries as the underlying world and life view. Where did the leading spirits of the proletarians get what they think today, what they have brought into everything that is their social will? They have it from the heritage of the bourgeois scientific way of thinking.

It may well be said that up to now the acceptance of the bourgeois scientific orientation was the last great trust that proletarian circles placed in this bourgeoisie, basically up to today. For they have adopted the bourgeois world outlook. And with this bourgeois world outlook they were put to the machines, were harnessed into the desolate life, into the life of capitalism that was becoming desolate for them, were torn away from all those occupations that answer the question: What am I actually in the world? Next to the machine, with its soullessness, and within the capitalist order, in which one is a wheel, the question is not answered: What am I actually as a human being within human development?

Above all, the proletarian demanded to receive the answer to this question from science, from a scientific orientation. The images of the newer world view became quite different for the proletarian than for the bourgeoisie. The member of the bourgeoisie still stands within an economic and social order that basically contains tradition and the teachings of the past everywhere. No matter how convinced he may be of what has emerged under the sole influence of the scientific way of thinking in modern times, it does not conquer the whole person in him; he has religious, spiritual, artistic or other impulses from somewhere else that stand alongside this modern scientific orientation. For the proletarian, this modern scientific orientation is the one that should answer the question: What am I as a human being?

Oh, if one has looked into the souls of numerous proletarians, into those souls that have retained their human feeling and their longing for human dignity, then one knows how they long to have the question answered from the modern scientific orientation side: What do I mean in the world as a human being? - Then what is already present in the expression 'ideology' presents itself to these souls: a spiritual life that does not guarantee man his connection with the spiritual world, a spiritual life that is supposed to consist only of unreal ideas, only of an ideology; it cannot sustain the souls. The individual may not know this, but the effect of it is in the soul! What desolates the souls is that the proletariat has adopted a way of thinking and a world view from the bourgeoisie and the ruling circles that cannot fulfill man, that the proletarian, who has been torn away from the old orders of life, cannot believe, cannot be connected with the old traditions to which the others still cling, and that this scientific way of thinking, which is only what the dead can grasp, cannot give him any answers to the question of the highest things, for which he nevertheless feels more or less unconsciously yearning, for the life of his own soul within the world order. This is basically in every proletarian soul; no matter how badly what comes from it may express itself, it rests at the bottom of the proletarian soul. And even what is visible in the excesses of today's social movement is only visible because that spiritual poverty exists, which has come about under the influence of what has just been described.

Let us take a look at how the ways of life have developed in recent times, ways of life to which man also owes something alongside the scientific order that brought the proletarian the aforementioned, how have these developed? Certainly, the belief in the state, as it has emerged in the course of modern times, is firmly anchored in the minds of many people who are absolutely unwilling to change their minds. This is the belief in the state, which would best take everything under its wing, including the economy and intellectual life! Because this belief is so deeply rooted, so little is learned from the facts. Do not the last four and a half years speak all too clearly of what the states and their missions have achieved over a large part of the world? The time will come when it will be seen that what has been experienced as the most terrible world catastrophe is a consequence of the structure of the entire organization of modern states. And if we examine how it came about that the states, through their own actions, were driven into this world catastrophe, we must ask: How have the states tried to and been able to cope with this combination of the three spheres of life: the spiritual, the state or legal life and the economic life? As states, they were driven into the world war! And anyone who observes the starting points of this world war in particular will see strong arguments against the existence, the composition and the inner structure of the states that have emerged in the last three to four centuries of human development.

But another thing that emerges is how spiritual life actually developed during the very period in which it was most claimed by all that belongs to the state, in the time when one was so proud of extending the power of the state over everything spiritual more and more.

This is basically a chapter of modern historical development that can only be drawn with strong pessimistic strokes! Let us take a look at this intellectual life of the last three to four centuries: many songs of praise have been sung to it. But the characteristic features have basically been little emphasized. The voices of our time will be obliged to say something different about this intellectual life of the last three to four centuries than was said in the songs of praise that were sung to it. Let me emphasize a characteristic feature of this intellectual life.

If we really want to see with an open mind, do we not see how great and significant people have emerged over the last three to four centuries? Even if they have not worked in the field that was directly necessary for the life that one was leading, have the most outstanding minds had some kind of impact? We should have no illusions about this.

Let us turn our attention to a very, very important personality of modern times: to Goethe. Do people really know Goethe? On the contrary! We basically know nothing about this Goethe! Has that which lives as a gigantic, great, powerful spiritual life in this Goethe somehow entered into the souls of men? No, nowhere! In Germany itself, after Goethe had been more or less a favorite of distinguished circles, a “Goethe Society” was founded in the 1880s. Is this “Goethe Society” a matter for the nation, as Goethe's intellectual heritage should make it necessary? No, esteemed attendees! Someone who himself worked within this “Goethe Society” for a long time, but was always in opposition, especially with the leading circles of this Goethe Society, is allowed to tell you: This “Goethe Society” is a pedantic, scholarly elaboration of that which has something to do with this Goethe on the outside, but not on the inside! The spiritual life of modern times, not only in Goethe but in all the other greats, has not been absorbed into general human life. It is a spiritual life that, to a certain extent, modern humanity has been unable to accept. When it has accepted it, it has done so only by absorbing this or that sensation, by informing itself about this or that, by making this or that acceptable, so to speak. For example, when the Goethe Society experimented with its leadership for a long time, they finally ended up making a former Prussian finance minister, who never had any kind of inner relationship to Goethe, the chairman of the Goethe Society! This is only one of the characteristic phenomena; it could be multiplied not only tenfold, but a hundredfold, a thousandfold, a millionfold, if one were to enter into this modern spiritual life. This spiritual life is characterized precisely by the fact that the broadest circles of humanity have not been able to absorb the significant achievements, that these significant achievements have had to live in the most tragic way, as parasites on the development of humanity. In a deeper sense than is usually believed, this is part of the development of social consciousness and of social life in general in modern times. And if we do not want to see in such phenomena of spiritual life something significant for modern social development, we will never find the transition to real, meaningful social will.

In a sense, this newer spiritual life has become a sterile theory. Why? Those who know what the conditions of a real spiritual life are know that if it is to flourish, the spiritual life must never be harnessed to the power of any external force. Natural science, which is directed only towards the dead, and all those branches of the spirit that have approached natural science under the compulsion of newer conditions, they could be harnessed into the structures of the states. But those branches of spiritual life that are based on the most individual abilities of human beings, that were to develop the momentum in the human being to the soul's will, were driven out of these state structures. That is why our newer spiritual life lacks the momentum that the old religious ideas had, because in the broadest circles people are not in a position, are unable, to take in that which runs counter to the development of humanity, and which unfortunately, in a tragic way, must live like parasites.

An explanation will be found for these phenomena. It lies in the fact that in recent times a particular progress has been seen in the intermingling of spiritual life with state life. Until it is realized that a radical change is needed in this respect, social recovery cannot come from this quarter. Intellectual life, school life, and all the other branches of spiritual life must form a special, independent link in the healthy social organism; they must be detached from the structure of the state, which should only really be responsible for the legal life, for the actual political life.

One could point to many phenomena if one wanted to discuss how not only the administration of science, the administration of intellectual life, has become dependent on state power and constraints, but also how the content of science itself has become dependent, how the inner workings of science have become dependent. Hence it appears how unsuitable the natural scientist is when it comes to social thinking and social will. A characteristic example of this is the following: Oscar Hertwig, an important naturalist in the biological field, could recently be cited as an unprejudiced mind who, in his excellent book 'The Development of Organisms - a Refutation of Darwin's Theory of Chance', has achieved something unspeakably important for the development of modern scientific thought. The same Oscar Hertwig made the unfortunate attempt to express his scientific way of thinking in a small booklet for social and legal and state life. One cannot imagine a more nonsensical, unhealthy concoction than this childish little book about social, legal and other similar questions, questions of science in modern times, alongside Oscar Hertwig's great work in the field of natural science! This is a perfect example of how, under the nationalization of intellectual life, a way of thinking has developed that simply cannot penetrate into what lies within social demands.

In general, this intellectual activity has become strangely dependent on something else; so that, after all, scholars like the historian Heinrich Friedjung are really no rarity at all. I am not speaking out of animosity towards Heinrich Friedjung; he was a dear friend of mine in my youth, but today the times are so serious that only objective interests come into consideration. That Heinrich Friedjung, the historian, who, as they say, has written an epoch-making work about modern Austria, he has applied the historical document method, the method of examining historical documents; he has put himself at the disposal of the Austrian Foreign Minister, Baron Ährenthal, with his story; he proved, or so he believes, according to the true historical method, that certain anti-Austrian machinations must have originated with seven conspirators. It came to a court case. Heinrich Friedjung was able to point out that he is not an historian to be taken lightly, that the University of Heidelberg gave him an honorary doctorate. In spite of the fact that Friedjung had proved, using strict historical methods, that the documents with which Baron Ährenthal wanted to condemn the Serbs were genuine, the court had to acknowledge that they were crude forgeries.

At that time, the historical method itself was condemned. Unfortunately, we live in a time when such things are not taken seriously enough, and above all, not deeply enough. Despite the seriousness with which it is pursued, intellectual life in general runs parallel to the rest of life as a secondary current. For me, the way in which the deepest intellectual life can be taken today has always been characterized by what I would like to call the count with the two trouser pockets. I experienced this count with the two trouser pockets, a witty man, I experienced him during one of my visits to the Nietzsche Archive. He was a familiar figure at the Nietzsche Archive. He had two trouser pockets, from one of which he pulled out a Bible for me at the time when we were just leaving the Nietzsche Archive; a complete Bible in pearl print; he was able to put it in his trouser pocket. He said: “You see, I always carry this with me.” But I have another one; and he took out the “Zarathustra”, also published in pearl print, from the other trouser pocket for me to see. So the count had carried with him, or at least wanted to carry with him, the two most important books for him! I would like to say that this is a purely symbolic expression of some of the modern man's affairs, to stand by spiritual things at all. The count with the two trouser pockets was quite symbolic: one pocket was filled with the Bible, the other with Nietzsche's “Zarathustra”. So we see how the newer spiritual life has become sterile and barren, despite all the praise.

Thus we see that political life, as it has developed in modern times until today, has, as it were, reduced itself to absurdity through the world catastrophe. Should we not ask ourselves whether it is not precisely in the interweaving of the three most important branches of life, the life of the legal, spiritual and economic order, that we find the cause of our being driven into the world catastrophe, and which prevents us from coming to terms with the social facts of today?

Anyone who studies the way in which these three branches of human life have gradually been absorbed into the life of the state, cannot but recognize that the recovery of the social organism lies in the re-dissolution, in the re-separation with regard to the three limbs mentioned. We shall not arrive at a living, vital social organism, in the sense of a real human organism, merely by considering the conditions of the spirit life, on the one hand, and the conditions of the legal or political life in the State, on the other. But then one will also realize that these three branches of life have completely different foundations, that they develop best when each of these branches of life is strictly left to its own devices.

In more recent times, this could not be understood only because people's gaze was hypnotized and directed only towards economic life. And so, above all, the human being was seen as harnessed with his labor, if he was a proletarian, into economic life. In this economic life, in the economic cycle, only that which is a commodity or a service similar to a commodity should actually move. The modern proletarian also feels this. This is expressed in his demands, even if he formulates it differently in what he literally says. He feels that it contradicts his human dignity that he is harnessed into the economic process like the commodity itself. Just as commodities have their mutually determinable price, so within this pricing, there is also a price for human labor. On the one hand, the most striking thing about Karl Marx's teaching was that he expressed the deepest feelings of the proletariat with regard to labor, drawing people's attention to the fact that Just as goods are bought and sold on the commodities market according to supply and demand, so your labor power is bought and sold on the labor market. In this respect, we must become even more radical than Karl Marx himself if the social organism is to be cured. We must be clear about the fact that human labor power is something that cannot be compared with any other commodity, and therefore cannot have a price like any other commodity. This is felt by the person who has to take his labor to the market. He feels that we have now arrived at the point in human development where the third must follow, in addition to the two other things that have fallen away in the course of human development. The old slavery has fallen away within human life, where the whole person could be bought and sold; property has fallen away, where less of the person could be bought and sold; the third, which the capitalist economic order has still preserved, must also fall away, the fact that human labor can be bought and sold on the labor market. For when a person sells his labor, he must go along with his labor. By having to go along himself, he still sells himself, so to speak. That is what is felt: we have arrived at the point in human development where nothing more may be bought and sold by man, where only that which, separate from man, can have an objective value for itself, may remain in economic life. That is to say, in the future, economic life and the economic cycle must be limited to the production, circulation and consumption of commodities.

What was human in economic life, and what is still partly human in it today, namely human labor, must be excluded. It cannot be released from economic life in any other way than by being administered independently in a healthy social organism, when labor becomes a legal rather than an economic matter, that is, when the legal state, the political state, develops alongside the economic organism. In economic life, fraternity will prevail, that fraternity which is, as it were, fraternity on a large scale, where an associative life arises from professional communities, from the regulation of production according to consumption, and so on. In the political state, which in turn will develop quite independently, like a sovereign state alongside another state, alongside economic life, democratic equality of all people will prevail. All institutions will have to be such that what makes all people equal among themselves, what concerns all people, is given full expression. Above all, it will be necessary to determine what relates to labor law, among many other things. But labor law is the first issue for the social movement in the present. Quite apart from the economic sphere, equality will prevail among people in the independent state under the rule of law, whether they work spiritually or physically; labor law will be regulated there.

What will happen as a result? The result will be that economic life, as a self-contained area, borders on the natural order on the one hand and on the legal system on the other. Economic life is dependent on the natural order. Whether the fields are fertile in any given year or not, what forces are actually present underground, much in economic life depends on this. One can bring about a different natural condition through technical means, or one can preserve the natural condition through different economic conditions, but a limit is set with regard to what is present through these natural conditions. This is expressed in the formation of prices in the economy and in all economic institutions. It would never occur to anyone to somehow make nature dependent on economic institutions. Just as independent as nature itself, just as independent as the germs of the grain fruits come from below, which are independent of economic life, the labor laws regulated within the legal system must be just as independent. The worker enters the economic cycle with rights that are formed outside of this economic cycle, just as the forces of nature lie outside of the economic cycle. All pricing, everything that develops in economic life, develops on the basis of labor law that has arisen outside of economic life. Labor law sets prices, but the price of human labor is not determined by the economic cycle.

That can only be determined by the healthy relationship between the physical worker and the spiritual leader. Then the laborer will no longer need to conclude today's illusory contract for his labor; then he will be able to conclude the only possible contract that refers to the corresponding division of what is produced jointly by the physical laborer and the spiritual leader. Nothing can be achieved in this area except through the strict separation of state and economic life.

On the other hand, however, an independent and free spiritual life is just as necessary. That which can develop in the state is only healthy if the state regulates only that which applies equally to all people. The spiritual life is simply stifled if it is to be formed on the same basis as the rights and political life. The spiritual life must develop out of the self-sufficient provision and administration of the individual abilities of human beings. This will then be a spiritual life that is emancipated from the life of the state, which in turn the human soul will be able to sustain. This will not be an ideology, this will not be a spiritual life that only provides abstract concepts; this will be a spiritual life that will fully prove its own reality, that will sustain man with his soul, that will place man back into a spiritual order. This is what the modern proletarian still rejects. In the depths of his soul he longs for such a spiritual life, because he feels that otherwise the soul is desolate.

This call for a free organization of spiritual life is a terribly serious matter. The reason it is so serious is that all human instincts, everything that has developed according to the current views of modern times, according to habits of thought, runs counter to this recovery of the social organism. That is why we should like to speak about this demand for a free spiritual life, a free spiritual life that is independent, to those who represent the youth of today. If science and worldview, spiritual life in general, are to be sustainable in the future, then we need a spiritual life that is something other than that which can be placed on the basis of the state. They should feel that it will be different when the teacher at the lowest level knows that what he has to do is administered by those who only administer within a self-contained spiritual organism, when a teacher knows that he is not dependent on any state regulations. When the state no longer has an educational role to a large extent, when those who want to become theologians, lawyers, doctors and so on are no longer dependent on the state, and when it is felt that what is needed, the needs of the spiritual life itself will develop, that it will be needed precisely for what the spirit needs for humanity, then a spiritual life will develop that can have an effect on the other branches of human life.

If we have just discussed what form the proletarian demands for the abolition of the wage relationship must actually take, we can now point out what the true form of the capital question is.

Many people today talk about the spirit, about that spirit that has become a shadow, an ideology, under the development of the last few centuries. From this spirit nothing can be drawn that will sustain the soul. This spirit, this intellectual life, has largely become something that has no impact on, and cannot be realized in, practical life. That is why Karl Marx found nothing in the economic life that still guaranteed him any realities. He said: “In practice, man must experience that his thinking really has a meaning, that the truth of his thinking can really develop.” But this practice was found only in economic life. The spiritual life must be able to give itself the practice of life from foundations that are realities. That is what makes these matters so tremendously serious. But then this spiritual life will not have those abstractions which are our great social, inwardly social evil today; then this spiritual life will take shape as something very concrete.

Oh, let us look at this spiritual life again from a certain point of view. We see how, within this spiritual life, ethical demands have been constructed. We see how, within this spiritual life, ethics of feeling, ethics of neighbourly love, ethics of the divine or moral world order have been founded on certain philosophical bases. What do these ethics speak of? They speak a great deal about the necessary love of one's neighbour, about human goodwill, about brotherhood. But their concepts and ideas remain at an abstract, shadowy level and do not penetrate down into the immediate reality of everyday life. Our intellectual life has become philistine – that is the word, even if it expresses something that does not appear so radical to man. It has become untrue. It moves on abstract heights and cannot descend into the immediate practical reality of everyday life. But it must immerse itself in it. It must become anti-philistine. When it immerses itself in the most mundane needs of everyday life, when the spirit proves itself by being able to intervene in the most immediate, I would say most mundane, actions of man, only then will the power of the spirit be able to show itself in social life. But then it will become clear that the question of capitalism will be resolved at the same time as the question of spiritual life. Certainly, in abstract terms, there is much to be said for the idea that private capital has delivered modern human life to decay and economic war and that a change must occur. At first, one knows nothing else but to say: So private property must end. One can be as honest as anyone can be with this demand, but one can still have the view, precisely from a deeper knowledge of social impulses, that nothing special will be achieved by converting private property into common property. On the contrary, the desolate capitalism would be replaced by the no less desolate bureaucracy. The throne and altar would be replaced by the factory and office. Now, whether the conditions would be better is still open to doubt.

The real issue is that what is actually meant, what actually lives in the subconscious of the proletarians, should actually come about: that capital, which is present in the administration of capital through the connection with individual human abilities, should in a certain way intervene in the economic process. It is precisely not the egoism of the individual, but the general public that is to be served. For it is in this area that the proletarian perceives an enormously significant economic principle, which has perhaps never been emphasized by modern economists precisely because it is so truly borrowed from life, because it is so truly significant. In the ethical and moral spheres, altruism and egoism are regarded as opposites; altruism is beautiful, egoism is extremely ugly. People do not consider the following: as soon as one looks into ordinary economic life, into that social organism in which, in the modern sense, the old primitive economy has been replaced by an economy based on the division of labor, the fact is that the more the division of labor has progressed, the less the individual can work for himself, at least in economic terms.

I am stating an economic principle that I have been trying to make popular since 1904; but humanity does not want to understand this economic principle. Whether one likes it or not, in a social organism in which there is a division of labor - and this is the case with every social organism in the modern civilized world - one cannot work and act selfishly in economic terms. Everything that the individual works must benefit the whole. And everything that belongs to the individual comes to him from social capital. After the replacement of the natural economy by money, and the further division of labor that came about through money, it has become a fundamental economic principle that in a social organism in which there is a division of labor, man cannot work for himself, but only for others.

In fact, in a social organism you cannot work for yourself any more than you can eat yourself. You will say: If someone is a tailor and he makes a suit for himself, then he is working for himself. It is not true if this happens in a social organism in which there is a division of labor; because the relationship that he thereby establishes between the skirt and himself by making this skirt for himself in a social organism with a division of labor is quite different from that in a primitive economy. It is certainly not possible in these brief discussions to present you with full and valid evidence today, but such evidence can be provided, and I will refer to these things in my book on “The Crucial Points of the Social Question”. It can be shown that when a tailor sews a coat today, he sews it for the purpose of serving his fellow man, so that he can work for other people. The tailor no longer has to make the coat just for himself; it is no longer made for selfish purposes, it is a means of production. This change in character has come about simply because the tailor lives in a social organism based on the principle of the division of labor.

This economic altruism is the active force behind everything that happens. If you sin against it, that is, if you place that superstructure over this self-realizing substructure, through which you selfishly acquire the fruits that actually flow to the general public in the true social process, then you place what I would call a real lie into the world. The egoism of today's economic system is nothing more than a sum of real lies, of sins against what actually happens beneath the surface, and what is beneath the law of social, economic altruism.

And it is the reaction of the human proletarian soul, which feels that in the modern social organism, which is based on the division of labor, economically, it is the reaction to the unhealthy, hypocritical egoism that lives itself out in the fight against capitalism.

What is today simply social ignorance in the broadest circles of the leading classes of humanity must give way to social understanding. Then social understanding will also advocate that what happens through capital must become a cycle, that care must be taken to ensure that the steward of capital is always the one who justifies this stewardship through his individual abilities. The moment he no longer justifies this administration through his individual abilities, ways and means must be found to ensure that the capital flows to someone else who, through his individual abilities, can in turn manage this capital profitably for the human community.

This is what will be found through the free cultivation of individual human abilities in the spiritual organism: that the circulation of capital will work. Today, something exists that is similar to what I mean here, but only for the most shabby property that the modern economy has, for the very shabbiest, namely for intellectual property. Intellectual property is said to come from the social order; even if it is based on individual abilities, a spiritual achievement cannot come from mere individuality of the human being. We always owe it to social impulses. We are obliged to give it back to the social impulses. It is therefore fair that what someone produces intellectually should become common intellectual property after his death. In a similar way, although the time periods must be different, material property is only justified for the individual person as long as he can claim the right of disposal over it through his individual ability. That which may remain with an individual as long as his individual abilities are active must find the means and ways, through the indirect administration of the spiritual organization, to reach other personalities who are again placed in the service of the general public. A cycle in the ownership of the means of production will take the place of today's private ownership. That will be the great solution of the capital question. We are only getting started in this area, as can be seen from the fact that people are now talking about the socialization of the means of production. This socialization of the means of production would only lead to a bureaucratic order, which in turn would give rise to the same tyranny from the ranks of those making demands today, never to one that can truly represent the healthy social organism. This healthy social organism must be established by circulating capital among the spiritually capable. The circulation of capital means that over time that which must be managed capitalistically can actually be managed for the common good.

I can only hint at this. It will be further developed in my book “The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Present and Future Life”.

But you can see from this that not only intellectual life itself is sought in its more intellectual branches when it is placed on its own, but also that what is dependent in economic life on the spiritual capacities, the spiritual abilities of people, that this would take the right path for the recovery of the future by making the spiritual organism independent. Above all, it is this that will not only produce shadowy thinking, shadowy spiritual life, luxury spiritual life, but a spiritual life that becomes aware of the spirit in that this spirit can penetrate everywhere into material life.

This is something that comes to mind when one looks into the very foundation of humanity basis of humanity, as it is developed by man today, at the present time; the old catchwords regarding whether spirit or matter is justified should be pointed out today.

I am speaking to you from the point of view of a spiritual science, but a spiritual science for which the old dispute between spirit and matter has become nonsense. For it is a third thing that is at issue, of which spirit and matter are the outer expressions. When we enter into this third realm, where neither spirit nor matter is seen, but the primal living spirituality of the world itself, then we arrive at that which no longer presents one link of the whole of human life as the cause, but expresses all three links: economic life, legal or political life and spiritual life as the three revelations of a primal depth. Then we shall overcome the great error that has become a practical error in life today, namely, that we want to base everything on economic life. Then that will come about which is not an abstract unity incorporated in the organism of the State, but then economic life, legal or state life, spiritual life will develop out of their own vitality. And as they develop, they will grow together into one unity.

I am not thinking of some kind of revival of the old estates: the estate of teachers, the estate of farmers, the estate of the armed. All class-like thinking is overcome by the fact that the social organism itself is divided into its three limbs. But man stands in these three limbs as the unifying element. Man is placed in any occupation, in any grouping, for my sake. He stands in a living relationship with the other members. Out of free trust, he sends his children to the schools of the spiritual organization. In economic life, everyone is involved in it anyway; in the life of the state and of the law, the fact that this state life has to administer, above all, that before which all people are equal.

Weak souls and thinkers, they tend to imagine, based on what I have just said, that basically the unity of state life would be endangered by it. Indeed, what has most endangered the unity of state life in the last few centuries? Precisely the fact that an abstract unity has been sought, precisely that these three members of the social organism, which should develop independently, have been chaotically mixed up and fused. I have shown you how intellectual life would flourish under this unity. But economic life, despite the existence of the state, has developed in such a way that today it is fiercely opposed in numerous areas of the civilized world to what state life is.

A recovery will only occur when one works one's way up from the usual way of thinking in this area to the lively view of the healthy social organism. And this can only consist of the following: the economic organism, the legal or political organism and the spiritual organism, structured alongside one another, like sovereign states that only attend to their common affairs through their delegates. Many still dispute this today. But he who, like the one speaking to you, will soon have reached his sixth decade of life and throughout his entire conscious life has always kept an eye on the development of the proletarian movement, but not in such a way that he only thought about the proletariat, but rather that he always learned to think with the proletariat through the vicissitudes of his life, knows how many prejudices are still piling up today against what the times demand, against what basically lies in the subconscious of the proletarian soul: the threefold social order. I am not one of those who, even though I have seen how decade after decade prejudices pile up against this, in my opinion, unique contribution to the health of the social organism, I am not one of those who I am not one of those who stand frightened when events take on a frightening form for some, even today. I am not one of those who, at the twilight of their days, would say: how much, how much has been gone through in vain! No, I am one of those, and I would like to mention this only as a personal comment at the end, so that you also understand the whole tenor of my talk this evening, I am one of those who would not say when they look back on their lives: if you could be young again, would you want to live through life again? - I would never say: no - but I would always say: yes!

Because of this positive outlook on life, I feel distant from some of those who have lived through this life with me up to my age and who, as unfortunately has to be said for the present time, have not been able to come to terms with what the loud facts of the present are able to cope with; but I have the faith that those to whom I feel close, feel close, even when I am three times their age, that those who are young today and to whom I am mainly addressing my speech today, that they will be the ones who will grow into a time in which there will be a lot of suffering, a lot of pain, a lot of tragedy to go through, but in which there will also be the opportunity to rethink and relearn very intensely. Therefore, I am not afraid that there will be many in this circle who will call what I have discussed today a utopia.

Something quite different could be called a utopia today, and it was also recently Basel as utopian by Kurt Eisner, who only recently met a tragic end, who said in his lecture: the world with its economic management and other social order in which we live, the most daring utopian two thousand years ago could not have imagined. Reality today is the strongest utopia. No wonder that when one speaks of a reality that is demanded by the human soul, that is demanded by human reason, when one speaks of such a reality, it seems like a utopia.

But those who are young today will grow out of today's real utopia into real realities. Strong power, strong courage and a certain good will for spirituality, the three will compose the true social will. And from this synthesis of true social life with proletarian demands, what must come about for the recovery of our conditions will develop.

That today's youth may find that path of the spirit to knowledge, which today from the social horizon, is what I presuppose, and it is what has filled me with great satisfaction and great love in response to the request that came to me from students in particular. If we find vitality, courage to face life and strong spirituality in those who look ahead to an afterlife, and a social will that is composed of these, then, despite all that is pressing and devastating today, the development of humanity will continue. Then we can hope for this again.

But today we can already hope for something that will prove that human life is always worth living if it is based on freedom of spirit, on the equality of all people before that which can truly establish human dignity can truly be established, and on an economic life that is equal in its brotherhood, in its brotherly work, to the freedom of spiritual life, to the equality of the democratic order of state life.

Discussion

Rudolf Steiner: I will take the liberty of responding to individual respond to the remarks of the honorable speakers.

First of all, I would like to point out that I understand that the things I said about the social order, the social organism, cannot, I would like to say, lead to conviction in the twinkling of an eye. In this lecture, which has been long enough as it is, I only wanted to provide some suggestions that can be pursued in some way.

I know how extraordinarily well established what the first esteemed speaker said in reference to private property, in reference to the demand for socialization of the means of production, has become. I would like to draw your attention to just one thing: it is not true that people today have usually accepted the idea, or are usually of the opinion, that external facts are extremely solid; but much more solid within us are our habits of thought. And what we have long become accustomed to in our thinking, above all as a human society, not only over decades but even over centuries, cannot leave us indifferent. Therefore, it will not be easily noticed that in all that is taking the form of the transition from private property to common property today, there is actually something in it that is quite justified as a demand, but which cannot so directly become the object of social will, because something ultimate is not overcome in the process, which is overcome when you really, in the deepest seriousness, go into what I have presented today. What all socialists today have not overcome in their thinking habits, and thus also not in the impulses of their will, is the concept of property. One would like to abolish private property; but because one has become so accustomed to the concept of property, one cannot get beyond the concept of property. Property must be; so, since it cannot be private property, one demands common property, social property, nationalization, and so on.

If you just think about what I have said today, the old concept of property disappears altogether. The objects that are owned today – capital, the means of production – will circulate. That is, there is a living organism there. The person who has the most ability to manage certain means of production will always be the one to do so. That this is not utopian, some may be convinced of when they read what I have put forward in my book on the social question, which will be published in a few days and which is not yet exhaustive. But it is precisely a matter of breaking out of certain habits of thought that are all too much alive in everything that people do today. This is what I meant when I pointed out that the means of production can only be found in connection with a human being for as long as that human being's ability justifies it. You see, today, under the influence of the scientific way of thinking, all the social and historical sciences, among other fields of study, are also influenced by the natural sciences; we even have a national economy within such sciences. One thing in particular is not noticed. And in this circle, perhaps, this one in particular may be discussed. People today suffer all too much from an illness that Marx very correctly called “mors immortalis”, the undying death. In life, everything is in motion; only the abstractions that man makes in his mind are actually something fixed. That is what remains. And so, in the period in which the capacity for comprehension has developed in relation to the earlier capacity for intuition, especially since the mid-15th century, in this newer age, which is fundamentally different from all earlier ones, people have often become the victims of concepts. If we look at our most elementary sciences, we see real errors in the methodological, in the theoretical [. . .]. It does not lead to any useful, living social impulses, but rather develops into a hopeless way of thinking in the social sphere. That is why it is difficult to understand the vitalization of concepts that is being sought in my presentations today. One would like to hold on to something that upholds the old concept of ownership. One must go beyond the concept of ownership altogether! And the first speaker in the discussion, if he thinks through what I have stated today to its conclusion, will see that in the demand for nationalization or socialization and so on of the means of production, there lies nothing else than the demand to bring that which is produced by the means of production to the benefit of the community. But perhaps – the current experiments show this precisely where they are conducted, but I do not want to discuss these current experiments at all – perhaps to a certain extent this will be achieved through such experiments. It will be achieved when the means of production really do circulate, when not the totality, which is only an abstraction and can only execute something based on some majority decision, when not the totality owns the means of production, but when the means of production can circulate freely, as, for example, intellectual property intellectual property thirty years after a person's death is something that is freely circulating, but something that is of course then administered by the intellectual organism.

What is to be achieved by demanding the socialization of the means of production will still be able to encroach upon the freedom of the individual without any fallow laying of human individual abilities. This will be achieved precisely in the way I have spoken of today.

My aim – now truly, I may say, after thirty-five years in the field of the social question – is to think things through to the end everywhere, not to seek theories everywhere but to seek out what is possible in life, based on direct experience.

If you think through what I have presented today, you will see that at every point in today's social order, we can simply continue in the direction I have indicated. Therefore, what I have stated is the opposite of any utopia: it is something immediately practical. Whether you start in Russia, where things have progressed to the point of certain destruction, or here in Switzerland, where the old order still stands, and continues to some extent today, you can achieve what I am calling for from a wide range of very specific institutions: the separation of spiritual, economic and legal life. One has only to turn back the machine, which has been running in the wrong direction in recent times, and in the last decades. What should be the result if the relationship of the individual to the individual is regulated in the one link of the social organism, in the constitutional state? A monopoly cannot arise, because, as I will also show in my book, what a person draws as a director can be determined from the outset, while what arises from the social situation must either be put into the business or, to balance it out, must go to the general public, that is, to someone else, who then administers it if he has the ability to do so. All the harm that results from the present position of private property will thus be eliminated. This is what should be noted about my arguments: that what is really achieved is what others want to achieve, but want to achieve with inadequate means. This is what I would like to say in particular with reference to the first honored speaker.

Of course, he did make a very valid point. You see, he described people who today talk about the individual state as an organism in the sense that an organism is in science. In doing so, he refers to a false way of thinking. The truth is that if one wants to make comparisons, one must make them correctly; then the individual state can at most be a cell, the entire organism can be the earth as an economic entity. This is what, I would say, detracts from this truth when people think of what is spatially limited as a whole. This way of thinking would immediately cease if one were to see that this organization, which we call the state, if it cannot be the case with real organisms [.. .], can certainly be the case with cells that come together. So, without going into this gimmick in great detail, I would just like to say something that is true: that the whole earth has already become a kind of unified work today. But this is based on a different sense than the one I have discussed. And as I said, I have not dealt with the relevant issues theoretically, but from the perspective of direct experience.

Of course, the second speaker must be agreed when he says that love for one's fellow human beings must become the fundamental idea of humanity. I would just like to draw attention to one thing in such matters. I will put myself in the position of this second speaker. I always find it more fruitful to talk to someone than to go directly to the points that can be put forward as opposing arguments. You see, as the honorable speaker said, people have been talking about love for two thousand years. Nevertheless, despite all this talk of love for one's neighbor, I ask you to consider the last four to five years! So perhaps it is not just a matter of talking about love for one's neighbor, but rather of how one talks about this love for one's neighbor, whether one talks about it in the abstract or whether one looks in concrete terms at how this love for one's neighbor can be put into practice. And here I would like to take the position of the honorable speaker. You see, one of the most significant and beautiful sayings of the Gospels, of Christ Jesus, is: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” That is more or less how it would be translated correctly. It is time to recognize that in the truest Christian sense, this is a true saying. We do not have to look for Christ only in the Gospels, we do not have to look only for the Christ who was, as it were, buried in the Gospels, we have to look for the Christ who is alive, who walks among us. We have to listen to what the Christ proclaims anew every day. I believe that one hears the Christ correctly when one is able, in each new era, to hear what the Christ says for each era in a new way from the place where the signs of the time appear. And I believe that today he speaks to us through the ages in such a way that we must not stand still, not even with the words, as was preached in the past, such as charity, but that we must progress to new forms, also in our outlook on life, as we clearly progress to new forms of life itself. That is what I would like to consider.

Not long ago, I heard a speaker in Bern, a Catholic priest, who spoke very effectively. The man spoke very similarly to our second speaker. He also said that love for one's neighbor must prevail; above all, Jesus Christ must lead the modern social movement. - I would like to say: nothing could be more self-evident than this. But then this gentleman made further statements - in Bern, I think - yes, he said what he said very effectively, but I myself remembered that I had read these statements in my schoolbook as long as forty-five years ago - they remain words. The gentleman used the same words. I had to think: Nevertheless, between the writing in my schoolbook and what the Lord said today lies the terrible catastrophe of the world war! So it will be necessary today, after all, to rethink, to approach things differently than they were approached before. Are we not to learn anything? Should we continue in the same old rut, always repeating, as our ancestors said, “love for one's fellow creatures,” when in spite of their preaching love for one's fellow creatures these terrible days have come about? It is not a matter of preaching love for one's fellow creatures! I have often said in the most diverse circles: If there is a stove in the room and I speak, as is now customary in the bourgeois world view, of all kinds of ethical demands, of which love of neighbor is one, then I would have to say: The stove has the duty to warm the room. But even if I try to say, Dear stove, it is your duty as a stove to warm the room, it is your sacred duty – and I repeat this over and over again, the room will just stay cold! But I can save myself the speech if I put wood in and light it. Then I am doing something concrete, and it will get warm in the room. Sometimes people talk about the way in which associations should form in economic life, how, as I said, fraternity should prevail on a large scale and come about in concrete life; when they talk about how the social organism should be structured, then they are talking about something concrete. That already includes everything, including what charity wants to be! But mere talk of love of neighbor is not enough either, at least not in our complicated circumstances. And when it is said, “Jesus Christ should be our leader,” then of course He should be our leader. But it is not talk that counts, but what one does. That is what matters, not merely saying, “Lord, Lord,” for He is Lord anyway! but on actually following him.

When it is said here that the great spheres of life must form a unity, and it is difficult to imagine how these three spheres of life can be separated, then I would like to point out that it is necessary to take this step forward in the field of social thinking, which unfortunately science for its part has not

In my penultimate book, “Riddles of the Soul”, I pointed out how, by using everything that modern science could already use, I was able to find out in the course of thirty years of spiritual research how the human organism is a threefold being , how the human organism really breaks down into the nerve-sense organism, which is centered in itself, and which also naturally stands in a relationship with the outside world through the sense organs; how, as the second, stands beside it the so-called rhythmic organism, the respiratory-heart organism, and as the third, the metabolic organism. All the activities of the human organism are contained in these three members, which are centered in themselves, and work together to form the most powerful unity precisely because each member has its center in itself, and it is precisely through being centered that the living unity comes about. One should not think in a scientific way in this field; I do not want to play with analogies like Schäffle or Meray, that is far from my mind; but I would like to point out that healthy thinking with reference to the social organism has difficulty in making this threefold division. With regard to the social organism, we must not only make this threefold division in theory, but also implement it in reality. I cannot understand why it should be difficult to imagine that a spiritual organization administers itself, to a certain extent sovereignly within itself; the constitutional state, in turn, sovereignly within itself; and the economic state, sovereignly within itself. The higher unity comes about only through living interaction; whereas if one imposes unity from the outset, whether it be unity directed towards economic life, or unity in legal life, as in this old constitutional state, or spiritual life, as in the old theocratic institutions, these three elements interfere with each other; whereas they not disturb each other when they work together in the living unity, when one is truly centered in oneself; only must the centering be done in the right way.

Recently, a listener in Basel replied to me that he could not imagine what it was like either, there must be justice in all three links, for example. Yes, of course, right and justice must be present in all three members, just as air, in its materiality, must be present in all three members of the human organism; but that is why it must be processed by the respiratory and cardiac systems, and specially prepared in one member. In this way it is particularly effective for the other members. The fact that one limb produces and develops in the right way that which is necessary for the others brings about just the right unity. The living organization is based on this. This is what man will have to go into; for that is what matters.

This is what I have to say in response to the objections that have been raised regarding these divisions. What matters is that what can be achieved through this organization is precisely what lies unconsciously in the proletarian demands, but what can only be realized through conscious social will. And of these different possibilities I wanted to speak to you today, as far as possible in this short time.

When it comes to ideas that are intended to be realized in practical life, complete fallacies are basically less harmful than half-truths and three-quarters truths. For complete fallacies can be refuted relatively easily and are unlikely to last long in public life. Half-truths and three-quarters truths are extraordinarily strong temptations in view of the complexity of life. They are carried through life by various passions, by the emotions of the mind, until perhaps, after severe struggles or perhaps after severe suffering, one comes to the conclusion that such half-truths and quarter-truths are just that and cannot be applied to life as they are conceived.

Anyone who looks at modern life with an unbiased eye, especially after the hard years of trial that civilized humanity has now gone through, will have to make such a confession, as I have just made, especially to what has long been called the social question in the present day. For basically, a whole bunch of half-truths and quarter-truths are being bundled together in this social question from all sides.

Now, the attempt has been made in my book “The Key Points of the social question in the necessities of life of the present and the future”, to look at what this modern social work, this modern social question, actually contains, apart from the half-truths and quarter-truths of the programs, and what it can realistically steer towards. What is set out in these “key issues” should then be further developed for Switzerland, for example in the “Social Future” published by Dr. Boos.

Before I go into my actual task for this evening, please allow me to make a very brief personal comment that is, however, related to the topic. What I have attempted is a conscious attempt that is aware of its imperfections. What I have attempted in my book “The Crux of the Social Question” did not arise from any given political direction, does not want to take any given political position, and does not want to directly interfere in the given political life of the present. It has arisen out of a very long observation of life and does not want to be any kind of program, any kind of abstract social idea, but wants to be a result of practical life itself, as it has presented itself to me since I had the opportunity - through the fate of my life it has come about that I have had the opportunity to really get to know, I may say, all, may I say, classes and categories of people in the contemporary world, to get to know them in their mutual demands, in their mutual misunderstandings, in their cooperation and non-cooperation. And since in my earlier years, whenever I had the opportunity to touch on subjects such as today's, I basically had to deal mainly with spiritual science as such, I may say that nothing whatever is influenced by any party affiliation in what I will have to express before you. My life has led me through many things, but in any case never through any party. And what has been the result of decades of social observation, always undertaken from the point of view of spiritual science, will, ladies and gentlemen, also prevent me from ever being able to participate in any given party program.

So it is suggestions for real practical implementation that are at issue. It is only natural that such proposals, when discussed, must be couched in more or less seemingly abstract sentences; but these abstract sentences are only intended to express what is life experience, which can certainly serve as a basis for practical life organization.

If we look at social life from such a non-programmatic but practical point of view, as it has developed for more for more than half a century, especially in the civilized world as it concerns us, we look at this social life, we will find that the perception of this social life is fundamentally different, and has been fundamentally different for decades, for more than half a century, between the leading classes of humanity on the one hand and the broad, broad masses of the proletarian people on the other.

From living together – I was a teacher at a Berlin workers' education school for many years – I was able to get to know the way of thinking of the broad proletarian masses, and not only the way of thinking, but also the way of feeling and emotion, as it expresses itself in what then crystallizes into the social demands of the present and also of the near future.

What then emerged in my “Key Points of the Social Question” is a condensation of what is based on the insights that I believed I always had to gain from observation and from the insights that showed me that, with what underlies the demands of the broad proletarian masses as a conscious idea, as a conscious party program, we cannot make any progress in the social question, , that this proletarian mass has surrendered itself to half-truths and quarter-truths in a fateful sense, and that precisely the one who is serious and honest in the social question cannot stop at what is formulated under the influence of the work of Karl Marx and his followers, more than half a century ago – the beginning was more than half a century ago. As I said, my “Key Points of the Social Question” were written under the impression of this realization, at a moment when one might believe that such truths, such insights, can be understood through the confirmation they have received from the world of facts. They were written when the disaster that had been brought about by the war, the so-called World War, had been raging for years. I do not mean the outcome of the war, I mean the fact that this disaster, this terrible killing, could happen to modern civilized humanity at all.

In the early spring of 1914, I had to express in Vienna that who, from the spiritual-scientific point of view, looks at the development of modern humanity, has the idea that modern social development resembles an illness, a kind of ulcer formation, which could break out in a terrible way in the near future. This book was written at a time when a current that had developed out of programmatic Marxism should have led to a practical result in Russia. What must be called the terrible failure of Marxism in Russia, which is obvious to anyone who is not biased, could have been the first confirmation of the ideas expressed in The Essential Points of the Social Question. Since then, further confirmations have occurred. I need only point to the failure of the Hungarian Revolution, which had to crush so many hopes. And finally, I need only point out that the German Revolution of November 9, 1918, has not yet been completed, but is certainly in prospect.

Those who are familiar with the circumstances can know today that this German Revolution is a terribly loudly proclaimed experiment in world history, an experiment which shows, as never before, how incapable the ideas are, which the 19th century produced in many circles in the social field, of bringing about any practical organization of life. Let us look at these ideas from one side. Let us look at them as they are felt by the modern proletariat under the influence of those impulses that stem from so-called Marxism, as founded by Karl Marx and Engels, which is truly not a mere theory, but is alive in the feelings and perceptions of the broad masses.

This Marxism was the first to create in wide circles of the proletarian population what might be called disbelief in a spiritual world. To the discerning, this disbelief in the spiritual world on the part of the proletariat appears more important than anything else. Ideology is the word that one encounters when one is accustomed not to think about the proletariat, but to feel and live with it. Ideology means, or at least should mean, the whole spiritual life. Law, custom, morality, art, science, religion, all this is basically only like a smoke that rises as something merely imagined from the economy, imagined, that rises from the only true reality, which consists in the economic relations of production, in the economic processes.

Under the influence of the personalities mentioned, this proletariat saw the true reality in what the economic system is. The way people organize their economic lives, the way they participate in economic life, and the way they relate to the means of production in economic life – as they are taught – comes from mere material labor. What arises in them as ideas, what arises in them as moral ideals, what is ultimately religion, what is science, what is art: none of this has any inner spiritual reality, so they say, but all of it is like a mirror image of pure economic reality.

And if you look at what this view has been formed from, you have to say: This view is the legacy of the world view that has emerged over the last three to four centuries under the influence of the leading, guiding circles of humanity. It is not true that modern social life has come about solely through capitalism and through what has been associated with this capitalism in modern times through modern technology. No, it is the case that, at the same time as modern capitalism and modern technology emerged, a certain world view emerged that only wants to deal with chemical, mechanical, and physical facts and does not want to rise to an independent understanding of spiritual life. The technical complexity of modern economic life has succeeded in flooding everything, as it were, with the influences and impulses of this economic life. Just as economic life was separated from technology, and technology from modern science, so a purely scientific worldview emerged, a worldview that consisted only of ideas, concepts, and thoughts related to the external mechanical, chemical, and physical life. This modern life had no power to grasp any other ideas, other world-view thoughts, than those that broadly relate to the inauguration of economic life, to the inauguration of modern technical operations. This scientific direction, this whole modern thinking, was incapable of other ideas. Through this modern thinking one could answer the question of how external mechanical processes take place and how to set them in motion in practical life; one could communicate chemically and physically through this science, but one thing remained absent from these ideas, from these thoughts of science, that which is closest to man: man himself. Rather, it was better said, one only understood the human being insofar as he was composed of material substances, mechanical, physical and chemical forces. But since the human being is also spirit and soul, one did not really understand the human being in this way. And one had a world view from which thoughts about the human being were actually excluded. No one answered in this modern way the question of how physical processes arise, as this modern science answered in an incomparably perfect way. No one answered this modern man in a modern way the question so perfectly: How do mental processes arise? What is man in his innermost being?

And you see, the leading and guiding circles kept as heirlooms, as traditions, what had been handed down from religion, from art, from old worldviews, from old customs. This filled the soul of the modern ruling circles. They cultivated this as something that meant something to them alongside the scientific world view, alongside what was incorporated into technology and economics as science. And so a dual trend arose in the inner life of the leading and guiding circles: one trend, which, so to speak, far removed from life, posed religious questions, formulated moral principles, and formed art and certain world views. Ask yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, how far removed from the practical side of life, for example, the modern merchant, or the modern industrialist or the modern civil servant, is from what he feels and experiences as a religious person, from what he his sense of goodness as a human being, his aesthetic feelings, how far removed that is from what happens in his life and is expressed in his office and in his bookkeeping. There are two very different currents of life. And the one, the spiritual current of life, which is basically an heirloom from ancient times, has no power to penetrate into the outer life. In what is the outer practice of life, the contingencies of the day live, that which, I might say, lives in the practice of life by itself. Then one likes to withdraw from life and regards the religious, the spiritual-moral, the artistic life as something that floats above life. But it was only by cultivating this inner spiritual life, separate from the practical outer life, that the leading and governing circles of modern civilization were able to give their souls any content at all.

The proletarian, who was removed from the old crafts and put at the machine, at the abstract machine, which has so little in common with in the human soul, the proletarian could not, because his feelings, which he could only develop while standing at the machine, did not correspond to them, he could not take over the old traditions, customs, law, art, religion, the world view that had been handed down from older times and in which the leading classes lived despite the modern soulless and spiritless technical economy. What emerged from this economy itself remained for him. And so he formed a world view, so his leaders formed a world view for him, which is spiritless and soulless, an ideology.

An ideology can be theoretically represented. An ideology can be thought up. With an ideology, one can even appear very clever. But you cannot live with an ideology, because it hollows out the soul. The human soul can only truly live when it does not believe that its thoughts are mere unreal thoughts; but when it can be aware that what lives in it connects to a living, real, spiritual world.

And so much is talked about in the socialist program; one does not even need to look at what is being said, because what happens in people's minds in this way is very different from what really lives in their souls. But what really lives in the souls of the broad masses of the intellectual population today is spiritual desolation. This is proof that one can think with what is modern world view, but one cannot live with it. That is the first part of the social question.

I know very well how many people, from their point of view, from their conscious point of view, rightly say: You are talking about the social question as a spiritual question. For us, it is about balancing social differences, social differentiations. For us, it is about ensuring that bread is distributed equally among people. Yes, that is a superficial view which only those can hold who do not penetrate beneath the surface of things. For the social question is present in the feelings, in the subconscious life of the modern proletariat. Try as much as you like to satisfy the purely material needs of this proletariat, if you could - you will not be able to - you would see: the social question will have to arise in a new form. It will not go away as long as intellectual life has the same relationship to the proletarian soul as I have just described. For people only believe that it comes from material interests. In truth, it comes from the hollowed-out souls, from the meaningless lives.

This must be recognized as the true basis of those social sentiments and of that widespread yearning which are found among the proletariat.

The second aspect is revealed to those who, as I said before, have not only learned to think and feel like the proletariat, but can actually think and feel with the proletariat. He comes to realize what it means for the modern proletarian when it is repeatedly made clear to him, with reference to Marxism, that he stands at the machine, he works, but he receives only wages for his work. You pay for his labor with his wages, just as you pay for goods on the market.

The modern proletarian feels that human labor cannot be a commodity, that it should not be sold and bought on the market like a commodity! From this arises what the modern proletarian calls his class consciousness. Out of this class consciousness he wants to create the possibility that human labor power will no longer be a commodity; for he has the feeling that what he works at not only produces the values that play a role in economic life as justified values, but that it produces surplus value, which is taken from him by those who are the leading, leading circles, as he believes, the capitalist circles.

And so the connection between surplus value and the inhumane buying and selling of human labor as a commodity is what moves the proletarian as a second point.

And the third point, what is it? You get to know it when you observe how, basically, the leading and guiding circles have developed a significantly different inclination for social issues than those that were imposed on them by the proletariat making demands. It must be said that few people in the leading and ruling circles are inclined, of their own accord, to really engage with the core issues of the social question, simply because those who are in a position are always much less inclined to think about the development of that position than those who are just trying to gain a position. But as a result, more in the subconscious, in the instinctive, than in the clear consciousness, in the broad circles of the proletariat, the view had to arise that it could expect nothing at all from the leading, guiding circles, that it had to rely on itself alone for a solution to the social question. And so something arose that is one of the most disastrous things in recent historical development. What I am about to say is based on a word that is often spoken and often heard, but whose deeper meaning is little understood. You probably know that the Communist Manifesto, which in 1848 initiated the Marxist social movement, concludes with the words: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” It is understandable for those who get to know the modern proletarian movement that this word has come. And the effect of this word is fateful in the most terrible sense, for it points from the outset to what is to happen, to struggle. And this struggle is still to be relied upon today. It relies on struggle. It does not rely on the fact that people come together under the momentum and thrust of an idea that is to be realized in practical life; it does not rely on faith in the power of the spirit. This word, it relies on the external material connection of a class of people, on the unspiritual. And it expresses itself in this word clearly and unmistakably the disbelief in the spiritual in the most disastrous way, the more this word inculcates the souls. And it may also be said that the more thoughtlessly it is listened to, without grasping its fateful significance in world history, the more humanity must sail into unbelief in the spiritual, and cannot, because material interests unite, as they belong to a class, to what life must move in its inmost depths: to belief in the power of spiritual impulses.

This is how the so-called modern social question presents itself from the point of view of the proletariat. And this proletariat has seen that certain social ills, which it feels in its own body, have developed under the influence of capital and modern technology. What does it mean? It means that these damages will cease when private property is converted into common property, when what is now managed and administered by individuals is managed and administered by the community.

And so we see how the proletarian demand repeatedly sounds in the call that is already taking on a catastrophic form today: conversion of the means of production, conversion of private ownership of the means of production into common ownership and common administration of the means of production. Only then, the proletarian believes, will salvation come to him, when no longer the individual administers the means of production according to the profit interest, but when the human community, in which everyone can participate in a democratic way, administers these means of production. And because the proletariat believes itself betrayed by the people who belong to the leading, guiding circles, because it believes that these leading, guiding circles are not at all interested in what a shaping of social life is from their interests, so what has developed over the course of many decades is heard together in the call for a kind of dictatorship of the proletariat itself in the replacement of old administrative and social conditions with new ones.

But these things must be seen clearly, not from a party point of view, these things must be seen completely impartially. Perhaps one can only see clearly if one also considers the opposite point of view. Whether the proletarian demands, as they are formulated today in a large number of newspapers and books, and how they consciously live in the souls of the proletarians, whether they are right or not, that is the question. For real movements are not about ideas, but about what lives in the will of men. It must be borne in mind that millions of people believe these things, and that it is not a matter of refuting these things in the abstract, be it in this way or that, but rather of getting to the point where their practical application is really understood in terms of life and reality. Precisely because the leading and guiding circles, I might say, had as a by-product of their economic activity the fact that they did not have to struggle with life, or at least did not have to struggle in such a way as the proletariat, precisely for this reason, the social question has not developed to the same extent as it did for the proletariat, where all the questions I have mentioned now, I would say, merge into a kind of stomach or bread or money question. The social question has not developed in such a way as to become an immediate question of practical life, of the personal interest of each individual, because personal interests are promoted like a by-product under the influence of modern life. Therefore, the leading, guiding circles have not experienced in the same field what the proletarian world has had. You can take it however you like, the great tempter or seducer Karl Marx or the ingenious, pioneering Karl Marx, it depends on your point of view, but there was no similar Karl Marx for the leading, guiding circles. Therefore, it seems today that basically the right light is not falling on the proletarian demands. They can be proved, they can be refuted; but other views are also possible, which can be proved or refuted just as well, and which represent the opposite view.

You see, the proletarian interprets everything that develops as a human world of ideas in art, custom, science and so on as a kind of mirror image of the purely economic conditions, which only he can see. For him, human thoughts are only that which is triggered in man like a mirror image of economic interests, of the conditions of production. Everything that people think and feel arises from the economic conditions of production – so says the proletarian.

The opposite could easily be proven by the other side with exactly the same right to prove it. And let us take just one example: it is child's play, I might say, to prove that this whole modern economic life, as we have it especially in the civilization of the Occident and its offshoot, America, that this whole human economic life, as it dominates the modern world, is a result of human thoughts, which in turn are born out of the spiritual world. This can be proven quite concretely. There is no need to get stuck in abstract ideas. Take the following.

If we consider the conditions before the war, it can be said that in the Western world about four to five hundred million tons of coal are produced annually. For the mechanical work among people, through industry and other things, these four hundred to five hundred million tons of coal are processed in modern economic life. I am calculating by putting this number, four to five hundred million tons, in front of you, everything that is necessary for private property and so on. That which flows into modern life through these millions of tons of coal, which are processed in the machines, in the form of power and technology that then becomes economic power, can be calculated, one can calculate what it does for humanity. What matters is that the comparison must be made with horsepower and with human power. If we now assume that a person works about eight hours a day, a simple calculation shows how many people would have to apply how much manpower if they were to achieve the same thing by applying human power that is achieved in a technical way in the further technical processing by these millions of tons of coal. The strange thing is that the calculation shows that seven to eight hundred million people would have to work, would have to give their labor, if they wanted to achieve the same thing through human labor that is achieved with the energy derived from these coals.

You see, this possibility of incorporating coal energy into economic life comes solely from the thoughts that have developed under the influence of the spiritual development of the West. A comparison with the economic conditions of the Orient shows this. There are, let us say, 250 million people who have the strength to carry out the ideas that have arisen from their minds, and who have provided everything needed to set this modern economic life in motion; there remain about 1,250 million people who have not participated in this life. If we calculate what these people achieve in the same daily working hours, we get a figure that is far lower than that which indicates how much is achieved through coal mining and coal processing in the mechanical field. But that means nothing other than that what is specifically modern economic life is a result of human thoughts. And these human thoughts truly did not arise out of matter; they are the result of the development of Western culture. And it can be proved that through these thoughts, through this way of working, human forces of a further 700 to 800 million are added to our 1500 million people on earth. So that in reality we are working on the earth today as if not only 1500 million were working, but as if well over 2000 million people were working. It can easily be proved that all this, which is the actual structure, the actual character of this modern economic life, from which the social questions have arisen, that this is a result of the development of the mind, that this mind is by no means an ideology, but that this spirit is the creator of economic life.

That is, on the one hand, there is the proletarian view, and on the other hand, the usual opposing view, which can be proven just as well as the other view. And just as one can calculate in a Marxist way how people work to create added value, which is the value that prevails in legitimate economic life, one can prove, just as scientifically and rigorously as Marxism does, that all of modern economic life stems from the ideas of the leading, guiding circles of people, and that what is paid out as wages is worked out of what the guiding, leading circles achieve for humanity socially. Just as one can calculate the surplus value that accrues from labor on the one hand, one can just as easily calculate the total of all wages as that which accrues from what the leading, guiding circles, from the bearers of human thought, achieve .

But that has not happened, and I am convinced that it has not happened for the sole reason that, on the other side, out of carelessness, a “Karl Marx” did not work who would have proved this just as well as the real Karl Marx proved his theory for the proletariat. What I am going to tell you now is truly not some abstract invention. Just as I have demonstrated it from the extraction of coal, so you can demonstrate it from the facts of economic life that the opposite of what Marx demonstrated is true, only to a limited extent for surplus value.

If we consider the structure that modern technology has economic life, it should be borne in mind that this modern technology arises from human thought and that this in turn arises from intellectual life, and that a certain concentration of the means of production is necessary for special times, which, simply because of advanced technology, must be concentrated and managed by individuals. If you put forward the abstract demand for surplus value, which can be gained from means of production that are to be managed communally, in opposition to what modern economic life and modern production conditions have developed – concentrations of the means of production that are now in the hands of individuals – then you will see what happens! Of course, one can raise the abstract demand that what has been achieved so far by the leading and guiding circles, who have provided the ideas for the structure of the modern economy, be taken from them and managed by the community. But to those who do not look into the workings of life from the point of view of human feeling and emotion, but observe them impartially, this appears as a threatening thought for the near future of humanity: If it could really happen that the takeover of what has been achieved so far by individuals [...] - even if it has caused damage in its wake - if that were to be achieved by the community, then it would probably happen to this community as it happened to the Japanese in the mid-seventies of the last century, who, out of a certain national pride, took over the first warships from the English. The English also offered them instructors for these warships, but they sent the English instructors away and wanted to do it themselves. And now one could see from the shore the beautiful spectacle of how the gunboats continually turned in circles; they could not move forward because the Japanese had not learned how to do it. It had been forgotten to show how to close and open the valve that releases the excess steam. And so they could do nothing but wait until the steam power was completely used up.

Thus, if we look at how things are really going in social life today, we fear that what the individuals in the leading and guiding circles achieve, albeit with damage, out of expertise and skill, could be taken over by the abstract community, which judges democratically, how what is to be produced, with the technical administrations and so on, is to be arranged.

These are all things that do not depend on party programs, that do not result from a party template, but that do result for the person who in a practical and unbiased way, and really has the will to respond to this life in a practical and unbiased way.

And the first thing that will result from this is also the first thing I had to conclude in my “Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future”. What is needed above all for humanity is, in addition to knowledge of nature, which is truly the creator of modern technology and thus of modern economic life, a true knowledge of the human being, in addition to this natural knowledge.

You see, you are also told from many other sides about that complicated world view that is supposed to be incorporated into what is now being built in Dornach as a monumental building, a kind of “School of Spiritual Science, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science” is what the thing calls itself. You would do well to assume from the outset, as it were, as an axiom, that what I call anthroposophical spiritual science is the very opposite of what is usually said by those who do not know it in the world. For this spiritual science is about finding our way to natural science as the spiritual foundation of modern economic life, about finding our way to a real knowledge of human nature. That is why this spiritual science is called anthroposophy, human wisdom, a real knowledge of the human being. Modern natural science is quite right not to concern itself with the knowledge of nature and everything that is connected with mechanical, chemical, physical, technical life and economics, and not to concern itself with the human being, but to leave the human being in the background, so to speak, like a spectator. But that is the disastrous thing, that in recent times everything that is in the way of ideas in natural science is also applied to social thinking, that one believes that one can permeate social life with those thoughts that are extraordinarily useful for natural science, that have raised natural science to a pure height; but in social thinking, one must live in them. There must prevail a consciousness that truly penetrates to the human being.

This consciousness is what spiritual science wants to add to what in modern times is merely natural science thinking and, depending on it, social thinking. And this spiritual science wants to penetrate deeper into the human being than one can with anatomy, with physiology, with biology, through which one only gets to know the outer human being. This spiritual science wants to penetrate into the depths of human nature, where something takes place that is not mere thoughts, where realities take place that are the same as the realities of outer life, and the same as the realities of outer nature.

On the one hand, this spiritual science wants to truly rise to the knowledge of the spiritual. But on the other hand, it does not stop at the facts of the most practical everyday life. For this spiritual science, it is inconceivable that such a duality should exist in human consciousness as I have described for the modern merchant, for the modern astronomer, for the modern civil servant, who have their separate religious and aesthetic lives, far removed from everyday life, and also far removed from what everyday life is. This life, which develops as a spiritual life, appears to be very spiritual. In truth, however, it is alien to life. Therefore, it has also created a certain disbelief in life.

This is why it has never been possible for the broad masses of the people to develop a belief in this spiritual life, to look at this spiritual life as if something socially beneficial could come from it. Here serious and honest personalities have been at work. Those who are seriously concerned with social life look upon the spiritual life as utopian. Here Fourier and similar spirits have lived who have worked out such beautiful programs for themselves as to how they want to shape their lives. But from what kind of thinking, from what kind of soul-disposition have all these social and socialist ideas arisen? They have arisen out of a mental life which sets itself up as something alien to life, just as the religious life is to the merchant in his account book. It is natural that beautiful ideas, genuinely meant, well-meant ideas, can arise out of such a mental state, but not ideas that intervene in real practical life.

Spiritual science aims to reach the highest heights of the spirit. But by descending into the deepest inner being of the human being, where there are not thoughts that are alien to life, but thoughts that penetrate into the realities of the external world, these should be able, when they reach up to the highest spiritual heights on the one hand, to grasp at the same time what we encounter in the account book in the relationship between employer and employee, what lives everywhere in direct life. The thoughts of that intellectual life that has dominated human souls in the last three to four centuries were weak and impotent; for these thoughts were beautiful aesthetic, religious, scientific and secular thoughts, but they were not thoughts that reached down into reality and

Take something that works like a modern moral code, let's say, like an ethic. You see what it says about humanity, goodness, benevolence, charity, human brotherhood. This is foreign to life, it does not intervenes in this immediate life, any more than modern philosophy, which lives in abstract ideas, does so, nor does modern spiritual life in general.

Only spiritual science can actually reach down into what philosophy, what real, external real science, brings to light. Read about this subject in my numerous books. You will find that spiritual science has nothing to do with those abstractions, with what is handed down today as a philosophical worldview and the like, but you will see that this spiritual science relies on really delving into the spirit in which the human being his soul lives, in order to gain real insights into the human being; because the human being is most spiritual, a knowledge can be established that ascends to the highest level of the spirit and at the same time descends into the directly practical life. For if one only penetrates deeply enough into the knowledge, this life in knowledge proves to be a unity, not a duality.

This spiritual life will also be able to penetrate into the life that we call social. The abstract intellectualism and scientific method that the modern proletarian perceives as ideology is incapable of penetrating into the real social structure of life. Their thoughts and ideas are too weak to penetrate and descend; they are abstractions and remain in the unreal realm of thought. They are truly ideologies. But the spirit need not stop at ideology. The spirit can penetrate so deeply into ideas that these ideas are at the same time forces contained in reality. With such ideas alone is it possible to delve into social life.

But for that a certain social structure is necessary. And this social structure I have tried to indicate, to sketch out at least, in my “Gist of the Social Question.” I have tried to show how it is necessary that the administration of spiritual life should be separated from economic life and from the life of the state, to which the administration of justice must be left; from everything political and economic the spiritual must be separated. As long as economic life develops out of spiritual life, in that the economically powerful are also best able to advance with regard to their spiritual education, as long as there is any connection at all, an inner connection between spiritual life and economic life, it is impossible for spiritual life to develop completely freely.

But anyone who is familiar with the spiritual life I have just spoken of knows that it can only develop on completely free soil. For the spiritual life of which I have spoken is a product of the human soul. This human soul must be cultivated in complete freedom. Schools and education must be administered independently in their own administration, independently of economic life and of the rest of state life, of political and legal life.

It is quite a different matter when the teacher of the lowest school class does not have to conform to what is supplied to him by economic life, does not have to be guided by the demands that a state makes in order to fill its positions; but when it follows what is taking place in the spiritual life, in the most important part, in the educational and teaching system, when it follows purely from what people should experience in the spiritual realm. If I were to characterize it in concrete terms, I would have to say: in the future, the entire spiritual life, including the life of teaching and schooling, must be shaped in such a way that those who teach and educate, from the lowest to the highest levels, are only so burdened with teaching and education that they still have the possibility of administering this spiritual life in which they work and in which they are active. Spiritual life forms an independent link in the social organism. It is self-governing and placed in its own administration.

If this is the case, then one will not experience what comes so strongly before the soul's eye when one is in the following situation. We have tried to establish a school in Stuttgart that is at least so shaped in its inner spiritual constitution that it is taken from the spirit just characterized. First of all, the teachers were prepared in such a way that they could at least work in the spirit of a completely free spiritual life. This was the starting point, because many paths are blocked today and because what is meant here is truly meant in a very practical way and is only really understood when it is approached with an instinct for practical life, not with some kind of theoretical ideas and the like. It is an eight-class elementary school that, in a free educational setting, is intended to achieve the same in terms of teaching as ordinary elementary schools and as ordinary secondary modern schools and grammar schools do for boys and girls up to the age of fourteen or fifteen, but which at the same time at the same time develop human individuality in a completely free way, so that individuality is placed in social life and will shape it, in which social life, from its economic and state points of view, does not provide the templates according to which individualities must develop. But then you see that you get your hands on the decrees on how teaching should be carried out from class to class, and today the decrees already contain prescriptions as to what should be done. But for those who can think straight and look at life independently, it seems the only possibility that what underlies education, the teaching system, and what determines what happens day after day, hour after hour in school, is that the decisive factor is not some kind of democratic will - that would be tantamount to pedagogical short-sightedness - but the specialized and factual knowledge of those who work from within the spiritual life itself and are also able to administer the spiritual.

These things must be approached practically. Only in this way can much of what is called practical today, and which cannot be imagined in any other way, be transformed into something other than what it has become for today. Only in this way can we look at it with complete impartiality and see it as it should be, and then follow the real inner laws of human development.

The other thing that must be added to this free spiritual life, which has its own administration - I can only sketch this today - is the independent constitutional state, the independent state political element, which, on the one hand, has separated out the independence of all spiritual life, but on the other hand, has also separated out economic life. In the last few centuries, there has only really been a legal life to the extent that this legal life has developed out of the economic life. And this was most clearly evident in those states that were drawn into this terrible war by their state economies. It became most evident that their entire political constitution was a consequence of their economic life, that, so to speak, the state was also an economic community to such a high degree. It would be an act of supreme folly to develop a large cooperative out of the state, according to the Marxist program, where the means of production would be administered and worked in common. Nothing new would be created; only that which has already caused great damage would be exaggerated to an enormous extent. But in an independent legal life, legal creation can only arise from an independent sense of right and wrong. That is to say, an independent state or legal element of the social organism must develop alongside economic life. This link will embrace everything in which all mature people have become capable of judgment.

One will never be able to administer intellectual life democratically; intellectual life must be administered by individuals with expert knowledge and expertise. But that which economic life is as such cannot be administered democratically either. It must be administered in such a way that what corresponds to the economic sphere is the underlying basis. This economic life must be administered in such a way that the person who manages in a particular sphere is spiritually mature and firmly grounded in that economic sphere. This sense of belonging, of being grounded, of being firmly grounded, of being able to act independently within an economic area, is undermined when decisions about how work should be organized in individual companies, what should be produced in individual companies, and so on, are made in a democratic way.

If the forces that are there are to be made fruitful for the social community, this can only be achieved if the individual representative, on the basis of their expertise and professional ability, stands in their rightful position and produces for the community what they can produce according to their abilities. But there still remains that over which he is not the sole arbiter, but over which every mature person who represents the democratic element has the ability to judge, whereby every person is equal, stands equally, and in which every person should develop a relationship from person to person.

On socialist soil, the following is constantly emphasized today: the worker is separated from the product of his labor, he works for the product, which he hardly gets to know, or only gets to know part of it. That is certainly all true. The product goes to the market, he is separated from it, he is separated from his field of labor, he simply performs his work, his human labor, on something he does not even know. But this is only the case as long as we do not have an independent link, an independent life, alongside the economic life in which the individual is involved, where one develops from person to person because one is the same as another person. This independent life, in which decisions are made only on the basis of what is right, this actual political life, is the content of state life. This is where democracy can truly develop. But it must be cultivated in the concrete. You cannot say: those who have excelled in a particular area of economic life will also excel in the field of law, so that this field of law can best be cultivated by them. No, that is not the case, because a person can only cultivate and develop judgment in that which actually develops in life. The life of the law must not be linked in a chaotic way with economic life, but the life of the law must stand alongside economic life. And the human being must enter into a relationship, a concrete relationship on the basis of the law, with the other human being. Interests must develop in him for the other people with whom he lives together in economic life, when economic life develops needs that have to be satisfied. On the basis of the law, every person will know: you are a member of the rest of humanity, you take part in something that determines your relationship and no other thing your relationship among others. You stand in all of humanity, you now learn to recognize yourself as a member of the state built on the equality of people, on democracy. This state becomes a reality for you. Because it becomes a reality by dealing with your labor law before all things. Labor law will no longer be established in economic life; the worker will no longer be dependent on the economic power of the person with whom he can work and undertake work together, but rather what applies is that in which every person is equal. In the separate legal sphere, it will be necessary to decide what makes every person equal. And other relationships will have to be regulated in the corresponding sphere. Today I can only characterize all this in very general terms; you will find more details in my “Key Points of the Social Question”.

Then there remains economic life, the actual, unified economic life. And then, in this economic life, we will not have what is in it today, but we will have associations in this economic life that are formed from consumers and producers together. And these associations will have to deal with matters closely connected with the ascertainment of economic needs, with the determination of prices, the value of goods, with everything that depends only on the human labor that goes into the goods. Economic life will not have to decide on the raising of human labor; the legal life decides on that. In the sphere of economic life, the corporations will have to deal only with fair prices. Such that, based on real expertise and professional skill, such prices will result from being in the economic life that the individual actually receives on average, for what he contributes, so many corresponding goods that serve his needs, until he has produced something has produced the same as that which he exchanges.

I will soon arrive at the primal cell of economic life; when it is presented as I must now present it, it looks somewhat paradoxical, yet in the last analysis everything is based on it. Above all, it is the basis for the emergence of fair prices; for it is not through some kind of joint administration, not through some kind of transfer of the areas into the administration of the whole, or into the ownership of the whole, that social balance can be achieved , but only through the value of the goods, which is determined not by the accident of the market, but by the value of the goods, which is determined by human reason, so that it flows from the actual management of economic life as such.

To put it dryly and paradoxically, and actually trivially: if I have made a pair of boots today, then in the social organism this pair of boots must be worth so much that I can exchange goods for it until I have again fabricated a pair of boots, including everything that has to be provided for the unemployed, the sick, the disabled, and so on. This is the original cell of economic life.

This can actually be achieved if economic life is completely detached from the other two elements of social life: from independent spiritual life and independent legal life

As I said, I could only sketch these things for you, but they have been developed from a real life practice, from a conception of life as it is, as it wants to shape itself. That was also the reason why I said to many a person during the raging of that terrible world war: The only way to cope with this raging is through ideas that have grown on spiritual soil. You have the choice, I said to many, either to speak now of such ideas to humanity that this humanity can take as a starting point for a real improvement on earth, or you will experience social cataclysms and revolutions.

People did not agree to accept reason. So the revolution came. But these revolutions have their peculiarities. Revolutions have been taking place in the world since the emergence of Christianity. What kind of revolution was that? It was a spiritual revolution. What was transformed was the conditions in spiritual life. What can truly arise in humanity in this way, through a metamorphosis in development, can only be spiritual impulses in the first instance.

The Christian revolution was a spiritual one. And the legal and economic life that it brought in its wake was a consequence of the spiritual revolution that took place through Christianity. That is why it was a great upheaval, and anyone who is familiar with the development of Christianity knows how profoundly Christianity has affected the world as a spiritual upheaval.

But if we now consider a revolution in legal and political relations, We find such upheavals in the French Revolution or in the continental revolution of 1848. Study these revolutions and you will find that They have achieved something, they have replaced something of the old order; but much has been left behind that was not at all a solution to previously raised demands, but a solution to previously raised demands, leftovers that were left behind by these political revolutions, by the three elements of human life. One can trace them, the upheavals in the spiritual realm, in the political-legal realm; an upheaval in the spiritual realm, that brought Christianity; an upheaval in the political-legal realm, the upheaval of the French Revolution and the revolution of 1848. Now they want an upheaval in the economic realm. Economic life cannot mechanize or transform itself out of itself. Those who are familiar with world-historical interrelations know that there can be intellectual revolutions because everything else in life can be fertilized by the spirit. But if the external itself, formed purely out of itself, is to be transformed, then this is an illusion. It is simply a law of world-historical development that where a purely economic revolution is to be carried out, as in present-day Russia, this economic revolution must be the gravedigger of modern civilization before it does not take up something truly spiritual.

It is true that Lenin and Trotsky are the last consistent educators of what has been living in the Darwinism of the masses for decades. But in trying to realize what could be developed in the ideas as mere economic ideas, and in what one could believe as long as it did not become practical, one becomes the gravedigger of civilization at the same moment as one wants to introduce it into life. And death could only spread in the European East under the influence of such ideas if it were not realized that we need something completely different in our time: a renewal of spiritual life.

That is what I wanted to emphasize particularly strongly today, that we need to develop a free spiritual life in an independent spiritual part of the social organism, which in turn is based on real spirit. From this spirit a real social future will arise. One must not hope for a new revolution. This new revolution should be an economic one. An economic revolution can only destroy, it cannot build up. Today the world is ripe for a new spirituality, so that it can be rebuilt.

That is what must be said by someone who does not base their views on party demands or party programs, but who looks at life impartially and honestly, and is serious and sincere about what is usually, but poorly understood, called the social question. This is what must be done first in the course of human development: to spread enlightenment about it, to educate the broad masses, on the part of those who have been able to develop this enlightenment through their previous education, which they have inherited, to educate the broad masses about what is necessary. Otherwise, the broad masses know what they demand out of their passions, but they cannot see through what can really be demanded in the interest of humanity and in the interest of a social future.

What has been attempted in my “Key Points of the Social Question” does not follow some party line, it follows what has been attempted to be recognized from the world-historical development of humanity itself, what has been attempted to be recognized from the world-historical moment. Anyone who assumes a commonality of the means of production is already unaware of development. Because even if it were possible for the common ownership of the means of production to occur today, to be introduced today, which cannot be, because it is of course impossible, because it would destroy all initiative of the individual, but even if it were possible to assume the common ownership of the means of production, then the current generation would have these means of production at a certain age, and the next generation would not have them again until later. And the protest of the next generation would once again result in what is to be made good today.

Only a thought like this, which is taken from full reality, not from one-sided reality, only such a thought is really from the outset today. And the thought that I have presented to you about the threefold social organism also takes into account the development over time, not just the coexistence of people in space. This thought can therefore much more likely shape spiritual life in its most important parts, in its most essential areas, in the school and educational system, and also with regard to the social organism, so that it can supply the social organism with forces in an appropriate way. Today, the Socialist side keeps telling us: if we introduce a common distribution of the means of production, if we introduce compulsory labor and so on, then we will educate people through these social structures so that they will work by themselves and so on. Yes, that is to say, humanity will achieve nothing, it will achieve nothing, and will only be willing and eager to work if a spiritual life really kindles the individual abilities of the human being, as they can only be kindled if we educate the human being during his upbringing in such a way that we take full account of his individuality.

Just as in this field, so in all fields the social idea of the threefold social organism is that which most comprehensively underlies the practical; it can only underlie the practical because it is built on the ground of a real spiritual science, where not only nature must be recognized, but where man must be recognized, but thereby also man man into consciousness.

I would just like to emphasize in conclusion that what you can read in detail about capital formation, labor organization, economic organization and so on in the future, is explained in more detail in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, as already mentioned, is still a weak attempt today. It is only a weak attempt because it is not some kind of contrived program, but because it is derived from practical life. Those people who today say that they cannot understand what is written in the “Key Points of the Social Question” lack the instinct for reality that is necessary today if one is to really understand practical matters in their fundamentals. It is not merely a matter of professing one's faith in a sociological doctrine; it is a matter of professing one's faith in those doctrines that can be supported by an instinct for the things to be realized. In attempting to present such thoughts, one will not claim that they should be perfect from the outset. One will emphasize again and again that they are an attempt. And so everything that is presented on the basis of the threefold social order should be seen as an experiment. For what it should ultimately be will become clear as it is transformed and introduced into practice.

I have often said to people: It is possible that not a single one of the details that I have given will be carried out, but the ideas that I have put forward are conceived in such a way that they can be applied to reality at one of its many points of contact. If you take hold of it there, then something completely different may result, but you will really be working. That is what matters, not programs, not preconceived ideas, no matter how clever they are, not to work from them, no matter how old they are, but to work from the reality of practical life! But not working from the randomness of everyday life, but from the great, overarching ideas from which all great, including social, designs have actually emerged. I believe that everyone who talks about such questions in this way thinks that way. I would like to express how I mean it by means of a comparison. Recently, in a studio where they usually work only with three-dimensional objects, a chair model was developed. The idea was that this chair should, on the one hand, satisfy our sense of beauty, which we apply to the Dornach building; on the other hand, however, it should be as inexpensive as possible. The most economical price is necessary in addition to the appropriate design in the overall treatment. Now we had made a model. When we handed this model over to the worker, we said to ourselves: There is the model, but now the practical design begins, and possibly what comes out as a chair at the end will look quite different from the model. But what comes out will be practical because the model was thought of practically.

This is how I would like to see the matter of the 'key points of the social question' understood. Everything that you will find as suggestions for the social question, for example in “Social Future” here for Switzerland, this book and our other ideas are only meant to be a kind of model, so to speak; but it should be a practically conceived model. If you take up the work with this in mind, the result will be practice. Perhaps it will look quite different, but it will only be truly practical if it is approached on the basis of a practical impulse.

Such a threefold social organism could, I think, most easily - pardon me for saying all these things, especially for those who are not completely familiar with these things, but I would still like to express it - it could be realized particularly strongly here in this country, which is justly proud of its old democracy. Because the democratic element has been developed here, it is easiest to see here how the path should be found to replace the spiritual and economic life on both sides in a corresponding way. In a further development, the idea of threefold social order emerged. If one is serious about these ideas, then I believe that, especially if one lives in a democratic community, one will understand and find it easier to understand what can necessarily be done for the threefold social order. Otherwise, this threefold social order will be attacked from left and right, from all sides. And while it is precisely the intention to be serious and honest about the social question, it has come about that I, for example, am personally attacked in the most obscene way by the leaders of socialist parties of all shades. But the point at issue is precisely that three great ideas, which should only be meant seriously and honestly, have emerged in the development of humanity. One is that of liberalism, the other that of democracy, and the third is that of socialism. If one is sincere about these three ideas, one will not be able to mix all three up or have one eliminate the other. Rather, one will have to say: something must radiate from the independent intellectual life, flowing into capitalism and into the whole organism. That is the free human development, that is the liberal element. In the political state, in the legal life, something must live in which all people are equal. That is the democratic element. And in economic life, the fraternal element must prevail. That must provide the true basis for a social structure. That is what it is about. We should not fight one-sidedly against and also not represent one-sidedly that which has emerged beneficially in the course of the newer development of humanity as the consequence of liberalism, democracy, socialism; we should see how in the independent spiritual life, liberalism grows, illuminating all the rest of social life ; how in the actual state under the rule of law democracy is growing, again overshadowing all other areas of life; how in that economic life, which is concerned only with the production, circulation, and consumption of goods and the determination of fair prices, socialism is again prevailing, permeating everything. Then, when one sees through this, one will correctly penetrate one's view of life today with the realization that complete errors in external life are less harmful because they can be more easily seen through than half or quarter truths.

But what exists today in many people as a social movement is flooded with quarter and third truths. And by adhering to a partial truth, people believe that they have grasped life in its entirety. But one should only want to embrace life in its entirety with a living interaction of truths. The whole full truth cannot be revealed in an abstract idea or in an abstract reality. It can only be grasped in the living interaction of ideas. Then, from half-truths and quarter-truths, the whole truth of life will be able to emerge, including in the social sphere, and the necessary social order will be established. And it will be recognized that it is less necessary to fight against complete errors than to correct half-truths and quarter-truths.

This is what I wanted to emphasize today with regard to the ideas of the necessities of life in the social question in the present of humanity and its immediate future.

Dr. Dr. Roman Boos points out that here in Switzerland, too, the danger is enormous in the economic field, and that we should therefore be able to extract something creative, which will be absolutely necessary, and that what Dr. Steiner could only hint at in his remarks today must be fully understood. (No discussion seems to have taken place.)

Rudolf Steiner: Regarding the closing remarks, I will be able to be very brief. I would like to emphasize that someone might say that in this lecture a great deal has been said about every link of the social organism: the spiritual, the legal and the economic life. But all this is not at all what matters to a large proportion of those who speak of the social question today , but that the social question is above all an economic question.

Now consider the whole attitude of both the lecture and what is meant by the impulse for the threefold order of the social organism. You can see this at least to some extent from the lecture: it does not present a finished program, but rather it starts from the premise that the social organism itself, that is, human social life, should be structured in a certain way, structured in such a way that separate administrations exist for economic life , for democratic, political or legal life and an independent administration for spiritual life.

Now, of course, it is easy to say: You are actually separating what must be a unity, the whole of human society, the human social organization into three areas. But it is precisely through the independent administration of the three areas that it becomes possible to achieve the proper unity of these areas. It is not a matter of renewing, as some have believed, what was demanded in the pre-Christian, in the Platonic world view, as the teaching, military and nutritional estates. No, in those days humanity as such was divided into three estates; so that one belonged to one, the other to the second, the third to the third estate. It is precisely this that is to be avoided, that people cannot be people as a whole, but are divided into estates. It is not humanity as such that is divided, but human life. And the person who is in life, in a certain way, stands on all three grounds: in the spiritual life, insofar as he has a living part in the spiritual life in one way or another; he stands in it in the legal life, in the entire legal issues, because he is a mature person in this part, either directly through some referendum or indirectly through representation and the like and he stands in that, in which he has credit through his person, or has factual and specialized knowledge in a certain economic area, in which he is incorporated through an association; the whole economic life is incorporated in itself.

And now it is precisely the various objections that have been raised that show how little the basic idea has been understood today. For example, a long review of this threefold social order appeared in a magazine, and it was said: Yes, he wants to replace the one parliament with three parliaments - a spiritual parliament, a legal parliament and an economic parliament. What matters, however, is that in a democratic parliament only that can be decided on which every human being has become capable of judging, which does not require any knowledge of the subject or field, and that precisely that should be eliminated which requires knowledge of the subject and field. Therefore, if there must be no parliament in the realm of intellectual life and in the realm of economic life, it is because the situation is precisely the opposite there. It is therefore a matter of honestly applying parliamentarianism by limiting it to the area in which it can truly flourish.

From this, however, it can be seen that the nerve has actually been little understood to date. But if one understands the nerve of the matter, then one will see how this idea is actually conceived out of the fundamentals. Anyone who believes that they can organize economic life, for example, according to a certain structure by means of some program, no matter how beautifully conceived, may think very cleverly of themselves, but they are not thinking from reality. But the person who says: Humanity must live in a social organism that is administered from three sides; then what is social structure will come. People will shape this through what they will experience through this threefolding of social life. That is what matters, not saying: Now there is a social question that needs to be solved. Today it cannot be solved, tomorrow it will be possible - one says it in one way, the other in another, but very many think that way.

No, he who believes that is thinking unrealistically. The point is this: the social question has come to the surface in humanity, and now a social structure must be brought about in such a way that this social question must be solved continuously. Today the conditions are there, today it will be solved one way or another, not tomorrow will it be solved. And if other questions arise tomorrow, the conditions for tomorrow will have to be solved again; then other things will arise again, and people must be included in the social structure. It will be an ongoing process. The solution is to be tackled anew from day to day. It is not the case that one can say, today it is there and will continue to be there, but one must ask: How must society be shaped so that what is shaped by society can be shaped in a social sense. Those who do not take human matters in this sense, who do not think in real terms, cannot see what is really going on.

Today people think they are thinking, but they think in a highly unrealistic way. For example, they think that social life will acquire a social structure through a certain reorganization of economic life. Well, that would be just as if one wanted to believe that the individual human organism acquires its structure from what it eats and drinks. No, the human organism has an inner lawfulness. It has such a lawfulness that it undergoes a very definite transformation at the age of changing teeth, and another transformation at the age of sexual maturity. The processes in the human organism come from transformations within the human organization; but ideas also arise in the course of historical development. Today this has reached a point where it is necessary to tackle the threefold social order!

Now, in conclusion, I just want to say the following to show you how things are meant. Those who really follow my writings know that when I experience something like this, I am not at all concerned with ridiculing anyone. I know best how worthy of consideration the simplest mind can be. But let us take the following example. In a discussion, I was replied to – actually, the replies are often where one believes today to be particularly revolutionary, according to a certain template, one does not need to go into the reply itself – but such a responder said something that did not directly have to do with the matter, he said: “Look here, esteemed attendees, we certainly do not want – he spoke from the standpoint of the most most radical orator of the Socialist Party – we certainly don't want, he said, to abolish intellectual labor, we want to keep it; because, you see, he said, I'm a cobbler, for example, I know very well that I can't do the work of a registrar; so we have to hire people who can take over this office once we have gained leadership. A glorious thought! The good man believed that he could not do the work of a registrar, but what he did believe was that he could be a minister who then determined the whole structure. That was a matter of course for him.

Such simple errors, in which one lives, are the essence of real life today, they are absolutely fundamental. These are things that show where approaches are that cannot lead to anything fruitful.

On the other hand, I had recently learned the following from a different angle. After writing an article that roundly condemned the entire threefold social order, an American came to me during one of my lectures a few weeks ago and said: I read this article; it is written in such a way that it insults everything. Yes, there must be something in it! And so I got hold of the matter, he said. You see, sometimes the abusive articles also have their good effects. The man was now, when he came to me, completely absorbed in the idea of threefolding. He said to me: Do you believe that with this idea of threefolding there will now be something that can apply to the whole of human future in the most absolute sense? I said, “No.” We have gone through a phase of historical development which has led to the fact that we have concluded everything in this unitary state. In this unitary state, we have concluded, let us say in Austria, economic life, legal life, spiritual life, namely in the form of cultural life. I have often spoken about this. In the 20th century, nothing else was possible than what led to the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was the subject of the negotiations. What emerged from that was linked to the construction of the Thessaloniki railway, which was a purely economic matter. And out of that arose a chaotic mixture, to which was added a purely spiritual element, namely the antagonism between the Slavs and the Magyars. And out of the terrible tangle of nations in the East, something was brewing from the three areas being mixed together. But they were so constituted that they were drawn to the unified state. Now it is ripe to disintegrate into the three elements. And in turn, a completely different necessity will arise in a relatively not too distant time. Life is vibrant, it is not something closed. We want something that applies forever and everywhere!

The inconvenience of such ideas is that they cannot be conceived out of abstract ideas, like programs; you introduce the programs and then that's it. No, it is not like that; but such ideas, spiritual ideas, take into account the spiritual life, the legal life and the economic life in the threefold social organism. And therefore they can only ever find that which is valid for a particular epoch. And they are aware that, in turn, this must be replaced by something else in a certain period of time. They also take evolution seriously by seeking in evolution what they themselves can find for their age.

So, I just wanted to show a practical result in this sense and say that it is not about something something absolute, as in other contemporary programs, but something that is thought out of the present in the most eminent sense.

Thus, that which wants to enter the world today is judged in the most diverse ways. It may meet with the most diverse judgments, if only these judgments, this judging, finally comes to the point of studying things in a way that is full of life. What matters in such matters is not that what is indicated on one side or another is pedantically carried out, but rather that reality is grasped in a practical way. In such a case no stone may be left unturned in the details, but out of such a life-filled approach that which can serve the common good will be effective and will come into being.

In this sense, these things are meant to be said out of reality for reality. The threefold social order is not meant to be a one-sided political development, nor is it meant to be a one-sided development at all. And so it should be taken up without any emotional attitude.

On the other hand, it should be viewed in such a way that it is understood without prejudice, as it is meant without prejudice. From many sides today we hear: Yes, this threefold social order would be all very well, but it must come into being at the very end; before that everything must go haywire, before that there must be dictatorship and so on. If one thinks in this way, then in reality one does not want the practical, but rather that which arises only from abstract demands, which arise directly only from this or that mood of the soul. In that case, one does not want the social threefolding as it is meant here, but rather one wants that which one has fallen in love with.

But if one seriously wants to achieve something in life, one must struggle to the point of view that sees through and overviews this life impartially.

If you board the tram here at Aeschenplatz in Basel and travel to Dornach, then take the small path through Dornach, you will come to a hill on which stands the Goetheanum, which is to become a School of Spiritual Science. Although it has been encouraging to note that an extraordinarily large number of visitors have been coming to see this building day after day, it must be said that, whenever the outside world world, for instance in newspaper articles, answers are given to the question of what is actually to be done inside this building once it is finished, these answers generally present the opposite of the truth, with a few exceptions of course. All sorts of things are said about what is to be done there in the past or present in this Dornach building. In any case, the answers given to the questioners are very far removed from what those involved in the spiritual current on which the Dornach building is based actually set as their goal. For this goal emerges from a careful consideration and observation of what I would call the cultural conditions for humanity in the present and future. And out of all the various presuppositions, which I shall venture to speak about this evening, this spiritual movement, which is to find expression in the Dornach building, is based on the conviction that the longings of wide circles of people today contain the realization that a complete recovery, a healthy further development of our human culture must come from the soul of the human being, from that which the human being can grasp in his soul as his connection with the spiritual world. It is based on the conviction that, in the face of the demands and difficulties that arise in our social life, we must try to find the impulses that correspond to the longings of a large number of people – and this number is growing ever larger and larger – from the spirit and soul.

Now, one can see – I would just like to mention in passing that now on Sundays and other days quite a few people come from Basel and the surrounding area to see what we call our eurythmy performances in the provisional hall of our carpentry workshop, where we have to hold these events for the time being until we can open the Goetheanum itself. , and it is reasonable to believe that a large number of those who have already made the pilgrimage to Dornach for these eurythmy performances have come to the conclusion that, in this particular area, too, an attempt is being made to spiritualize something, to raise something into the sphere of the spirit, which, under the influence of materialism of the last centuries, is still practised today by our culture in a more or less materialistic, physiological and similar way.

In this eurythmy, there is an art of movement of the human organism itself, which is taken from the organizational structures of the whole human being, the whole human being, who encompasses body, soul and spirit. And quite apart from the fact that this eurythmy aspires to a special new art form that cannot really be compared with what are often perceived as neighboring arts, it can also be said that these efforts to the spirit is based on what I would call the inspiration of the human organism's possibilities of movement, which, for example, in gymnastics, are understood only in an external physiological way, in a purely material way. The human being is meant to carry out movements, and that is why this eurythmy will also have a spiritual-educational value at some point. In addition to artistic movements, the human being should carry out movements that are not merely taken from anatomy and physiology, as in gymnastics, but that are taken from what can live in the moving human being: spirit and soul.

Now, it is difficult not to be misunderstood when you go out into the world with a thorough spiritual or soul current today. One would like to say that misunderstandings are coming from all sides. And so it may happen that in some places some misunderstandings regarding spiritual science itself have already been cleared away, to the extent that this spiritual science is even allowed to speak on social issues. But we have committed what we believe to be the right thing to do, but what others have thought of as ineptitude: in some places where I have had to speak about spiritual science and social issues, I have also given eurythmy performances at the same time. And lo and behold, the judgment was immediately made: how can a spiritual endeavor be of any value that also includes dance performances?

Well, I could easily add to the list of misunderstandings that come from all quarters, because the world still judges in many ways today as if everything that is to be done in the Dornach building is something obscure, something dark and mystical. So often today, when spiritual endeavors are mentioned, one hears that all sorts of mystical things are being done here or there, even in many places. The fact that the movement that is to be linked to the Dornach building has nothing to do with such obscure mystical movements could be taught to those who seek to see clearly and truthfully in such matters by the fact that one who stands before you and speaks to you about his cause, the cause of this building at Dornach, this Goetheanum, can point to a book written as early as 1894, The Philosophy of Freedom. And if anyone reads this 'Philosophy of Freedom', I think they will not get the impression that this 'Philosophy of Freedom' is intended to bring anything of obscure mysticism, enthusiasm or the like into the world. And I may say that, after all, everything that is to form the main content, the main impulse of this spiritual scientific movement, of which I am speaking, is permeated by that longing of present-day humanity, which expresses itself in the urge for such a way of life within which the individual human being can, on the one hand, fulfill his social duties, but on the other hand, can still be a free being as an individual human being.

I would like to begin by pointing out a phenomenon that is connected to something that is very familiar to you. And although I take as my starting point in today's reflections a politician, you should not think that I am going to devote myself even remotely to the political culture of the present day. I would like to speak about the cultural conditions of the present and the future in a much broader sense; but I would like to mention a characteristic that can show us how the call for freedom is, so to speak, emerging from the cultural aspirations and ideals of the present, only emerging in such a way that it is truly not taken deeply enough. And to take it deeply enough, to deepen what humanity's longing for freedom is, that is intimately connected with the view that spiritual science has of the cultural conditions of the present and future.

Those who have heard my lectures this year and in previous years, this visitors who remember how I spoke at that time, when Woodrow Wilson was, one might say, seen as a man honored throughout the world, to whom people looked up and to whom they attached great hopes for the future, these honored visitors will not hold it against me if I, who in the days when this man had many supporters freely expressed my opposition from a certain point of view, if I today take as my starting point the special conception of freedom, the special call for freedom, that resounds from the political world view of Woodrow Wilson. One must believe that the strong, otherwise, in my opinion, quite incomprehensible impression that Woodrow Wilson has made on the world so far, where the matter stops, is based precisely on the fact that all the program points, everything that has come from this man into the world, is ultimately based in a certain way on the impulse of human freedom. Let us see what this man did before he became President of the United States, let us see what made him great as President of the United States. We will find that it is his conception of a possible social organization of human coexistence in which man can have his freedom in a democratic way. Woodrow Wilson saw how, in the last decades of the 19th century and the early 20th century, large accumulations of capital had come to be concentrated in the hands of a few people in the course of the life of America. He saw how trusts and the like had been formed. And he saw how a few wealthy people had gained control over other people as a result. This is where he began his reflection and his work. He first of all asserted the impulse of freedom. He demanded a complete democratization of human political life in the face of the accumulation of economic and political power in the hands of a few. He wanted every single person to have the opportunity to make use of their abilities in human coexistence. He did not want those who had established themselves in any branch of industry or trade to be able to have monopolies that the legitimate abilities of the weak could not compete against. He wanted us to look for the causes of what happens in social life in every single human situation, even the simplest. And he often expressed this. And it is characteristic of him that he has based his political aspirations on precisely this goal of freedom.

We need only consider his extraordinarily significant writing “The New Freedom”. One might say that on every page one finds the truth of what I have just said. I will quote just one of his most remarkable sayings. He said: There is only one way to create a free life, and that is to ensure that under every garment beats a free and hopeful heart. I truly believe that what had such a strong effect was this call for freedom.

Now, this call for freedom always resonated in the practical political and social effectiveness. The writing “The New Freedom” is actually just a collection of election speeches. There is no talk of a freedom that is only philosophically speculated, there is no talk of any abstract mere freedom of consciousness, there is talk of a freedom that is to be realized and realized in life .

Now, I also tried to grasp such a freedom, which should be realized and actualized in life, through my book “The Philosophy of Freedom,” which I wrote at the beginning of the 1990s. But now, after much hesitation, I have published a new edition of this book, and I can now openly express the belief that freedom can only be truly and practically lived out if we seek it not only in the outer social and political life, but if we seek it in the depths of the human soul itself. And it is in the depths of the human soul itself that freedom should be sought through my “Philosophy of Freedom.” If one stops at the surface of mere social and political life or of external social life, one will very soon see that the realization of freedom is not at all possible if one grasps it only in that sense. For freedom is something that must arise from the individual human being, something that cannot exist if individuals are not able to realize it, if individuals do not first pour it into the social life that they lead together. But if we wish to appreciate the full significance of what is suggested here for the culture of the present day, then we must overlook much of the mere phraseology of the present, and we must try for once to speak seriously and honestly and truthfully about many things. The call for freedom is, I would say, present throughout the entire educated world. Today it is there for those who want to hear it, for the American, the European, and the Asian world. And the only question is: how can the awareness of freedom be realized in the life of the present?

To answer this question, we must take a closer look at how a man inspired by the impulse of freedom, such as Woodrow Wilson, talks about freedom today, and how others talk about freedom today. It will sound strange to you, and I must confess that I hesitated for a long time about expressing the truth I have to say here as bluntly as I will, because such things still shock many people today, because people still take such things far too much at face value, far too little in terms of what is actually behind them. Read Woodrow Wilson's book 'The New Freedom'. Listen to how he talks about the social conditions in America and, ultimately, about the social conditions of contemporary civilization in general. What do you find in it? Actually, only criticism, criticism of how this freedom is not realized within today's civilization, how one must strive to realize this freedom within today's culture and civilization. There are sharp words in this direction of criticism in Woodrow Wilson's book 'The New Freedom'. And if you stop at the criticism - and there is not much else in this book except criticism - and now really seriously and honestly ask yourself: How does this criticism of freedom or social criticism by Woodrow Wilson relate to the criticism that is asserted from another side? you come to a strange result. For example, I have tried to examine Lenin's and Tyotzki's criticism of freedom in terms of how this criticism of freedom and social conditions relates to Woodrow Wilson's criticism in The New Freedom, and I believe that anyone who makes such a comparison honestly and truthfully can say nothing other than: With regard to the criticism of social conditions and the realization of freedom in them today, Woodrow Wilson agrees with Lenin and Trotsky, however different the conclusions they draw.

One must be able to admit such a truth to oneself, even if one finds it quite understandable that despite this criticism, Woodrow Wilson naturally comes to the opposite conclusions from Lenin and Trotsky. And even if one, like the person standing before you, is convinced that Lenin and Trotsky are the gravediggers, not the founders, of a social life, that hardly anything worse could happen to humanity than if the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky were to be realized - but an important, an important fact is expressed in what must be set apart right now; the fact is expressed that from the most opposing party standpoints, from the most opposing social passions, people today come to similar criticisms of the existing cultural conditions and finally also to the abstract call for freedom. Only they understand this freedom in very, very different senses.

If one penetrates to the fact that ultimately the true impulse of freedom can only come from the depths of the human soul itself, then one may well also ask: Why is it that despite all the politicking and calling for freedom in his book, and in his other books as well, there is so much that one must say are abstract, impractical truths that can never penetrate into reality? I believe that precisely what Woodrow Wilson thinks of as freedom is precisely what prevents him from being a truly practical person for the spiritual life of the present. It is very characteristic how Woodrow Wilson explains freedom. He explains it, one might say, as if he had absorbed the whole sum of his concepts from the art of machines. For example, he says: A ship moves freely when it is so equipped that its apparatus is precisely adapted to the movements of the wind and waves, when it experiences no obstacles or hindrances from the movements of the wind and waves, when it is, as it were, carried along freely, without resisting what carries it. And so a person would be free in the sense of Woodrow Wilson, who would be so adapted to the external social conditions that nothing in him would give rise to obstacles and inhibitions, so that he would feel nowhere, as it were, dependent, constrained, disturbed in any direction. If we take seriously only one sentence, we shall see what significance this statement by Woodrow Wilson has for the concept of freedom. If we compare seriously and honestly the human being who is to act freely from the innermost impulse of his soul in some humane social order with a ship that offers as little resistance as possible to the forces of wind and waves, then we completely ignore the fact that the ship must be held still by another force must be held still against wind and waves, cannot hold itself still, but that if man is to be free, he should certainly not be carried along by social forces, but that under certain circumstances he must be able to stop and also to oppose the forces that affect him. The opposite of this would have been the result for a real idea of freedom, which is found as a kind of definition of freedom in Woodrow Wilson. And we will find that the vague call for freedom sits in many human souls today, but that what they consciously connect with the impulse of freedom is different from what they unconsciously really strive for. This was already before my soul's eye when I conceived my “Philosophy of Freedom” out of the human spirit in the 1880s. I saw how the question, “Can man be inwardly free or unfree at all?” occupied philosophy and worldviews and religious convictions throughout the entire civilized development of mankind. If man is a being, a natural being, that is driven purely by natural causes, then he is not free. Or does a being live in man that possesses and uses what he is as an external physical being only like an apparatus out of his own innermost impulses? If he were that, then it could be said that he, this man, is a truly free being. Is man free or is he not free? Is he one or the other by virtue of his nature and being? These questions were before me. And anyone within today's scientific community who wants to tackle these questions must, however, give an account of how he deals with the various views that have been expressed here and there in the whole of civilized human development on the question of freedom

Now it seemed to me that the main thing was that the question is usually asked quite wrongly: the question is, “Is man by his own nature and essence a free being or is he not?” It is wrongly formulated. And as a wrongly formulated question, it can never be answered with a simple yes or no. And so you will find that my 'Philosophy of Freedom' is based on putting the whole question on a different footing. However, what I am going to explain now lies more than the foundation under what is presented in my 'Philosophy of Freedom' itself. The way modern man is, in whom the true consciousness of freedom has actually only awakened, is the way this modern man has developed out of earlier states of the human being. Today, far too little consideration is given to the fact that one should seriously and honestly apply the principle of development to humanity. Although it is thought that in the very, very distant past, man was once a kind of ape-like creature; then it is said: It is not yet scientifically time to talk about how today's man has become from this ape-like creature, from this animal-like ape that once climbed around in the trees. One leaves a long, wide desert between the ape-like man and today's man. But even if this is not admitted, essentially one does have the idea that once man has become man, his soul and spirit have not changed particularly radically. I know that this is a debatable statement. But anyone who allows the history of the development of humanity, as it is usually viewed, to take effect on them, will find this statement justified. And anyone who delves more deeply into this history of human development will find that, as man has developed, consciousness of freedom has awakened in him, so that from the depths of human souls the call wells up: First of all, you must be able to act freely out of your own passions, emotions, sensations and feelings; you must live in a social condition in which you can be free. But on the other hand, this call actually exists only as such. Today, there is also no human consciousness that would allow this call to come to its full meaning in man himself. That is to say, man does not find enough of his own being within himself, so that he could say of this within himself: yes, there is something in me that is a free being. In the course of human development, we have advanced to a magnificent development of scientific knowledge, and the last one will be the one who represents the spiritual science meant here, who - as I have often discussed here - would somehow like to deny the magnificent scientific progress or would like to object to the justified scientific views. But the way in which we have developed natural science in modern times means that the human being of modern times, of the last three to four centuries, can actually only understand himself as a physical being. From the depths of the human being, from the human consciousness that is given according to nature, it does not rise at all: you are just as much a real soul, you are just as much a real spirit – as it rises from the depths of the human being: there you have your arm, there you have your hand, they are made of flesh and blood and bone.

This is not just, I would say, a carelessness of worldview. One completely misunderstands what is actually at the root of it if one merely criticizes what I have just said and sees only a carelessness of world view in it, if one merely says: People today are so comfortable that they believe that the human being is only a material being, and that nothing of the soul and spirit is expressed in him. No, my dear audience, with such a criticism one does not get anywhere. One must rather recognize that, as man has developed, he is initially forced to see himself only as a material being if he takes in nothing into his soul but what today's external view of nature and external natural science and the consciousness of the times can offer. In other words, if we allow contemporary culture, which particularly loves time, to be what contemporary culture produces as time, as science, as art, as religious conviction, and also allows it to influence schools, if we allow this to influence today's man to such an extent that he is permeated by it, then, if he is honest, he will have to become a materialist. That is a harsh word. But I believe it is a true word. Today, in a certain respect, one can be dishonest, can say out of some prejudice: “I do believe in spirit and soul.” Then one is not serious about what has actually been produced by the consciousness of the times and by scientific convictions. And if you take these convictions seriously, there is no other option than for man to feel like a material being. He once developed in such a way that if he merely abandons himself to the conditions of life he has created for himself today, he can only come to believe that he is a physical being. A physical being, no more than any other natural being, can be a free being. Therefore, one can say: If the present consciousness is taken seriously, then nowhere does something like the impulse of freedom arise from this present consciousness. One can sound the call for freedom out of subconscious instincts, as Woodrow Wilson does. But if you become absorbed in the time consciousness of the present, you will arrive at false concepts of freedom, at a definition of freedom that says nothing about freedom and a free being, as Woodrow Wilson does. You have to have the courage to step outside of this time consciousness, which has taken hold of the widest circles, which has become popular. And one can say that, especially at the time when I wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom,” one could feel quite alone within contemporary culture with such ideas, no matter where one lived on earth. One can understand that Woodrow Wilson's particular views grew out of America's young life in terms of world history. And when I look at my “Philosophy of Freedom” today - I may also speak frankly about it - I know how justified those criticisms are that may strike today's reader of this “Philosophy of Freedom”. I know very well that if anyone reads the first thirty or forty pages of this book today, they will say: Well, this clearly bears the eggshells of German philosophy, professorial concepts, university concepts, school concepts.

Nevertheless, I have to stick to the form of this book and appeal to the present in such a way that I say: Just as one should not take the essence of man from his clothing, so one should not take my philosophy from its clothing in concepts, which had to serve as such a clothing for it for reasons of time and education, for reasons of the intellectual life within which this philosophy originated. Rather, something else seems important to me, which, I would say, has symbolically confronted me during the elaboration of my “Philosophy of Freedom”. At that time, while working on this philosophy, I was also working at the Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar. For some time, an American scholar worked with me there. He was preparing a literary-historical treatise on Goethe's “Faust”. It was very interesting to talk with him, and anyone who can see reality in symptoms had American intellectual life in the midst of Central European intellectual life, so to speak, in the form of the excellent American literary historian Calvin Thomas. But you see, I felt as if I were working in a typical Central European office in the Weimar Goethe and Schiller Archive, with all kinds of scholars, including American scholars. I could only use my leisure time to work on my “Philosophy of Freedom” after office hours. But I often had to ask myself: How close is what is in Calvin Thomas's mind American knowledge, American insight, to what European scholars are writing on the same subject, and how alone one is in the face of this cultural formation, in the face of the whole world, with what can be conceived as a real idea of freedom from an independent intellectual life. To a certain extent, one also felt isolated when it came to what could be derived from the young sense of freedom in America, in terms of world history, in terms of an idea about the impulse of freedom. And at that time it was important to me to put the whole question of freedom, as I said, on a different footing. I had to say to myself: the way man is, if he leaves himself to himself, if he only takes what can first fill his soul out of the consciousness of the time, then he cannot know himself as a free being. Therefore, I put the question differently. And this other way of posing the question permeates what I recognize as the idea of freedom. I cannot ask: Is man free or is he not free? but rather: Can man, in the depths of his soul, after he has gone through what arises from himself, as it were, from nature and from his being, continue to develop his soul by taking his soul's development into his own hands, and can he then awaken something in him that is dormant in such a way that this actually deeper being in him comes into its own, so that only through this awakening of a second man in him does he become a free being? Can man educate himself to freedom, or cannot he? Can man become a free being or not? How does he become a free being? That was the new question that had to be raised.

But this pointed out that the present-day human being, if he wants to come at all to the consciousness of the full human being, must not stop at what arises of its own accord in the human being in his development, but that he must take his development into his own hands. Admittedly, this is a point of view that is highly inconvenient for a great many people today. For in order to make it plausible, one must say the following to people: Take a look at a five-year-old child. Let us imagine that this five-year-old child is standing in front of a volume of Goethe's lyrical poems. This five-year-old child standing in front of the volume of Goethe's lyric poems will do something with this volume of lyric poems; he will tear it up, perhaps bite it, or something else, but one cannot assume that this five-year-old child will do the right thing with the volume of Goethe's lyric poems. But the child can develop, the child can be educated so that later he will learn to do the right thing with this volume of Goethe's lyric poems. Now, what would it be like if we were to say to people today: Just surrender to what time consciousness itself gives you, and then you will relate to the actual secrets of nature, to the actual secrets of the world around you, as the five-year-old child relates to Goethe's lyrisches Band. It has the whole of Goethe's Iyrisches Band before it like a fully understanding human being, but of course it does not penetrate into that which one can penetrate into as a fully understanding human being. It must first be educated. Now the call for freedom actually presupposes that the human being has the great intellectual modesty to say to himself: perhaps I stand before nature, before the essence of the world, as the five-year-old child stands before the first volume of Goethe's lyrische Gedichte. I must first take the development of my soul into my own hands, and then, just as Goethe's volume of lyric poetry will mean something completely different to a five-year-old child after five or seven years, so the world will mean something completely different to me. While before, when I just leave myself to what comes naturally, I am a fettered being, a different person awakens in me when I take my development into my own hands. And as this other man glows through me, warms me, permeates me, I become a free being.

Yes, that was the foundation of a human conception of freedom in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” and it was not intended merely as a philosophical truth, but to show that through what man awakens in himself by advancing himself – as if he only achieves what is given to him of its own accord – by developing himself in this way, he develops, as it were, a previously dormant, hidden reality within himself. He creates something in himself that brings him to freedom. As long as one theorizes, as long as one thinks up abstract ideas, these will be a matter for the human mind. They will not particularly take hold of the whole person. Anyone who has dealt with such things could actually know how shadowy the most beautiful, the most ideal abstract ideas live in people. It is different when not abstract ideas but life itself is to be awakened in the human being, when the human being is to go through something vividly, through which something awakens in him that was not there before. This is something alive that takes hold of the whole human being, that is not just a matter of the head, that is a matter of the soul and spirit of the whole human being. Here all feelings and impulses, the whole human life of will, are brought together; freedom becomes a real force in the human being, freedom becomes something that is experienced. But then, when it becomes something experienced, then the human being also wants to develop it in the external life together, then, by living with other people, he comes from his experience of freedom to an idea of such a social structure of human life together, in which only can be realized.

Therefore, in the second part of my philosophy, I tried to establish a moral teaching for people, to establish a social outlook that, I would say, must then naturally arise from the awakened sense of freedom. If we take the impulse of freedom as something that is vividly grasped in the deepest essence of man, then freedom is not an abstract idea, then the philosophy of freedom is not a mere philosophy, then what is expressed by such a view of freedom is something that merges into all of man's actions, into all of man's objectives. Then it contains something that others long for when they speak of freedom, but that can only be found by those who, if they want to understand freedom, do not stop at the world views of the present, but ascend to what lies dormant in man and can be awakened. What I would call a language of freedom that can be spoken to humanity in such a way that it is intimately connected with the cultural conditions of the present and future human being, still needed another thing in its further development.

And here is the reason why we had to move on from the foundation of a philosophy of freedom to anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Take one of the main books of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. There you will find a detailed description of the paths that a person must take inwardly, in soul and spirit, in order to awaken in him the consciousness of the other person, of the truly free person. There you will find how it is possible for a person to truly come to such an understanding of his own being that the true form of thinking and also of willing appears before his soul. And here I may refer to something I already mentioned in one of the last lectures I gave here: thinking and willing becomes something different for the human being than it is for ordinary consciousness, which, as described in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds', penetrates the human being. By thinking one learns to recognize how the being, which one then grasps as the higher human being, was already there before man entered into physical existence through birth or conception. By thinking one learns to recognize the true form of the human will, how man carries his nature through the gate of death into the spiritual world. One learns to recognize by truly rising, by developing to the truer essence of man, to the eternal in man.

But this only properly sketches out the paths that lead people to, I would like to say, regard the “Philosophy of Freedom” as something self-evident; the paths to finding the truly free human being. But at the same time, this serves the deeper cultural conditions of the present and the future, which express themselves precisely in such calls for freedom as I characterized in the introduction to my lecture today.

What does a human being need when he feels intensely about a dignified existence, what does a human being need for the content of his innermost human consciousness? What I want to say here can perhaps be best illustrated by referring you back to the starting point of spiritual human culture in the last three to four centuries. For it was a great thing when, at the dawn of the newer development of humanity, minds such as Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno and so on appeared. What did they do, basically? They broke with the knowledge and worldviews of the old days and directed human attention to the unbiased observation of the external world. They wanted to dispel prejudices. They wanted to make clear what man can gain by observing the external world. But little by little something else has occurred, something that I have already partially characterized. What has occurred is that an old awareness of what man is in his innermost being has been destroyed by more recent observation. If today, in accordance with our newer natural science, we look at the starry sky, what is this starry sky? Something that we want to understand through mathematics and mechanics, something that we only feel related to – this abstract product of our minds, mathematics and mechanics. And if we compare this with the consciousness that people in older times had when they looked up at the starry sky, He did not have the abstract scientific consciousness: up there the stars revolve according to mathematical-mechanical laws, but you, earthworm, stand here on this earth, are born with birth and perish with death, and that which you are has nothing to do with the course of the stars. If we go back to the earlier stages of human consciousness, we find that this earlier human consciousness held the view that you, human being, as you stand here on this earth, you are not merely attached to this earth; that which lives and works in you is connected with that which circles up there in the stars. And when you perfect your knowledge, when you become aware of yourself as a complete human being, then you know yourself as being related to the animals and plants and stones of the earth, and thus to the entire cosmic space of the stars. We have paid for what we have learned mathematically and mechanically about the stars by cutting ourselves off from the cosmos, from the world. If one now walks the path to higher knowledge in the way I have described, and comes to recognize that human being that did not begin with birth or conception, but that was there in spiritual worlds before birth and conception, and that also lives in us now and which penetrates through the portal of death into the spiritual world, then one does indeed learn anew, with this human being, only in a new form, not in an old, worn-out form, one's kinship with the whole cosmos; then the human being is again imbued with world consciousness. His mere earthly consciousness is transformed into world consciousness. But then man has something that he needs precisely as a cultural condition of the spirit in the present and for the future. Humanity could never experience the moment without the deepest damage to its essence, where reference would be made to new external observations, and the old spiritual life would gradually be extinguished. Man needs faith, the reference to the realization of a permanent, that can withstand, as well as the outer observation of the world expands.

Thus it is anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that shows man himself in such a way that he can in turn tie his world consciousness to the whole cosmos, that he in turn knows himself in connection with the world spirit. This is not just a theoretical idea, but something that comes to life in the whole human being, and what makes him, this human being, a different being. In the present and in the future, there will be much speculation about what social institutions are needed so that people can find a dignified existence within them. In recent times, people have even deluded themselves into believing that such institutions can be invented. We shall only arrive at institutions that give man a dignified existence when man is able to create such institutions from his deepest spiritual and soul life. But for that we do not need to dream of a transformation of the external social conditions; for that we need to seriously tackle a new spiritual culture, to awaken that which slumbers and sleeps in the human soul, and which must first be awakened so that man may know of himself that he is a free being. Today we completely overlook the deep rift in our spiritual culture. For many centuries, certain social powers have ensured that external science does not speak of the spiritual and the soul. That should be the concern of dogmatism. One was to experience it through mere belief, to let mere authorities dictate what one should think about spirit and soul; because certain social powers claimed a monopoly on dictating what should be recognized about spirit and soul, science was pushed aside to the merely material. It makes a very peculiar impression on the one who looks deeper into the development of humanity when he hears today how official science believes that it is pursuing the truths without prejudice and that through this unprejudiced pursuit of the truths it will find something that is today called science and that basically only wants to deal with sensual facts. In truth, it has become a developmental process, in truth, it is human research that has capitulated to the monopoly of certain social circles that alone wanted to deal with what people have to think about spirit and soul. A science such as I have characterized, such as leads to freedom, it leads at the same time to man not only being able to investigate the physical, his bodily nature, it leads to man also learning to investigate the spiritual and the soul. And when he learns to investigate the spiritual and the soul, he absorbs stronger, more realistic concepts than those he absorbs when he has to limit himself to mere external material. And so they have tried to allow only that into social thinking which arises out of the present-day consciousness. And from this point of view they believe that human ideas cannot actually penetrate into social conditions, or they fashion for themselves most perverted social ideas. In my book Von Seelenrätseln (Riddles of the Soul) — one of the last that I wrote and which, like the others, is only a continuation of what you will find in my book The Philosophy of Freedom — in this book Von Seelenrätseln, I have shown how truly anthroposophically oriented spiritual science not only capable of speaking abstractly about all kinds of spiritual and psychological phenomena, but that by grasping the reality of the spirit it is at the same time able to comprehend the human being, which is body, soul and spirit, in its wholeness. And so, for example, in these “Puzzles of the Soul” I was able to point out how it is a great error in present-day scientific physiology to speak of the fact that man has sensitive nerves that go from the sensory organ to the central organ, while the motor nerves go from the central organ to the muscles. An abstract science that speaks only abstractly of spirit and soul will never dare, and will never find the method, to say anything about the senses that cannot be proven merely by the senses. One can prove by stating that there is only one kind of nerve, that there is no difference between sensitive and motor nerves, that such phenomena as tabes dorsalis, which are cited in support of the opinion that motor nerves exist, actually prove the opposite proves the opposite of what is believed to be proven by them.

Thus, in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, something is created that in turn penetrates all of nature, that has enough impact to penetrate all of nature. But this also allows this spiritual science to penetrate into that which must be of particular interest to contemporary culture. This spiritual science is allowed to penetrate into the structure of social life. And it is only through those experiences that people have with the higher human being that truly social concepts can be gained. That is why we live in such a confusing time today, why we live in such confusion and such chaos today, because people who deal with the solutions of various social issues are not able to dig deep enough into the human being itself to find the ideas that can truly govern social life. And so we are at a loss when faced with the most pressing and burning questions of the present day, and we are left standing before these most searing and burning questions in such a way that no answer comes from the depths of human nature as an echo.

We have seen how great transformations have taken place in the course of human history. Or was not one of the greatest transformations that have taken place in the course of human development that through which Christianity arose? Christianity, which has given the evolution of the earth its true meaning, has emerged through a mighty transformation. It left many things behind. Not all people recognized the truths of Christianity; but on the whole, Christianity was the one thing that worked transformatively in the old cultural element, and basically brought forth the whole of European civilization with its American civilization appendix. Later, something like the French Revolution was experienced. While Christianity was a purely spiritual transformation and has achieved its goal to the greatest extent, it can be said of the French Revolution, which was a political one, that it has achieved some of its political goals, but that important and essential things have been left behind, which have not been achieved of the goals that were set. And now in our time we are experiencing the longing of many people for a new transformation, for new revolutions. And we already see these revolutions at work in many ways. Mankind has had sad experiences. If it wants to be unbiased enough, it should also recognize this in proletarian circles. Mankind has had sad experiences with the extreme social revolutions in Eastern Europe, in Hungary, and a great lesson of world history should be the failure of these social revolutions. And an even greater lesson could be learned if people are at all capable of learning from world-historical events, namely the sad fate of the German revolution of November 9, 1918, a revolution that fizzled out. And if we take a comprehensive view of all that follows from such facts, from the failed revolutions in Hungary and Eastern Europe, from the sadly abortive German Revolution, then we see: spiritual transformations, such as those brought about by Christianity, can take place in the course of the development of humanity; political revolutions, such as the French Revolution, only in part; economic revolutions, such as are being attempted now, are doomed to failure, can only destroy, can bring forth nothing new, if they do not transform themselves into spiritual impulses for progress. One of the most important and essential cultural conditions of the present time is that, out of the correctly grasped impulses of freedom, people come to realize that all the questions that are being addressed today must be considered in the context of the whole spiritual development of humanity, with a renewal of the human spiritual life. And mankind must realize this clearly before the sad and terrible lesson of necessity can occur, which would occur if what is happening to the downfall of human culture in the east of Europe, what has happened in Hungary under such sad circumstances, what is happening in Germany, if what is happening in the way it is grasped by those , who have no conception of the real impulse of the spirit, takes its course, which is now regarded by many as appropriate for the times.

Even what is done economically is only done correctly out of the human spirit, and we live in an age where the old concepts no longer suffice, where we must find new concepts that can create a new economic culture for the present and for the future. Woodrow Wilson is right when he says: We have new economic conditions, people could not shut themselves out from the new economic institutions; but we think about this economic life with the old legal concepts, with the old traditional spiritual ideas. But then, nothing will sprout from that which is rooted in the soul that could now master the new economic life.

What is sought here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science in what is communicated here, will on the one hand reach up to the highest heights of human spiritual and soul life, but on the other hand will also be strong enough to reach down to where the most everyday aspects of life need to be grasped. What is the situation today? Intellectual life has gradually taken on a very abstract character. Think about how the religious, aesthetic, artistic, and ideological convictions of, say, a merchant or an industrialist or a civil servant are formed. This is a matter for himself, which he experiences in his soul. It has nothing to do with the account book or with what he does in his office. In the realm where he generates his spiritual ideas, the ideas and impulses that are then expressed in his account book are not created at the same time. At most, it says “With God”; but that is also all that connects the activity that is expressed there with what he carries through the world as an abstract spiritual and soul life. But that is why it was said when people with good social ideas arose in modern times, such as Saint-Simon, Blanc, Fourier: These are good moral ideas, but good ideas alone will not transform social conditions. This can be heard everywhere today where the socialist point of view is discussed. And they are right. With such social ideas as Saint-Simon, Blanc, Fourier and so on had, you do not transform social life, because they arose from the consciousness of people that, when you think and reflect on the spiritual, this spiritual is a thing in itself, that should not grasp the world at the same time. In the end, all spiritual life has become abstract. On the one hand, man takes the upward surge religiously or artistically or ideologically to spiritual heights, if he takes it at all. On the other hand, he abandons himself, I might say, to the hazards of life; in natural science, by working in laboratories, in the observatory and the like, and what he brings out of it, whether in the social or in the scientific field, has no connection with the abstract spiritual life. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to pour out a unity of spiritual and material life over all of human civilization. And from that which is developed in the human being, through beholding the higher human being within himself, ascending to the eternal, the possibility should follow of grasping that which lies beyond birth and death for the human being, but at the same time to make the ideas so strong that they can intervene in everyday life. For it is not the person who speaks of the spirit who is serious and true about the spirit, but the person who is serious and true about the spirit who pursues the spirit to its last involvement in material existence, for whom nothing at all remains of spiritless matter even in the practical conception of life. That is what could be called the cultural conditions of the present and the future, that such spiritual and mental consciousness should be in people.

Then people who are imbued with such consciousness will also create social and political conditions that are desired by people like Woodrow Wilson. Today, however, the situation is such that people only criticize, that productive ideas are not yet there, because they do not want to descend to the spirit or want to ascend. Today we see how, starting from America – we have given the example of Woodrow Wilson himself, certainly a decisive personality – how, starting from America, there is criticism of contemporary social life, and the call for freedom is heard. But one does not want to decide to properly ascend to the real impulse of freedom. And we have seen how truly beautiful, ingenious ideas about freedom and social conditions have emerged in Europe. But it is characteristic of us in European civilization that we are incapable of bringing down from the abstractions, from the philosophical heights, what we conceive and feel so beautifully and introducing it into direct life. And we still do not understand it when there is talk of such an introduction of real, not merely imagined ideas into political life. And when we look across to Asia, we are confronted with a different civilization that criticizes the social and freedom life of the present just as aptly as America and Europe. One only has to read the beautiful arguments of Rabindranath Tagore to see how far the one who stands at the forefront of Asian culture can go in criticism. He does not achieve this in the productive sphere because he is not able to say to himself: if we are to speak of spiritual life again, we must strive for something new. He wants to preserve an old spiritual life, but only to be effective in it.

Now, unfortunately, we have seen in Europe that people have finally lost the direct connection between what they strive for in spirit and what everyday life, so that we now see numerous societies engaged in shaping Europe according to purely external economic aspects and trying to satisfy the needs of the soul, since the Christian religion no longer satisfies one in Europe, from Asia, through all sorts of theories and so on. Such relationships are not suitable for bringing about a new spiritual life; they are the last decadent shadows of an old one.

What is meant here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science takes all this into account. It is pretty much the opposite of what is said about it. And the building in Dornach, which is so often said to be symbolic, does not have a single symbol. Rather, it is said to be built, I would say, purely naturally, in such a way that it is envisaged that one day this and that will be , just as one learns to recognize the nut within its shell, and when one looks at the shell around the nut, one finds that it is naturally shaped to fit the nut. In the same way, we wanted to create a new shell for a new spiritual life, in architectural, artistic and pictorial terms. The building was not constructed out of abstract ideas or out of a complicated aesthetic view. I have often used a rather trivial comparison to try to express what I actually mean by this Dornach building. I am sure many of you know that in Germany, Austria or here, certain cakes are called Gugelhupf, and then the form in which the Gugelhupf is baked is called the Gugelhupf pan. Now, I said, if we imagine that what is to be done in this building is a Gugelhupf, a cake, then, if the cake is to be right, the Gugelhupf pan must be right. In the same way, the spiritual life that is to be cultivated there must have the right shell, just as the nut in the nut shell has the right shell. Except for this basic principle of the building, everything is still fundamentally misunderstood in wide circles today.

Now, as in other numerous lectures that I have already given here at the same place, I wanted to point out once again how the things that are really involved in the Dornach building and what is to be done in it for the civilized development of humanity, in contrast to the numerous misunderstandings that arise, that must arise very naturally. Perhaps it is possible to see from the few suggestions I have been able to make, but which are intimately connected with the most important human longings for the renewal of culture in the present and for the future, what is meant and wanted by this building and its purpose. When the call for freedom rings out from America, as I characterized it with Woodrow Wilson: the goal is to find humanity, a dignified existence, through a spiritual and soulful understanding that can meet this call as its realization, as the right answer to the question that is being asked. Some people today still avoid it. Out of dark, vague feelings, demands are made. The answers must be given out of a clear spiritual insight. I have to think how right Woodrow Wilson is in a certain respect when he points out that secret consortia should not decide on the affairs of the people, of humanity. Woodrow Wilson wants decisions to be made in every family home, be it in the country or in the city, but he wants people to come together in the schoolhouse in particular. It is a beautiful idea that the place of nurturing the spirit should be the place of origin for the formation of contemporary ideas. And it is a beautiful saying of Woodrow Wilson's when he says: Our goal is the reality of freedom. We want to work towards preventing private capital accumulation by law and to make the system by which private capital accumulation was created legally impossible. And another very nice saying is: Inside the country, on the farms, in the shops, in the villages, in the apartments of the big city, in the school buildings, everywhere where people meet and are true to each other , that is where the streams and rivers rise from their source, to form the mighty force of that stream that carries and drives all human endeavors on its journey to the great common sea of humanity. It is a fine idea to call people together in such a way that the stream can form from all the individual sources for the liberation of humanity, and it is a fine idea to let the goals that are to carry humanity forward be set precisely in the places where the spirit is cultivated, in the school buildings.

But if you take what I have tried to explain today, then perhaps Woodrow Wilson's call for schoolhouses will have to be different after all. For I believe that only when a cultural life is cultivated in these school buildings, permeated by a realistic, humane understanding of the free human spirit and the human soul, only then will the right current of human freedom come from the school building. Until we can implant in the human soul a correct understanding of freedom, we may gather in schools, but they will hardly find realistic goals there either. These will only be found when we have the courage to bring into the schools a spiritual, realistic worldview, an artistic outlook, and a religious confession. For what will come out of the schools for the future of humanity will be more important than what people in general decide on the basis of what they have learned at school.

If you travel from here to Basel, take the electric train to Aeschenplatz and then the route to Dornach, you will find there on the neighboring hill a building that is not yet completed but already shows the intentions associated with it, even in its exterior. This building, which is called a free university for spiritual science, is intended to represent externally represent that which is striven for by this spiritual movement, which calls itself: an anthroposophically oriented spiritual-scientific movement.

Now that the building has visibly manifested the existence of such a movement, one can already hear and read many things about the foundations of this spiritual cultural movement. Of course, there are still exceptions to be found, but in general, there are accurate descriptions of these endeavors. On the whole, however, it may still be said today that what is said or written about it in public is quite the opposite of what this movement is really striving for. It is very often described as an unscientific, obscure, and, in the worst sense, mystical movement. It is very often described as if it wanted to oppose this or that, societies, creeds, and the like. In truth, this movement and this Dornach building, the Goetheanum, through which it is represented, wants to serve those longings, those goals, which today often live so unconsciously in the human soul, in the human soul of the broadest masses, which in many respects have not yet found the form to express themselves, but which are connected with all that which should lead present and future humanity out of the cultural chaos, which can be perceived by anyone who is unbiased, and from which everyone who is unbiased must extricate themselves in the present.

If one is to indicate from historical phenomena where, I would say, the main nerve of this movement lies, then perhaps to something that seems quite remote from today's man, that also seems to belong to quite abstract regions of thought and imagination, but which only needs to be developed for the most general and broadest human interests in order to lead us to the very thing that today's culture needs for its renewal, for its rebirth. I would like to point out what Goethe strove for, based on the full breadth and depth of his world view, which is still far from being sufficiently appreciated today. I would like to point out what he strove for as an insight into the living world in contrast to the dead, inanimate, inorganic world.

What Goethe strove for in terms of knowledge was closely connected with his entire spiritual striving, and he drew the best that his world view contains from the contemplation of art, but he extended what he had gained from the contemplation of art to actual scientific knowledge, as he had to view it in the sense of the breadth and scope of his world view. Goethe allowed himself to be influenced, admittedly with regard to the plant world, which was so dear to him, and his contemplation of it, everything that could be available to him in relation to the plant world from the science of his time; but it can be said that nothing that he could find in the science of his time was sufficient to explain the essence of the secrets of this plant world. And so, out of the originality of his nature, he himself turned his comprehensive gaze over the whole plant world, as far as it was accessible to him, over all its forms, and sought a unity out of the diversity, out of the variety of plants. He sought that out of the variety of the plant which he called his primal plant. When you hear the definition of what he meant by his idea, it may seem abstract, but it is not. By his original plant, Goethe meant a unified image, of which every plant, whatever external form it may take, is an image, a unified, ideal, spiritual entity with which one can traverse the plant world and which is revealed, so to speak, in every single plant.

“Such a primal plant - as Goethe wrote from Italy to his friends in Weimar - such a unitary plant, which can only be created in the mind and is nowhere to be seen in the external world, must surely exist - so he said, seemingly abstractly. How else could one know that a single is a plant?

But it matters little what his abstract opinion of these things was. What matters more is that he had the faith, the profound and coherent belief in the essence of things, which is expressed in the following words. He said and wrote about this archetypal plant: “If you have grasped it in spirit, then it must be possible not only to compare and recognize with it the plant forms that are out there in the world, but it must be possible to inwardly and spiritually devise plant forms yourself that, even if they do not exist, could exist.”

This is a weighty and momentous saying. For what does a man, a man of insight, who wishes to grasp such a spiritual idea want? He wants nothing less than to evoke in his soul a thought that can lead him, I might say, to use his own expression, to invent an external reality that can then take shape. He wants to become so inwardly related to what grows in plants, to what grows in living things in general, that he has in his own spirit, in his own thinking, in his own imagination, what is revealed outwardly in growth as power. He wants to immerse himself inwardly with his whole being in the outer world. This striving is much more significant than what Goethe achieved with it in detail. As I said, if we characterize it only in relation to the plant world, which may interest some but not others, and if we characterize it only in relation to the plant world, which Goethe wanted, it may seem abstract to some. But in this kind of spiritual endeavour there is something that can be extended to the whole extent of human knowledge, of the human view of the world.

Then one rises from the contemplation of the individual, insignificant living creature to that of the whole human being, the human being who not only contains, when one ascends to his wholeness, that which today's external natural science observes, which in many ways the materialistic sense of the time regards as the only thing about man, but which encompasses body, soul and spirit.

Goethe started from natural science. What is called anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, on the one hand, starts from Goethe, in that it seeks to develop the kind of world view that processes and allows to be revealed in the spirit that which is as intimately related to reality as Goethe's idea of the Primordial Plant is intimately related to the individual plant; on the other hand, this spiritual movement is in complete harmony with the true scientific attitude of our time, not with some obscure mysticism. And it is in complete harmony with a genuine, honest and contemporary religious endeavor of the human spirit in modern times. In past years, I have often spoken in this place of the fact that anthroposophy, the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, by no means underestimates the importance of this natural science, with its enormous influence on modern culture. Indeed, it appreciates this natural science much better than many of those who want to stand on the ground of this natural science. Anyone who has not just adopted the popular prejudices about science and believes that they are a true scientist, but who has consciously immersed themselves in what science can achieve for the overall education of the human soul and mind, must say: if science, as it has developed over the past three to four centuries, but particularly in the course of the second half of the 19th century, would fully grasp itself in its own essence, would those who pursue it fully understand their own nature, then this natural science would already proclaim today of its own accord what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to proclaim. This natural science would speak of itself as human soul and human spirit, of that which is of eternal value in the human being.

Why does not natural science do this, although it so conscientiously, with such penetrating methods, penetrates into the outer sensual reality of nature? Why does not this natural science, on the other hand, rise in the same way as Goethe did for the plant world, to such an inner processing of the idea of nature that one becomes one with creative nature itself in one's inner being?

To answer this question, one must look back a little on the historical development of humanity in modern times. In natural science itself, great and powerful progress has been made. We need only go back to the work of Copernicus and Galileo, to see how much our understanding of nature has developed up to the present day. But at the same time, we must consider how little this scientific work was actually completely free in terms of its entire rule, in terms of its entire work within the intellectual life of modern civilization. It was not, because not a unified world view emerged in the course of the more recent development of humanity, which, in addition to free, independent natural science, also tried to penetrate into the nature of the external sense world. In the external sense world there were monopolies, monopolies for the knowledge of soul and spirit. The religious world views continued to retain certain ideas about soul and spirit. And they managed to get the public to admit, more or less voluntarily, that only they had anything to say about the human soul, about the human spirit.

Natural scientists, like other people, were influenced by what I would call a monopoly on knowledge about soul and spirit. And they limited themselves, because they did not dare to ascend from the knowledge of the world to the knowledge of the soul world, to the world of the spirit; they limited themselves to saying: Yes, natural science has its limits; it must limit itself to the sense world alone. A mind such as Goethe's, which was certainly imbued with a reverent religious impulse throughout his life, sensing a divine element in all of nature and in the whole world, always felt the necessity to shape his view of the physical, the , the soul and the spiritual.

But we must consider the situation of natural science, which is to some extent under the influence of the monopoly of knowledge just mentioned. We must consider what natural science can give to man through its own efforts. Then one will understand such a unified striving for knowledge and spirit as was present in Goethe. Those who do not allow themselves to be oppressed, I would say, by the commandment, 'Thou shalt not know soul and spirit', will undergo a spiritual education precisely through the way in which the modern spirit tries to penetrate the secrets of natural science. And this education then gives the stimulus to continue the development of the human spirit to higher levels of development than those that one simply has by being born a human being.

But to understand such stages of development, one needs a certain intellectual modesty. This intellectual modesty is very necessary for the present human being. This intellectual modesty must lead the present human being to say to himself: You are not only a being that may have developed from lower organisms in the process of the evolution of the world order to its present perfection, but you are a being that can develop itself further, has developed itself further in this life; so that the forces that you received at birth can experience a higher and ever higher education.

You see, you have to be able to say the following. You have to be able to look impartially at a five-year-old child holding a volume of Goethe's lyric poems. This five-year-old child will truly not be able to do much with Goethe's volume of lyric poems, at least not what the adult human being knows how to do with Goethe's volume of lyric poems. It will perhaps tear the volume apart or do something else with it. It must first grow up, then it will treat the volume of Goethe's lyric poems in the right way. Its development must be taken into account. For although as a five-year-old child everything contained in the volume of lyric poems is before the eyes of this human being, the possibility does not yet exist for this human being to draw out of this volume of lyric poems everything that could be in it for him. Thus the human being of the present must learn to feel his way in relation to the whole expanse of nature and the world. He must be able to say to himself with intellectual modesty: You stand before nature in such a way that, owing to your present development, it cannot give you what it truly contains within itself; one must be able to assume the possibility of taking one's development into one's own hands, so that, by attaining a higher level of development attain a higher level of development than that which one simply acquires by birth, by then being able to treat what one always has before one, what one believes to recognize - like the five-year-old child who does not yet know what to do with it - in such a way that it reveals to one all the secrets it holds. The very effort that one makes when applying the scientific method today, when applying it intensively, the depth that one penetrates, can lead one to feel that, out of the effort of the spirit, a power is awakened that enables one to undergo such a development. It is truly not due to modern natural science that people are so reluctant to admit that man can undergo development! No, it is due to the pressure that I have just characterized, and which one must only look at without prejudice in order to be able to devote oneself freely to what lies in the scientific treatment of the world itself. Then one will feel that the soul is inwardly awakened precisely by looking at nature in the modern sense, that forces arise in it that were not there before. As a rule, it is precisely today's scientists who do not bring themselves to awaken these forces. But if they could bring themselves to do so, they would be in a position to proclaim what is sought in the problem of the immortality of the soul, the eternity of the human spirit. Scientific thinking and a scientific attitude can lead to an inner awakening of the human spirit. And this can then be continued and systematically developed.

How this is possible, I have often outlined from this place and described in detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” and in the second part of my “Occult Science”. One can continue in full self-education that which one notices developing through modern scientific knowledge. One can apply to the spirit that which is called meditation, concentration of thought-life, of feeling, of will. One can develop that inner world of ideas to such an extent, or at least the ideas that one applies by observing stars, by working in a chemical-physical laboratory, by observing plants or people or animals externally; one can further develop the inner spiritual power that you apply by devoting your thoughts to such an extent that you only want to live in these thoughts until at least the thought leads the soul to grasp inner connections. You cannot grasp them if you do not allow your soul to develop such inner self-culture. It is possible to awaken an inner soul culture. You can indeed achieve such an awakening so that your ordinary life, which you live out in ordinary science, seems like a sleep from which you awaken. And from this awakening one can observe anew what surrounds one as the world.

That is one thing that the modern human being can undergo. If he applies natural science in the right, I would say Goethean way, he will come to a religious realization, to a real spiritual realization.

But also from the life of the modern human being itself emerges that leads to such a path and, I would say, to a corresponding goal for the future.

Those who look at history superficially, as it is usually presented superficially today, do not have the real history in front of them. One must look more inwardly at the historical life of men. One must be able to compare, for example, how a person in the 9th or 10th century AD was in his entire state of mind, and how a person of the present day is, even if he is a person living in the simplest, most primitive way; for even the simplest person today differs quite significantly from the person of the 9th or 10th century AD. I do not want to go back any further. People are definitely in a state of development. Today, we have to take the word “development” not only in the limited sense in which natural science usually takes it. It must be possible to use it in a much broader sense if one wants to penetrate into the essence of human development.

It must be possible to say that a number of centuries ago, that is, in the centuries I have just mentioned, people were much closer to each other within certain associations. Before this relatively short time, a person was connected to his neighbor through blood or tribal ties. This closeness, which brought people together into associations relatively recently, no longer exists in modern times. If you are unbiased, you can see this everywhere. Modern man is much more closed in on himself; I would go so far as to say that modern man has become much more of a loner in his soul. People in older times did not pass each other by as people in newer times do. People in newer times have become more estranged from each other. But I would like to say that something else arises from a spiritual conscience than arose for people centuries ago. It arises - again one can see it if one looks into one's own soul without prejudice and has a sense for such things, again one can perceive something like an inner voice - it arises as something like an inner obligation: You should now, since you no longer feel close enough to those immediately closest to you through blood or tribal ties, be able to come close to them through your soul development. You should take up his will in a real human love within you. You should not pass him by so that you can live socially with him, but you should be able to take up his will into yours, to make his thoughts your thoughts. You should be able to think, feel and want with his inner soul state in your inner soul state. You should be able to approach him spiritually and soulfully.

Just as engaging with natural science represents a kind of awakening for the soul, a kind of waking up in the ordinary consciousness that one otherwise has in everyday life and in ordinary science, if one only looks at ordinary science correctly, then this ordinary science gives, I would say, inner social duties that awaken more and more in man. It represents something that can be described in contrast to this awakening – I will have to express it somewhat paradoxically now, but some of the truths that must be incorporated into cultural life today must still sound paradoxical – it can be described as a feeling that overcomes us when we feel inwardly: we must be close to our neighbor in spirit and soul, we must live in his will, his thoughts; it is something that feels like losing ourselves in people. This losing of self in our neighbor in his spiritual and soul life, this devotion to our neighbor, is actually the basis of the much caricatured process of social feeling in the present.

And if one says: natural science can awaken us - this feeling, I would like to say, brings about the opposite state of mind, a strange state of mind, if one can only understand it. But just as little as one becomes aware of the awakening from the natural scientific method, just as little does one become aware of this feeling of empathy for one's neighbor. But modern man will be increasingly seized by it. Then, in contrast to the awakening through science, they will feel this like falling asleep, like resting in the surroundings, like the transition of one's own soul into the soul of the other. And just as the mysterious life of a dream awakens, full of life, out of natural sleep, so can awakening come out of this devotion to what is humanly and soulfully alive, which will increasingly take hold of modern humanity more and more as a duty of conscience. It is a kind of sleep in the human environment; but out of it rises something like a dream from natural sleep. And this dream from natural sleep can be compared to what will emerge more and more from the real, not the caricatured social feeling.

This dream will give rise to that which tells the human being: See, by immersing yourself in the will that is developing alongside your will, by becoming one with the thought that develops alongside your thoughts, you know how you are inwardly connected to this person.

Just as Goethe sensed something that was given to him through his idea of the primal plant, which he had to describe as a way of living into the whole power of the plant world itself, so one lives into the living environment of the human world, precisely through the most modern feeling. And again, something awakens in you from this living into the human world, which now arises like a new realization precisely from social life. You feel connected with the being of the other person. You feel as if something in you, as if a dream, is speaking through the being of the other person, bearing witness to you: you were already connected with this person in times gone by.

From this real experience, from this genuinely modern experience, what has already grown for individual favored spirits, such as Lessing, will grow for newer humanity as a real experience, as a real experience. If you want to be pedantic, even if it is in a higher sense, you can say: Lessing, such a person was certainly great, but in his old age, when he was already half demented, he wrote his 'Education of the Human Race' and came up with the crazy idea that humanity lives in repeated lives on earth. But for those who are not pedants but who can really penetrate the development of a man like Lessing, it is quite clear that such a man was only the forerunner for all those who will come to know this peculiarity, this mighty experience, which will arise out of the rightly understood social feeling, will arise out of it, full of life, like a dream; but it will be a dream full of life, not just like dreaming, the having been connected with people whom one meets again in earthly life, the having been connected in earlier earthly lives, with looking at the fact that one will be together with them again in later earthly lives. The experience of repeated earthly lives will develop out of the right social life and feelings of modern man.

Natural science, in its research, has already come to the conclusion that it no longer wants to be purely materialistic, at least in the case of some minds. But when the ordinary natural scientist wants to prove that something lives in man that is spiritual and soul-like, that is not merely an expression of the body, then he does not turn to such phenomena that he can prove, that he can present as one presents phenomena of the laboratory, the clinic and the like, but he turns precisely to the abnormal phenomena of human life. And I would like to say that it has become fashionable to examine the world of dreams, which awakens so mysteriously from its natural sleep, in order to point out how the human being also has a spiritual and a soul element within him. But that means examining everything that arises from the phenomena of suggestion, hypnosis, somnambulism, mediumship, and so on. Here too, it is tempting to confuse anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which seeks to draw on a sound knowledge of nature and a sound experience of the human world, with that which would like to lean on such phenomena as hypnotism, somnambulism and the like for a real exploration of the human spiritual and soul nature.

We can start from the world of dreams to get a little closer to these phenomena. We can point out how this world of dreams conjures up images before people, into the human soul, in the time between falling asleep and waking up, when the human being is not fully connected to his spiritual and soul life to the resting body. But the one who can properly study this dream world will never answer the question, “What is this dream world?” “This world of dreams is something that takes people beyond their ordinary external daily lives.” – Then, for the unbiased person, it is quite clear that all sorts of things must interfere in this dream world that come only from the lower, animal-like instincts of human nature.

Consider Just consider what a person is capable of doing in a dream, how he tends towards the lower drives, how he often tends towards a life of crime in what he imagines in his dreams. Man must say to himself: he is not transported into some higher spiritual realm when he dreams, but on the contrary, he has descended into the subhuman. Truly, it is a dream itself when people today want to claim, want to claim quite willingly, that in their dreams they are transported into a higher world. No, in a dream we are brought into a lower world than the one we see through our senses. And especially when a person is subjected to the influence of some suitable fellow human being, so that he is placed in the sleep-like state of hypnosis, one can even, I might say, exert irresponsible influences on the person by acting in a kind of sleep-like state. Then he regards a potato as a pear and eats it as a pear, purely because he is being suggested, this idea is being given to him: this potato is a pear. And still completely different things can be given to him! It is only the extreme state, which also otherwise exists as, I would like to say, not a completely permissible state, where one counts on the damping down of consciousness by the other person, and wants to persuade him, I would like to say, to rape ideas. For those who work in the sense of true spiritual science, the question arises: what is the state of mind in which a person is in a dream? What is the state of mind in which a person is when he is in such a hypnotic or mediumistic - which is also similar to a hypnotic state - when he is in such a hypnotic state and can experience such influences from any fellow human being or from other surroundings?

In a hypnotic state, it is indeed possible for thought transfers to occur over long distances; they can be demonstrated and proven experimentally. But the question arises as to what regions a person, with his entire human, physical, mental and spiritual being, is brought when one descends into these regions. One then brings him into a region that is subhuman, that represents the animalistic in man.

In fact, man is being hypnotized down, profaned down into that which plays in him as animalistic. And it is precisely through this that one gets to know the animal in man, which is nevertheless something quite different from the animal in the animal series; but one enters into the region of the subhuman.

In contrast to all that is presented here, the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here would like to lead to the attainment of the soul-spiritual in man, not by dampening what is already in man in order to seemingly feel something spiritual-soul, but that one develops up what is already there in the sense world to a higher insight by educating thought, will, feeling through meditation, concentration, as it is presented in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” Anthroposophical spiritual science aims to lead people beyond themselves, in a healthy way, beyond what is already there in sensory perception and ordinary science.

In this way, it enters into a region that is quite new compared to the external sensory world. This is very important in order to realize that man becomes dependent when he is placed in a hypnotic, a somnambulistic, or a mediumistic state, or even when he merely surrenders himself to the dream-world of fantasy, that he becomes dependent on his outer sensory environment in a way in a way that he is no longer dependent when he surrenders to normal sensory life; when we surrender to sensory life in an awake state, then our will can avert our eyes from something that we do not want to look at, can even pay a little attention to what we hear. In short, we are more powerful through our will when we relate to our surroundings through the senses. What is placed in the freedom of our will, what brings us into a free relationship when we perceive sensually in an awake state, becomes a relationship of compulsion, as it is in animality, when we are subdued in the waking state through hypnosis. In this state we do not discover the soul in man, but that in us which is animalistic and which is otherwise veiled by our free spirituality. What is otherwise veiled comes to the surface and dominates the person. Man is organized down to the animal. Only one does not recognize - since the human being does not behave like the animal, but expresses himself more spiritually - that it is nevertheless a matter of a downward organization to animality. In contrast to this, what anthroposophical spiritual science wants is to raise the human being to a higher level of consciousness, and only through this does one recognize that which presents itself at a lower level of consciousness. For when man develops his spiritual nature as I have described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” then a different relationship to the world also arises. But not the world that presents itself when we are hypnotized or in a mediumistic state, or when we become somnambulant, not the world of our ordinary sensory surroundings presents itself, but a new world, a spiritual world, a world which man has not known before, but which presents itself to him as a real one, just as the outer sense world presents itself to the senses as a real world.

You see, the human being can undergo this development by ascending from the human into a superhuman, just as he descends from hypnosis, from somnambulism, into an inhuman. This development can be undergone, and in this way the human being can ascend to an immediate perception, an immediate experience of the spiritual. In this way, the spirit can enter into human consciousness.

Now one can certainly say that in a book such as this one, “How to Know Higher Worlds,” it is shown which development one must undergo in order to comprehend that the true world, which one gets to know in this way, is the real one, as I have described it. But not everyone can become a spiritual researcher themselves, not everyone can enter this spiritual world themselves so that they can make statements from this spiritual world. However, the one who reaches that development, which, where one knows about the existence of a spiritual, a supersensible world, has always been called the world beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness, who enters this world, in which he has the spiritual around him as one has the sensual around him for ordinary consciousness, he makes his discoveries in the spiritual. He knows, for example, through these discoveries, that through that which appears today in man, by having him in a hypnotic, somnambulant state, by becoming a medium, his ordinary consciousness is subdued. What appears in man as the subhuman, that in truth represents an earlier stage of human development, and that which today develops as his sensory perception, his intellectual perception, that represents a later stage of development. And even that can be recognized - you can read about it in “Occult Science” - that today, when a person is put under hypnosis, it becomes apparent in an abnormal way how he was in his environment in an evolution of the earth world that lies far behind what geological external science presents to us as the evolution of the earth. One can even learn something about a much more spiritual state of the Earth, in which man also already existed and perceived his surroundings as he perceives his surroundings today when his consciousness is dulled. We recognize something of the past of the earth, which was not as the Kant-Laplace theory presents it, but was as a spiritual-soul being itself, in which man was embedded as a being of the senses. And on the other hand, man of the earthly future will recognize where the earth will be more spiritual again, where man, through his natural condition, will recognize as one recognizes today when one develops the soul further, as I have described it.

These knowledge, although it is a need of the newer, the modern man, will initially, I would say, only be attained by individual people. Individual people will enter into that region of life that lies beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness. So much is necessary if one really wants to come to these higher realizations. You see, I will give you a simple higher realization. But in this simple higher realization, the one who comes to it sees, for example, what the attainment of higher realizations, the discovery of higher realizations, is actually based on. In the usual story, it is not known today that basically the development of all humanity is just as internally conditioned as the development of the individual human being. Who would not find it ridiculous today if someone were to say: a person who lives to be seven, fourteen, twenty years old and so on is always the result of what he eats and drinks; what he eats causes the child to develop further and further from childhood on, making it an adult. Everyone knows that this is not the case, that a person goes through certain stages of development that even lead to certain leaps in natural development. We have such a clear leap, for example, around the seventh year, when the teeth change. Those who have an understanding of such things know what powerful revolutions take place in the human organism, for example, when sexual maturity occurs; later on, the changes are no longer as clearly and distinctly perceptible, but they are nevertheless present. Something develops in man that springs from the depths of his being. But it is the same for all of humanity. And so it was around the middle of the 15th century of our era that humanity took a leap in its development. The state of mind of people has become quite different. What I have characterized today as the fact that man feels lonely in relation to other people, that he is closed in on himself, that he no longer feels close to people through mere blood relationship as he used to. This growing independence, this becoming personal, has developed in step with the change of teeth, the onset of sexual maturity, in the individual human being, in the individual human organization. So, out of the whole evolution of mankind, something came in the middle of the 15th century. Such knowledge can only come from the spiritual world. And only when one has gained such knowledge, as an inner fact of experience, can one also have an opinion about the realities of repeated earthly lives, about the path of the spirit in human development, about the life of the spirit in natural existence, and so on.

But everything that can be done to arrive at such knowledge can be prepared for through meditation, concentration, and the devotion of thoughts, feelings, and impulses of the will, as described in “How to Know Higher Worlds.” One can develop and then say to oneself, “You are now ready to receive higher knowledge.” But then one must wait. The nature of spiritual science does not allow one to go out and collect knowledge; one can only prepare one's own soul; then one must wait. Then one must, I might say, wait for the moment, which one feels like a gracious effect from the spiritual world; one must wait until the illumination comes. That illuminations from the spiritual world occur in one person but not in another. That is why the truths arise in some people, who must communicate them to their fellow human beings. Even when such simple realizations arise, such as the turning point in the whole development of humanity in the 15th century, one must have become acquainted with them in one's pure soul life today. One must have learned to renounce the forcible conquest of the spiritual world; one must have worked only on the development of the soul in order to prepare oneself to receive the truths. Then they come, come at the appropriate moment. One must limit oneself to accepting them as such individual truths. One must only be clear about one thing: if one wants to draw consequences from them, as some people do, then one only brings forth caricatures of the spiritual world. Let us suppose that some man has made various inner discoveries; he comes to an idea; then he builds a whole system out of it, a system of nature, a system of history, an economic or a social system, or something. Men are not satisfied with making such individual spiritual experiences, but continue to draw their conclusions, building systems upon them. The one who is experienced in the spiritual world only works on his spiritual development so that he is ready to receive what reveals itself to him. Then he again accepts such an individual experience and waits for another to arise. Just as in the external, sensory reality, one must wait for the new experience to approach, one must always be inwardly filled with resignation, through which one can wait until the individual inner realizations arise. Otherwise one often produces figments of the imagination. And because most people only have such hazy fantasies, they think that the laws that come into play only come from fantasies. But in truth, no figments of the imagination arise when a person makes an effort to move forward. Only when he does not make an effort to gain ideas about the invisible does he arrive at figments of the imagination. But only if he strives to let all thoughts and development, all work in the spirit, aim solely at the spirit becoming more and more perfect in its cognitive faculty, then he can get sufficiently far; when he has learned to wait, then the discoveries in the spiritual world present themselves to him through that which is to be communicated in the spiritual world. Man can, of course, come to discoveries himself if his fate, I might say, is favorable in this respect and he learns to wait. But above all, he can come to recognize as truth what spiritual discoverers tell him, and to acquire the judgments through such an inner development that he can also he receives from the other person as the truth.

This is the secret of life that people will live when the spirit becomes their guide in the world of the senses and in the supersensible world. This will be the peculiarity that human coexistence will become more intimate. Today we see an illusory, a misunderstood socialism, we see how people want to work socially, but actually become more and more socially distant from each other. But then, when people realize that they can develop to the point where they can acknowledge what the other person comes to through the intimacies of his inner life, through which he makes spiritual discoveries, then they will be able to enrich themselves spiritually in their lives together. Then one will realize that it is precisely when the spirit will be the guide in the sensory realm of man that the social life will be able to receive its true meaning through this spirit.

If one really wants to consciously cross the threshold, penetrating into spiritual worlds presupposes that one, in a sense, becomes fearless in the face of the experiences of the spiritual world. The ordinary world of the senses allows us, I would say, to be cradled in a certain sense of security. But the one who crosses over from this world of the senses, over the threshold of the spiritual world, into the real spiritual worlds that underlie our world of the senses, experiences the fact that, as it were, the comfortable, firm ground is no longer under him. The spiritual world does not have the same forces of gravity and the like as this world of the senses. Within the spiritual world, man feels as if he were on a surging sea, and the security that one otherwise has through a fixed point of view in the external world of the senses, through ordinary life, this security must be provided by inner strength, through which one steers through the spiritual world.

Furthermore, you must bear in mind that when you enter this spiritual world, you are not initially adapted to it. You are adapted to a world as a human being between birth and death; you are not adapted to that which reveals itself as eternal to human nature when you enter the spiritual world. You are adapted to this world, to the world here. When one enters the spiritual world after having developed in order to enter it, one feels, as long as one is still in the body and has not yet passed through the portal of death, that one is not yet adapted for the whole process of development. One often feels this as a burning pain, I might say. Many shrink from it. Only if one prepares well to experience one thing or the other, can one rise above oneself, can one venture out onto the open sea of spiritual knowledge, on which one must have the guide, the spiritual guide within oneself.

But it is already possible for every person today, if they observe such things as I have presented in “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds », to see from his own conviction, not through reasoning, that what the spirit-discoverers, the modern seers, can really reveal to the world is based on truth and taken from reality.

Human coexistence will result from the fact that we can learn to see when the other person develops the ability to fully recognize what has been discovered. A spiritual coexistence will arise that will provide the basic power for a life that humanity will need in the future, especially if some structures in the social organism are to be overcome that have emerged from old forces and which can only be overcome by new spiritual forces that develop from soul to soul.

Precisely because the spiritual will become a reality for people, precisely because of this people will come closer together. One only has to consider whether a person discovers this or that in the spiritual world; that depends on the way his life is. Isn't it true that a person's knowledge of the external world of the senses differs depending on whether he was born in Europe or America or Asia. In the same way, every person's knowledge of the spiritual world differs, depending on whether he is a spiritual explorer, a seer. The knowledge of the other person, who in turn has different knowledge, is a supplement to his own knowledge. People will know different things from the spirit. But they will be able to complement each other.

In the face of real spiritual knowledge, as it is meant and presented here today, there is truly no shame or anything degrading if one person, in a truly social existence, simply accepts what is transmitted to him from the spiritual world, while another person is able to discover it. There is no need to fear that some man who becomes a spiritual discoverer will shine through immodesty within his community of fellow human beings. On the contrary, anyone who wants to penetrate into the spiritual world must first acquire what I have called intellectual modesty in the corresponding high power, and he knows very well, especially when he begins to know something of the spiritual world, how little he actually knows. There is no danger of those who recognize spiritual things becoming particularly proud. Those who talk about the spiritual world in empty phrases, who talk about the spirit without knowing anything about it, who talk about it through mere philosophical conclusions, they may become proud. But those who penetrate into the spiritual worlds also know how small they are as human beings in the face of this spiritual world, which wants to realize itself through them, and they truly know that they should neither be arrogant nor dogmatic.

Now I would like to mention something else. On the one hand, it must be said that for the sake of the future of humanity, it is necessary today that those who have not yet discovered certain truths listen to those who have discovered them, and that this is by no means shameful, degrading to freedom, it can also be pointed out that even the one who can perhaps recognize to a high degree, who is a seer, learns tremendous things from his fellow human beings. That is the remarkable thing, that in this direction one gains a completely new relationship to one's fellow human beings precisely through seership, precisely through the development of the soul-spiritual. We must not forget that things can reveal themselves even in a simple, elementary way of life. We experience them, we have the sense to penetrate into what, as mysterious soul-spiritual depths, are also revealed, for example, through a child. This gives us cause, if only we do not interpret it symbolically, if only we do not brood over it, but give ourselves to it in love, to recognize spiritually that afterwards, when the seer has exercised such love for the simple, the blessed moment comes for him to recognize something great. And every great, real spiritual seer will be able to tell you about those moments when, not through the interpretation of what he has just seen, but through the actual experience of this power within him, he has subsequently learned something different from some human being, by choosing the spirit as his guide. You get to know a person. What they share with you from their experiences, from their experiences, perhaps as the simplest, most primitive person, leads you into the depths of the soul, if you are able to recognize correctly, to find the right context. You make the discovery that what people experience, what people learn, can lead to a revelation in every person.

Yes, over the whole wide circumference of human beings, when we choose the spirit as our guide to the world of the senses and the supersensible world, every human being can give us something of what he has gained from the world, and something can be revealed in us that is absolutely necessary for his further development. We often notice that people themselves do not apply to their lives with their inadequate powers what they believe they have in their consciousness, in their conscious soul life; they think it is something highly unimportant because people are inadequate to see through their own judgment to see the supersensible. If one looks into the depths of the human soul, if one has acquired the sense in this way, as I have described it today, then, as a spiritual researcher, one can also gain so much in modern natural science, through the way in which natural science works in clinics, in observatories, in chemical and physical laboratories. If we accept what the researchers, with their power of judgment, often understand from their own very inadequate understanding when they describe their work and their results, which they themselves do not really achieve with what they say about it, cannot reveal in its depths, if we accept what we are told about the work in the scientific workshops, then deep natural secrets are revealed to us. And precisely through what spiritual science does in this field, what medicine so often strives for today, what it cannot achieve with its own means, what is connected with what I have described, that medical science and natural science can be fertilized by spiritual science.

But social life will also be able to be fertilized when the spirit can become a guide through the sensual world and into the supersensible world. And there is no need to believe that the religious element, which should be one of the fundamental forces of every human being, will suffer from the knowledge of spiritual life, from the fact that spiritual life is taking hold among us and that the spirit is becoming a guide for people in the world of people! No, quite the opposite is the case. Precisely what the religious denominations themselves have sought, they could not attain to because of the needs that have arisen from healthy scientific life, in that they have preserved old traditions. As a result, they could only achieve what they wanted to create as a belief in the soul and spirit through dogmatic commandments, while in truth, when people come to make the spirit their guide in the world of the senses, they will be at one with their soul life in the spiritual. But people who recognize the spirit, people who live with their ideas, with their perceptions in the spirit, they will also be able to worship the spirit, they will be able to find the way to truly religious worship. Those people who know nothing of the spirit will not be religious people even if they belong to a “word religion.” Those who have the spirit as their guide do not fear that Christianity could be damaged by the spirit being imbued with modern spiritual science. Oh no, those who say that spiritual knowledge should not come because it will undermine religious sentiment and Christianity show themselves to be small. He who truly recognizes the spirit cannot think so little of the power of the Christ impulse, which has been working in the world since the Mystery of Golgotha. He must think much higher. He must think in such a way that he says to himself: Whatever insights may come, the more one penetrates into the spirit, the better one will learn to worship that which can only be elevated in its significance for people by being recognized ever better and better recognized.

Not spiritual science will hinder the real religious development of mankind, but the desire to remain stuck beyond real knowledge and spiritual progress will have a hindering effect on religious development. And it could be that in the not too distant future, many people will realize where the obstacles to religious development actually come from. They will come from the fact that the denominations no longer want to live with what is present in the innermost human being as a need.

You see, I just wanted to show how the spirit can become man's guide through the world of the senses and into the supersensible world. I can only do this in a sketchy way in such a lecture as I was allowed to give here.

Man comes to know that within him which is eternal and immortal, which passes through birth and the gates of death, precisely by developing the spirit within him to which he belongs. He comes to recognize that through his soul and his spirit he belongs to the spiritual world, just as he belongs to this world through his body.

Today, however, the fact that I have characterized is fully alive in the depths of the subconscious. But the one who sees through things today knows that there are many people who long for such a spiritual fellowship; but in people's consciousness this is often not the case. In the broadest circles, I might say, there is still an aversion, an antipathy to such spiritual leadership. But anyone who is inside such a spiritual movement looks at the way in which spiritual movements or even external cultural movements have been met with in the course of the historical development of humanity! And if today one is wholeheartedly attached to the idea that something like the Dornach building, the School of Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum, as an external representative – it is not yet finished, it is only just being built, but hopefully it will be finished in the not too distant future – that something like this should stand as a visible sign of the spiritual movement that I have characterized in today's lecture, then one has to remember history in the face of various disparaging judgments.

Imagine what today's world would look like if, at the time when Columbus wanted to equip a few ships to steer westward into regions of which he truly knew nothing, and which the others knew nothing about either, if the opinion had triumphed. You can read about it in history that this opinion was very much present – that it regarded Columbus's intention as folly, as madness! But in the end, he won. Imagine what would have happened in modern times if it had not been the cleverness of those who refused Columbus's ships that had won, but the “madness” of Columbus that had won. For many people, this madness of Columbus is what anthroposophical spiritual science wants. Even today, for many people it is madness. But this madness does not just include that which is only a spiritual realization; no, this madness includes such a development of the spirit through which one also becomes a truly practical person, through which one becomes such a person that one can practically attack a voyage of discovery into real life. A real voyage of discovery into life is to be inaugurated through that for which this Dornach building is to be the external representative.

Therefore, many people may see madness in what is to be undertaken with it. Those who, through inner insight, have connected their hearts and minds with what is to be a symbol of the beginning of the spirit's guidance in the development of humanity through the sensual world and into the supersensible world, know that out of this “madness” must develop that which many people, and ultimately all people of the civilized world, must seek, so that we may emerge from some of what is sensed by the unprejudiced as chaotic, as cultural confusion, in order to arrive at that which numerous people and numerous souls long for after all, long for more than the contemporaries of Columbus longed for India in his time, long for the light that is to dawn for humanity, so that it can truly strive towards higher cultural goals in humanity.

It is still considered in many circles today to be a sign of a particularly enlightened mind to reject the possibility of penetrating into the spiritual, into the supersensible world, through human knowledge. It can be said that in some circles, especially in the scientific way of thinking, a front is already being made against this so-called enlightenment. But however much may be said from this side about spirit and the supersensible world from this or that point of view, it cannot be said that a really satisfactory way into the world of spirit is already being tried or striven for in wider circles.

That there is the possibility of penetrating into the supersensible world, not merely through an indefinite, scholastic belief, but through a genuine and true continuation of that way of thinking which has made modern scientific thinking so great, to penetrate into the supersensible world, that is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks, which - as I already said here a few weeks ago - is to find its external representation through the Goetheanum in Dornach, as a proof to be presented to the world, to be fathomed through the experience of the spirit.

If I am to explain the path of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from a different perspective than the one I have already presented in numerous lectures here, I would like to begin today by talking about something that seems rather abstract and perhaps far-fetched to some.

It is no coincidence that the Goetheanum takes its name from Goethe. In a certain respect, Goethe's entire world view, his entire way of thinking, forms the starting point for a more recent spiritual-scientific endeavor. And even if one can say that what one finds in Goethe still presents itself as a beginning, it is perhaps best to illustrate the fundamental principles by starting from certain simple thoughts or ideas of Goethe's. Well known in wider circles, but unfortunately still too little appreciated today, is what Goethe called his metamorphosis doctrine, in which we also find his idea of the primal plant.

By this archetypal plant, Goethe does not mean a simple, tangible plant structure, as a modern natural scientist would say, but rather something that can only be grasped and experienced in the mind. At the same time, however, he means by this archetypal plant something that is not found in any single plant, but that can be found in every single plant in the wide plant kingdom of the earth. He therefore assumes that, I would say, within every plant that can be perceived by the senses there is a primal plant that can be grasped supernaturally and experienced in the spirit.

He also imagines the same, although he has not explained it so clearly, for the others, for the non-plant organisms. And even if Goethe, partly out of his artistic attitude, developed this idea of the primal plant, it must be said that his main aim was to find something scientific in the very best sense through something like the primal plant, something that can be a guide for man as an idea, a spiritual guide through the whole vast world of plants.

When Goethe traveled through Italy to clarify and mature his world view, he once wrote to his friends in Weimar, who were well aware of what he actually wanted with his primal plant, that the image of the primal plant had emerged for him again, particularly in the rich, abundant plant world of Italy. To begin with, in abstract terms – we need not, as we shall see in a moment, adhere to the abstract – to begin with, in abstract terms, he says: such a primal plant must exist, for how else could one find in the whole manifold plant kingdom that each individual being is really a whole plant? – As I said, that is expressed in abstract terms, but Goethe expresses himself about this primal plant in much more definite, much more forceful terms. For example, he says: “When one has grasped this primal plant in one's mind, then one can, from the living image of this primal plant, create images of individual real plants that have the possibility of existing.”

One must only look in the right sense at what is actually being said with such words. Goethe wants to arrive at an idea of the nature of plants in his mind, and he wants to be able to form a spiritual image of a plant from his Primordial Plant. This plant is a single plant, not like a plant that he sees with his senses, but rather, he invents a plant that is added to the plants that exist in the senses. This plant does not exist in the senses, but it would have the possibility of existing in the senses if the conditions were right. What does this actually point to? It points to the fact that man, through his soul, can become so immersed in the sensual reality and, in this immersion in the sensual reality, can experience the spiritual that is within the sensual reality in such a way that he grows completely together with this spirit, which lives and weaves everywhere in nature, creating.

The greatness of Goethe's world view is that it aims at this immersion in reality, and that it is convinced that, to the extent that one immerses in this reality, one comes upon the spiritual reality, so that one spirit of reality, which can then be one's guide through the entire confusing diversity of the sensual world itself.

Now, what Goethe strove for can be extended to the entire world surrounding man and to man himself. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has set itself the task of extending this way of thinking to everything that confronts man from outside and from within. It is thus the opposite of all unclear obscurantism, the opposite of all unclear mysticism. It strives for what Goethe claimed for his world view: to delve into the spiritual world with mathematical clarity and transparency.

This spiritual science now feels completely in harmony with modern science, although it goes far beyond the science of modern times. One has only to have passed through this natural science to realize how this spiritual science must spring from this natural science itself. Let us take a look at what this newer natural science is actually striving for. It sees its real goal as finding a knowledge of the things surrounding man, of the mineral, vegetable and animal world, and even of man himself, in which nothing is said about any subjective feelings or ideas of man himself. This natural science, in particular, from its newer point of view, that of experiment, to which it has rightly placed itself as a natural science, seeks to explore nature in such a way that the individual phenomena and processes of nature themselves reveal their essence, their laws, so that man does not weave anything into what he calls knowledge of nature, from what he finds within himself.

This is how what has been presented as natural science for three to four centuries, but particularly in the 19th century, differs from the knowledge of nature in earlier times. Anyone who has studied the way in which nature was understood in earlier times knows that people took what they formed in their imaginations and projected it onto natural phenomena, and to a certain extent they extracted from natural phenomena what they had first projected into them. That this does not happen, that man allows nature to speak to him quite impartially, that is the endeavor of modern natural science.

But one cannot help but let the spirit do the research when researching nature. One cannot help but apply that which one has within oneself as a life of thoughts and ideas, and which is of a spiritual nature, to the context of natural phenomena. Now one can take one of two paths. The ordinary scientific worldview of recent times has taken one path; but anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would like to take the other.

When science develops its ideas, these ideas, which pure as I have described them, are to be gained from nature, then with these ideas, I might say, science can contemplate itself; then it can ask itself: What is the nature, what is the value of the ideas that we apply to external nature? – This is not done by the newer natural science. Modern natural science is limited to discovering everything about nature that does not answer the question: What is the human being actually? That is the characteristic feature of all, one might say, insightful natural scientists, the emphasized point, that they say: Yes, we can explore much about the physical world outside and within us - but this does not answer the question: What is the human being itself? And again and again we must emphasize: in its efforts to understand nature, natural science sets up a picture of the world in which the human being is not included as soul and spirit. Natural science, honestly based on the present standpoint, has no answer to the question of soul and spirit.

The question as to why this is so must be answered historically. Natural science itself does not know why it does not advance to the knowledge of soul and spirit, why it stops despite its admirable results on the outer nature before soul and spirit, why again and again natural scientists arise who say: Yes, if natural science were to speak of soul and spirit, it would transgress its limits. - One believes to speak about nature without prejudice. One does not speak without prejudice, because what has become established over the centuries as a certain way of thinking weighs heavily on natural science, actually on the way of thinking of modern natural science. And this pressure consists in the fact that certain confessional currents have claimed a monopoly on the truths of soul and spirit.

If we go back a few centuries, we find precisely in the period in which modern science had its early days, how religious denominations claim their monopoly on dictating the truths about soul and spirit. In the face of this claim to monopoly, modern science recoiled. Natural science of modern times has penetrated with magnificence into the outer nature; but not because one would have recognized through this penetration into the outer nature that one could not ascend to soul and spirit, one has refrained from this ascent, but because it was so firmly rooted in the unconscious human views that the monopoly claim of the confessional religions must be taken into account. That is why this belief was transformed into an apparent proof that it is impossible to penetrate the soul and spirit.

Anyone who has seriously studied the scientific research methods of modern times, and who has then inwardly processed that that arises as ideas about external nature with the exception of the actual essence of man, knows that the other path, which is taken by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, must be further pursued into the future of humanity. If natural science understood itself, if it did not live under the pressure hinted at, then, precisely because it strives to be a natural science that disregards the subjective element of the human being, it would come to the Goethean principle of growing together with the spirit that is spread out in the phenomena and facts and beings of nature. And if it understood itself, modern natural science would choose of its own accord precisely that which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as a continuation of the natural science direction, must claim for itself.

Indeed, what must be essentially supported is that which can be cultivated through natural science in terms of inner imagination, of thinking power, through careful inner spiritual methods. And it is on the training of such inner spiritual methods that everything through which the spiritual science referred to here wants to find its way into the supersensible, into the spiritual world at all, is based.

Today, people perhaps imagine far too lightly what is meant here by this path into the supersensible world. One thinks that it means something like an inner spinning, a surrender to all sorts of ideas, through which one weaves out all sorts of things that the nature of things should be. One might imagine that this is easy compared to the difficulty of the experimental method or compared to the methods used in observatories and clinics. But if you read something like I have tried to present in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” or in my “Occult Science”, you will see that it is not just any kind of spinning around in inner ideas, but a strictly lawful, inner soul work of the spirit into the spirit. For true spiritual science can never be the view that one can penetrate into the spirit through external methods of experimentation, but true spiritual science must uphold the view that only the spirit in man can find the spirit of the world.

What man has to accomplish in his inner being, I have often referred to here in these lectures and in my books as meditation, as concentration. Today I would just like to point out that this work of concentration, this meditation work, is a purely inner soul work. But what is the goal of this inner soul work? What is the goal of this work with only the inner soul forces, this devotion to the pure workings of the soul and spirit in the inner being of man?

You know that we perceive the world through our senses as we live in it, and then we process this world. This is also how science works. We then process this world by reflecting on it, by revealing its laws, by forming ideas about it. But you also know that this process of forming ideas leads to something else, to something that is intimately connected with the health of our personal human being. This process of forming ideas about the world is connected with the fact that we can retain impressions of the world, as we say, through our memory, through our power of recollection. People so easily overlook this power of memory, this memory of the human being, because it is something so everyday for them. But that is precisely the peculiar thing about the real pursuit of knowledge: that which is often everyday for people must be understood precisely as that in relation to which the most important, the most significant questions must be raised.

When we perceive the world of the senses, form ideas about it, and after some time seemingly bring these forth from our inner being again, so that we remember events we have experienced, then there is much that is unconscious in these memories, in this memory process. Just think how little you are actually in control of your memory with your will, how little you can command, so to speak, your power of remembrance. Consider above all how little you are able to think of this memory while you are perceiving outwardly. Or is it the case that when a person looks out into the world with his eye, when he hears sounds with his ear, he simultaneously ensures that representations are present that make reminiscence possible? No, for that to happen the human being would have to consciously exercise another power alongside perception and the inner workings of the senses. In reality, this does not happen in ordinary life. I would like to say that memory with its power runs alongside the outer life. But it is the one that works subconsciously, so to speak, that helps determine all life in the outer world of the senses, so that we support this life through our memory through life. This power must be brought up from the unconscious. In other words, we cannot bring up from the depths of our soul what we unconsciously practise in our power of remembrance by merely remembering our experiences, but by trying to bring the power, which we otherwise do not know at all, which, as I said, runs alongside, I have said, to such a conscious clarity as otherwise only the external sensory perception is, by bringing this power up from the subconscious depths and weaving and living in what is otherwise in the subconscious of memory. If we use the power of recollection not for memory, not for remembering, but to make ideas and images that are otherwise only kept alive by the power of recollection consciously present in our mind, we strengthen something in our mind that, when the necessary time comes, allows us to experience a very different awakening from the one we experience every morning. If you consciously work again and again in the way that otherwise only memory works, then you experience something of a new awakening in the soul. One experiences something like the appearance in the soul of a completely different person than the one who otherwise walks through the world of the senses. One cannot reach the spirit through theorizing. Every philosophical argument that wants to reach the spirit through mere reasoning has nothing else in mind than the word or words about the spirit. The spirit wants to be experienced. And it can only be experienced by our raising up what would otherwise remain in the subconscious, in the deeper layers of our human soul, so that it lives in us with the same luminous clarity as what we see through our eyes, what we hear with our ears, and that in this brought-up conscious will lives in such a way as the conscious will lives when I direct the eye from this wall over to that wall, in order to turn the gaze away from what I see here and to look at what I can see there. By availing myself of my senses, the conscious will lives in this availing of the senses. This will must fully penetrate

this inner soul work, then one comes to something that is a continuation of the ordinary soul activity of man, which relates to the ordinary soul activity of man just as the waking day life relates to the life of sleep, from which at most the dream speaks .

That there is something in human nature that can be brought up and becomes a new organ of knowledge, that becomes what Goethe calls the soul eye, the spiritual eye, that is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to demonstrate through gradual familiarization with such inner soul work. In this way it will express what natural science is unable to express because it lives under the pressure I have indicated. But this pressure must, because humanity longs for it - one can notice this longing if one is only unbiased enough to do so - this pressure must fall away from the knowledge of humanity.

So you see that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science does not want to be some kind of false mysticism, some kind of obscurity, but a truly genuine continuation of what is known in natural science. And especially those who have enjoyed a scientific education will find it easier to concentrate and meditate on thoughts, because they are accustomed to methods and ways of research that disregard the subjective side of the human being and enter completely into the objective. If we now apply what we have been trained in to natural science, especially to meditation, then we eliminate all human arbitrariness, then we bring something into meditation, into the inner work of the soul, which is an objective lawfulness, like that of nature itself. It is precisely by taking the way of thinking and imagining of natural science into the human being that the chaotic, unclear self-knowledge, which is striven for with many a complicated and wrong mysticism, where one only wants to brood over one's own inner being, is overcome. Working in one's own inner being, which proceeds in every step of this work in the same way that only the most conscientious natural scientist proceeds, by extending his power of judgment over that which unfolds before his eyes or before his instruments, stands in opposition to this uneducated brooding into one's own inner being.

That is one side of it. I would like to say that it is the side that points to the awakening of special powers of knowledge. The ordinary power of memory will certainly not be there in those moments when one wants to explore the spiritual directly, because this power of memory itself has undergone a metamorphosis. It has become a spiritual eye that can perceive the spirit. With the usual conclusions that today's popular logic has, one cannot penetrate to the real spirit. Whoever wants to speak of a real penetration to the spirit must point to the real existing forces that lead to this spirit. And one such real existing force is the power of remembrance. But this power of remembering must be transformed, it must become something quite different. Every other penetration into the spirit leads at the same time into the dark, because human will is thereby eliminated, and with it the most important part of the human being itself. Just as we regard as fantastic what arises from, I might say, organic foundations of our mind, and as we do not call what we have no control over a true memory, so the true spiritual researcher will accept no soul-content for his spiritual research that he does not completely permeate with the light of his will.

So much for one side, the life of imagination, as used in spiritual research. But something else in man can be used and must be used if one really wants to find the way into the supersensible, into the spiritual world. And just as spiritual science has been challenged by the spirit of natural science through the way of thinking of modern times, so on the other hand spiritual science has been challenged by human life in modern times. Anyone who follows the development of the human soul through the last few centuries without prejudice, not with the preconceptions of today's historian, but just without prejudice, can see that a tremendous change occurred in the state of human souls around the middle of the 15th century, admittedly only within the civilized world, but just within this civilized world. It is a mere prejudice to believe, merely by looking at the external historical facts, that a human soul in the civilized world in the 8th or 9th century A.D. had the same inner makeup as the human souls of today. Of course, there are still backward human souls today who more or less still stand on the standpoint of the 8th or 9th century; but they are instructive precisely because they also lead us outwardly back to that time. But on the whole we can say: One need only look at human life in accordance with experience. A tremendous change has taken place, which has become ever more pronounced since the mid-15th century. If we want to describe it in more detail, we have to say that if we go back to that point in time, we find that people's relationship to one another was very different from what it is today and from what unconscious human forces are striving for in the future of humanity. Whatever may be said against it out of certain prejudices, something is being striven for in relation to the relationship between human beings that has its beginning at the time referred to. In earlier times, people were close to one another through blood ties, through tribal ties, through everything that made them related to other people through their organism, or what made them related to other people through the organic connection that manifests itself, for example, in sexual love. Do we not see, if we only want to see, that in place of the old blood relationship, in place of the old clan relationship, the old family relationship, the old tribe relationship, there is more and more that works from person to person in such a way that it passes from the soul, from the willing soul of one person to the willing soul of another person? Do we not see that the development of modern times makes it more and more necessary for man to approach another human being through something quite different from his mere physical organism? We see that since the time indicated, the sense of personality has grown, that the human being has become more and more inward-looking and inward-looking, and thus also more and more lonely and lonely. Since that time, I would say that the human being lives more and more isolated in himself with his soul life. The soul life closes itself off from the outside world. The blood no longer speaks when we are face to face with our neighbor. We must make our inner life active. We must live ourselves over into the other. We must merge spiritually into the other. What may be called the social principle, the social impulse of modern times, is very much misunderstood, especially in those circles that today rightly believe themselves to be socialist. One sees the social impulse emerging, but even today only a few circles know what it actually consists of.

It consists in the fact that more and more in the lonely human being the impulse awakens to live himself over into other people, spiritually and inwardly through his will, so that the neighbor becomes the one who becomes it through our consciousness, not through our blood, not through our organic connection. There we stand face to face with people and have the necessity to live ourselves into them. What we call goodwill today, what we call love today, is different from what was called by that name in times gone by. But by living ourselves into other people in this way, it is as if everything that pulsates in us, that lives in us as will, would take up the will of the other. We enter completely into the other with our soul. We go out of our body, as it were, and enter into the body of the other. When this feeling increasingly takes over, when this feeling, permeated by love, I would say, as modern love of one's neighbor, spreads among people, then something arises from this shared experience of the will, of the entire soul life of the other person, which is a real life experience. Today, many people could already have this life experience if they did not allow it to be clouded by prejudices. Where it occurs, it is rejected with truly unsound reasons. One need only remember a person like Lessing. At the end of his life, when everything that he could produce in the way of human greatness had passed through his soul, he still wrote his “Education of the Human Race,” which culminates in the acknowledgment of the fact of repeated human lives on earth. There are higher philistines, as there are higher daughters, and they have their judgment ready for such a thing. They say: Yes, Lessing was clever all his life; but then he became decrepit and came up with such complicated ideas as those of repeated lives.

But these repeated lives are not a fanciful not a fanciful idea; they are what we experience when we do not stand before another human being merely by virtue of blood relationship or organic belonging, but when we can truly live our way into what lives in his soul. There, in response to what is approaching us, the spirit of one person meets the spirit of another person, and from this arises, as we know from experience, that which can be said: what is forming a bond here for your soul, for your spirit, with the other person, did not come about through this life. What arises in the blood has come about through this life. But what arises in the spirit as a necessity has come about through something that preceded this life. Anyone who really follows the development of modern human life since the middle of the 15th century – it is still shrouded in mystery for the widest circles of humanity – will come to the idea of repeated earthly lives through living with people. And what comes to light then occurs, I might say, like a dream. I say “like a dream” for the following reason: When we fall asleep, we fall asleep into an unconscious. Then, out of this unconscious, this or that emerges as a dream. One can compare this falling asleep into the unconscious with submerging into the souls of our fellow human beings, as I have just characterized it. Then, out of this immersion, I would like to say, not figuratively, but very literally, out of this sleeping into our fellow human beings, something also emerges at first, like the dream of repeated earthly lives, and draws our attention to the fact that something like this must be sought in order to understand life, in order to find the way through the world of the senses. And what shines out like a dream from our social life becomes a complete certainty when we train the human will in the same way as I have described for memory. But just as memory must become a fully conscious power, so the will must, on the other hand, discard what completely directs it in ordinary life.

What then directs our will, our desires, our longings in ordinary life? If our desires did not arise out of the organic life of our body, the will would, so to speak, have nothing to do with them. He who, through experience, has penetrated to the will, knows that this will is based on desire. But we can also detach that which is the actual power of the will from our desires. To a certain extent we do detach it in our social life. But that only draws our attention to what is actually important. We detach it in social life by loving our neighbor, by being absorbed in our neighbor, not desiring him like a piece of meat. We do not love our neighbor out of our desires, but rather it is an application of a desireless will. But this disinterested will can also be developed through a special training. This happens when we do not merely want what can be achieved in the outer world, what one or the other desire is after, but when we apply the will to our human being and his development itself. We can do that. We all too often abandon ourselves to the way life carries us. But even after we have outgrown school, that is, when others are no longer providing the education, we can still practice continuous self-education and self-discipline. We can take our own spiritual being into our own hands, we can set out to achieve this and that. One can resolve, if life has led one in a certain direction up to a certain point, to become knowledgeable in this or that area of life, to transfer one's judgment to another area of life. In short, one can turn one's will around. While otherwise the will always works from the inside out, as desire dominates the outside, the will can be turned around, turned inward. By practising self-discipline through our will, by trying to make ourselves better and better in one direction or another, we apply the actual dispassionate willpower. And what you find in my book How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds and in the second part of my Occult Science, aims, in addition to the other thing I have already characterized, to show that man applies such a culture of the will to himself, so that he penetrates more and more, I might say, with his will into himself. But then, when these two forces work together, the power of remembrance brought out of the unconscious, which then seizes the human will, then the human being knows himself inwardly as spirit, then he knows that he has seized the spirit inwardly in a purely spiritual way, then he knows that he does not do this through the organs of the body. Then he knows what spiritual action in the spirit is like, then he knows what it means: soul and spirit are independent of the body.

One cannot prove that the soul and the spirit are independent of the body, because in ordinary life they are not. In ordinary life, the spirit and soul are entirely dependent on the body. But there lives in us another human being who is independent, and we can bring him up from his depths. Only then does that which reigns in man as the eternal reveal itself to us.

You see, there is nothing wrong or complicated about mysticism in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is in it thoroughly that which can be expressed in a completely clear way, but which one only comes to when one really explains it inwardly and does not just say: You shall develop your inner being, you shall look into yourself, you shall find the God in your own nature. In anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, reference is made to very specific forces that are to be disciplined in a very specific way. That is what is important here. In this respect, however, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is a continuation of modern scientific and social endeavors. In the field of science, one can no longer completely ignore the spirit. And so it has come about that, because one did not want to eliminate the pressure that I characterized at the beginning, one wants to use the same methods with which one, I might say, ducks under the characterized pressure, to also prove today that there is something in man like a spirit, like a soul. And that is what has occurred in those who do not see the whole situation in the cultural development of the present.

We owe all the hopes that are based on certain justified grounds to this striving for the spirit, but which moves in the wrong direction. that are based on certain legitimate grounds, the hopes that many a naturalist has with regard to hypnotism, with regard to the possibility that one human being may suggest some idea to another when their consciousness is dulled. We owe to this quest the hopes that many place in the study of the dream life and the like, and we owe to this quest, to get to the spirit – because man cannot help but seek the spirit after all – the whole error of spiritualism.

What is actually being sought in this area? Well, take something like what happens in the case of hypnotism or mediumship. What actually happens there? There, that which is normal human consciousness, through which man is firmly grounded in ordinary life, is subdued. When a person is hypnotized, that which is his conscious ability in ordinary life is subdued. In a sense, other forces then take effect on the unconscious or semi-conscious or quarter-conscious person, which may come from the person next to him or from others. There, without doubt, all kinds of interesting things come to light. Of course, all kinds of interesting things also come to light through mediumship; but what comes to light is achieved on the basis of a dimming, a lulling of the ordinary consciousness. This is never the aim of the research methods of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. The research method of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science says: Man has advanced in his development to the consciousness that he has in ordinary life through his senses in the waking state; if one wants to recognize something new about man that is beneficial, one should not paralyze this consciousness, one should not dampen it down, but on the contrary, one should develop it further, as I have indicated. One should increase clarity, guide sensory perceptions into the power of memory by applying the will, which otherwise arises only from dull desire, to self-discipline. Because one does not go this way, because one has not the courage and the perseverance for this way, one belittles the will and believes that in this way one will arrive at a knowledge of the soul, of the spiritual in man.

But what does one arrive at by taking away man's other abilities? By putting people to sleep, one arrives at an external way of looking at people that does not show them as spiritual-soul beings, but shows them precisely in their subhumanity, in that which makes them more like animals than they are in ordinary life. It must be strictly emphasized that through all these sometimes well-intentioned research methods, the human being is led down into the subhuman. If I hypnotize someone and give him a potato, but by the power of suggestion make it clear to him that it is a pear, and he bites into the potato with the consciousness of biting into a pear, then I darken his higher consciousness in such a way, I act on him in such a way as is done to the instinct of the animal. The only difference is that even in his subhuman aspects, man is not entirely an animal, but that his animal nature expresses itself in a different way. That is the essential point. And if one seeks to find any kind of thought-transference in a state of sopor or in a diminished consciousness, then one is dealing with an instinctive activity that has been translated into the human, that is to say with something subhuman. Anyone who lumps together what wants to be anthroposophically oriented spiritual science with these things defames anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For here it is not a matter of leading man down from his ordinary state of consciousness into something subhuman, but of leading him beyond himself, so that the ordinary consciousness continues to have an effect and a higher consciousness is added to this ordinary consciousness.

This is precisely what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science shows through its research method: that the human being we have here in the sense world is based on an animal, subhuman instinct; and this can be evoked and demonstrated by putting ordinary consciousness to sleep. When it expresses itself differently than in ordinary consciousness, the spiritual science just meant here can follow this other expression. It characterizes this other expression, which always takes place in hypnosis, in the mediumistic state, as a subhuman, as a descent into animality. But at the same time it shows that what lives in man as animality is not the same as in the ordinary animal. The method of research of which I have spoken here, as of the spiritual science meant here, knows that what comes to light through such experiments as in hypnotism and mediumship is something that still lives in man today from earlier human conditions. It is precisely because this spiritual science does not arrive at a subjectively colored, but at an objective self-knowledge, that it can gain a judgment about what it actually is that occurs through hypnosis and through mediumship. This is something that does not belong to this earthly world.

If we follow the development of the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms in the earthly world with the means of spiritual science, and follow it in its relation to man, then we find that man, as he is now, is adapted to the earth precisely because he has his present consciousness. The states of consciousness that occur in sleep, in hypnosis, and in mediumship are not states of consciousness, are not human powers that could arise from man being adapted to the earth; that arises from such an adaptation that was peculiar to man before the earth became earth. And it is precisely through such states that research into the conditions of the earth itself is rejected, but these preceded the present state of the earth.

If one now investigates further how the present state of the earth is connected with the animal and plant world, one sees that man carries something within himself that does not make him appear adapted to today's earthly existence, but that the animal and plant world is adapted to today's earthly existence. From this we can see that man certainly existed in primitive conditions, which, if brought about today, would have nothing but a deadening effect on his consciousness, before the present-day animals existed in their present form. So that we have to say: Man did not ascend from the animal world, but man was, albeit with such states of soul and spirit as we bring up, as they occur in animal-like ways in the characterized states, present before the earth came to this present planetary state.

I cannot go into the details for you today, which you can read about in my books. But I wanted to at least hint that precisely by observing certain things on which hopes are pinned today for knowledge of the present nature of man, a way is shown to gain insight into pre-earthly times and into the nature of man in such times. But in the same way, the fact that we can evoke states of consciousness that lie above the present state of consciousness adapted to the earth indicates how we will live in these higher states of consciousness when the earth is no longer our dwelling place.

These things open up to the inner eye. One cannot say: These things cannot be proved, just as little as you can prove that camels exist. You must have seen them, or someone must have seen them, and then you know that camels exist. In this way one cannot prove the supersensible with the ordinary power of judgment, which is valid only for the ordinary world. One must show how one comes to see the supersensible. From this vision of the supersensible, that which indeed has an effect on the sense world but can never be seen in the sense world itself, arises.

So, of course, it could now be said: Yes, you show us how some people succeed in making the spirit their guide through a supersensible vision through the sense world and into the supersensible world. But can all people see into the supersensible world in this way? The situation is as follows: if you allow the inner training and inner development that I have described in the books already mentioned to take effect in you, and which you undertake for your soul, you will inevitably come to recognize, through your own powers of judgment and your own healthy human understanding, which is then developed, what spiritual researchers can discover in the spiritual world. But just as there are individual researchers in the physical world who investigate one thing or another, and we have to accept what they have found, so in the future development of humanity there will be individual spiritual researchers who investigate this or that in the spiritual world. Whether they can research something depends on whether, in certain moments of life, for which they have been waiting, without their having done anything to bring it about (for one can only become a waiting being through the development of the soul), that which presents itself as a spiritual fact becomes recognizable. One could say, using a religious expression, that this must come about through grace. This grace will intervene for the man as a spiritual researcher just as, let us say, this or that experience in the material world intervenes for one person and not for another. It will be so, because certain facts will always bring individual people from the spiritual world.

In order to bring these facts to light, various things are necessary; it is not only necessary to have gone through what is written in the books mentioned, to be able to fully understand what the spiritual researcher expresses, but something is needed that can be described as a quality of the human being as “fearless” to a very high degree in the face of the spiritual world. People are so reluctant to enter the spiritual world because they are actually afraid of the unknown, as a person is always afraid of the unknown. The spiritual researcher must become fearless. And on the other hand, he must acquire the quality of being able to suffer, to feel pain; because a real discovery from the spiritual world cannot be achieved without a certain pain, without a certain suffering. You will understand that this must be so if you simply imagine that the state of spiritual vision is not adapted to ordinary earthly conditions, is basically just as little adapted as our soul is adapted to our diseased organism, which hurts. If one really places oneself with the developed soul in the facts of the spiritual world, then one is in a world for which one is not initially organized. One penetrates into a world that cuts, that burns. This must be experienced. And one only penetrates to the facts if one really approaches them with the attitude that consists in applying everything that the soul can develop, but that one then waits until, in certain, I would like to say once more, gracious moments, the spiritual facts approach

This should not be imagined as something that approaches one like a fantasy idea, but rather as an experience of a profound intensity in relation to the inner being of the human being. I will just take this simple fact, which I have already mentioned, which can actually only arise through spiritual research today before the human soul, the fact that in the middle of the 15th century the whole human race in the civilized world experienced a turnaround – a simple fact. That it may be stated as a scientific fact can only come from the fact that one has worked on one's soul, diligently worked, not wanting to conquer the spirit by arbitrariness, but by working one has put oneself in an expectant state, until that which reveals itself as such an apparently simple truth has come.

Then something else is necessary. There are people, I am just mentioning the philosopher Schelling or others, who, through special moments of grace, received one or the other impression from the spiritual world. What did they do? They could not be quick enough to build up a worldview when they received an impression from the spiritual world. They draw conclusions from some impression they receive from the spiritual world. They have received an impression, then they make a whole system out of it, a whole worldview. This is what the real spiritual researcher must completely refrain from doing. The real spiritual researcher must stop at this single fact that is revealed to him, and he must wait to see if another fact is revealed to him. For example, if one has become acquainted with the fact that the earth was preceded by pre-earthly conditions in which man already lived, one must not derive a whole scientific system from it about the evolution of the Earth, but must accept such a fact as an isolated, individual fact and allow other equally isolated, individual facts to be approached, so that fact after fact presents itself, more or less comprehensive. But one must wait for each individual fact; that is what matters. Even though spiritual revelations are definitely what underlies spiritual research, these spiritual revelations only occur when the destiny of man predestines him to them. Just as one must not draw conclusions from the northern hemisphere of the earth about what is in the southern hemisphere of the earth, but must research separately what is in the southern hemisphere of the earth, so one must not draw conclusions from one corner of the spiritual world to the other, but must learn to wander around in the spiritual world, to grasp the details in their isolation. From this you can see that people will be given what they can research from the spiritual world; they can indeed learn many things.

Now you could say: Yes, but isn't there a danger that those to whom such spiritual facts are revealed will now become haughty among people, that they will consider themselves special creatures that stand out above the rest of humanity? That is already taken care of. The first thing that must precede real spiritual research is absolute modesty, especially intellectual modesty. Without developing this modesty towards all of humanity, one cannot progress in the field of spiritual research. The spiritual researcher may indeed know how to communicate individual facts from the spiritual world to his fellow human beings, but the fact that he has the grace to communicate something that is revealed to him is at the same time due to the way he approaches his fellow human beings. The spiritual researcher is one who treats even the smallest child with true reverence when it babbles something from the spirit and the soul hidden within man, even if it only asserts itself screaming from a child's throat. The spiritual researcher is glad when he hears this or that from the experience of the individual person. The experiences that people share with him are his school. He completely subordinates himself to it. He knows only one thing: he knows that what people experience, even if they are at the most primitive levels of education, is infinitely valuable, that only what is usually man's power of judgment does not follow from it. If people would judge what they have experienced correctly, they would bring forth treasures of soul and spirit from their inner being and from the depths of their being. It is these that the spiritual researcher looks for. For him, every person is an equal being with sacred mysteries in the soul, except that the consciousness, the power of judgment, sometimes does not correspond to what is in the depths of the soul. Thus the spiritual researcher in particular becomes a modest person because he always has the spiritual equality of people in mind in this regard, and because he knows that he only has what he researches in the spiritual world because he is a human being among humans. Thus he is predestined to work in the spirit for other people, who in turn can develop their souls through meditation and concentration to such an extent that they can receive what the spiritual researcher says.

You may reply that it is not very well organized that people should live side by side in such a way that they should learn from individuals what they can understand but cannot discover for themselves. I can answer that in two ways. One is that this is a fact that has to be accepted like many other facts of life, even if some people might wish otherwise. That is the first thing I can say. But the other thing is that anyone who foresees such a future for humanity, a future in which there are people among us who can see into the spiritual world and reveal intimate matters to people from this spiritual world, so that in this way other people can experience from their own understanding what they can gain in the way suggested, also knows that the most intimate relationships will develop from person to person. And he also knows that it is precisely through this that the social impulses pass from soul to soul and that the real social life is brought about in the spirit, which today one believes can only be achieved through external means. Just think how people will be brought together, how they will present a social structure in their living together, when people will face each other in such a way that one person accepts what the other is investigating as a most important, intimate matter for him. It is precisely in this way that people in the future will come close to each other in the desirable way, that spirit will work in the soul of the next person in the way that has been indicated. Those who can explore the spirit will be felt to be a necessity for other people. On the other hand, the spiritual researcher will also feel that the whole of humanity is rooted in it, without which he cannot live, without which he himself would not have the slightest meaning with his spiritual research.

Even if today the social question has been made into something that is merely understood in an outwardly materialistic way, what is anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, when viewed inwardly, shows that when the spirit becomes the guide through the world of the senses and out of the world of the senses into the supersensible world, the structure is thereby also brought about in the social life of people, through which the human being can become for the human being in the future what he is actually meant to become.

In this way, I have tried to characterize to you today, from a different point of view than in the numerous previous lectures, how anthroposophy attempts to penetrate the spirit and how this penetration is based on developing the inherent powers of the human soul. I have been trying to do this for almost two decades in what I call anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is still said in many circles that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science represents something of a striving for Buddhism or something similar. In my last lecture here, I already hinted at how precisely this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which works from the essence of the human being, from the present essence of the human being himself, abhores that weakness of people who do not want to strive from what is there, not from what we have acquired in modern natural science, but who want to go to the Orient, to India, for my sake, and take there that which was adapted for a completely different age and no longer fits into our present. We experience it again and again. A few days ago, here in Switzerland, it could be experienced again that people say: Anthroposophism, as they express themselves, also represents some kind of escape to India. When this is said in particular by people who call themselves 'Christian', then I would like to remind these Christians of something that they may know: 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor'. Because it is nothing less than bearing false witness against one's neighbor when one speaks of what is meant here as anthroposophical spiritual science, as if it were something obscure, as if it were something for humanity that has become purely passive and the like. Because humanity has become passive, because humanity can no longer come to action through what has been traditionally imparted to it through the centuries, a new spirit must be sought as a guide through the world of the senses and into the supersensible world.

Those who always only speak of warming up the old spirit and loathing, as one loathed natural science at the time of Galilei, that which appears as spiritual science, to them should be said above all, especially when they want to speak from the Christian spirit: Those who take Christianity seriously need have no fear that the Christ Impulse in its true significance, the religious worship of man, will suffer any impairment through any discovery, even if it be a spiritual discovery. On the contrary, religious life will be given a higher radiance by the fact that people will once more know what spirit and soul are, that they will not allow themselves to be dictated to about what spirit and soul are, that they will seek within the soul the way to experience the spirit and the soul. But this is what is striven for in the movement that has its external representation outside in Dornach at the Goetheanum.

The movement strives for that which lives unconsciously as a longing in numerous souls without their knowing it. It will not be possible to extract it from these souls by mere decree or dictate, but it will live in the souls as a striving, even if one were to bring about the actual representation of this striving. For just as man would die if he ceased to absorb new life forces at the age of thirty-five, just as he could not continue to live from that point on if he did not supply himself with new material life forces, so humanity cannot continue to live if it only only wants to assimilate what is old and traditional, if a new spirit does not arise in due time, weaving itself into the evolution of mankind.

For that is what this spiritual science wants to make clear and unambiguous, not obscurantism, not complicated mysticism. That is what it wants to make clear and unambiguous: that the spirit is the living element, the true guide through the world of the senses and into the supersensible world. Without the spirit we become directionless in the world of the senses. But if we develop the spirit as a guide through the world of the senses, then it proves not to be an abstract spirit of ideas alone, but to be the living spirit in us. And then we would have to clip its wings, through which it wants to strive into its actual homeland, into the homeland of the spirit, if we, after having chosen it as a guide through the world of the senses, do not want to ascend through it, through its guidance, into the supersensible world. For the spirit is alive. And if the belief can spread that the spirit, in contrast to matter, is not an independent living entity, what is the cause of this? The only cause is that man has deadened the spirit within him through his will, and so the dead spirit cannot grasp the living spirit. But if the spirit in man is quickened, then the living spirit in man grasps the living spirit in the world.

In speaking to-day as one must, if one speaks from the way of thinking that underlay, and underlies, the impulse towards the threefold social order, one cannot fail with one's whole soul to have been following the events of the times; and so one well knows, that one is talking into a storm. And although many people still remain unaware of the storm, yet the storm nevertheless is raging. So that one may well be filled with a kind of amazement, when, answering back, from a blank unconsciousness of this storm, one hears the reply,—which we have heard in these days,—“All ideology! a mere Utopia!”

It is from the actual events of the times that we shall seek to-night to refute the notion, that the impulse towards the threefold social order can be treated as a piece of unpractical idealism, a ‘Utopia,’ or that it has in it anything whatever ‘ideologic.’

Since the present Appeal [Aufruf an das deutsche Volk und die Kulturwelt (“Appeal to the German People and the Civilised World”), issued early in 1919.], as need hardly be said, goes out in the first place from the experience of a particular person, you will find it excusable, if a very natural astonishment at this reproach of ‘utopianism’ and ‘ideology’ leads me to begin with just a few introductory remarks which might perhaps he thought personal. But it is only too true in these days, that everything personal—which is not deliberately shut up in its own walls, hut can live with the life of mankind—may, through the grave events of the times, be something also which is very commonly human, and therefore perhaps a very good example of what is commonly human in these present anxious days,—with the undoubted prospect of a still more anxious future.

First came this Appeal to the German People and the Civilised World, where the Threefold Order of the Body Social was first set forth in the form now being propagated by the League for the Threefold Order. And this then was followed up by my book on the Roots of the Social Question, or the Life-needs of To-day and Tomorrow [Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft. Published in England under the title “The Threefold Commonwealth.”].

Such things as these are not put forward without reason by a man who had no wish to do so, and no power to do so, until close upon his sixtieth year of life. In no way whatever do they originate in any sort of theoretic reasonings or ingenious propositions; they originate in the fullness of life and of the observation of life. And probably they would even to-day not have become public, if the person who made them public had not been led by the actual events of the times to the conviction, that in these critical times so much is being done which is not practical, and so much finds its way into men's heads which is Utopian and ideologic, that, if anyone has something to put in place of all this, which ij3 practical, it is nothing less than his bounden duty to speak out, and make this life-practicality known.—And yet, Echo answers: Utopia! Ideology! Impracticable idealism!

You will therefore pardon me, if I make a few remarks of a personal kind, by way of introduction.—It was not from any feeling of personal attraction that I was induced to come forward with this thing, after having spent long years in one of the three fields in question, doing as much as in me lay to put this particular field onto its legs again,—it having been, in my opinion, stood upon its head by our modern form of culture. After having been busily engaged for some twenty or thirty years past in working at what I call Spiritual Science, it was really not any personal attraction that led me to extend into the other two fields of life as well, but simply the urgent necessity imposed upon a man by the present times.

What stood so menacingly before my eyes, long years ago, as the terrible problem of our civilisation, was this: that our modern spiritual life, through the peculiar character which leads to its most triumphant successes on the one side,—namely in the field of natural science,—is on the other disqualified from laying hold upon actual human life,—the life, that is, which goes beyond such things as proceed solely from the natural world; that this same spiritual life could therefore ... and this was what stood as the terrible menace of civilisation before my mind's eye ... that this spiritual life could never therefore prove qualified to grasp those great social problems which mankind is urgently called upon to solve at this present day. For the social problem is, ultimately, a spiritual one. Nobody is in a position to grasp it in its truth, who cannot grasp it from its spiritual aspect. Here, in the grasping of spiritual things, I felt myself more peculiarly at home; and this too I more peculiarly felt to be the home where I did not find the kind of hearing that I should have liked to find, so that what was only words might have passed over into acts, into a reformation of that spiritual life which was no longer capable of actually entering into human life and permeating it. Still, I would gladly have kept within this special field, if it had not been for all the things that arose out of the events of these last few years,—things, that so very plainly showed the way men go hunting after Utopias and ideologies, and never manage to grasp the really practical thing at their door, except from the aspect of some “grey theory” or some party dogma.

In the midst of the war-troubles, when I thought the time had come, when one might expect mankind to be beginning to see that any further prolongation of these war-troubles would inevitably lead to the ruin of Central and Eastern Europe, I then for the first time drafted the outlines of the scheme which has now come out, for the threefold social order. For I could see coming up, as the war went on, a terrible Utopia; a Utopia,—but one which unfortunately, from the peculiar circumstances of the times, exerted a very real influence. Its real influence was due to two properties which it possessed: In itself, in its substance, it was an unmixed Utopia. And again, in what went along with it, it was something which had been launched into the world by the interests of actual groups of human beings, and was peculiarly fitted to delude all such people as think themselves practical whilst running after every sort of utopia, and to conceal from these people the fact, that this Utopia had its origin simply in human and, in this case, purely economic interests. One could see it; one could see this Utopia, coming up on the mental horizon of the day. One could see how, in the western world, this Utopia acted upon people in such a way as not only to create certain tones of mind; but also—because it was a Utopia that coincided with very practical interests (though these interests didn't come to expression in what it said)—that this Utopia had the power to set armies marching, and to propel ships across the seas. And greater and ever greater grew the following of this Utopia in the countries of the West. And finally this Utopia assumed the shape of the so-called Fourteen Points of Woodrow Wilson.

In Germany, there would have been, at that time, no sense in doing so: in Switzerland, (where it was necessary to speak out the truth in this direction during the war), I repeatedly pointed out the Utopian character, on the one hand, of this Wilson-Programme, and, on the other, its economic character, that had its source solely in the economic conditions of the West.

So strong was the influence of this Utopia, that in the autumn of 1918 it not only found general adherence on the side of the Entente; but that in Germany, in addition to the military capitulation there came the capitulation of the spirit,—the capitulation to Wilson's Utopia,—and through the very man to whom the German People in their day of destiny looked as to their last hope.—Before it had yet taken shape in the Fourteen Points, at a time when this World Utopia was still only on the horizon, I tried to set on paper what ought to be put forward in opposition to this World Utopia as a Central European Reality. In not one quarter, where the matter should have obtained a hearing, was it possible to find any understanding for the thing which, from its inherent practicality, was fitted to be matched against a World-Utopia. At that time, they thought it very practical to trumpet into the world phrases about: ‘the rule amongst men of Might and Right.’ Those were the statesmen, who could get as far as threadbare definitions of Might and Right, but couldn't get as far as anything concrete, as really laying hold of something that was real. Never shall we get clear of confusion and chaos, until we grow able to lay practical hold on what is really practical!

As I told you, I neither wished, nor in a way was I able, to bring this thing to public notice until close upon my sixtieth year of life. For the thing goes back in retrospect to what I myself had experienced in my own life as a working-class child amongst the working classes,—where I learnt the note that rose up from the working classes of to-day, (that is, of those days,) and from the din of economic life with its toils and its troubles, in the 'sixties and 'seventies of the nineteenth century. I made acquaintance with what today is termed ‘class-struggles,’ through the ample opportunities my destiny gave me of becoming acquainted with the classes. I learnt to know the working class as myself a member of the working class. Later on, I learnt to know the middle-class with all its habits and ways: its short-sightedness for the real practical requirements of the times, its absorption in the interests of the one particular class, its indifference to everything that lies outside these particular class-Interests. And I learnt to know that class of people too from direct intercourse in life, who deal in the ‘big politics’ of the day. And in this way I acquired a direct picture of what is actually living in the age: of the struggle between the different classes of mankind. Believe me, I have been brought into near touch with the needs, the toils and troubles, the various destinies, of all those classes, of which to-day we are obliged to speak, because the great audit of accounts is beginning with regard to class-differences.

There was one thing only to which circumstances kept me a stranger; and to this I remained a very thorough stranger. I have always been kept aloof by circumstances from any sort of association with one or other party. In all my life I have never be* longed to any party whatever. I have had to do with any number of party-men, I have become acquainted with any number of party-programmes and party-opinions; but I never belonged to any party. In Austria, where my youth was spent, I could neither elect nor be elected, for the simple reason that, in those days, nobody might elect or be elected, who did not possess a yearly income amounting to a considerable figure. Afterwards, I never was in any place where I had a chance of giving my vote, for the simple reason, that my temporary residence in two other countries never gave me citizen's rights in either country. No circumstances of party, no schemes of party, have any share in what comes before the world today as the Impulse for the Threefold Social Order. Nothing has any share in this impulse, save what can be acquired in the course of a life spent in learning to know the needs, the demands, the conditions and circumstances of all the many human beings living side by side in the various classes. And when a practical way of life is then sketched out to-day on premises such as these, then one is told that this practical way of life is a ‘Utopia,’ an ‘ideology!’

For me the whole thing is a symptom: it is a symptom of the mentality of the age, that the very thing today which is out against all utopianisms, should itself be taken for a Utopia by all those utopian-minded people who fill the ranks of parties—or other posts in human society. I venture to say that, from the needs of the costermonger and the day-labourer, up to the needs of the big capitalists or of the people—for there is that sort too!—who, as diplomatists, have been concerned in the world's destinies during these last twenty or thirty years, that all this has come together in the thing, which of course in this first Appeal had to be compressed into a few short sentences. And there has gone into it too, whatever the experience of an elementary school teacher, up to that of a member of the upper universities, can contribute towards the practice of real life to-day. This seems, and seemed, to me the only possible way of acquiring the ground from which one can attempt to approach the great social problem of our times.

The social problem of our times: in what does it find its expression?—It finds expression in everything, from what the costermonger enters with a stumpy pencil in his pocket-book as his takings and outlay, up to all those creations of the mind that go out into the world as spiritual impulses to give mankind a direction and an aim. All these things to-day involve vast, wide-reaching problems, which we require to consider, before we can enter upon anything, big or little, that concerns the social question and the tasks it lays upon us.

I spoke just now of, call it a revolution, or call it a reform, in the character of our spiritual life, and said, that I looked upon this as the province where I was peculiarly at home. And I said, that the great anxiety, the great problem of civilisation which faced me here, was, that this spiritual life, in the reactionary and conservative form in which it has lingered down into our days, is suited to lay the basis for a great science of the natural world, but is bound to remain sterile and unproductive, when it comes to really grasping the will-forces at work in social life. This is a fact, one might say, which to-day is palpable. Let us just look at what the results have been of this incapacity to extend the powers of the mind over the field of social will.—During the last three or four centuries, when mankind began to emerge from the earlier, instinctive patriarchal conditions and to think over its economic system, there arose for the first time all sorts of views as to the form this economic system ought to take,—views with which I needn't trouble you to-day, and which have been superseded. They merged however finally, on the one side, into the principles of national economy evolved by the spirit and in the style of university learning,—which is nothing however but the imposition of middle-class views upon national economy. And on the other side they crystallised out into what has found its clearest, its most forcible, its most comprehensive expression in Marxianism, in the social views of Carl Marx,—which are nothing however but a reflexion of those impulses by which the working-classes are determined to see national economy propelled.

What are the characteristic features of these two tendencies?—In pointing them out, we shall at the same time be pointing out just those things in the present day which are not practical, but the reverse of all that is practical, which are ‘ideology.’

University learning: what has it finally come to? except to regarding anything like social will and purpose on a large scale as an impossibility, and taking petty tinkerings for great measures of social reform. This university-made economics moreover has declared its incompetence to do anything whatever in national economy beyond registering what actually takes place, or—expressed in this learned language itself—making a historical and statistical analysis of it. This historical and statistical analysis has resulted in nothing hut a complete paralysis of all social will and purpose. They examined the existing social tendencies historically: that is, they recorded what occurred. They examined them statistically: that is, they tabulated figures of all that went on, and thereby killed every sort of impulse towards any social will and purpose whatever. So that in practice all social will and purpose exhausted itself in petty details; whilst the things, which life actually brought with it were devoid of all real will-force, at a time when the problems of the day had long been clamouring for active consideration. And these things which actual life brought with it, being left to run their course thought-less and will-less, rushed headlong at last into the World-Catastrophe, which is the great r e d u c t i o - a d - a b s u r d u m of this Social Will-lessness.

And, on the other side, yoked to the factory, yoked to the technical processes, to the soul-blighting capitalist system, were the working classes, who turned with all their spiritual fervour to the doctrine of Marx; for they saw in this Marxian doctrine the most brilliant, the most grandiose criticism, which they themselves felt in their own hearts towards the social order: a social order; on which they could only wage war, because it was one that allowed them no share in its material and spiritual possessions.

And this Marxian doctrine, so powerful, so grandiose in its criticism of Society,—what is the nerve of it? The nerve of it is this:—‘Evolution goes forward of itself. Little by little, in modern times, the economic system has evolved forms, in which the means of production have gradually passed over into the hands of Trusts, or similar Combines. This is the way in which the working-class have become expropriated; but it is also the way which will inevitably lead, quite of itself, to the expropriation of the expropriators. Whatever men may do to assist the process, this evolution will go forward of itself.’—This, let me say, is the most unpractical confession of faith that ever was uttered: the confession, that evolution must go forward of itself; that Man is tied and bound to the wheel of history; and that he is bound to wait until the historic, economic forces in their un-human objectivity of themselves evolve what then is to be the salvation of the great masses of the working class!

Then came the World-Catastrophe. And what did it show? It showed, that all talk of automatic evolution had its origin simply in the paralysis of the human will. The will of the working-classes, yoked to the factory, yoked to the soul-blighting capitalist system, was paralysed by this yoke. They had no faith in their own power to shape a new world-order. They made it their confession of faith: ‘For us too salvation will come in due course: we cannot bring it about of ourselves.’ And they comforted themselves with this,—with this confession of faith: ‘Our salvation will come to us from without, in the course of automatic evolution.’ Such is the great creed, and such the mis-practice of life amongst the large masses of the working-class.

And now came the World-Catastrophe and suddenly demonstrated that what they put their faith in, the accumulation of the means of production, didn¹t lead to what was expected of it in the course of evolution, but planted the working-man down himself on his two feet, as a human being, and demanded of him: ‘Now then! Act!’ And this ‘Now then, act! act like a man, out of your own social will and purpose!’ is like a sign hung up in very luminous letters before the eyes of the working-classes to-day.

If one was not going through life asleep; and if one was not a theorist, simply saying yes or no to propositions propounded in some theory of life; but if one was a person who regards what men say and what men think as the outcome of something much deeper-seated,—as symptoms of what is going on deep down, inside the external affair,—then one said to oneself: Men are rapidly drifting into a total disregard of real practice, into a paralysis of all practical will. Such was the disposition of men's minds, whilst those great questions were gathering, which to-day can only find their answer, when people see fit to introduce genuine practice into life's mis-practice.

Jumbled together in all the relations of our life to-day, there is an unnatural conglomeration of Rights, of Labour and of that, which must really lie below the cry for social reconstruction in its true form. In the things about which people are fighting today, there is a great deal more underneath, than enters the minds of those who are fighting. In truth: one may say that at every point in all that is done in these critical times, one may see this unpracticality coming into it. The cry for socialisation runs through all the ranks of the working classes; it finds expression in quite definite impulses; it finds its immediate expression in the demand of the day for Works' Councils.

If the Works' Councils are to play that part in the age of socialisation, which in reality they are called upon to play, and which is demanded by the consciousness of the age (though often may be unconsciously) throughout the wide ranks of the working-classes, then these Works' Councils must grow up on the independent soil of an economic life, which in its internal organisation is completely detached from everything else in the form either of political or of spiritual life.

In saying that the corporate body of Works' Councils must grow out of a free selection of such persons as are actually engaged in economic life, so that it may make its own forms of constitution for the coming economic life of the future,—this, and what this means,—the whole nature of what is now rising up from the subconscious depths of men's souls and seeking expression in acts,—all this is something so foreign to those who today call themselves practical people, that they have now in project a Works' Councils Law, which in every one of its items is a flat contradiction of all that Works' Councils are intended to be:—a law which in every one of its items proceeds from the idea, not of moving on towards a new future, but of somehow preserving forms that inwardly are dead and done with. There can be no plainer symptom of the impracticality and utopianism of this age than the life-remote phaenomenon presented by this Works' Councils Bill.—Is it not time, that even people who had till now made their spiritual home elsewhere, should feel it their personal duty to speak out, when they see how this age is saturated with Utopianism,—how infinitely far this age—so rich in life's routine, is removed from anything like life's genuine practice! -

In this present age we have—all jumbled together—impulses still dating from the earliest times; times, when wave after wave of migrant peoples broke in and built up territorial lordships, conquered the soil, and on the strength of conquest of the soil established rights over the soil, out of which has grown in due course the whole code of legal rights. In our notions of right and justice, in our impulses of right and justice, we still have the old conceptions, principles, laws, attached to the conquest of the soil. “Of the rights you brought with you at birth” of these alas! there is still in many respects “no question.” That age has left much behind with us to-day; it has left us everything in our national economy which has to do with the soil.—Then followed the age of industrialism, which has led to the thing against which people are struggling so fiercely today in many quarters; namely, to Capitalism.

What do we mean by Capitalism? By Capitalism we simply mean, in other words, the private ownership of the means of production. And so we have, matched one against the other, (as becomes plain directly one tries to form a comprehensive view of the whole economy of the civilised globe) ... we find, matched one against the other, on one side those conditions that arise from the use of the soil for the purposes of human economy, and those again that arise from ownership of the means of production, and the use of these for the same economic purposes.

This is something which very few people see: that down to the smallest thing, down to the halfpenny that I take out of my purse to buy some trifle that I need, there is this economic struggle going on between the conditions arising from the soil, and the conditions arising from the means of production. Our whole process of national economy is one constant endeavour to effect a balance between these two sets of conditions: arising from the soil, and from the means of production. And into this whole process we ourselves are forced with all our life's fate in every field, as men of modern times. And what came about when the old aristocratic forms of society passed over into its middle-class forms, can be best described by saying, that these middle-class forms of society have given rise to the modern market, governed anarchically by Supply and Demand. In the market today, we find capital transferred from hand to hand, from company to company. And subject to this principle of Supply and Demand, we find human labour-power, working under a system of wage-relations, and commodities circulating, the services performed by human hands.

Three separate things have been flung into the market by the middle-class order of society: Capital, Wages, and Services [Leistung: i.e. that which is performed by labour, whether the manufacture of an article, a personal service rendered, or a literary or artistic production.]; and under this middle-class order of society Capital has been made the substitute for something that in earlier days, under the old aristocratic world-order, wore a very different aspect. Under the old aristocratic world-order, based upon conquest of the soil, everything in the nature of services exchanged between men was relegated to the sphere of Rights. Part of all that was produced must be paid as dues to the landlord; and so-and-so-much one might keep back as labourer. All this was relegated to the sphere of Rights. One had a right to consume so and so much oneself; and one had a duty, because the other man had a right to consume so and so much of what one produced in his service. Rights were the rule under the old aristocratic order; that is to say, rights of privilege, class-rights, ruled everything to do with human requirements. Much of all this echoes on into our own times,—vibrates on even into the penny I take out of my purse to buy something. And through this under-note comes the sound of the other thing: of what has taken the place of this old Order of Rights; the sound of all which has turned capital, human-labour and human services into commodities, ruled by Supply and Demand, regulating themselves, that is, according to profit, according to the most sordid competition, the blindest human egoism, which leads every man to try and earn as much as ever he can squeeze out of the social system. And so, in the place of the old Rights, there came something that was a play of forces between economic power and economic coercion. In place of the privileged with preferential rights, and the others with deferential rights, under the old patriarchal relations of master and servant, there came the economic relations of the middle-class regime, based upon the war of competition, upon profit, upon economic coercion in the tug of war between capital and wages. And into this again is coerced the exchange of commodities, is coerced the adjustment of prices, which is dependent on the egoist war between capital and wages.—And to-day, ... to-day what is trying to grow up ... for this is the really practical thing, to see what is growing up, and how, more or less unconsciously—though consciously too in many quarters to-day!—a new order of society is trying to take shape; one that shall no longer be based upon relations of coercion, of economic coercion, but based upon reciprocal services, justly exchanged;—based, that is, in this respect upon a really unegoistic and social way of thinking amongst the human community. And the only practical person to-day, the only person, who is not working in opposition to what nevertheless must come, is one who hears the cry that goes up from the whole depths of the human soul: ‘The old privileged rights, the old system of capital and wages, must give place to the system of mutual services!’ How many people are there to-day, do you think, who understand it as yet in all its consequences, this great, new, up-welling life-impulse, springing from human evolution itself,—not conjured up by the arbitrary wishes of individuals,—this life-impulse, which has had such a bloody prelude in the terrible World-War? One may still hear people, even those who think socialistically, who with every fibre of their will are bent on combating capitalism,—one may still hear them talk—and it's a plain symptom of the times!—of the worker receiving the just wages of his labour, and that this is the way to combat capitalism!

Anyone who looks deeper into the conditions, knows,-that Capital will exist, so long as Wages exist. For, as you know, in the real world we always find two opposites going together: a north pole, and a south pole; north-pole magnetism, and south-pole magnetism: each positive has its negative; Capital brings Wages in its train; and one only needs to look into the whole business of national economy at the present day, to know the answer to the question: What are wages paid out of?—Wages are paid out of Capital! And there will inevitably be Capital, so long as Wages have to be paid out of Capital. Anti-capitalism has no sense, unless at the same time one is clear, that along with capital the wage-system itself must go; and that there must come a free communal association of the manual worker and the spiritual worker in the non-capitalist order of economy. A free communal association, which makes the manual worker the free partner of the spiritual worker, who is no longer a capitalist, will do away with the wage-principle, with the wage-relation; and, with the wage relation, will do away with the capital-relation. And therefore the only possible way to talk of capitalism, is to talk of it from the standpoint of the social requirements of the day,—as you find them discussed in my book The Threefold Commonwealth or The Life-needs of To-day and To-morrow. We must start from this important truth: that we are situated in the midst of this struggle between the two opposing sets of Rights: the Rights arising from the soil, and the Rights arising from the means of production; and we must show, that the soil, in our future economic order, will be a means of production, and nothing more; and that a means of production can only accumulate labour-value until it is ready-finished; that, from that moment on, it is nobody's property; that, from that moment on, nobody has strictly speaking any rights of heritage over it; that, from that moment on, it goes back into circulation in the community, as I have described in my book* And then, then we come also and very straight to the discovery, that this was the position held by the soil from the very first; that all mortgaging of the soil is a thing against nature; that land and ready-finished means of production are in no way commodities, but must pass from man to man by some other means than by exchanging them for commodities. This is something one may learn at the present day from the actual practice of life.

That this is something which may be learnt from the actual practice of life to-day, will be plain from the following considerations. Nobody can look into life with a practical eye to-day, who approaches this life with a mind hill of stereotyped theories, party definitions or merely abstract ideas. We have moved on today into an age, when man has awoken to the consciousness of himself, in quite a different way from ever before. Only their disinclination to the objective study of souls can make men today blind to the fact, that since the middle of the fifteenth century we have entered upon a totally new epoch as regards the evolution of the human soul,—an epoch, in which the soul of man is becoming ever more and more conscient. And there is one class of mankind from whose unexhausted brains the cry goes forth: ‘Let me come to myself as a human soul, in full consciousness of my manhood!’—That, ladies and gentlemen, however unpleasing the symptoms which may often accompany it,—that is the soul of the Working-Classes! And the first words in this appeal for a self-conscient life under human conditions are as follows: ‘No longer shall Capital coerce me by unjust economic power through the means of Wages!’ Wages, for the modern working man, represent what he has to fight against, if he would rise to that full human consciousness which is absolutely demanded by the age upon which we are now entering. And it is the task of this age, upon which we are entering, to give Services their right place as such in the economic process.

Services can only find their right place In the economic process, when every measure has been taken on the other hand to separate out from this process again all that has become involved with it through the old aristocratic and the old middle-class regimes;—when we have separated out from the economic circuit the system of state-rights: the political relations;—when we have separated out the spiritual life (which truly has been long enough in bondage!), and released it from the state on the one side, and from the economic process on the other. And therefore every endeavour after a social order in which services shall ensure just reciprocal services, in which men shall work for men, not merely every man for himself, is inseparably involved with the division of the body social into those three organic systems, which have been fused together and confounded by what had quite other interests than interests of common humanity,—by what had, and could have, only interests of caste, interests of class.

All these single, separate interests, then, mount up to what we find as the collective totality of interests when we come to the big world-affairs. As I mentioned to-day in my opening remarks, which had a somewhat personal tinge,—a person who has spent his life in learning to know the life-needs of all kinds and conditions of men, has his eyes a little sharpened for those international conditions too, which have come about through the amalgamation of economic life, political or rights life, and spiritual life. Believe me, if one has not been asleep through all that has happened, one finds so much in these happenings which is symptomatic and very plainly shows the impossibility, in international life also, of this amalgamation of the three fields of life!

Let me remind you of one thing only: At the time when the German Empire was founded from reasons of the political life, how often did Bismarck lay it down as a maxim that, ‘This Empire is politically saturated; this Empire needs no extension.’ This was in the first place a political line of thought, proceeding from the political impulses which led to the founding of the Empire. And then, whilst the remains, the remnants, of this political way of thought lingered on amongst the people in power, economic conditions began to come to the front, amalgamating ever more and more with these political conditions; and, finally, the economic conditions gained so completely the upper hand, that if one asked any of the leading people (and I often made the experiment during the war): What are they aiming at on political considerations in Germany? one got no answer to one's question. But answers came, and very early in the day, from certain economic interests: which is to say, that economic interests wanted to have the decision in a political matter.—One has only to observe things of this kind with an eye to the really practical understanding of life!

For years, the whole tangle of national, that is to say spiritual and cultural relations, of economic relations, and of political-international relations of rights were all knotted up together in the fatal part played by the so-called Baghdad Railway Question. It was one of the causes that contributed to set the world on fire. For years past, any real practitioner of life, any real observer of life, could see how,—like a knot that is continually being ravelled and unravelled,—economic, political, •;cultural relations were for ever, now blending, now undoing one another in this question of the Baghdad Railway. One could see the thing coming up over the horizon: how It began politically with the Young Turk Party establishing itself in Constantinople and setting up Liberalism as a political system, in place of the old Turkish conservative system. There one had, to begin with, political considerations. And then these became mixed up with purely economic concerns, in the question of the Sanjak Railway and the question of the Dardanelles. And to this there then came in addition the cultural problem of the Slavonic question, involving spiritual relations of a national and cultural character. No steps had been taken to forestall this confusion of provinces in the international life too of modern times, and to bring the three into same form of international structure in which they might work, not to mutual disturbance, but so as to correct and balance one another.

Anyone, who looked from the real experience of life in one nationality to the field of international affairs, might see the terrible T w i l i g h t o f t h e N a t i o n s coming up in Europe from this amalgamation of the three provinces of life in all the great questions of world-politics in modern times. And for him it lay like a nightmare on his soul: ‘When at last will they see, that the sources of all really social thinking in every people must lead to a separation of those three social systems, whose entanglement is bringing mankind into crises and disaster!’

Our diplomacy was a mis-practice, a Utopia, an ideology! No wonder then, that from this quarter the very thing to be set against it is regarded as a Utopia, as an ideology, as a mere piece of idealism I These things have finally brought about the conditions, of which at the present day one can only say to oneself again and again: When will people wake up to the seriousness of the times? When at last will they see, that the worst of all Utopias at the present day is the Utopia that cannot see that it is a question to-day of big accounts, not little ones, and that one is sinning against the spirit of the age when one labels a thing from some hole and corner of one's own, as being the kind of thing that happens to fall within the particular limits of one's own understanding,—when one looks out at life from some point of view like this at something which obviously demands experience of life, demands the good will to learn from actual life,—and then calls this thing unpractical, a piece of idealism!—When will people at last wake up, and recognise this ‘piece of idealism’ to be the genuine practice of life?—When will they be willing to see, that the important thing is not to say, ‘I don't understand that,’ but to feel from the underlying instincts of life, whether a person is talking, not from some shadowy theory but from the faithful observation of life itself!—Or else,—to the great misfortune of the age!—we shall always be meeting in the social field with a repetition of something which is a typical picture of bourgeois philistrosity:—At the time when the plans were being made for the construction of the first German railway, they consulted a college of physicians—practical people therefore, a select committee!—as to whether it were advisable to build a railway. And these practical people replied: That it would be better to build no railway; for that if they did, it would be injurious to the health of any persons who might eventually travel on it. But that if, however, there were persons already who were determined to travel on It, then at any rate they should put up a high wooden fence to right and left along the line, so that, when the train rushed by, people mightn't get brain-shock from the rapidity of the motion.—Well, to-day too, people are afraid of the on-rush of the social movement. They would like to put up high fences, for fear of getting brain-shock. Woe to the weaklings, who want to put up such fences, for fear the reality might unhinge their brains!

And so every actual observation of our times is a constant reminder to speak in such a way, that one knows that in speaking one is talking into the storm. Though many people may still be unaware of the storm, yet the storm is raging. May as many people as possible grow aware of the storm,—may a large enough number of people grow aware of it,—before it is too late!

* *

(a discussion followed; after which
Steiner replied in conclusion:)

After all that has been said by the other speakers in the course of the discussion, there remains very little for me to say to-night in addition. I should only like to point out,—not by way of correction, but simply to prevent any misunderstanding,—that by ‘capitulation to the Wilson-Utopia’ I simply meant what the previous speaker, Mr. X..., himself said. X merely wanted to point out the significant fact about it, which in my opinion is, that in this Western Utopia we have before us, what in its substance as I said is a Utopia. Its Utopian character has by now, I think, been plainly enough demonstrated. A Utopia is something which utters very fine words and words which are meant to be very ideal, but which lack all basis for realisation. And in this sense everything that came to light in these Fourteen Points—insofar as they proposed to bring about ideal conditions—was Utopian. I am quite of opinion with the gentleman who spoke, that, with all this, there was something very different behind; as I expressed it myself in my lecture, there were extremely real western interests behind. And so we have to do with a Utopia, which very cleverly conceals behind it something which is Not-a-Utopia, namely very real interests. And in saying that in Germany in October 1918 they succumbed also to this Utopia, I meant to say that in those days people believed ... well, in certain circles at any rate they believed ... that these Fourteen Points didn't represent a Utopia, but something that was to be taken as Not-a-Utopia. I should like to know otherwise, why they surrendered—so to speak—to this Utopia! At any rate, they didn't say: We appeal to the very real selfish interests which lie behind the Fourteen Points, and to these we surrender. But they said: We surrender to the Fourteen Points, and appeal to the realisation of them. And therefore I think, in the light of what has actually come to pass, that one may certainly see all the signs of a real capitulation to a real Utopia.

If I may say a few words upon the question that was raised about the Works' Councils; I should like to refer to the brief remark already made in my lecture: that the whole corporation of Works' Councils must go out solely from the economic body itself; and in this way; namely that in the different businesses, from the different persons actually engaged in manual and spiritual work, and simply and solely on the grounds of a confidence founded in this joint associative work,—that first of all these Works' Councils should be set upon their legs. Then we have the Works' Councils there, possessing the confidence of their fellow-workers in the different businesses. One can't socialise in the individual businesses. This is just what is so unpractical in the proposed Works' Councils Bill, which is in all truth wide enough of anything like real socialisation. The really practical thing will be, that all the inter-arrangements between the different businesses should come from the Works' Councils of these businesses themselves; and they will have to come about in this way; that the councils elected from the separate business-works come together and form a Corporation of Works' Councils covering a definite self-contained system of economy, and begin first by giving themselves a constitution at a sort of preliminary Founders' Meeting. And they will also go on to mark out the lines of direction along which the individual councils are then to work in their own businesses, under the joint social management of the whole Corporation of Works' Councils. It must come out of the forces of the economic life itself, of an independent economic life, resting upon its own grounds, if the thing which proceeds to-day from the real, social foundations of human nature,—not from any red-tape government theory,—is to what is officially termed ‘march;’—though indeed this official ‘marching’ is very unlike the old military forward march, and looks much more like a skipping-about,—or ‘running to cover,’ let us say!—

And now, after the many points that have been touched on by the different gentlemen who spoke in the course of the discussion, it only requires that I should add one thing to what I have said already; which is: That the age, which we have now entered upon in the course of historic evolution, is one which sets a great task before us; the task of combining together men who render spiritual, and men who render manual services, and of enabling them to turn their services to full value, so that they may find their rightful place socially in the whole social community of which they form part. But this means, that we must give our minds in deepest earnest to this demand of the times, so that really we may succeed at last in arousing men to a mutual understanding and agreement between man and man in the field of Economics, of Rights, of the Spirit.

That these three departments of life work best in actual practice when they are divided, is something very plain to be seen in a quarter, where people are obliged to-day to let them work together from separate and very different sources: namely in the life of the individual family. Just think what would become of the individual family of these days, if Rights life, spiritual life and economic life were all jumbled up together in it chaotically! What is needed for the times to come, as well as for the present time, is that we should find means to apply to our social conditions today, what goes on of itself as a matter of course in the family. But here our eyes grow confused; and we can't see the wood because of the trees; and then, if we talk of separating the three systems of the body social, we are accused of wanting to split the body social into three parts, whereas of course anything can only live as a unity. But just in order to keep this unity properly alive, the body social must be placed on its three proper footings! It's not I that am so unpractical as to want to chop the horse into three pieces; all I want is, that those people should come to their senses who maintain that the only one and undivided horse is the horse with one leg, not with four. This seems to me much the same as those people who declare that one wants to out up the body social into three parts, because one wants to separate its three limbs. No! what I want, is to establish the unity of the body social, so that this body social may stand soundly upon its three legs of Rights, of Economics, of Spiritual life. But to-day one is shouted down as a Utopianist, directly one talks of a horse standing on its four legs; and those are taken for the really practical people to-day, who maintain, that the only proper horse, the only one-and-undivided horse, is the horse that stands only on one leg.—There are many things to-day, which are only standing upon one leg, and which we need to put upon their sound number of legs; indeed one might say that very much has been stood on its head by Utopian dreamers, which we need to set up on its proper legs.

“I believe the thoughts, which I am expressing, to be not the private thoughts of a single individual, but to voice the unconscious actual will of European mankind.”

“Here is no claim for a plan that ought to be realised; here is simply a statement of what is trying to realise itself, and will succeed in doing so, the moment it is allowed free passage.”

The practical problems, presented by the social life of our day, cannot fail to be misinterpreted by anyone who approaches them with the idea of any sort of Utopia. One's particular views and sentiments may lead one to believe, that some special form of institution, as planned in one's own brain, is bound to make men happy; this belief may assume the force of overwhelming conviction; one may try to promulgate this belief;—and yet all one says may be completely wide of the mark as regards the social question at the present time, and its real significance.

One may push this assertion even to the following, seemingly absurd extreme, and yet strike the truth to-day. For suppose someone to possess a quite perfect theoretical “solution” of the social question, his ideas might nevertheless be wholly impractical if he thought of tendering this brain-devised scheme as a “solution” to mankind. For we are no longer living in an age when one should think it possible to influence public life to any purpose in this manner. With the present constitution of men's souls, it is not to be expected that they should say in respect to public life: “Here is somebody who understands social institutions and what is necessary; what he thinks to be the right thing, we will do!”

This is not at all the way in which people are willing to welcome any ideas about social life. The following book,—which has already received a fairly wide circulation—reckons with this fact. The intentions with which it was written have been totally misunderstood by those people who attributed to it anything of a Utopian character. The people to do so more especially, were such as themselves persist in thinking in Utopias; what they see in the other person is the characteristic feature of their own habit of mind.

For the practical thinker, it is to-day one of the accepted experiences of public life, that, with any idea of a Utopian kind—be it never so demonstrably convincing—there is absolutely nothing to be done. And yet many people still have a notion, that they are called on to lay some idea of this kind,—in the economic field, for instance,—before their fellow-men. They will have to convince themselves that they are talking in vain; their fellow-men can find no use for their proposals.

This should be taken practically as a piece of experience. For it points to a fact of great importance in modern public life:—the fact namely of the life-remoteness of what is thought, in comparison to the actual demands, for instance, of economic realities. But how can one hope to master the tangle of public life at the present day if one approaches its intricate conditions with a thinking that is life-remote?

Such a question cannot be exactly popular; for it involves the admission that one's way of thought is remote from life. And yet, without this admission there can be no approaching the social question either. For the question is one that affects the whole civilisation of the day, and that must be treated seriously, before it can be possible to arrive at any clear view of what is needed in our social life.

It is the whole form of the spiritual life of our day which is thereby called in question. Mankind in modern times has developed a kind of spiritual life which is dependent to a very large degree upon state institutions and economic forces. The human being, whilst still a child, is brought under the education and teaching of the State. He can be educated only in the way permitted by the economic conditions of the environment out of which he proceeds.

Now it might easily be thought, that in this way a person cannot fail to be well fitted to the conditions of life at the present day, since the State thus has the means of giving such forms to the whole system of education and teaching, (and thereby to the principal part of public spiritual life) as shall prove of best service to the human community. It might easily be thought too, that a person is likely to be the best possible member of the human community, when he Is educated in accordance with the economic possibilities from which he proceeds, and placed by his education at the post to which these economic possibilities appoint him.

This book has to undertake the unpopular task at the present time of showing, that the complications in our public life arise from the dependence of the spiritual life upon the State and upon the economic system; and it has to show, that one part of the very burning social question is the emancipation of the spiritual life from this dependence.

In doing so, the book sets itself in opposition to errors that are widely spread. The taking-over of the educational system by the State has for a long time past been generally regarded as something very good, and favourable to human progress. And persons of a socialist turn of mind can hardly conceive of anything else, than that the Community should educate the individual to its own service after its own standards.

People, in this matter, are very unwilling to come to a recognition which is absolutely necessary to-day: the recognition, namely, that, in the course of history, a thing may come at a later age to be mistaken, which, at an earlier stage of evolution, is right. In order for the new conditions to grow up amongst mankind in modern times, it was necessary that the educational system—and therewith public spiritual life—should be taken away from those in whom it was vested during the Middle Ages, and should be made over to the State.—But to continue to maintain this state of things is a very serious social mistake.

This is what the book has to show in the first part of it. Spiritual life has grown up to freedom within the framework of the State. It cannot flourish in this freedom as it should, unless it be given full self-administration. The whole character which our spiritual life has assumed, requires that it should form a completely self-dependent branch of the body social. The educational and teaching system,—which after all form the ground from which all spiritual life grows,—must be placed under the administration of those who do the educating and teaching. In this administration nothing must interfere, whether by voice or authority, which plays any part in the State or in economic affairs. Every teacher must spend so much time only on the actual teaching, as will allow of his also being an administrator in his own province. This means, that he will carry on the administration in the same way as he carries on his educating and teaching. Nobody will proscribe instructions, who is not himself at the same time livingly engaged in the actual work of educating and teaching. No parliament, and no individual,—who once taught perhaps, himself, but does so no longer,—will have any voice in the matter. What is learnt in the direct experience of teaching,—this will pass over into the work of administration too. And under such an arrangement it will be natural for competence and practical sense to find their fullest possible scope.

It may of course be objected, that even under this self-administration of the spiritual life everything will not be perfect. But perfection is, after all, not to be looked for in real life. All that can be aimed at, is the realisation of the best-that-is-possible. The faculties, ripening in the growing child, will really be passed on into the human community, when the care of developing them is left solely to a person who, judging upon spiritual grounds, can form a competent decision. How far a particular child ought to be brought on in the one or the other direction,—this is a matter only to be judged of in a free spiritual community; and only a community of this kind can determine, what should be done to give such judgment due effect. From a free spiritual community of this kind, both the State-life and the life of Economics will receive those forces which they are not able to give themselves, when they shape the spiritual life from their own aspects.

It lies along the lines sketched out in the book, that, as regards their arrangements and subject-matter, all educational institutes for the service of the State or the Economic System will also be under the charge of the Free Spiritual Life and its administrators. Schools of law, trade-schools, training-institutes for agriculture and industry, will all take the form which the free spiritual life gives to them. The book will inevitably awake the hostility of many prejudices, if these, quite correct, consequences be drawn from what is said there. But what is the source of these prejudices?—The antisocial spirit of them becomes plain enough, directly one perceives that at bottom, unconsciously, they proceed from the conviction that teachers are of course unpractical people, out of touch with life,—people who, if left to themselves, could not possibly be expected to make the sort of institutions that would suitably supply the practical departments of life,—that these institutions must be shaped by those actually engaged in practical affairs, and that the teachers must work along the lines directed for them.

Those who think so, do not see, that teachers who are unable to direct their own lines, from the smallest matter to the highest, are thereby made unpractical and out of touch with life. And then, the principles given them may be laid down by the most practical persons—to all appearance,—and yet the teachers will educate no practicians for actual life.

Our anti-social conditions are brought about by the fact, that people come into social life without a social sense acquired from their education. People with a social sense can only proceed from a form of education that is guided and directed by persons who themselves have a social sense. The social question will never be touched, unless the education question, and the whole question of spiritual life, be treated as one of its essential factors. Anti-social conditions are not created simply by economic institutions, but by the fact, that the human beings in these institutions behave anti-socially. And it is anti-social to have the young taught and educated by people, whom one cuts off from actual life by proscribing to them from outside what they are to do and what lines they are to follow.

The State appoints schools for the study of law, and requires that what is taught in these law-schools should be that code of jurisprudence which the State itself has laid down from its own standpoints, in accordance with its own constitutions and rules. Law-schools, that originate solely in a free spiritual life, will draw their teachings of law and equity from the sources of the spiritual life itself. The State will have to wait for what this free spiritual life shall encharge on it, and will receive new seeds of life from those living ideas which can proceed only from a spiritual life that is free.

But within the spiritual life itself, there will be those people who go out into life from their own points of view, and spread into all the branches of life's practice. Life's actual practice can never be anything that grows out of educational institutions devised by the mere practicians, and where the teaching is done by people estranged from life; it can only grow out of a teaching where the teachers understand life and its practice from their own points of view.—The administration of the spiritual life in detail, and the form it will take, is described, or at least indicated, in the book.

People of a Utopian turn of mind will raise any number of questions in argument. Artists and spiritual workers of all professions will anxiously enquire, whether artistic talent is likely to flourish better under a free spiritual life, than under the one at present provided by the State and the powers of the economic world?—Those who put such questions should reflect, that this book is in no respect designed as a Utopia. Nowhere is there laid down in it any sort of theory: Things should be thus or thus; but practical suggestions are made for human communities, which, living and working together, shall be able to bring about desirable social conditions. Any person who judges life, not according to theoretic preconceptions but actual experience, will say to himself, that every worker, producing freely out of Ms own creative talents, will have a prospect of his work being duly appreciated, when there is a free spiritual community, able to intervene in life's affairs from its own point of view.

The “social question” is not something that has come up in human life in these days, and that can now be solved by a couple of individuals or by parliaments, and will then be solved. The “social question” is bound up with the whole of modern civilised life, and will remain so, once having arisen. At every moment in the evolution of human history it will have to be solved anew. For human life in these latter times has entered upon a phase where all social institutions continually give rise to what is anti-social. And this anti-social element has constantly to be overcome afresh. Just as any living body, after repletion, enters again after awhile upon a phase of hunger, so too the body social, after its organic conditions have once been ordered, comes again into disorder. There is no more a panacea for the ordering of social conditions, than there is a food that stills hunger for all time. Men, however, may enter into such forms of community, that, through their joint living co-operation, external life is constantly redressed and turned into the social direction. And one such community is the self-administering, spiritual branch of the body social.

Just as, for the spiritual life, free self-administration is a social necessity, called for by the practical experiences of the modern age,—so, for the economic life, is associative work.—The economic process, in modern human life, consists in the production of commodities, the circulation of commodities, and the consumption of commodities. By means of this process human needs are satisfied; and in this process are involved the human beings with their activities. Each person has his own part-interests in the process, and each must himself take part in it with the peculiar activity of which he is capable. What each person actually requires, he alone can know and feel; what he ought to perform, he desires to decide from his own insight into the life-conditions of the whole body. This was not so at all times, and is not so to-day over all the earth; it is so in the main, amongst the civilised part of the earth's population at the present day.

The economic life has drawn ever wider circles in the course of mankind's evolution. The self-contained system of household-economy grew into town-economy and this again into state-economy. To-day we are confronted with world-economy.—It is true, that in each new system a considerable part still lives on of the old; and in each old system a good deal of the new was already present in anticipation. But the divers lots and lives of mankind are involved with the fact, that this series of evolutionary phases have exerted in turn a predominant influence in certain relations of life.

It is a senseless idea to want to organise the forces of economic life into an abstract all-world community. The individual economic organisms have to a large extent merged, in the course of evolution, into the economic organisms of the various states. But the state-communities arose out of other forces than purely economic ones; and it was the endeavour to convert these state-communities into economic communities, which has resulted in the social chaos of these latter times. Economic life is struggling to assume shapes given to it by its own proper forces, independent of State-institutions, and independent too of State ways of thinking. It can only do so, when associations come together, composed purely from economic points of view, and drawn conjointly from circles of consumers, traders, and producers. The size of such associations will be regulated of itself by the circumstances of actual life:—over-small associations would prove too costly in the working, over-large ones too complicated, economically, for provision and control. The actual requirements of life will lead the different associations to find the best ways of regulating intercourse one with another. There is no need to fear, if a person's life has to be spent in constant change of place, that he will find himself restricted by associations of this kind. Transition from one to the other will be easy, when the interests of trade and industry effect the transit, and not state-organisations. One can conceive arrangements between such an organic system of associations, which would work with all the ease of a money-currency.

Within any particular association, a very general harmony of interests can be made possible by practical sense and a thorough understanding of the departments of business. Instead of laws regulating the production of the commodities, their circulation and their consumption, the people themselves will regulate them through their own direct insight and immediate interest in the matter. Standing themselves in the midst of this associative life, the people are able to possess the requisite insight; and the fact, that the various interests must find their level by means of contract, will lead the commodities to circulate at proportionate prices. Such joint association according to economic points of view is something quite different from what exists, for instance, in the modern trades' unions. The trades' unions exert their action in economic life; but they do not come together according to economic points of view. They are constructed after the principles which in modern times have grown out of habitual dealing with political, or State, points of view. They are parliaments, in which the people debate; not where they meet to settle together, according to economic points of view, what service one should render the other. In the associations, there will not be sitting ‘wage-labourers’ exerting their power to extract as high a rate of wages as possible from the employer of labour; but the manual workers will be collaborating with the spiritual directors of production and with those whose interests lie in the consumption of what they produce, jointly endeavouring so to adjust prices, that one service may find a suitable reciprocation in the other. This cannot be done by debating in parliamentary assemblies; people will be very chary of such things; for, who would ever be working, if any number of people had to spend their time negotiating about the work! It all goes on in agreements between man and man, between association and association,—along with the work.

What is sketched here, is no plan for a Utopia. It does not say in the least, that anything ought to be arranged in this way or in that. It simply points out how the people themselves will arrange things, when they want to work effectively in communities that accord with their own insight and interests.

That people will actually join together in communities of this kind, is a matter which human nature takes care of on the one hand,—when it is not hindered by state-Interference,—since nature creates the wants. And on the other hand, the free spiritual life will take care of it; for a free spiritual life develops the kinds of insight that are needed for action in the community. Anyone, whose thinking rests on experience, must admit, that associative communities of this kind could be formed at any time, and that there is nothing utopian involved in them. Nothing whatever prevents their existing, except the fact, that the modern man is so bent upon “organising” economic life from outside, that the idea of “organisation” might be said to have become a sort of psychic suggestion with him. In direct contrast to this “organising,” which tries to join men together from outside in the work of production, is this other picture, of the living economic organisation which rests on free associative union. In the course of joint association, one man forms links with the other, and the general system of the whole body grows out of the intelligence of its individual members.

One may say of course, ‘What is the use of the Have-Nots associating together with the Haves!’ One may perhaps think it better that all production and consumption should be regulated “justly” from outside. But this sort of “organising” regulation hampers the free creative energies of the individual, and deprives economic life from receiving what such creative energies alone can produce. Only let the experiment for once be made, in spite of all existing prejudices; let an association be formed even between the Have-Nots of to-day and the Haves; and if no forces intervene save economic ones, he-who-has will of necessity be obliged to balance services with him-who-has-not, reciprocal service for service.

In discussing these things to-day, people talk, not from the life-instincts which arise out of experience, but from those moods of mind which have grown up out of class-interests and interests of all kinds, other than economic,—and which have been able to grow up, for the reason, that in this modern age, when the economic life especially has become ever more and more complicated, people have been unable to keep pace with it with purely economic ideas. What prevented them, has been the unfree spiritual life. The people engaged in economic life are caught up in its routine. The forces in action, that shape the economic processes, are not fully clear to them; they work without any insight into the totality of human life. In the associations, each will learn from the others what it is absolutely necessary that he should know. There will come to be a collective economic experience as to what is possible; because the people, of whom each has insight and experience in his special department, will put their judgments together.

Just as, in the free spiritual life, the only forces at work are those which reside in the spiritual life itself, so too, in the associative system of economy, the only economic values will be those which result from the associations. In the economic life, what any particular person has to do in it, is the outcome of his life in conjunction with those with whom he is economically associated. This means, that he Will have exactly so much influence upon the general economic process as corresponds to the service he renders.—The case of those who are unfit for service, and the place they occupy in the body social, will be found discussed in the book. To shelter the weak from the strong: this can be done by an economic life that is shaped solely by its own, economic forces.

The body social will fall then into two self-dependent parts, which are able mutually to support one another for the very reason, that each has its own peculiar administration, proceeding from its own special forces. But between the two, there must be a third form of life at work. This is the ‘State’ branch, strictly speaking, of the body social. What here finds scope, are all those things which are, and must be, dependent on the judgment and sentiments of every grown-up human being. In the free spiritual life, each person busies himself according to his own special faculties. In the economic life, each person occupies his particular place in the way that results from the associative connection in which he stands. In the political, or State life of Rights, he comes to his account purely as a man,—insofar as this is independent of the faculties he may be able to exert in the free spiritual life, and independent too of whatever value the associative economic life may give to the commodities that he produces,

Labour is shown in this book, as regards hours and manner of work, to be a concern of the political, or State Rights life. In this system of the body social, every man meets his fellow man on equal ground; because, here, the only affairs transacted, or administered, lie in provinces where every man alike is equally competent to judge. Men's rights and men's duties find their regulation here.

The organic unity of the whole body social will grow out of the independent development of these, its three systems. The book will show, what form the action of movable capital,—the means of production,—may assume under the joint working of the three systems, as well as the use of land and soil.

Anybody, who wants to ‘solve’ the social question by means of some economic device hatched out in the brain, will think the book not practical. But if anybody, starting from life's actual experience, wants to promote those forms of association, amongst human beings, in which they may learn to understand and to apply themselves to the social problems—then he may be not quite unwilling to allow the author's attempt towards a genuine practice of life.

The book was first published in 1919. To what was verbally delivered at the time, I added a series of supplementary articles, which appeared in the paper, ‘Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus,’ and have now come out in book-form under the title “In Ausführung der Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus” [obtainable in English through the anthroposophical book-shops under the title, “Studies in the Threefold Commonwealth.”].

It will be found, that in both books there is comparatively little said about the “aims” of the social movement, and much more about the paths that must be trodden in social life. Anyone, who thinks along the lines of practical life, knows, that a particular aim may present itself under a variety of shapes. Only those people who live in abstractions, see everything mapped-out in single contours. Such people often find fault with what is really practicable, as being not ‘clear’ enough, ‘too vague in its outlines.’ Many, who fancy themselves ‘practical people,’ are often just these very abstractionists. They do not reflect, that life may assume all manner of shapes. It is an element of flux; and whoever would go along with it, must adapt himself in his own thoughts and sentiments to this trait of constant fluctuation. Social problems are only to be grasped by this kind of thinking.

The ideas in this book have been wrung from observation of life; it is from the observation of life that they ask to be understood.