The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Everything will depend on whether the whole attitude of the lectures that you now want to present to the public is different from the one that usually underlies the discussions that have been common up to now. The attitude that you will have to take will be particularly determined by the fact that you will have to point out everywhere the importance of the human being in all of social life.

Today you will find social judgments everywhere that start from something other than the human being as such. You will find social judgments that are based on the concept of capital, on the function of capital and so on within the social order. You will then find that capitalism is spoken of as if it were some kind of power that goes around the world, and that in all this talk of “capitalism” there is actually little basis in consideration of the essence of man as such.

You will then hear talk again about work, about the social significance of work. Here too you will be able to sense that, by talking about work, one already takes the human being as a starting point, because he is, after all, the one who works. But one also talks about work as such in isolation from the human being, namely from humanity, and from “work itself”.

Then, thirdly, you will find that people talk about the product. This may have its good meaning within economic life; but it only leads to errors and distorted social conceptions if one does not take into account the essence of man as such in all areas.

Certainly, especially when one sets out on the threefold social order, one must distinguish sharply between what, I would say, must be a field of human activity to express itself in the spiritual realm, and what must express itself in the legal-political realm, and finally what must express itself in the economic realm. But these ideas, which must be so one-sidedly conceived about human activity, cannot be properly formed unless one can turn one's gaze to the essence of man as a whole human being. It is precisely this turning of the gaze to the essence of man as a whole human being that reveals to us the necessity for the external social order to be structured into the three areas characterized by the corresponding writings.

Now, however, man has gradually been eliminated from consideration in modern world view life. You will find everywhere that man as such has actually been eliminated. You will find this first of all in the narrowest spiritual field, that of science. Science considers the kingdoms of nature, the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, then looks at the development of the animal kingdom up to man and presents man as a more complicated, transformed, metamorphosed animal. But it does not set out to consider man himself. It presents man only as the end point of the animal series. This has long been the aim of science. But this is only one symptom of the fact that feeling and thinking have been expelled from the essence of man. If in modern times there had been a strong feeling for the purely human in the most diverse areas of life, then it would not have been possible to expel man from so-called science, to treat him only as a final point.

But you can also see how man is excluded from the institutions that are now being laid down for spiritual life. He is, as far as possible, harnessed to regulations that do not come from himself; or he is harnessed to the effect of forces that come from economic life; but very, very little attention is paid to what man is as a human being in social life. And so they start coming up with definitions of everything possible, of capital, of labor, of goods; but the human being is completely left out of the equation.

In the life of the state itself, it is very strange how, especially in Central European countries, the feeling has been lost in the very latest times that everything that is state or other commonality is actually there for the sake of the human being , not man for the sake of the state; that all institutions originating in these communities must ultimately aim to develop the human being into a full human being, into a full individuality, as far as possible.

How often, especially in recent times, has it been repeated that man must sacrifice everything for the sake of community! Yes, my dear friends, if what at first seems to sound right were to be put into practice, that man must sacrifice everything for the sake of community, it would gradually lead to the most severe atrophy of community life. For nothing establishes community life better than when, within this community life, individual human personalities can develop in the fullest sense of the word. Those who think the opposite usually do not take the main point into account.

The person who develops as a whole human being, who can bring their human individuality to bear in all respects, is, because of this development, dependent on contributing as much as possible to community life; they already establish community life in the very best way through what is within them. What can be developed in the human being, if it is guided and directed in the right way, is by no means based on selfishness. Selfishness in the human being is actually generated from the outside, not from the inside. Selfishness is often generated precisely by community life. This is far too little considered in the treatment of social issues. And so it has also become apparent that in recent times there has been a real imbalance between the self-evident lack of selfishness and generosity in spiritual matters and the selfishness and greed in all material things. In terms of what people produce spiritually, they are not exactly stingy by nature; they would like to share as much of this as possible with every human being. A person who is only a lyricist would like to give what he produces as a lyricist to all people, most generously and without selfishness, not keep it to himself. People today do it differently with regard to external, material goods; they want to keep them to themselves. But these never come to us from within, but are conditioned by what surrounds us. And the social art would consist in gradually transforming that which surrounds us externally so that we can treat it like that which is our own from within, like that which springs entirely from our individuality. But for this to happen, it is necessary that people incorporate into their minds a way of thinking such as I have now indicated in a few abstract sentences. They will never be able to do this within the present spiritual life, because this present spiritual life harnesses the human being to the external state or economic order and does not aim to develop what is in the human being from within. In education, it remains an abstract principle to say that everything that is taught and taught must be brought out of the human being. This abstract principle is of no help at all. And those who preach it the most are also the ones who usually sin against it the most in practice, for example.

What fills one with such an attitude, which is focused on the human as such, can only be anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For it leads in every direction to the recognition of the essence of the human being itself. It places the human being at the center of all consideration. Take, for example, you can just as easily take something else, my “Secret Science”: there the stages of earthly development are traced through pre-earthly conditions, the names of which do not matter, through the state of Saturn, the state of the sun, the state of the moon, and so on. But not one of these states is followed in the way that it is followed in the hypotheses of modern science. What did they have in this modern science? At first they had some nebulous state in very distant times; there was nothing in it of the human being. And for a long time to come, in the stages of development that arose from the thoughts of science, there was nothing of the human being in it. Then man suddenly appears, after all the other creatures had gathered together. Then he will later pass away again, and the earth and everything will pass away with him. And ultimately, the whole development is heading towards a field of corpses. What we think about the world, about the cosmos, is dehumanizing. And if one were not compelled to do so – because one has this two-legged animal on earth after all and because this two-legged animal at least does the insignificant thing of thinking at all – one would be compelled to swindle man into a position after all, one would put him aside altogether, because there would then be no necessity at all to swindle man into it.

But consider my “occult science”: from the first installations, man is in it. Nothing in the cosmos is considered without man being in it. Everything only makes sense and at the same time provides a basis for knowledge by being considered in relation to man. Nowhere is man excluded. This anthroposophically oriented spiritual science leads our world view back to a consideration of the human being.

I am suggesting some thoughts that are important for you when you go out to give your lectures, because they should give you cause to pursue the idea of putting the human at the center of the social process; and you will, I would say, color your speech in such a way that you place the human being at the center and avoid leaving the human being out of this center.

You see, the theoretical approach of recent years has already left the human being out at the starting point, it actually regards him only as a kind of luxury object for knowledge. But the national economic considerations of recent times have also taken a similar path. Go back to the source, and you will find that Marxist and other schools of thought also go back to it – go back to Adam Smith. You will see that two things have been placed at the center of attention: firstly, economic freedom and secondly, private property. Man is not really the main focus anywhere. He is occasionally considered, of course, but he is not the main focus, he is not placed at the center.

But humans as such cannot have economic freedom! For economic freedom is not something that one has as a human being, but as the owner of certain goods. It is as the owner of certain goods that one moves within the social process, and by possessing these goods one can, in a sense, have what Adam Smith calls freedom. But you don't move as a human being; instead, you set goods in motion, you trigger processes in the goods. And these processes – the plowing, the harvesting, if you are the owner of a good, or what you do in industry – these are free, independent; but the human being as such is not taken into account at all when one speaks of economic freedom.

And private property? Well, one must remember that this must somehow have been acquired, whether by robbery, conquest, inheritance or otherwise; so somehow it must have had to do with man. But Smith does not look at it in terms of how man originally formed a relationship to property; instead, he regards it as something absolutely given. This is how people view private property in general: man is just like a herd of pigs. They only consider man by not focusing on him, the human being, but on property as such. The national economic point of view has thrown out the human being.

But this is no longer merely the result of a lack of knowledge or a lack of insight, one would like to say, but it has arisen because, basically, economic life itself has taken on this form. Under the influence of the newer, more abstract way of thinking, economic life has automatically developed itself. Man has gradually withdrawn from it, leaving it to what has been shaped outside of human beings. Basically, you could easily make the following observation:

Take, say, a stately home and, with the exception of what external forces have brought about through technology and so on, follow it purely in relation to the human element, which has been through a series of generations; go up from the owner at the end of the 19th century to the owner in the middle of the 19th century, to the owner at the beginning of the 19th century and so on. You can actually follow how the process took place, how the estates intervened in the economic process, without worrying too much about the estate owner at the end of the 19th century, the estate owner in the middle of the 19th century, or the estate owner at the beginning of the 19th century. They go for walks on their estates, do what follows from the matter itself and intervene there; but it is indifferent, one cannot distinguish whether it is the owner of the end of the 19th century or of the middle or the beginning of the 19th century. What matters is the extra-human process. So, the objective has already developed in such a way that the human being has been excluded.

But he has only been excluded on the one hand, but that is the basis of our catastrophic conditions. He has not been excluded with regard to a certain area of intellectual life: the technical-scientific. There he intervened, but the two things did not go together. One only pushed itself into the other. Man has, however, intervened in many other ways, in that, as a result of ignoring the human being, more and more people have become proletarianized. What had become proletarianized, which was actually nothing other than the human being, asserted itself again. And so, in the more recent development, what man meant in the whole economic process, in the whole social process, was absolutely not developed together, but the individual areas had an inorganic effect on each other. One simply pushed its way mechanically into the other. Nowhere, it can be said, did technology develop in such a way that those who owned the goods would have had technology in their hands, but rather, technology, I might say, pushed its way into the administration of the goods from the side. Of course, nothing organic came of this, but rather something that ultimately had to be fought fiercely. Everything that is being fought in our time basically stems from these facts.

But this has had the effect – and you must now present this to humanity from the opposite perspective in your lectures – that we have increasingly lost sight of the context of the entire economic process and have focused more and more more and more on partial processes, that is, on the way capital is created and functions, how labor fits into the national economic process, how goods are produced, how they circulate, and so on. But the view of what belongs together has not been developed at all. Because, you see, if you look at the interrelated process, the process of social life, as a whole, you cannot help but place the human being at the center, relating everything to the human being.

But only a correct spiritual science can give us the right attitude, because it puts the human being at the center of everything. In the “Key Points of the Social Question”, I therefore did not have to ask: From which production conditions did modern social life arise? That is the question Marx and similar thinkers ask, and that is also the question Rodbertus asks. Instead, I had to ask: How did the modern proletarian come into being? How did the impulses in the modern proletariat arise? That is the subject of the first chapter of the Kernpunkte: how did this important fact, that the proletarian regards all intellectual, moral, scientific, religious, and artistic life as an ideology, how did that come to be in the proletariat? Man is placed in the center here. And so you will find it in the following chapters.

But only by placing the human being at the center can the concepts of goods, capital, and labor attain their true meaning, just as scientific concepts also attain their true meaning when the human being is placed at the center of the entire cosmic evolution. Your lectures must be imbued with this idea, so that you always have the human being at the center of your thoughts and feelings and also evoke in your listeners the feeling that it is the human being that matters and not capital and commodities.

I would like to talk about this nuance of your lecture: in a certain way, you must be very familiar with the terms that you find in the usual handbooks and manuals of economics. You should know them. But it is not that difficult to know them. You are just too impressed by too much of what you are brought up with. Just take a look at the small collections that have appeared in recent years, such as “Natur und Geisteswelt” or the Göschen collection and other collections, and you will see that you can simply get hold of the tables of contents. If you want to get to know, say, political economy and are not completely up in the clouds upstairs, but have an ability to grasp concepts as they have developed, then you really don't need to distinguish much between one collection and another. You can choose either. If you want to learn economics, take the little books from the Göschen collection – but it is not necessary that it should be these particular books, you can just as easily take another collection, it makes no difference at all. They do not differ much internally. Everything is uniformed. Not only have the soldiers been drawn into the uniform, but basically all the scientific books have also been uniformed. The only ones that have internal life, albeit precarious internal life, are those collections that come from publishers such as the Herdersche Bookstore in Freiburg im Breisgau. There is still something of the old, corrupting intellectual life of today in them, namely, of original Catholicism; there are concepts in them that at least differ from the others and that have a certain inner momentum, albeit momentum in a direction that we do not want to go. In the end, it is the same phenomenon as when you take a Goethe biography that originated within the new spiritual life. It does not matter so much whether you pick up one or the other, whether Heinemann or Bielschowsky or Meyer. People tell different stories, of course: Heinemann like a schoolmaster, Bielschowsky like a bad journalist, and Meyer like a collector of notes. Gundolf, I believe, is the name of one who, on the other hand, tells how, let's say, a somewhat flirtatious cultural Gigerl; but you won't learn anything new from it that isn't in the other biographies. Not even Emil Ludwig, I believe, will tell you anything seriously new, although he differs considerably from the others in that the others tell like philistines who grew up in rooms, and he tells like a street urchin. But that doesn't make up for the actual lack of substance either. In contrast, take a book as inwardly solid as that by the Jesuit priest Baumgartner about Goethe, who indeed grumbles about Goethe, but in whose book there is spirit, spirit of course, which we wouldn't wish any impact!

And so we can say: You do indeed have to familiarize yourself with what is being produced in today's world. You need to know how people think about work, about capital, and so on. But you have to be aware that you have to reverse the whole thing everywhere and put people at the center of your considerations.

You may say: This is rather daunting. We are soon to go out and give speeches and do everything that is said here! But it is not like that! It depends on our attitude and not on our sitting down and thinking long and hard about how we put people at the center. Now we must immediately do what is indicated here. And so it is important that you go out with the attitude that is characterized here and try to achieve what you can according to the state of your development so far. But I must still present things as they are, for my sake, let us say, ideally. And you can deduce from this what you can actually apply.

Now, if you gear everything to the human being, if you proceed anthroposophically in this sense, if you also occasionally incorporate what comes to you straight from anthroposophy, without because you don't need to insert the structure of the human being into a treatise on economic life physical body, etheric body, astral body, I, because then modern man cannot follow it at all. One must try to put things in the language of modern man. If, therefore, anthroposophical life is not only in the background of your own life, but also in the way you present and in your references, which is only found in anthroposophy, then you will be able to evoke a certain impression, but you will also be in a position to do so, not from one-sidedness, because you will not just take the examples from anthroposophy, but you will also take the insights into social life that you have gained from them. ophy the examples, that is, the ones you use to illustrate the actual insights of social life, you will be able to create a certain impression, but you will also be in a position to work from the one-sidedness of the concepts.

I will give you an example of how work is done from the one-sidedness of concepts in current social thinking. I have already indicated how, for example, the Marxists speak about labor and the commodity. They say: In the product that appears on the market, we have that into which labor has, as it were, congealed; when we pay for the product that has come onto the market, we pay for “coagulated labor.” Attention is also drawn to the time that is invested in it; but that is not what matters. The worker works. This is how the product comes about, and this is how the product is “clotted labor”. The raw product that nature provides has no intrinsic value in human intercourse. Labor “runs into” it, and basically it is a matter of determining how much a commodity object is worth in that a certain amount of labor has “run into” it. This quantity of labor that has been “incorporated” is imagined to mean the wear and tear of human muscle power, which in turn must be replaced. This is achieved indirectly through wages, so that people must be paid in such a way that the wages replace what they have lost through labor, what has been “incorporated” into the product. This is an extremely plausible idea if you only look at the worker and his relationship to the product from one perspective, especially in the area where real physical labor is involved. So you could say, if you look at this area one-sidedly: a product that appears on the market is worth as much as the labor that has gone into it. Of course, this is something that is indisputable from a certain point of view, which can be proven strictly logically, from a certain point of view.

But look, take a different point of view. Take a worker who, let's say, has been working for the production of certain products. Through some economic relationship, one side is inclined to give him more for the work he has done than he used to get, because, due to economic cycles and so on, one side can give him more. He will be inclined to give his labor to the one who now gives him more. So in the following moment he gets more goods for his labor than he used to get. But as a result, the goods now acquire a different value for him, a significantly different value. He ceases to consider the only point of view of labor flowing into the commodity. The opposite point of view becomes decisive for him. He begins to evaluate the goods in such a way that he says: A good is all the more valuable to me the more labor I save, the less labor flows into the good, the less I need to work. And if you consider that you can also acquire a good in other ways than through work: you can rob it, you can find it, you can also acquire it in a way that the terms “rob” and “find” are then only figurative, but in terms of economics mean something similar, then this way of looking at things is the most common one! For, having such a commodity, what does it mean for one? It means that one can give it away, and the other performs work for one. One has not worked for it, but one can give it away. The other, in our economic context, performs work for one; one can have so and so many people work for one. There you have the saving of labor expressed in the value of the commodity in the most eminent sense. And in the final analysis it goes so far that certain goods are produced entirely from this point of view, to save labor, to avoid doing it. If I paint a picture and sell it, the economic value lies in the fact that I no longer need to make my own boots, sweep my own room or do many other things, but that I save all this work. In this case, the value measure goes straight to what labor is saved. There you have to measure the value according to the labor saved.

And so I can say: there are two points of view from which one can define the relationship between labor and goods, or at least the value of them. One can say that a commodity is worth as much as labor has gone into it. But one can also say that a good is worth as much as one saves labor with it, as one does not need to put labor into anything. And the former definition, that of congealed labor, will be all the more valid the more we are dealing with purely physical goods or goods produced by physical labor. But the other definition will be all the more valid the more we are dealing with goods to which thinking, speculation, or other more valuable intellectual powers are applied. Both apply to the whole of life, one as much as the other.

But the point is not to be deceived by the fact that one definition is correct for certain cases, because then one can argue with the other. In life, there are two opposing views for everything. Therefore, one should not approach life from the conceptual point of view. Because no matter how correct a concept is, if one aims at life with it, one will only ever find part of life. But if one starts from life, then one finds that one can always characterize things in opposite ways, just as one can photograph a person from the front and back, from the right and left. Proper contemplation of knowledge is no different from artistic representation. And we must replace the theorizing views that have been brought to people in recent times with a view of life.

But when people have views, they act accordingly. And for three, four, five centuries, people have adopted views that start from the concept, and they have organized social life accordingly. People make social life! And so today we not only have one-sided ideas in human terms, but we also have one-sided institutions in life itself, which then do not correspond. For example, in the proletariat we have a mode of labor in which the relation between labor and commodity is such that the commodity represents congealed labor; but when we look at the capitalist side, we have the essence of the value of a commodity in that this value is determined by the labor power that is saved.

Thus, in the real process, we have something that cannot be compared. The capitalist acts differently than the proletarian. The proletarian not only thinks, but acts in such a way that values arise out of his actions according to the labor incorporated into the commodity; the capitalist acts in such a way that values arise according to the principle of labor saving. So one must waste labor to create commodities, the other economizes on labor. And these two processes clash. And the social evils of the present time arise from this antagonism. And there is no other remedy than to really look at the real processes, to know life as such, to actually admit to oneself: It is necessary in the social process that there are people in it - you see, that's where you come the human being – that there are people in it who work in such a way that their work runs into the product, and people who work in such a way – the work of others cannot be done at all without following this principle – that work can be spared. Because you can't manage without following this principle: to spare labor.

It follows that it is not at all acceptable to introduce the regulation of labor into the economic process, but that the regulation of labor must take place in the social sphere, which is the sphere of state and legal life.

If you follow such trains of thought, you will see what is at stake. It is important, because the world today is full of unclear, nebulous concepts, especially in the practical sphere, to correct these concepts so that people can bring what is right into the institutions again. If we lack the courage to proclaim: You must not continue to think as you have thought up to now, for you are ruining the outer world with your thinking; you must place the human being at the center and not goods or capital and so on; — if we lack the courage to proclaim this in the face of the errors of the present, then we will not make a single step forward. This must be done precisely where people otherwise speak entirely from the old ideas, especially in economics.

From the nature of the arguments that I give, you can see how you have to take into account the cases of life everywhere. They are not taken into account in the usual economic literature, so that you can easily be recommended one or the other book of it. It does no harm whether you get the Göschensche book on economics or the one from “Natur und Geisteswelt”. For you will find in them all what you need and the opportunity to educate yourself in the way one must not think. And everywhere you need to counter this with a way of looking at things that penetrates and proceeds from the human being. But one can only educate oneself and educate people to this through something like anthroposophical spiritual science. Therefore, it should not be misunderstood that a recovery of the outer social life is only possible if a recovery of one of the threefold social organism, the spiritual link, occurs in education and teaching and so on, in order to then be able to visualize how a productive spiritual life can come about, that is, one that completely fulfills the human being.

In this regard, it is so difficult to be understood, but at least those who are sitting here now should understand such things quite well. You see, again and again, from a wide variety of sources, we are told that schools should be set up along the lines of the Waldorf School. Some people say to us, “We can set up such schools as soon as we have the money.” I always ask them, “Yes, how do you want to do that afterwards?” They answer: We want to ask you which teachers we should take. I tell them: I will only be partially considered in the choice of teachers, because there are legal requirements that only those teachers may be used who have passed the state examinations and been certified. So it does not come out at all, what should come out, if Waldorf schools are to be established. One would have to start from the assumption that one has a completely free choice of teachers, which does not exclude the possibility that a state-approved teacher may be needed. But there should not be the necessity that only such teachers may be used, because otherwise we do not stand in the threefold order.

What is important is not to found schools within the present system in which teaching surrogates are created simply because one believes that one can follow the course I have given. What is important is to pursue the principle in this area: freedom in spiritual life. Then such a school would mark the beginning of the threefold social order. So do not create false ideas in people's minds by teaching them to believe that they can remain obediently within the old structures and still found Waldorf schools. Instead, create the idea that there is truly free spiritual life in the school in Stuttgart. For there is no program and no curriculum there, but there is the teacher with his real ability, not with the decree of how much he should know. You are dealing with the real, real teacher. It is still better to envisage a poor real teacher than to envisage one who is simply part of the decree and who is not real. And when you teach, you are dealing with the students and with the things that fill the six walls of the classroom, not with what is called teaching material, teaching method and so on in the regulations. And that is what you have to point out: that you should deal with realities.

If it comes down to programmatic institutions, then, as far as I'm concerned, twelve people can sit down together – it could also be more or less. I give you my assurance: if these twelve people are only a little disciplined among themselves, they will think terribly cleverly, will be able to draw up reform plans; what they think will be terribly clever, terribly reasonable. One will be able to say: this must happen, that so and so on. In regard to such things one could even claim that there are numerous people who could very well say how some field of science should ideally be treated or how a journal should ideally be organized. But that is not the point. The point is that one works out of reality.

What use are school regulations, no matter how well formulated, when teachers are provided with material that is far removed from their abilities? Such regulations only serve to delude people, whereas the truth is served by using the material that is available. One must reckon with realities and beware of reckoning in any way with paragraphs and programs when it comes to creating anything.

This is so difficult to understand in our time, and that is why it is necessary for humanity to be made keenly aware of this point. For by working with programs in the broadest sphere of life in recent times, one has thoroughly corrupted life.

If you take, for example, the development of Social Democracy from the Eisenach Program to the Gotha Program, you see a flattening out. It is at its worst in the Erfurt Program. It says how everything should be organized, for example, the socialization of the means of production. But it was created with the exclusion of any view of life. And then someone came along who more or less took as his starting point the principle: What do I care about life? – I am only concerned with the Marxist program! Let life perish if only the Marxist program is fulfilled! For my sake thousands and thousands of people can be hanged in a day if only the Marxist program is fulfilled! This man is Lenin. He would be willing to have thousands of people hanged every day if only the Marxist program were fulfilled.

Of course, these are all radical statements, but they still characterize the situation correctly. And what does the man come to? You see, this man's unrealistic view of life stems from something that basically only brilliant people say. Of course, Lenin is a brilliant man again, albeit stubbornly brilliant, bullishly brilliant, but brilliant nonetheless. In his writing 'State and Revolution' you can find something like this: Yes, the fulfillment of what is to come does not follow from my Marxist program. But my Marxist program will ruin everything that is there now. But then a new humanity will be bred. It will not have a Marxist program, but will live according to the program: Each according to his abilities and needs. But first a new humanity must be bred!

So our life today has become so divorced from reality that a man, with the help of his accomplices, can organize an entire great empire not according to life but according to programs. He admits, however, that this organization is basically hopeless, because healthy conditions will only arise when the people who are there now are no longer there, but when other people have taken their place. I would like to say: it is obvious what the particular world of ideas and feelings of the present has come to. Such things should not be underestimated, but must be faced squarely.

I have already emphasized that the human being must be placed at the center of the considerations that will be incumbent upon you in the near future. If this is done to the fullest extent, many things can be put right in the views of the present, which, as I showed again in the last lecture, must inevitably lead to catastrophes. Now it is a matter of saying a few words, by way of example, to illustrate the things that are connected with this assertion: the human being must now be placed at the center of social considerations and social action.

We have a whole range of buzzwords, phrases, and so on among us. What many people assert before their fellow human beings has gradually become almost exclusively a phrase. We live in an age of phrases. And a reality that is guided and directed by phrases must obviously disintegrate into itself. This is connected with the fundamental phenomena of our present-day development.

Let us take something out of the whole sum of what is present in social life, and let us look at it as it is very often discussed today. Today, we hear from some who want to have a say in social matters that it is important, for example, for the proletarian movement to rise up against the unemployed income, against the unemployed acquisition. - Well, of course, there is always something real behind the assertion of such claims. But mostly something quite different from what the people who very often make such an assertion mean. For it must be clear that only by observing social processes, and not through abstractions, can we discover what is actually meant by “unemployed income” or “unemployed acquisition”. People have expressed themselves about these things in the most diverse ways. There are people, even Bismarck was one of them, who expressed themselves differently – they spoke of “productive classes”, but actually meant working classes – but who were of the opinion that, for example, farmers, tradesmen who work with their hands, and representatives of similar occupations were “productive people”, but that, for example, teachers, doctors and the like were not “productive people”. That what emanates from the teacher is not “productive work”.

Perhaps you know that Karl Marx made an economic discovery which has been much discussed, precisely in order to put the “productive work” that people meant into perspective. This discovery of Karl Marx is the well-known “Indian bookkeeper”. He was the person who, somewhere in a small Indian village, where the other people worked with their hands, sowing, harvesting, picking fruit from the trees and the like, was employed to keep records of these things. And Karl Marx decided that all the other people in this village did “productive work,” but that the hapless bookkeeper did “unproductive work,” and that he lived his unproductive life on the “surplus value” that was deducted from the labor income of the others. And from this unfortunate Indian accountant, a great many deductions are made, which have recently become common in a certain field of economic observation.

Of course, the work of a teacher can be integrated into the social process in exactly the same way as the “unproductive labor” that Karl Marx said the unfortunate Indian accountant performed. But let's look at it this way: a teacher is a skilled person, skilled as a fully human person. He teaches and educates very young children, elementary school children. And for the sake of simplicity, let us assume – the theory is not affected by this – that all the children the teacher educates and teaches become cobblers. And through his skill, by developing abilities in his children through teaching, through which they think wisely, wisely engage in life with their profession as cobblers, and through his practical guidance with all kinds of educational means, he makes his children more skillful; and they now become cobblers who, let's say, make as many boots every ten days as others make in fifteen days. Now, what exactly is going on here? Surely, according to genuine Marxist doctrine, all these shoemakers who have been created are engaged in 'productive labor'. If it had not been for the teacher and his skill, if he had been an unskillful teacher, they would have performed the same productive labor in fifteen days instead of ten. Now, if you add up all the shoes that will be made by these children after they have grown up, in the five days that have been saved by having a skilled teacher, you can say: this skilled teacher has basically made all these boots made, and at least in the economic process, in all that belongs to this economic process, that is, in everything that flows out of it for the maintenance of people and so on, in all this, the teacher was the actual producer. His being actually lives on in the boots made in the five days!

The point is that here one can apply a narrow-minded way of looking at such a thing, and then one will come to call only the cobbler's work “productive work”, and “unproductive work”, that is, work that maintains itself from the surplus value, but the teacher's work. But one distorts all reality with such a way of looking at things.

We can take a different approach that does not tend to one side or the other, but rather looks at the whole process of social life. But if we think in economic terms, purely economic terms, then we have to ask: what exactly is it that the teacher draws for his physical maintenance? Is it different in an economic sense, in other words, is it different in an economic sense from any other form of income? Is it different from anything else that, to use a Marxist term, is 'withdrawn' from purely physical work and, I would add, handed over to another person? In economic terms, it is no different at all! The reason for this is as follows.

Let us assume that what is known as “added value” is used for teachers, then it flows productively into the whole economic process in the way I have just characterized it. Let us assume that it is handed over to a financier, a person who is really called a pensioner and who actually does nothing but what is usually called “cutting coupons”. But does the fact that he cuts coupons exhaust the economic process? Of course not, the man eats and drinks and dresses and so on. He cannot live on the “added value” of what is delivered to him. He lives off what other people produce for him. He is merely a switchboard for labor, for the economic process.

And if you look at the matter quite objectively, you can only say the following: such a person, who lives somewhere as a financing pensioner, through whom the economic processes are switched, is in social life roughly the same as the resting point of a scale, of a balance beam. The resting point of a balance beam must also be there. All the other points move; the one point of rest of the balance beam does not move. But it must be there. Because there has to be a switchover. In other words, this issue cannot be decided at the national economic level. At most, one could say that if the number of these points of rest, these pensioners “cutting coupons”, became too large, then the others would have to work substantially more, work longer. But in reality it is nowhere like that, because the number of pensioners in relation to any total population never comes into consideration at all in this way, and because, in the first place, as we have the social process today, hardly anything would come of it if we were to change it from our present circumstances.

So you can't think about the whole thing like that at all. And if you go through the Marxist literature, you will see that precisely because of the compulsion to blame someone for all the ills of social life, as in the so-called unemployed acquisition, you will see that all the conclusions are inconclusive. Because they don't actually mean anything. They would only mean something if the economic process were to change significantly, if the pensioners did not receive their pensions. But that would not be the case at all. So with this way of thinking, you don't get anywhere near the matter.

Rather, it is a matter of focusing attention on the fact that such resting points are necessary for switching, for turnover in economic life. For there is an added value that corresponds exactly to all of Karl Marx's definitions of added value, and which, in all its functions, corresponds to the functions of Marx's added value, insofar as one thinks only economically: that is the tax burden. In terms of its nature and function, the tax is exactly the same as Karl Marx's surplus value. And the various socialist governments have not exactly proved, where they have appeared, that they have become particularly combative against surplus value in the form of tax payments! But it is precisely in such things that the absurdity of theories is revealed.

The absurdity of theories is never revealed by logic, but always by reality. This must be said by someone who strives to judge from this reality in all situations. As long as one remains in the economic sphere, it is impossible to associate any kind of reasonable meaning with the concept of “surplus value”. As long as we remain within the economic sphere, we are concerned with the realization of economic processes. And these can only be realized if there are control points. Whether these are in the hands of the state or of individual rentiers is only a secondary difference, from a purely economic point of view. Therefore, it is necessary to point out that everything associated with such a concept as “unemployed income” or “unemployed acquisition” is not based on economic thinking at all, but merely on resentment: on looking at the person who has such an “unemployed income” and who is basically regarded as someone who is lazy, who does not work. A legal or even moral concept is simply smuggled into economic thinking. That is the fundamental phenomenon of this matter.

In reality, it is something quite different with these things, namely, that our human life process, our civilization process, could not be maintained at all if, for example, what some people are striving for were to be realized, inventing the phrase “the right to the full yield of labor”. For there is no way to speak of a “full labor yield” when you consider that if I become a cobbler and work more skillfully than I would have worked if I had not had a skilled teacher, any possibility of me vindicating the right to the “full labor yield” is eliminated. For from what does it flow? Not even from the totality of the present! The teacher who taught me may have died long ago. The past is linked to the present, and the present in turn flows over into the future. It is absurd to want to overlook such things with narrow-minded concepts, and to see how the individual achievements of a person fit into the whole economic process.

But something else immediately emerges when one says to oneself: Well, in purely economic terms, there can be no question of a person somehow receiving a “full yield of labor,” because one cannot even grasp the concept. One cannot narrow it down, contour it. It does not exist. It is impossible. But something immediately emerges when one looks at reality. In reality, there are such transition points, such people, to whom the proceeds of others who work physically flow to some extent. Now, let us assume that the person to whom it flows is a teacher, then he does a very productive job in the sense that I characterized it earlier. But let us assume that he is not a teacher, but really a coupon-cutter. Let's start with not one coupon cutter, but two. One of them cuts his coupons in the morning, then lights a few cigarettes after breakfast, reads his morning paper, then goes for a walk, then he eats lunch, then he sits down in his rocking chair and rocks a little, then he goes to the club and plays whist or poker and so on, and so he spends his day. Now let's take another fellow who also clippeds his coupons in the morning, but let's say that then he occupied himself with, well, let's say, setting up a scientific institute, who therefore devoted his thoughts to setting up a scientific institute, which would never come into existence if he couldn't cut coupons, because if it were set up by the people who are there to do the work of cutting his coupons, it would certainly never be set up. He arranges it. And in this scientific institute, perhaps after ten years, perhaps after twenty years, an extraordinarily important discovery or invention is made. Through this discovery or invention, productive work is done in a similar way, but perhaps even more extensively, than the teacher was able to do with his children who became shoemakers. Then there is a certain difference between coupon-cutter A and coupon-cutter B – a difference that is extremely important from an economic point of view. And we have to say: the whole process of coupon-cutting was extraordinarily productive in the context of human life.

The question cannot be decided at all in purely economic terms. It can only be decided if there is something else besides economic life, something that, apart from economic life, separate from economic life, causes people, when they draw their sustenance from the community in whatever way, to give back through their own nature what they ; if, therefore, there is a free spiritual life that inspires people not to become financiers, but to apply their spiritual strength in some way, just as they have it, or to apply their physical strength, just as they have it.

When one looks at things as they really are in real life, one is led to the necessity of the threefold social organism. And above all, such insight into life makes us aware that all the stuff that is often put forward in terms of political economy, even by practitioners, is basically unusable, that something else must finally be put into people's heads, namely a holistic view of life. And it is this holistic view of life that ultimately leads to the threefold social order.

We must therefore endeavor to spread such ideas ever further and further. We must not disdain to point out how short-sighted the practical life of the present day is. We must combine these two activities: on the one hand, present the positive side of the threefold order, and on the other hand, be the harshest critics of what so often exists today as spiritual currents. We must get to know these schools of thought and become harsh critics of them. Only by holding up the absurdities that exist today to people as if in a mirror image will we be able to make progress and get through to them. And what we teach people in this way must at the same time be presented in such a way that they feel how we work with real concepts.

You see, a person who produces boots is most certainly a productive person. But in Marxist terms, a person who, say, produces beauty spots is just as productive. Because if you just look at the performance of physical labor, it is just as much physical labor as the other. What matters is to consider the whole process and to get an idea of how what someone does is shaped into the process of social life. People need to get a sense of these things. It cannot be done any other way.

Now, however, we will be obliged to respect the thought habits of today's people. But they must be clear about one thing: if you go out and talk to people for an hour and a quarter about such things as I am putting before you now, they will start to yawn and they will eventually leave the room, glad that it has stopped, because they are longing for a healthy nap. You think that is difficult, much too difficult! For people have completely lost the habit of following thoughts that are borne by reality. The fact that people have only ever followed abstractions, that they have been accustomed to following abstractions since they were schoolchildren, has made humanity lazy in its thinking. Humanity is terribly lazy in its thinking in the present day. And we have to take this into account, but in a useful way.

That is why we incorporate stories into our lectures about what has already been developed from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Maybe we tell people fewer anecdotes! It is very useful for today's lazy humanity to interrupt a difficult lecture with anecdotes from time to time, but we can spend our time better than that. In the meantime, let us tell you about our Waldorf school, about eurythmy, about our college courses, about the coming day, by inserting this in the necessary way into the course of our thoughts. This is something that breaks up the train of thought, which is initially a pleasant change for people - they then need to think less. Because, isn't it true, the essence of the matter can then follow. We can describe for a while how the Waldorf School came about, how it is organized; we can describe how thirty lecturers in Dornach have tried to fertilize the sciences from the perspective of spiritual science in the university courses. When you tell people that science should be fertilized, they don't need to think about how that happens in chemistry, in botany and so on, but they can stick with generally hazy ideas while you talk about it. And then they have time to slip into the thought bed between the thoughts that are put forward. We have again gained the opportunity to talk about some more difficult things in the next five minutes. But the other things are still extremely useful. For example, when we tell people how we created school reports in the Waldorf school, how we tried not to write “almost satisfactory”, “hardly sufficient” - which you can't distinguish at all whether someone has “hardly” or “almost sufficient” - but where we gave each child something like a small biography and a life verse. The people don't need to think much about how difficult it is, that is, they can think about how difficult it is to find a life verse for each child; but if you just say the result, it is painless to accept. So we can tell them what has been practically developed there. And in this way we can also tell people something about the facilities at the Waldorf School, how the building gradually became too small, how we had to build barracks because we didn't have the money to build a proper building. It is useful for people to hear sometimes that we don't have enough money; this can have very pleasant consequences. If we include such things in our reflections, it will be very objective, because it is objective, and will be very justified; but it can also create a pleasant change for the listeners.

Then we can tell about the university courses in Dornach, in Stuttgart. We can weave in that all of this still has to be done today for the most part by the poor Waldorf teachers, that so few people have come together who are really doing something in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Because the fact that Waldorf teachers are overburdened three times over is something that people are quite happy to accept, isn't it. Everyone then imagines that they too are overburdened. Well, and in this way we can, by actually speaking of what is already on the outside, show people something at the same time that they may like to hear again and again in between, but what they should also know, what they also need to know.

And then we also talk to them by name about the Day to Come. We try to give them a picture of how this Day to Come is set up. You can see from the brochures that have been distributed how it is set up. We teach people about the Coming Day with the help of the brochures that have been distributed and we tell them: Of course you will find that this Coming Day does not yet fully correspond to the associations about associations – we will talk about this tomorrow – and that it is still very much based on the present economy. But at the same time we say to people: we know that anyway, but it just shows how necessary it is for this economy to change, because no matter how hard we try, we cannot shape the ideal of an association out of the current economic system.

But it is necessary that you see our movement as a whole in your lectures. You should not be embarrassed, on the one hand, to present the spiritual side, the anthroposophical orientation to the people, but on the other hand, to also go into the practical things of the coming day and present all of this to the people. In your lecture, you do not need to make a direct appeal for money; that – I say it in parentheses – can be done by the other person, who is traveling with you and will approach the people only after the lecture; it is better that way. But although I put it in parentheses, that is how it should be done. As I said, you do not need to do it directly in the lecture, to promote the cause. But you can certainly let it be known that, without any selfish purpose behind it, in order to promote what is actually intended by the threefold order, you need, firstly, money, secondly, money, thirdly, money. And depending on which of you, according to the situation, finds this right, you can emphasize the first word money more strongly and then drop the tone or rise with the second tone. This is something that can somehow contribute to the inner formation of the matter.

I am not telling you this to imply anything more than that you have to be considerate of the way something is said. In a sense, when you walk into a room, you should sense whether you have to speak one way or the other. You can sense that, especially when you are among complete strangers. So you will have to take such things into account. If you want to achieve what is to be achieved now, you will not be able to go before the people with a finished concept, but you will have to adapt completely to the circumstances. You will only be able to do that if you approach the design and delivery of your lectures in the way I characterized yesterday. But we must not forget to keep referring back to what we have already achieved in the establishment of the school system, including practical institutions. After all, it is already the case in the present that people need this. And you would do well, especially when describing the threefolded social organism, to use the establishment of the Waldorf school for illustration, and likewise when describing the other economic life, to exemplify again and again what is intended by the coming day. I would like you to remember that the world must be pointed out very sharply to our various institutions, precisely through your lectures.

And behind all this there must be the awareness that from all corners and ends - as I have already said several times in these lectures - the opposition is there and more is to come, and that we do not have much longer time to bring to bear what we want to bring to bear and what must be brought to bear, but that we must tackle things sharply in the near future.

We must not take as an example – and I say this for those who have been in the anthroposophical movement for a long time – the way the anthroposophical movement as such has developed, because it is developing in such a way that its members are all too little interested in what is actually going on in the world. Now is the time to develop a keen interest in what is going on in the world. And we must be quite explicit and also critical of ourselves with regard to what is currently going on in the world today. Therefore, we must take an interest in these events. We must seek to explain the necessity of our movement on the basis of these events. We must repeatedly emphasize how these events are likely to lead modern civilization into decline. For people must learn to understand that if things continue as they usually do today, the decline of modern civilization will certainly result, and that the countries of Europe would at least have to go through terrible times if a foundation for a new beginning is not laid out of a truly active spiritual life and an actively grasped state and economic life.

We must also take away the phrases that are repeatedly uttered in the following way: Yes, all this may be very nice with the threefold order, but to introduce something like that, it would take not decades but perhaps centuries. - It is an objection that is made frequently. But there is no more absurd objection than this. For what is to arise in humanity, especially in the way of social institutions, depends on what people want and what strength and courage they put into their will. And what can naturally take centuries with carelessness and inertia can take the shortest possible time when active forces are applied. But for this it is necessary that we bring into more and more minds what can come from our spiritual science and be derived from observing our other institutions. Do not forget to point out such things as are to be created here in Stuttgart, for instance in the Medical-Therapeutic Institute. For it is also the case that it is precisely from such institutions that people can best learn to understand the fruitfulness of spiritual science, at least for the time being.

And if one can make such a thing plausible to people, there is also the consideration that it would actually be of no use at all for the further development of humanity if, in addition to the old Catholic religion, , the old Protestant creed, and the Jewish, Turkish creed, and so on, and in addition to many a sectarian creed, now also to establish a world view that would be “the anthroposophical” That would certainly have a meaning for people who meet every week, or twice a week, to indulge in such worldviews. It would have a subjective meaning for these people. But it would have no meaning for the world. For the world, only a worldview and outlook on life that directly engages practical questions has meaning. And that is why we find it all too often now that people are quite willing to be told something about the eternal in human nature, about life after death. One can also speak to a larger number of people without them scratching out one's eyes just because one says it, about repeated lives on earth, about the law of karma and so on. But today it is even more useful and important to teach people that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can contribute something to medicine, for example, to therapy, so that it can be seen how truly for the material world that which one conquers in the spiritual has a certain unique significance. For it is not enough just to rise to the spirit in its abstractness, but it is important to rise in such a way that this is the living spirit, which then has enough strength and power to have an effect on the material.

You should present this thought, this placing of the spirit in material life in the most diverse variations, to people again and again in the eyes of your soul. For the spirit wants to rule matter, not flee from matter. Therefore it is in a certain respect downright nefarious when people like Bruhm, who wrote the little book Theosophy and Anthroposophy, reproach Anthroposophy for wanting to draw into the everyday life what should hover in the heights of heaven, above reality, what should not be drawn down into material reality. One can hardly imagine a greater annoyance for human life than such teachers of the people, who need the lecterns and the universities to teach such stuff to the people. But that is happening today in all, all variants.

And what is particularly on the agenda today is that people say: Yes, anthroposophy may be an attempt to deepen the individual sciences, but anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion, anthroposophy has nothing to do with Christianity. And then people come and want to prove why anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion and Christianity. Then they come up with completely arbitrary concepts that they have of religion and Christianity. And they make it clear that these concepts, which they have of religion and Christianity, must not be challenged!

If only people would at least be truthful! Then one would be able to be a little more lenient with them. If people would come and say: Anthroposophy is now emerging; it speaks from different sources than I have spoken from so far at the theological faculty or in the pulpit. I now only have the choice of either giving up my job, but then I have nothing to eat, that's a fatal thing, or I'd rather stick to my job and reject anthroposophy! One would not exactly take such people very seriously for the cultural life of humanity, but they would speak the truth, just as the Graz law teacher spoke the truth, who proved the freedom of the human will every year before his students by saying: “People have free will!” Because if people had no free will, then they would have no responsibility for their actions. And if they had no responsibility for their actions, then there would be no punishments and no criminal law. But I am a teacher of criminal law. So I would not be teaching criminal law. But now I have to. And because there has to be a me at this university, there has to be a criminal law, so there must also be punishments, and thus there must also be a responsibility of people, and consequently also a free will of people. This is roughly how the Graz law professor taught his students about the freedom of the human will years ago. What he presented was not much different.

And theologians and other people would also act according to this scheme if they said what was true. They could also still cite the other side of the matter, they would then be equally true, and one would then be more lenient, they could still say: I could perhaps also take on the inconvenience of re-founding religion and Christianity. In the case of university professors, it could then happen that they would then have to migrate from the theological faculties, perhaps if they were in a larger number, to the philosophical faculty. If they are already professors, then it is easier than if they want to get into the university. But even if the life food were to be retained, it would still be difficult. But they do not want to go to the trouble and inconvenience of re-establishing the things. But if they just wanted to say these things, then at least they would be honest. Instead, they put forward all sorts of arguments that do not correspond to reality, but are only decorative, intended to cover up reality. We, however, must not be lenient in any way on these points, but must seek out untruthfulness and mendacity everywhere in these points and ruthlessly expose it before the world.

And we must not fail to point out the sloppiness in the thinking of some people, who simply express it by not taking certain assertions with all their moral depth. Not so long ago, someone heard me publicly characterize the mendacity of Frohnmeyer, who simply described something for Dornach in a lying, tendentious way that looks quite different from the way he described it in a tendentious way. And this person said: Well, Frohnmeyer just believed that it looked like that. - That's not what matters to me, to point out precisely that Frohnmeyer is saying something untrue in this case, but rather that Frohnmeyer shows that he makes assertions about something in Dornach that fly in the face of the truth. Anyone who does this in one respect also does it in other respects. He is a theologian. He lectures at Basel University. Theology draws from sources that are claimed to be sources of truth. Anyone who bears witness in this way, as Frohnmeyer does, who describes the statue of Christ as he has described it, shows that he has no concept of how to research the truth from the sources. If it were not for the fact that it is written in the history books when Napoleon was born and died, he could also tell lies about these things if he had to research them. What matters to me is that such people are described in all their corrupting effect on contemporary history, that it is shown that they do not fit into the situation into which they have been placed by the chaotic conditions of the times. On this point, we must be in no way lenient.

That is one of the formalities of your work in the coming weeks.

In this lecture I would like to speak about certain colorations regarding the characteristics of the present spiritual life, which our lecture work will have to assume. We must not limit ourselves to focusing our speech merely on understanding the intellectual side of social issues, but we must work to make the world aware of how, with regard to certain things, people must feel differently from the way they currently feel, especially in the supposedly influential circles. For what lives outwardly in institutions, what happens outwardly in people's social actions, depends entirely on the way people think, feel and will. That is why I have emphasized so strongly that the human being as such must be placed at the center of the social as well as the whole view of life and the world. But we ourselves must develop a sense of how misguided and lost the life of feeling has become in the present day. We must have a keen sense that it is precisely through this often quite perverse life of feeling that the civilized world has come to its present situation. We should make such things clear to ourselves by means of examples. And we should also make them clear by means of examples from the world. We can easily find such examples if we just discuss the treatment that the anthroposophical movement is receiving in our time, with a certain objective sense.

When discussing social issues, the moral aspect must always be emphasized. This consists in the fact that the leading people of the immediate past have allowed events of the time to unfold in a rather irresponsible manner. Is it not the case that the leading circles were only concerned with the staging of the course of the world in the sense in which modern technology and the forms of materialism that have emerged in recent times support the course of the world, and how the course of the world is supported by them? And it is quite clear: no attention has been paid to the influence that this course of the world must have on the countless people who, as the proletariat, have been formed precisely by this course of the world. All this has really been allowed to happen with a carelessness that now, of course, appears tragic, but which must be clearly recognized if any improvement is to occur.

A glaring example of this carelessness is, of course, this, which I have mentioned several times before: at the end of the 1960s, Austria had a Minister of Police, Giskra. Even then, there were some people who pointed out that a social question was looming on the horizon of modern civilization. And when certain questions were put to him about the social question, this police minister replied: “Austria knows no social question. That stops at Bodenbach!”

Now, this burying one's head in the sand, this ostrich-like policy, has been pursued to the greatest extent by the leading circles in modern times. And this, my dear friends, must be seen through, it must be sharply brought to the present. For one can say: Unscrupulousness has gradually moved out of the external world and into thinking itself, and there it asserts itself, unfortunately unnoticed by very many people. This results in a coarsening of thinking, and this coarsening of thinking is usually denied, especially by today's intellectual people. I would like to illustrate what I have just said with a recent example.

You see, a certain Count Hermann Keyserling, who founded a so-called “School of Wisdom” in Darmstadt, is still a plant from the circles that have operated with the greatest carelessness and unconcern for the course of world events. His bookshop advertises this “School of Wisdom”. And a booklet has just been published that bears, as you may admit yourself, the rather pretentious title 'The Path to Perfection'. This booklet needed to be advertised by the bookstore. The following is added to this advertisement on the outside of the so-called belly band: 'Responding to Rudolf Steiner's attacks'. The bookshop then adds in its announcement: 'Count Keyserling's position on Theosophy in general and on Steiner's Theosophy in particular is communicated in the 14th chapter of his last book 'Philosophy as Art' under the title 'For and against Theosophy'. Rudolf Steiner found it necessary to respond to these entirely objective statements, which proclaimed the truth, with personal insults.” This is the kind of advertising that the bookstore writes for this ‘school of wisdom’! Now it is really necessary, if a social recovery is to occur in the present, to keep an eye on people like this Count Hermann Keyserling and to really say openly and frankly to the world what has been discovered by looking at them. For the pests of contemporary civilization must be exposed.

What this Count Keyserling's inner and intellectual dishonesty is, may be seen from the way in which he proceeds in this writing, which, incidentally, contains the beautiful sentence: “Only the members of the student community are entitled to longer personal discussions with Count Keyserling outside of the general members' meetings. For them, he is available to speak to, by prior appointment and with the exception of Saturdays and Sundays, if he is not traveling, every afternoon between 3 and 5 o'clock in the school premises at Paradeplatz 2, entrance from Zeughausstraße. Should anyone, without being a student, wish to take advantage of the headmaster's time in matters of wisdom, the management reserves the right to charge special consultation fees for the benefit of the school in such cases."

My dear friends, it is certainly justified to laugh at such things; but the things are not ridiculous. It is precisely in these things that the original damage to our social life lies. For you will find the following sentence on page 47: You know that I have, with a certain ruthlessness, but it is necessary in such cases and is well considered, characterized the dishonesty of Count Hermann Keyserling with regard to my dependence on Haeckel, which he has maintained, here in a public lecture, in due form characterized the untruthfulness of Count Hermann Keyserling with regard to my dependence on Haeckel. In response to this characterization, he writes the following sentence: “.... and instead of correcting a possible error on my part, which I would gladly accept, because I did not have time for special Steiner source research... Steiner simply accuses me of lying...” So, this man has the nerve to suggest that anyone can write any untruth and get no other kind of a rap on the knuckles for it than to have it corrected! Just imagine this intellectual laxity, almost working towards it: you can write anything, and the other person is obliged to correct it. If we were to work in this way, we would end up in the social mire. And to write in such a way: “I have no time for too much specialized research into Steiner's sources...” what does that really mean? It really means: I am not taking the time to check exactly what I am writing. And such a man claims that as his good right!

My dear friends, we must have a sense of the perverse intellectualistic sentiments of the present. If we do not acquire this sense, we cannot confront the present with the exposure of this swamp, and then all the rest of our talk is in vain. I must keep repeating that mere defense is of no use. We must take what is used as an attack against us only as a symptom, in order to characterize the intellectual decay that exists. For humanity must know how it is actually being led spiritually today.

This is in contrast to the beautiful denunciation carried out by a Basel university professor who always pops out of the woodwork like a brownie in the night and is perhaps called Professor Heinzelmann for this reason. Dr. Boos has indeed struck out in a somewhat sharp manner in a reply to certain attacks. It was claimed in Swiss newspapers that anthroposophy was borrowed from various ancient writings; something was said about the Indian Vedic and Vedanta literature, the Bhagavad Gita was mentioned, and among the things that were mentioned was also the Akasha Chronicle! Now, you see, Dr. Boos was probably right when he said: to claim something like that is to provide proof that one is telling a deliberate untruth; because the person who says something like that must know that if he goes to the bookcase, he cannot take out the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita and then the Akasha Chronicle one after the other. That was how the matter was presented. So they must know that they are writing a falsehood. That “Brownie” from Basel now writes, after I have characterized it accordingly, that my characterization is a “completely new definition of knowing untruthfulness”; I would have provided the definition on page so and so much, an objective untruthfulness is present where one incorrectly asserts something that one should actually know; this contradicts the previously familiar definition of “knowing untruth,” which consists in asserting something “against better knowledge.”

So this university professor writes that there is a definition on that page. But there is no definition at all! I only said that what he says about the Akasha Chronicle is really asserted against better knowledge. So, it is simply lied that there is a definition on that page. People are being hoodwinked by being distracted from the real issue: that it is precisely the assertion against better knowledge that matters.

You see, these are seemingly pedanticities. In reality they are not, but they are what is most necessary today in the moral relationship: that we assert the point of view to the leading personalities, how morally marshy thinking has actually become. And this moral marshmallow is basically spread over the whole of intellectual life today.

Now it is true that this moral decay comes from two sources: firstly from scientific life itself, and secondly from journalism. But that cannot prevent us from seeking out these things wherever they assert themselves and bringing them to people's attention again and again.

And if we want to make it clear, especially to the people of the present day, who are so difficult to understand, how necessary it is for intellectual life to become independent, we will be able to do so by pointing out what has become of intellectual life under the leadership of the state and the economy. It is quite natural for us to present these things in a purely descriptive way, without becoming polemical, and I might say with the same tone with which we endeavor to present any other objective fact. This does, of course, presuppose that we care about such things. And we must be able to have that in general: a clear, open view of what is happening, of what is going on around us. I have already emphasized this from other points of view.

It will not be difficult to show the harmfulness of much of what is found in this brochure by Count Keyserling. Because, isn't it true, in this brochure, where the talk is of that blissful atmosphere into which those who devote themselves to the School of Wisdom in Darmstadt are welcomed, sentences of this caliber can be found: “This” - the atmosphere - “will soon mean such a factor of power that the mere stay in its rooms will be enough for the receptive novice to grasp emotionally what is striven for in it.” Then further: “But the creation of a certain cultural atmosphere does not mean the main intention underlying the School of Wisdom. The atmosphere is the basic prerequisite for achieving more important things. This, however, consists in promoting the called individual not only through the involuntary unconscious influence of a certain lifestyle and the level of being of the leading personalities, but also through intensive private treatment.” And again: “He may hold any world view, adhere to any political program, believe in any faith, pursue any interest; he may be young or old, man or woman: in the School of Wisdom he will learn to relate any ‘being’ to a deeper ‘being’.” At another point, it is emphasized how beautiful the School of Wisdom is because it does not concern itself with whether, for example, people who speak of free money are right or not, or whether other directions are right or not; the School of Wisdom in Darmstadt considers it a small matter whether anyone is right or not in any direction. Rather, all these directions should come together on the ground of the Darmstadt parquet! Because all these arbitrary interests, arbitrary beliefs, arbitrary human conditions are caused there to “refer an arbitrary existence back to a deeper being.”

You see, basically this is only the dark side of something that cannot really get any better unless spiritual life is placed on a completely new and free foundation. For anyone who wants to talk about the recovery of social conditions today must be fully aware that we are at an important moment in the development of humanity in world history, that certain things are simply being sought by working them out of the depths of the human soul. And one of the most important impulses to work out of the depths of the human soul is to overcome the old compulsions in the relationship between people.

Please note this formula: overcoming the old compulsions in the relationship between people. We look back at the social conditions of humanity. We find that in ancient times there existed the institution of effecting social stratification on the basis of mere blood; by virtue of being born of this or that tribe, of this or that family, one was lord, the other servant, one the commanding, the other the dependent. The further back we go in the development of mankind, the more we find that social life was built on such blood and hereditary relationships. They have partly been preserved in the consciousness of the people. What still exists today as the class consciousness of the nobility ultimately stems from ancient times and is essentially a continuation of those social demands that were based on blood in ancient times.

Now, in more recent times, another stratification has been superimposed on this social stratification. And this other one is based on economic power. The social stratification that arose from blood ties has been joined by another stratification that arose from modern economic conditions: the stratification that arises from economic power. Those who are economically powerful belong to a different class from those who have nothing, who are economically powerless. This has been superimposed on the old. Basically, much of our present social conditions are still based on the survival of the old constraints. Today's human consciousness is rising up against this. And basically, a large part of what we call the social questions is based on this democratic rebellion against the old constraints. Therefore, the question arises: how should we act in this regard?

And here we must realize that without the emancipation of the free spiritual life from the other members of the social organism on the ground that I have just characterized, a lasting social state cannot be created. If the spiritual life is really placed on its own ground, then there can be no social coercion in this spiritual life, but only the relationship of free recognition. And this free recognition will arise of its own accord within social life. To put it crudely: You would hardly hire someone as a music teacher who had never played a musical instrument in their life, and democratic sentiment will never demand that absolute equality should prevail among all people with regard to appointing a music teacher. Rather, in completely independent free recognition, someone will be appointed as a music teacher who knows and is able to do the things that are necessary to be a music teacher. And one will not be able to deny recognition to the one who knows and is able to do the things, when there is nowhere something that is practiced by force; recognition will arise all by itself.

In a free spiritual life, there will be a great deal of things that are similar to building on authority. But it will be a building on self-evident authority everywhere. For what is the rebellion of countless people in the present time against all authority based on? This rebellion is based on nothing other than the fact that people perceive that economic conditions impose forced subordination on us, and we do not recognize that economic conditions impose forced subordination on us. Nor do people recognize that forced subordination is imposed by political or blood relations. And this is opposed by the historical element, which I have characterized as the democratic feeling that is now emerging from the depths of humanity. And since, of course, the broad masses have learned from intellectuals and spiritual leaders not accuracy but superficialities, they take history to mean that they reject all authority in economic life. And now the third, intellectual life, is also taken into the bargain, because it does not appear before the soul-eyes of men in its own particular essence. It can only do so when it stands actually in direct free self-administration. The necessity for the liberation of intellectual life must be made clear to people from the most diverse backgrounds.

And we must also emphasize the following: there must be a sphere in which people can truly feel equal. This is not the case today because, on the one hand, the state has absorbed spiritual life and, on the other hand, economic life draws it in, so that it draws the authoritative from both sides into its being and there is actually no ground on which people who have come of age can feel completely equal. If the ground is there on which people who have come of age can feel completely equal, can someone really feel: I am equal to every other human being as a human being. - Then he will also recognize authority in the area where he cannot feel it because it is an absurdity, or he will recognize associative judgment.

Something will arise again – it is not yet opportune to tell people this today, but I am telling you – something will arise that is like what played a certain role in ancient times from different circumstances. Take a village in ancient times: the pastor was a kind of deity in the truest sense of the word. But there were occasions when the pastor appeared purely as a human being among other human beings. They valued this very much. If we now have, on the one hand, spiritual life with the recognition, the free recognition of self-evident authority, and on the other hand, economic life with group judgment, which is based on the confluence of the judgments of associated human beings, and in between a place where people meet without distinction of the rest of the authoritative - and that would be the case if the threefold social organism were there - then it would actually have a real effect in the very deepest sense on solving the social question. But in the deepest sense it must be the case that the teacher, the spiritual person - I mean this symbolically now - takes off his toga when he appears on the ground of the social state life, and that the worker can take off his blouse when he the ground of the social life of the state, so that in fact people meet from both sides in the same uniform, which need not be a uniform in the ordinary sense, but can be equivalent when it is based on the legal-state.

We must attach great importance to the fact that such, I would say, moral impulses, which also live externally, really do come back into human society. For savagery and barbarism would undoubtedly occur if what a true Marxist regards as the ideal social order were to be realized. On the other hand, we can be quite certain of one thing: if the broad masses of the people, after the experiences they have had in Europe in the last few months, listen in the right way, unperturbed by their leaders, long enough, to what the meaning of the threefold social organism is, then a light must finally dawn on them.

But at the same time as this action is being taken, something else must be done: the moral decline, as I have just characterized it, must be brought to consciousness in the judgment of the present. We must prove quite palpably where people simply fall out of morality in their judgments, as is the case with Count Hermann Keyserling. For the man is to a high degree a sand-in-the-eyes-scatterer, and one must only place such a specimen of a human being in front of the contemporaries in the right way. Then one has done something extraordinary morally.

You see, after Count Hermann Keyserling had done, or had done through his bookstore, all that I have mentioned to you, he then accomplished the following. He says: “I only touch on the case in order to make it quite clear by his example how carefully one must distinguish between ‘being’ and ‘knowing’. I cannot possibly have a favorable impression of Steiner's being; noblesse oblige – by this he means: noblesse oblige one not to call a liar a liar – “... but as an expert I still find him very remarkable and advise every critical mind with a psychic disposition to take advantage of the rare opportunity of the existence of such a specialist to learn from and with him. I am familiar not only with his most important accessible writings but also with his cycles, and from them I have gained the impression that Steiner is not only extraordinarily gifted but actually has unusual sources of knowledge at his disposal. He lacks any finer organ for the sense, and therefore must find all wisdom abstract and empty that does not relate to phenomena; but what he presents about such phenomena deserves serious examination, however absurd some of it may sound at first and his style as a revealer of his essence inspires so little confidence, which is why I deeply regret that his action against me, which came as a complete surprise to me, deprives me of the opportunity to make personal contact with him. For it remains true, as I wrote in the same essay that provoked Steiner's anger in defense against his opponents, that an important person should be judged solely by his best qualities; interest in his knowledge and abilities must not be affected by his infirmities and faults. On the same day that I received Steiner's diatribe, I recommended to a student of mine the serious study of his writings and even joining his society, since this seemed to me to be his path and I did not consider contact with the questionable aspects associated with Steiner to be dangerous in his case. One should never forget that every being is multifaceted, that no bad quality devalues the good; and that the character of a society depends entirely on the spirit of its predominant members. The Anthroposophical Society can still have a future if it abandons dogma and sectarianism, if it gives up its dirty agitation and truly becomes what it is supposed to be according to its statutes.

So, as you can see, for those who, unfortunately, are also numerous in the Anthroposophical Society, there is plenty of opportunity to say: Yes, what does Steiner want? Keyserling praises him to the skies! But for me it is not about whether he praises me, but whether he is a pest of civilization or not. Because it seems to me that everything Keyserling says in the end is such that I can only characterize it by saying: This man tries to cover up everything that his superficiality inflicts on the world behind what I can't call it otherwise in this case, adulation. I say this simply because I am fully convinced that Count Keyserling does not have the slightest organ for understanding the things he praises here.

And this must be much more important to us: to go into this objectively, to show the world in our lectures – I have only cited Count Keyserling as an example today – what superficiality and unjustified aspirations there are today. If the world realizes what kind of people are leading it, then it will gain an understanding for the liberation of the spiritual life. For it will be impossible for such heroes to emerge from a free spiritual life. Quite certainly, my dear friends, the earthly life that man spends between birth and death will never produce anything but angels. And only someone like Professor Rein in Jena can make the strange claim that anthroposophical morality is actually meant for angels, as he once did in an article. But even if there are bound to be all kinds of strange eccentrics in the free spiritual life, the majority will not be able to do so, but the majority will be educated differently, precisely because of the inner strength and impulsiveness of the spiritual life. Of course, it is easy to give the world the kind of empty thoughts that Count Keyserling gives, if one has acquired one's social position through old blood ties, as Count Keyserling has, and if one perhaps receives some support from other quarters, which need not be mentioned here, for the establishment of such “schools of wisdom”. But such folly will never be able to arise in a free spiritual life. Because there will certainly be enough people who reject such ideas.

You see, what was important to me in that lecture was to point out the emptiness and abstractness of Keyserling's arguments, the lack of reality in them. And anyone who remembers well will know that I first characterized this emptiness and abstractness, this insubstantiality, this empty verbiage, and then added: Anyone who indulges in empty abstractions and empty verbiage is then compelled, when he encounters something of substantial content, to resort to untruth. That was the context. And at that time, it was the context that was essential. And what has been made of it now? It would be interesting to hear what a man who has been accused of suffering from emptiness, from intellectual and spiritual shortness of breath, has to say in his defense. But the count has the following to say in his journal “The Way to Perfection,” “Communications from the Society for Free Philosophy,” “School of Wisdom.” He says, and he means me, that he finds my wisdom bloodless, abstract and empty and claims that he can always say in advance what people of my ilk might bring forward; the essence of my philosophy is “spiritual shortness of breath, an inner gasping for air,” and I “don't have a clue about anthroposophy, not even a blue one.” So you see, the way I have given this characteristic characterizes Count Keyserling himself. But in this respect he is really only an example. It is precisely that which is contained in the present spiritual life as the main tone that ultimately leads back to such things.

The development of abstract intellectual life in recent centuries has indeed given us the opportunity to see outstanding scholars in various fields who, when it comes down to it, are unable to formulate a single correct and meaningful thought. A good example of this is the excellent biologist Oscar Hertwig from the University of Berlin. When you read his book criticizing Darwinism, you cannot help but say: This is a person who must be considered completely significant in his field. And the book 'The Development of Organisms', it is said, is a good book. But one needs nothing to write such a good book as to be immersed in the mechanism of thoughtless experimental research, to be diligent, to be promoted a little - he was indeed pushed into a certain clique as a Haeckel student - and can be a very important person there if the circumstances are favorable. He is so important that he was even chosen to add something to the wisdom of the former German Emperor Wilhelm II in Berlin, and he was allowed to present him with particularly sensational findings from research into lower organisms! Now, soon after the book on Darwinism by Hertwig was published, which is an excellent book in its field, Hertwig also published a book on social issues. This is nothing more than a compilation of pure nonsense, line after line. Why? Well, you see, with the book 'The Becoming of Organisms' you didn't need to think. One was completely immersed in the mechanism of modern scientific endeavor. But to make a sound judgment in the social sphere, it is necessary to begin thinking for oneself. So it turned out that the great scholar cannot think in the simplest, most primitive way.

We have to grasp the fact that we live in a so-called scientific and intellectual life that can basically be conducted to the exclusion of any real independent thinking. And as such a spiritual life became more and more prevalent, real thinking, meaningful, substantial thinking, increasingly disappeared.

And then we experienced the strange phenomenon that people wanted to test children's abilities with experimental psychology, by incorporating some nonsense words into their memory in order to determine this memory, or similar gimmicks that are passed off as “exactly scientific”. These are even more rampant in America than in Europe, but they have already come up quite high in Germany. By introducing this into school life, it means nothing more than that we have so strongly emphasized the human being out of social life that the teacher no longer has a relationship with the child, that he no longer comes from the child, but that he has to determine through apparatus what the person in question is capable of. And if Bolshevism continues in Russia for a long time, this method will perhaps be used in Russia to a very considerable extent instead of examinations. Children will be tested like machines to see if they are good for anything in life. This is one of Lunacharsky's ideals.

These things must be characterized impartially, then perhaps, little by little, we will evoke in the people of the present day a feeling that so palpably shows how we need a renewal, a fertilization of intellectual life, and how this renewal, this fertilization, can take place on the basis of the isolation of the intellectual from the other social elements. We must try to illustrate these things in terms of contemporary phenomena, which we present in all their starkness.

On the one hand, it is necessary to show people the necessity of the separation and free organization of spiritual life by looking at the threads of spiritual life in the present. On the other hand, it is necessary to show everything that ultimately shows how economic life must be based on the associative principle.

Above all, a sure judgment must be called for in order to prevent the individual from doing anything in economic life that cannot be fruitfully integrated into that economic life. In the spiritual life, it is the case that the judgment must always ultimately come from the individual person; therefore, through a free spiritual life, the individual person must be able to fully come into his or her own; the state must be brought about in which each person can individually come into his or her own according to his or her abilities. In economic life, this would be of no use at all. On the contrary, it would be harmful because the economic judgment of an individual person has no value at all. It can never be rooted in reality.

Anyone familiar with anthroposophy will readily understand this. For what constitutes spiritual life ultimately flows from within the human being. A person must shape what he brings with him through birth out of himself. Admittedly, he shapes it through interaction with his environment. He also acquires experience, be it external, be it internal, be it physical, be it spiritual experience. But the process that unfolds must come from his very individual abilities. Now, if we want to intervene in economic life, we have nothing in our humanity that could be as decisive for social life as the individual abilities of the individual.

These individual abilities enrich the general life of humanity when they are applied by the human being. If he simply applies them, community life is enriched. In economic life as such, that is, insofar as one is dealing with the exchange and valuation of goods, nothing is present from the human being other than his needs. Man, as it were, knows nothing about economic life and its necessities as an individual through anything other than his needs; he knows that he has to eat and drink to a certain extent, he has individual needs. But these individual needs are only important to himself, only to himself,

What a person produces intellectually has significance for everyone else; what he produces intellectually is, in fact, a priori socially significant. The needs that a person has, and for the sake of which he must desire that there be an economic life, have significance only for himself. Economically, he can only know how to provide for himself. But this in no way provides a social yardstick, nowhere the basis for a social judgment. For it simply excludes what is to be effective in the social life if one has only one yardstick for what one needs oneself. Therefore, a social judgment can never be built on that knowledge, which is taken from one's own needs. The individual has no basis for social judgment. If he acts from what he is as an individual, that is, simply takes his needs into account, then applies his intellect and abilities, not to produce something for the general public, as in intellectual life, but to satisfy his needs, then he acts under all circumstances as an anti-social being.

That is why all cleverness is of no help when it comes to economic judgments. I must again and again cite the example of the defense of the gold standard in the course of the 19th century. If you read the parliamentary reports and other things that, for example, also originated from practitioners in defense of the gold standard in individual countries, you can actually find a great deal of individual acumen everywhere. What was said was actually completely clever, one might say. One gains respect for human capacity when one still reads the speeches that were held about the gold standard today. But just what the cleverest people said always culminated in the fact that the gold standard would contribute significantly to promoting free trade in the world. And the reasons that were put forward to support this judgment, that free trade would result from the gold standard, are actually indisputable. But the opposite has happened everywhere! Everywhere in the wake of the gold standard, the need for protective tariffs and the like has arisen. Everywhere, free trade has been restricted. And this example shows to an eminent degree that individual human cleverness is of no help when it comes to economic questions, even if it is as prominent as it was in the 19th century. It is a mistake for individuals to want to act economically on the basis of individual judgments.

The necessity of associations follows with apodictic certainty. Only when people who are active in the most diverse branches and elements associate with each other, and what one person knows in one field is supplemented and expanded by what another knows, only then does a common judgment arise that can then be transformed into economic action and lead to social recovery. There is no way to escape the necessity of association, if one simply points out this basic fact. Furthermore, what happens to economic life as such under the influence of threefolding? What do we actually have in economic life? We have three factors.

The first is that which arises from expertise in the production of this or that. Whether you want to mine coal, grow grain, raise livestock or supply some industry, you have to be an expert in the field.

The second thing is that, in our present economic life, the movement of goods, of the necessities of life, must be properly directed. Trade must be conducted in the right way. Goods must be transported to the places where they are needed. For only there do they have their real value. Otherwise they are not commodities, but only objects. One must distinguish between them. Something, even food, can, when it is in any place, be merely an object and not a commodity. For if there is an enormous amount of food of a certain quality in any place, without people needing it, there are only as many goods as people can use up. The others are merely objects, and they only become commodities when they come to the places where they can be used. Without trade, no object is a commodity. This is the second point. But this second point is intimately connected with human labor. For the transformation of natural and other objects from objects into commodities occurs precisely through human labor. If you think about it, you will find that this transformation of objects into commodities is actually quite equivalent to the expenditure of human labor. The labor begins with what we take from nature. It is always possible to trace it back to the object's character, and if you can trace it back to that, then you cannot speak of any economic character of the object. It only becomes economic when it comes into circulation. Only then does it become something that has significance for the economy as a whole. But this is connected with the overall structure and development of human labor, with the type and time and so on of human labor.

The third thing in the economy is that you know what is needed. Because only by knowing what is needed over a certain territory can you produce in a reasonable way. An item that is produced too much will inevitably become cheap; and an item that is produced too little will inevitably become expensive. The price depends on how many people are involved in the production of an item. That is the fundamental and vital question of economics, that it starts from the satisfaction of needs, and from the free satisfaction of needs. What is at issue here cannot be determined by statistics because it is part of a living process. It can only be determined by people associated with a particular territory simply becoming humanly acquainted with those who have this or that need, know the sum of the needs humanly and can negotiate from a purely human, living point of view, not from a statistical point of view, how many people are needed to produce an item. So that in the life of the association, one has first of all those people who set out to educate themselves about the existing needs in a given area, which of course arises from economic foundations, and develop the will to initiate negotiations about how many people in any economic sector must produce so that the needs can be satisfied. All this must be linked to having a sense of the freedom of needs. In no way should any opinion prevail among those who have the task just described, whether any need is justified or not, but it must be merely a matter of objectively establishing a need.

Combating senseless needs, luxurious, harmful needs, is not the responsibility of the economic life of the association, but only of the influence of the spiritual life. Meaningless and harmful needs must be eliminated by educating people in spiritual life to refine their desires and perceptions. A free spiritual life will certainly be able to do this. To put it bluntly: cinemas must not be banned by the police, but people must be educated in such a way that they do not acquire a taste for them. That is the only healthy way to combat harmful influences in social life. The moment needs as such are assessed by the economy or the state, we no longer have a threefold social order, but a chaotic mixture of spiritual, economic and other interests. The threefold social order must be taken seriously down to its innermost fibers. Spiritual life must be truly placed on its own footing. It is not free when some kind of censorship authority exists, when this or that can be forbidden in the sphere of human needs. No matter how fanatical you are, you can rail against cinemas; that does not affect the free spiritual life. The moment you call for the police, the moment you shout: That should be forbidden, you impair the free spiritual life. This must be remembered, and one must not shrink from a certain radicalism.

So initially, the associations will have to deal with people who inform themselves about the needs within a certain territory and then initiate negotiations, not make laws, about the necessary production.

So you see, you can characterize the matter somewhat differently, then perhaps it will even, I would say, seem somewhat more mundane. But finally, by way of illustration, it can also be said that initially the associations will need objectified agencies and agents who are not only interested in ensuring that the person for whom they work sells as much as possible, but who also ask themselves: What needs are there? – and who are then experts in how to produce in order to satisfy these needs.

Thus we have, I might say, the first link of the associations. The second link is taken from the series of those who have to supply the market, who, therefore, when a product is manufactured somewhere, have to arrange for its transportation, or initiate negotiations for it to be transported to the place where it is needed. So we find, so to speak, experts in consumption, experts in trade and, thirdly, experts in production. However, these are taken from the free spiritual life, because this includes everything that flows from the spiritual into productive life through abilities.

You see, representatives of all three limbs of the social organism will be present in the economic associations; only the associations themselves will belong only to the economic link and will only deal with economic matters: with the consumption, circulation and production of goods and the pricing that results from this. Therefore, in the threefold social organism, there are corporations that have sole competence within the respective link. In the economic associations, nothing but economic issues are discussed; but in the associations, of course, the people who have their abilities and competencies for the negotiations come from the free spiritual life and the legal-state. It is therefore not a matter of placing the three elements of the social organism schematically next to each other, but of having administrations and corporations with expertise in the individual matters. That is what it is about.

The details will be clear to you from the “key points”. First of all, it is a matter of always appealing to the intellectual life with regard to capital, by saying: the person who has brought together the means of production through his abilities remains in the business as long as these abilities are present. Determining this is a matter for the intellectual life. Then it still attributes so much judgment to him that he can determine his successor. That also belongs to the free spiritual life. And if he cannot or will not do it himself, the free corporation of the free spiritual life decides. You see, everything that is a function of abstract capitalism passes over into the work of the free spiritual life within economic life. It is exactly the same as in the human organism. The blood is connected with the circulatory system, but it passes into the head and pulses through it. It is exactly the same with the real social organism. Therefore it is, in a sense, fatal that, especially abroad, particularly in Nordic countries, there has been such a strong tendency to speak of a “tripartite division” of the social organism instead of “tripartition”. This “tripartite” social organism naturally gives rise to terrible misunderstandings. It is a division that is not a division. The individual members must interact with each other. We must create a clear understanding of this.

And we can hope that the reasonable bourgeois, like the proletarians, will gradually come to understand the matter. We already had the beginnings of this in Stuttgart in 1919; elsewhere, a start may have been made here or there. But the opposition from all sides has become so active that we, with our few people, have not been able to hold out for the time being. Therefore, we have now called upon your strong forces so that a kind of strengthening of our advocacy for the threefold social organism can occur. It is now absolutely necessary, I would even say urgent, that a strong push be made for everything that emerges from anthroposophical spiritual science and what threefolding of the social organism is. Because in a certain respect, it is still a matter of our temporary existence or non-existence. We should not deceive ourselves about this.

But we must work towards great clarity in everything. That is why I have tried again to give as clear an idea as possible of associative life. If anyone wants to know more about associations, we can do that this evening by answering all kinds of questions. It must be a constant feature of our lectures that we strive for clarity and that we try to evoke an understanding of how lack of clarity in our public and social affairs has brought about our present situation. I will give you an example of this.

When you are asked about this or that today, people come to you with schematic questions. They ask you: what about capital, what about small businesses, what about land and so on? Well, with regard to healthy social conditions, the land question is settled in my “Key Points”, although it seems to have only been touched on in a subordinate clause. But everything that is otherwise discussed today stems from the fact that land is involved in our social life in an incredibly convoluted way.

When the newer economic life arose and imposed the character of a commodity on everything, for example, labor, so that everything can be bought, then land also became a commodity. You could buy and sell it. But what is actually involved in this buying and selling of land? If we want to understand this, we have to go back to very primitive conditions, in which the feudal lord had acquired a certain piece of land either by conquest or in some other way, and gave it to those who were to work it, who then, in kind or in other forms of payment, gave him a certain quota in return, which initially meant the origin of land rent. But why did the people give this rent to him, to the feudal lord or to the church, to the monastery? Why did they give it to him? What made it plausible for them to make such payments? Nothing else made it more plausible for them than if they, as small owners, worked on their land and soil to till and harvest it, since anyone could come along and chase them away. Being able to work the land requires protection of the land and soil. Now, in most cases, the feudal lords themselves had an army, which they maintained from the tributes, and that was for the protection of the land. And the land rent was paid not for the right to work the land, but for the protection of the land. The right to work the land had arisen entirely out of necessity, since the landowner himself could not work all the land. This had nothing to do with any other circumstances. But the land had to be protected. And that is what the dues were paid for. In the same way, the dues were paid to the monasteries. The monasteries themselves maintained armies with which they protected the land, or they were bound by some kind of treaty here or there in such a way that the land was secured by some other power relationship. If you trace the origin of the land rent, you have to see it as a tax for the protection of the land and soil. If we consider this original meaning of the land rent, we see that it refers to times when very primitive conditions prevailed, when, in economic terms, sovereign feudal lords or monasteries ruled who obeyed no one.

These conditions ceased, first in the West and only later in Central Europe, in that certain rights that the individual had - in certain areas of Germany they ceased to be individual rights at the very latest - were gradually transferred to individual princes, which was by no means an economic but a political process. The rights were transferred. With the transfer of the rights, the protection of the land was also transferred. It then became necessary for the prince to maintain the armies. For this he naturally had to demand a levy. Gradually, the systematization of the tax system came about, which weighs so heavily on us today. This was added to the other, but curiously the other remained! It lost its meaning, because the one who was now the landowner no longer needed to spend anything on the protection of land and property; the territorial prince or the state was now there for that. But the land rent remained. And with the new economic life, it gradually passed into the ordinary circulation of goods. The fact that the connection between land rent and land lost its meaning meant that land rent could be turned into a profit-making object. It is pure nonsense that has become reality. There is something in the process of circulation of values that has basically completely lost its meaning, but which is still treated today as a commodity.

Such things can be found everywhere in our economic life. They have arisen from some justified things. Something else has taken the place of these justified things. But the old has remained. And some new process has taken it up and introduced the senseless into social life.

If you now simply take economic life as it is – if you are a professor of economics and thus have the task of thinking as little as possible in the sense I have characterized it before – then you define the land rent as it is written in the books today. And as something so senseless, it also figures in life today. So you can see how much work there is to be done to make people understand that we not only have nonsense in our system of thought, but also everywhere in economic life. And when the individual sighs under economic life, it is actually from such undergrounds. What is needed today is to arrive at a more thorough, unprejudiced, comprehensive thinking than that which can be developed by sitting in today's educational institutions.

For ultimately, what kind of thinking is being developed there today? The thinking that is perhaps characterized by mathematics is being developed. But it is being developed in such a way that it stands apart from all reality. Then they develop the kind of thinking that can be learned through experimentation, that can be learned through systematics. They develop the kind of thinking that has finally become a mere formality in the hands of people like Poincare, Mach and so on, something that they merely call “summarizing external reality.” In short, they do not develop any kind of thinking at all! And because they do not develop any thinking, they cannot do anything in economics at all.

Indeed, a method of economics has gradually emerged – Lujo Brentano handled it particularly cleverly – that develops out of understandable needs the theory that one should not think at all about what economic life should be, but only observe it correctly. Well, one should imagine how one is somehow to arrive at a science of economic life by mere observation! It would be like advising the pedagogue to just observe the children. It would never be possible to develop an activity from it. That is why our economic theorists are so terribly sterile, because they have the method of passively confronting external reality.

And the other side of the coin becomes apparent when people really do start to intervene in economic life. On the one hand, they developed a science that only observes. But when war came to Central Europe, they were suddenly supposed to intervene in economic life, even to the point of influencing price formation. What was the result? The economist Terhalle summarized the results: First, he said, and he cites countless scientific proofs in his book on “Free or Fixed Pricing?” First: things have been done in such a way that you can see that the people who did it didn't know what was important at all. Secondly, they are based on theoretical schematisms that have so little to do with reality that, by applying them, they ruin reality. Thirdly, in influencing the formation of prices, it has come about that individual trades have not been helped but harmed; and fourthly, honest craftsmanship and trade have been harmed in favor of profiteering! Just imagine what it means for an official economist to have to judge the political and governmental economic activity of recent years on the basis of economic research: that it has favored profiteering at the expense of honest trade and craftsmanship! One has only to sense what this actually means. These things must be said to people, as clearly as possible, so that one can see how powerless our civilization has become in the face of reality.

If we do not clarify such things as I have just told you with regard to land rent, we will not be able to show people the necessity of the associations; because just imagine the associations installed in the most makeshift way: immediately, experience reveals how damagingly all the unnatural things in economic life affect the formation of prices. This cannot come to light, of course, if economic life is organized in such a way that the agents go out into the countryside and do business for the individual enterprises. There they cannot be confronted with the connection between production and consumption. They do not have the interest to focus on how much should be produced. For them, only the one self-evident “truth” applies, that their master can produce as much as possible. This interest in the master's production being as strong as possible must be replaced by the positive knowledge: how many producers must there be, because we have seen that there is such and such a demand for an article, so that it must be ensured that not too many and not too few work on the territory in question for this purpose? The objective interest must take the place of the interest in the individual entrepreneur. That is what matters in the association.

Now we have to show people how economic life, because it has so many absurd elements in it – because in addition to the land rent, there are many others – is already pushing for integration. The cartel system, with the quota allocation of profit, demand, sales and so on, the merging, the amalgamation – what does it arise from? In Europe it takes more the form of a cartel, in America more that of a trust. It arises from the fact that the individual can no longer produce due to the many absurd elements that are in economic life. Just think how different it is today, when everything is pushing towards large-scale enterprise, than it was when the sole trader or small business owner was part of economic life. What can a person ask today if they want to start their own business? They can only ask how the market for a particular product is doing, whether there is demand for a particular product. A product that is in demand seems promising, a product that is not in demand does not seem promising.

In the past, when the number of entrepreneurs was small, it did not matter much; only when there were too many did the individual ones perish. But suppose that everything tends towards large-scale enterprise, when it is noticed that a particular article is needed and that something can be earned from it. By setting up the large-scale enterprise, you abolish the very thing from which you concluded that it was necessary to set up the large-scale enterprise! Because everything tends towards large-scale enterprise, what used to be decisive for the individual small entrepreneur is no longer decisive. This is why the necessity for mergers arises. And so we have cartels, trusts and so on, because the leading circles were quite careless with regard to consumption. Because they did not care about it, these mergers arise only out of the interests of the producers. Consumption is not taken into account.

The essential thing is that it is shown: You can no longer get by in economic life without association. Therefore, the one-sided associations of cartels and trusts, which, however, arise from mere production interests, must be supplemented by being based on an understanding of consumption, on an insight into the needs of a particular territory. Thus the trusts and cartels, by being caricatures of what should arise, show how necessary it is to move in a certain direction, in the direction of association. One has only to look at what kind of associations should now be created.

Characterization must be based on real life in all cases. Then perhaps we shall be able to make people understand how necessary associations are for economic life. And so it will actually be a matter of giving the lectures you now want to give in terms that are as clear as possible. The prerequisite must be that what is given in the “key points” is basically a kind of axiom of modern social life. It is never necessary to prove the Pythagorean theorem in all its individual objects. But it must prove itself in all its individual objects. Just as little is it necessary to prove the insight into social conditions, as it is gained, in detail; it is proved as such by its content, like the Pythagorean theorem. And one has only to show how things must be integrated into life. This must be taken into account.

And I would like to say this: Let us really consider our activity in such a way that it connects with what has already been done. That is why I said yesterday: It is necessary to look at our movement as a whole and not to be embarrassed to present what has been done to the people and to tell them that it is there. We have an experience again and again, in fact in a truly alarming way: When I go somewhere to give a lecture, there is a table of books at the entrance of the hall. It is only looked at if I do not mention any of the books. If I do mention one, it is bought. Usually there are not enough of them available. The others are passed over. Well, I always regret that there are so many books. You can't mention them all in a single lecture. Therefore, we must also face the present with a sense of reality. I recommend that you do not disdain any opportunity to recommend the Dreigliederungszeitung where you can, because we must reach the stage where the Dreigliederungszeitung becomes a daily newspaper. But we will not reach that stage unless we make it more popular than it is. So, we must face reality to that extent. But don't forget to recommend something else as well! Otherwise the other things will be returned unpurchased in huge numbers. It may look strange to say such things in serious lectures, but if we don't say them, they are very often not done either. And we have come together to agree on the things that should be done. Because we want to do something in the near future.

If you look around in the somewhat more experienced economic literature, you will at least notice in many cases that a certain remark can be found somewhere among the authors, which goes something like this: the economist should not concern himself with how the people are educated or what is good for the people with regard to their needs. From another point of view, I have already pointed this out, he should leave that to the ethicist, the hygienist and so on.

If you take such a remark seriously, then it actually means nothing less than proof of the necessity for the threefold social organism. For what is being said? It is being said: If you think in terms of economics, nothing comes of it that could somehow aim at ethics, at hygiene, but what should aim at ethics, at hygiene, must come from another side.

If we now think of such a remark, which until today was actually only meant theoretically, exploited practically, it is said that it is necessary that economically real judged, that is, that the economy be designed so that only only those things that are purely economic, that disregard all ethics, all hygiene and so on, and that, alongside them, there are real administrations that are there for the ethical permeation, for the hygienic development of social life. These will lie in the free spiritual life.

And for you it will be an important pedagogical-didactic point of view to show that the foundations for this are present everywhere and that, if used in the right way, they lead to conclusions regarding the threefold social order. One can say that economists, if they really think economically, cannot think differently from the way it should be thought in the associative member of the social organism. But the things that are thought in this way do not remain in books; there are instances that also transfer them cleanly into reality.

I mention this today, when I want to point out more methodological things, precisely in a methodological way, to make you aware that wherever the threefold order is mentioned, one can start from things that people have already thought of somehow. Only today no one has the courage to draw the consequences from them. The essential thing for us is to draw the necessary consequences for social life.

Likewise, you will have to deal with other questions if you want to focus on social issues. If you familiarize yourself with the development of economic thought, you will find that a whole series of utopian ideas have emerged in recent times. We need only go back to the eighteenth century to find such utopian ideas, perhaps because the older ones are less relevant to the present day. But since the eighteenth century a whole series of social utopias have been conceived. Why did such utopias arise? This is important for you to know so that you can incorporate it into the overall attitude of your lectures.

You see, the following is available for intellectual life. Basically, it leads back to ancient wisdom and the customs associated with it. Take, for example, what we have in Europe today as a completely decadent intellectual life: on the one hand, Catholicism and, on the other, the highly filtered modern educational life, which is also still fed by ancient religious ideas; they are everywhere. You can follow them right into the materialistic parts of medicine; and they are in philology, these offshoots of theocratic or theological thinking. So if you consider how all modern thinking is thoroughly impregnated with this element that leads back to ancient wisdom, you will understand that in the whole way in which intellectual life, I should now say, administers itself - for it has already has become anarchic in that it has not been drawn into the tight fetters of state life, you will notice that the threads can also be seen in the administrations, which were in the constitution of the territories where ancient wisdom held sway. In the church you see it in the structure of the hierarchies. This leads back to the views of ancient wisdom. In jurisprudence, you may only see it in the struggle that is the struggle of materialism against spiritualism in the external life, in the struggle waged by lawyers and judges against the wearing of robes in court proceedings. In the robes you have the remnants of the old way of thinking; in the fight against the robes you have the modern materialistic way of thinking. And that has a much greater significance than one might think. And if you consider all the formal aspects of the doctoral degrees at some of our universities, you will easily be able to trace the threads back to the old theocratic element. In this respect we have something in it all that people have lost sight of, but which points back to the past, to the fact that people once knew how to manage spiritual life. Even if we no longer have this spiritual life in our present time, we have the forms in it; and I might add, we are even still stuck in them like discarded clothes. We need new forms everywhere. These will be found in the free spiritual life.

The other point is this. In England, for example, the political-democratic element developed out of the church-democratic element. This came about simply because the ecclesiastical background was stripped away and the democratic form of thinking was revealed. But in fact the political-legal element has gradually emerged everywhere from the theocratic-ecclesiastical element. It is just that it is no longer noticed so clearly in other places. For example, there is a secret connection between the entire system of civil servants, at the top of which one can imagine the absolute ruler “by the grace of God”, which latter reveals the origin from the theocratic-ecclesiastical element, because only the one who was appointed by spiritual authorities was “by the grace of God”. The entire body of civil servants is simply the ecclesiastical hierarchy that has become secularized. But the other side, which basically also developed out of the theocratic-ecclesiastical element, is the military. This is perceived as paradoxical by people today. But the military is only that which, like the shadow of an illuminated object, follows the whole organization of the state. And so, I might say, a certain way of handling the state has gradually emerged during the separation of the secular element from the theocratic-ecclesiastical element. This can be seen in all its details when we consider the transition of the forms of administration, as they were still clearly manifested in their theocratic-hierarchical form in those times when Charlemagne attached importance to being crowned by the Pope in Rome, how ecclesiastical life then passed over into the profane, how, as a latecomer to this transition, for example, the first state posts in France were filled by cardinals. If you consider this, you will be able to grasp everywhere the emergence of this modern political-legal element in the handling of the theocratic-ecclesiastical element and the independence of its administration. One could handle these things independently.

Now modern economic life is pushing its way into this, which has indeed produced instinctive practices, but so far not something that has been as internally permeated as the old hierarchical-ecclesiastical and state-militaristic elements. These two elements have brought the world to a tight uniform. By contrast, it was only in recent times that the urge arose to consciously penetrate what has become the predominant feature of modern life, namely the complex economic life, which in older times did not need to be thought about because it was drawn from inexhaustible sources. It is true that the necessity has arisen to find a certain way of handling economic life. But this way of handling has not yet been found.

And basically, the first attempt to bring something into economic life that can be paralleled to the state and the church element, is the associative principle. It is the first attempt to really found something organically in economic life. Because that has not happened before. And the most diverse theoretical attempts to develop a way of thinking, to organize economic life as such, these are the utopian theories, which were always infected by what had been inherited from the past. People still thought: If you organize, you have to organize in the same way as it is in the ecclesiastical-hierarchical or state element - after all, people were not aware of this.

And the practical expression of this in the outer world is the appearance of economic liberalism in the first half of the nineteenth century. Why did this economic liberalism appear? What is it? It is an appeal to the efficiency of individual economic personalities. It was the same in the theocratic-hierarchical element. Before an organization could be found, it was necessary to appeal to the leading individuals. The same applied to the state element. Before passing over to a parliamentary system, it was necessary to appeal to those who had the ability to administer the affairs of the state. Economic liberalism is nothing more than this appeal to the individual efficiency of the personality in the economic field. It is only because things in the world have developed more rapidly that it has become necessary to find something that really paralyzes the harmful effects of the absolutist individual.

Surely you only need to study the constitution of the Catholic Church to see that in this Catholic Church, which simply preserves an ancient administration of spiritual life, you will find everywhere that the institutions and organizations are aimed at banishing the harmfulness of individuality. It is precisely through this that individuality can come into its own in a certain way.

I once attended a conversation in Vienna in which a professor at the Viennese theological faculty, who had somewhat liberal tendencies, but only indulged them in the most cautious way, complained that Rome was choking him completely and not allowing him to express anything from the lectern. It was discussed at length why, for example, in Innsbruck, where the same subject was taught by a Jesuit, he was allowed to express himself on the same topics in the freest manner. And those who were experienced in such matters said to themselves: Yes, it does not matter to the Catholic Church, for example, that exegesis is not also freely taught at the university, but rather that the individuals within it give an absolute assurance that, despite their liberal views, they are firmly within the organization, and of course the Jesuit is particularly good at achieving this, firmly within the organization. Then he is also allowed to take his special liberties. For the organization does not destroy individuality. It is not destroyed at all. The individual personality is free to a high degree in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Catholicism. But those who take things similar to Protestantism are choked, who take things so that they take dogmatics seriously; the Catholic only takes symbolism seriously. For them, there is always the danger of throwing off the robe. But that must not be. Within the church, anything can happen; outside the church, no one may place himself.

Of course, something like this cannot be imitated. But it can be cited as a characteristic example of what has been found on the other side: older times appeal to individuality, but have such an organization that individuality cannot be harmful. In the life of the state, the time has also passed when it was realized that these two sides must be present.

In economic life, it is a matter of finding the transition from economic liberalism to the principle of association. We are only in the middle of what needs to be done. This is what the world-historical moment actually reveals to us in this respect: the principle of association in economic life means nothing other than what must necessarily come about in the face of the degenerations of economic liberalism. And in modern times, precisely because thinking is inactive in a certain sense, people have not yet found the courage to move on to action, to move from liberalist thinking to active thinking. But the attempt has been made everywhere. If you pay attention, you can see some interesting experiences.

Recently I picked up the little economics book from the Göschenschen collection. It talks about economic liberalism and says: “It became necessary to move from an individualistic economic system to a kind of social economic system.” And so it was necessary to transfer more and more of the individualistically established to the state administrations: state socialism! So no trace of an understanding of the necessity of the association principle, but: state socialism! And in another part of this little book by Göschenen, which was also written by a fox, but not such a bad one, I found the following sentence: And the World War has shown us how right this way of thinking was; he means: to gradually transfer what individuals have achieved to the state. I said to myself: Now I have to turn to the title page. In which year is it still possible for a person to write that? I found: 1918! It was the last date when one could write this without being called a fool. [Interjection: Excuse me, Doctor: 1920! - Mr. Blume shows the latest edition]. It is questionable whether it is still in the latest edition. This is marked “reprint.” If it is still in there, it is because things would have remained in their folly even in 1920. Indeed! He did not feel the need to correct the matter after two years! They are not clever, these foxes. I opened to the title page, “1918,” and said: Could conditions still be such that one could believe that the transfer of what emerged from the old system as a world economy into a state economy or even into a city economy - I would like to remind you that the municipalities in particular are on the verge of ruin and will all collapse soon - was absolutely right?

What I am trying to suggest is that modern thinking has not yet found the real, correct transition from liberalist economics to associative economics.

Perhaps it will not be possible at all for anyone to grasp the associative principle correctly if they do not at the same time fully embrace the threefold social order. For in the unified state, what works properly in the threefold social organism will actually have a harmful effect. And this must be emphasized, at least in the nuance that you give to your lectures, that, for example, anyone who comes and says, “Yes, we want to leave spiritual life to the state. We don't want threefolding.” But twofolding – something similar was even proposed in the Weimar National Assembly – yes, but twofolding! It is possible to separate economic life! But it is not possible for the reason that a separated economic life, organized associatively, would in fact contain within the associations people who are completely dependent on the state and who have not grown out of the free spiritual life, and these people would then influence economic life in the state's interest. Thus the whole of economic life would take on the state mentality.

Likewise, we would never establish truly independent schools like the Waldorf School if we admitted that teachers were taken from state institutions, that the state license of the teachers would have to be taken along with the teachers. If one says that we could establish an independent school but could only achieve it if we found state-approved teachers, then that shows that one does not understand the matter. For that means nothing other than this, that one sticks to the old and just spruces it up in the modern sense, thus throwing dust in people's eyes. And the times are too serious for that. What should be advocated in terms of threefolding is what the real threefolding holds, even at the risk that the practical arrangements cannot be made immediately because of people's resistance. The most important thing today is to get the idea of threefolding into as many minds as possible. This is the quickest way to bring it into practical realization.

And now a few words about the method by which you cannot present the idea of threefolding without taking as a basis, in a tactful and didactically correct way, spiritual science oriented towards anthroposophy. This can be clearly seen from the development of thinking in the social life of modern times.

There have been all kinds of utopian ideas, and the system that has become popular in the broadest sense among the proletarian population has developed: the Marxist system. Of course, this Marxist system has taken many forms. Revisionism on the one hand, Leninism on the other. This is a kind of radicalism that says: We know full well that Marxism does not solve the social question, but it works towards the radical destruction of everything that exists, and then another humanity will come along to rebuild it. But the Marxist system is at the root of all this. Karl Marx knew how to find his way into the souls of the modern proletarian world. And that is why it is also possible for the leaders of the proletarian world to influence the proletarian world with Marxist ideas. In a sense, it must even be said that this Marxism – not so much as it lived as a theory with Karl Marx, but rather as it lives in the views of the broadest proletarian masses – is, in terms of its form, the most modern social conception of life in terms of world view. The others, regardless of whether they are advocated by practitioners or university professors, are actually always somewhat backward.

Precisely because Marxism is the most modern form, it must also be sharply envisaged by those who now want something really radical. Today, one cannot simply speak to the masses without having a clear, at least intuitive, understanding of what Marxism means. The essential thing about it is that Marxism is the Weltanschhauung and outlook on life which best corresponds to the whole social situation of the modern proletarian. It is simply adapted to the whole social outlook on life of the modern proletarian. And if you fight Marxism purely theoretically, you are actually doing something that does not correspond to reality. They fight against Marxism without realizing that they have allowed the reality to develop in such a way that the modern proletarian has become what he is. This can be traced back to the carelessness of the rest of the population. But by allowing him to become what he has, he could do nothing but take Marxism as his world view and outlook on life. For this Marxism contains within itself, for the proletariat's conception, the threefold order of human social life. By becoming a Marxist, the worker has, from Marxism, his view of the threefold order of social life, which is appropriate for his class. That's what he has in there.

For you see, in modern times it has become more and more the custom to distract from consumption and its understanding and to look at mere acquisition. In doing so, one only had to let enough of this acquisition go so that the social organism could still be administered. One was only interested, whether aristocrat or bourgeois, in as much of the proceeds of the acquisition as one got and had to give up so that the whole thing could be held together at all. How did this work out for people who, through old privileges or other circumstances, were inside the real social organism? They tried to get as much as possible out of their earnings. They did not care about consumption and only grudgingly paid the taxes necessary for the cohesion of the whole. What did the modern proletarian do? He just stood at the machine and was outside of capitalism. He categorically refused to pay certain taxes if they were not knocked down. For he had no interest in the reality of the old social organism; he was only interested in what remained from the acquisition. Since he was not involved in the administration of capital, this only became the subject of a critique of what he calls surplus value. The proletarian's relationship to surplus value, criticizing it, is the same as the bourgeois's, when he grudgingly approves the taxes. By approving the tax, the bourgeois has not progressed to what lies behind it. The proletarian has not progressed either. But he has practiced critique. He has looked the surplus value in the eye and practiced critique. This shows, then, that the point is to add the positive to critique. That would, of course, be the associative principle. But it is in the theory of surplus value that which, within a worldview and conception of life, embodies the economic element for the proletarian.

The second thing that lives in Marxist theory, insofar as it is the proletarian's conception of life and worldview, is the class struggle, which, in his view, must be. That is the political and legal element. Through the class struggle, he wants to fight for his rights, he wants to organize labor, and so on. So the second area of social life is included. It is only the flip side of what it is like for the bourgeois and the aristocrats. They cannot get out of their class. They do not have the talent to go from the class-based to the general human. The worker does this consciously, but of course he takes his class with him. So in Marxism we also have what has developed in modern life as the political and legal element, which has not yet found the transition to the truly democratic element, which has not been carried out anywhere, but to which we must come, where, on the basis of the state-legal sphere of the social organism, all people who have come of age are equal before the law. That is more or less what the classes concerned have always meant until now. When, say, before the French Revolution, there was essentially an aristocratic element, this was quite democratic among itself, but below its class, the human being simply ceased to exist, he was no longer a human being in the fullest sense of the word. Then the bourgeoisie came along. That, too, was quite democratic among itself. But below that, the human being ceased to exist. What everything tends towards in modern times is general democracy. The one who stood outside the social organism, like the proletarian, constituted his own class against the others in the place of the general human, which can be defined in such a way that in all that is to be democratically parliamentarized, all people, whatever they may represent, all people who have come of age, face each other as equals. Thus, I would say, we also have in the class struggle that which we must characterize something like this: the proletarian knows that something completely different must come, he is modern in this respect, something must come that is quite different from what has existed so far. But he has not learned the general human. Therefore, he starts from his class instead of from the general human.

And within the Marxist philosophy and outlook on life, the proletarian also has a place for the spiritual. This is the materialistic view of history. In the materialistic age and in the whole education of the modern proletarian, who only comes into contact with the mechanism of life and not with the psyche and the spirit, this spiritual life quite naturally became the materialistic conception of history in the proletarian's view. But this represents the spiritual element in the world and in life.

So, in proletarian Marxism, you have the ultimate radical expression of what modern humanity actually wants and in which it does not know how to help itself. And you have to counter this with something that is just as well-founded as proletarian Marxism is for the proletariat. What is the essence of this proletarian Marxism as a worldview? The essence of proletarian Marxism as a worldview is disbelief in man.

This disbelief in man was justified in the times of the original wisdom of mankind, for then it was divine powers that sat within the human being and guided him. People knew they were dependent on what they unconsciously recognized from the depths of their souls as the revelations of the gods as guiding forces for life. Then there was disbelief in man and faith in the gods. When the state-administrative and the official-military elements had been separated out from the old theocratic-ecclesiastical element, this unbelief in man still existed. For then arose the belief that man as such cannot direct the destinies after all, the state must do that. The state became an idol, a fetish. And this led man, who was now harnessed into the state system, to disbelief in man, to belief in the external fetish. Of course, as soon as God comes down, he becomes more and more of a fetish. Proletarian Marxism is the third and final stage of disbelief in man. For the proletarian says to himself in his materialistic philosophy of history: it is not man who directs fate, but “the forces of production” that direct him. We stand there powerless as human beings with our ideology. The course of history is determined by the course of the production processes. And what human beings are within these forces of production is only the result of the forces of production themselves. Disbelief in man and real belief in the tangible fetish! There is no fundamental difference between the African savage, who has reached decadence in a different way, worshipping an external block of wood, making it into a fetish, or the European proletarian, who regards the means and processes of production as directing history. In principle, there is no difference in logic; it is our magic superstition! And we must look at this sufficiently. In various ways, people have come into decadence. In Africa, there was also an original wisdom. Then it deteriorated in administration; we see this in Egypt. Then it decays. Fetishism is not what stands at the starting point, but what occurs in decadence. At the starting point, pure belief in the gods is everywhere, and only in the decline does fetishism arise. Within the civilized areas, instead of worshipping external wooden blocks, the “forces of production” were worshipped. The prayers were, of course, also arranged differently. But “the forces of production” and “production processes” were made into idols. It is the last phase of unbelief in man, the phase of economically superstitious thinking. There is no difference in principle between an African savage who goes to his idol with a magic spell and a modern proletarian gathering to thrash out Marxist phrases. The prayer sounds different, but one must be clear about what the inner essence of the matter is.

This must be contrasted with what is now not unbelief in man, but faith in man. And ultimately it is essential that faith in man be found, the faith that the directing forces for life reveal themselves within man. Man must come to himself, to full self-awareness. He must find the possibility to say to himself: All externals are superstition. Only the directing forces within oneself are to intervene in life!

But for this, courage is needed to go beyond mere passive prayer and to have an active prayer in the grasp of the divine in the will. This transition to active prayer, to inner activity in general, this transition from disbelief in humanity to faith in humanity, is what must be present in your hearts and souls as enthusiasm. You must feel that you are at the turning point in history, where people must be led from disbelief in humanity to faith in humanity.

You don't need to tell people, but you must go on the podiums with this awareness, with the awareness that you have to teach humanity that the guiding forces of life must be actively grasped within, that life in the future must be organized in such a way that people say to themselves: I must be the one to do things.

It was the last superstition of civilization that people did not have faith in themselves, but that they had faith in “the forces of production” arranging life. And from this superstition arose the terrible worship of the rear in the East, where an attempt was made to imbue with willpower that which is not determined by willpower. The personality that ideally unites two unrelated things, inner passivity in conviction and activity in action, whereby one destroys the other, is Lenin. Lenin is the personality that most purely crystallizes in new times that which comes from ancient times. He most purely crystallizes what the real impossibility, the real destructive urge, the real ruinous urge has become.

What leads to construction, what leads to the re-imbibition of real life forces into social life, is, if we can find the possibility, to create in man out of disbelief in man, belief in man, a belief that ultimately expresses itself as follows: Whatever I experience as luck or misfortune, or as social institution, or as something in the outer life, I myself will make!

You cannot instill this in people without at the same time steeling them with your words. You have to bring people to have confidence, to have faith in their own being. And that is what you must strive for, at least in your heart. How you do it may depend on your abilities today. But if you devote yourself to the matter with good will, it will soon no longer depend on these abilities, but the necessity of the time will take hold of your abilities. And you will rise above yourself precisely in bringing this belief to people, so that in the place of unbelief in people, faith in people must come.

That is what I wanted to say to you before you go out to give your lectures. Feel the strength that can lie in saying to yourself: I have to bring about the conviction that the last doubt and disbelief in man in relation to man will be transformed into faith in man, into the inner activity of the human being! Because this is what matters when striving for real progress. Everything else will only lead to the propagation of that which is decadent. Do not uphold what is destructive, but rather apply Nietzsche's words to me: Let it still be pushed so that it perishes more quickly! But love what is not of yesterday and today, but what is of tomorrow!

I want you, my dear friends, to go out as people of tomorrow and to shape your words in the coming weeks from the consciousness of the people of tomorrow.

I am of the opinion, that, in this course we are now starting, it is [a question of] a discussion of what is necessary in order really to connect one's self responsibly with the movement of Anthroposophy and the Threefold Idea. The course will therefore not be arranged for lecturers in general, but as a kind of orientation course for the personalities, who have made it their task to work in the direction indicated.

Personalities who receive what can come from Anthroposophy simply as a kind of information will not get much from this course.

Indeed, at present, we definitely need activity within our movement. It seems to be difficult to kindle this activity. It seems difficult to spread the insight that this activity is really necessary in our time.

Hence, it will not be a matter of a formal course in lecturing, but rather, of just those things which are necessary for someone who would like to accomplish a quite definite task, I mean the one just indicated.

On the whole, the Anthroposophical Movement has no use for general talk. Indeed, this is exactly the mark of our present culture and civilization that there is general talk around things—that people do not pick up concrete tasks—that they have, by preference, interest for talking in general terms.

Hence, I do not intend to treat the things in this course, (which I shall discuss as regards content), in such a way that they might serve as information. But I shall try to treat these things so—and this must indeed be the case in such an orientation course because it is intended as the very basis for a definite task—so that they can then link up directly with the spoken word. And I shall treat this spoken word so as to take into consideration, that he who sets himself the task of delivering a lecture for Anthroposophy is perhaps not working under conditions in which interest is already present, but is working to awaken interest by the first few lectures. Thus, I should like to shape this course in this quite concrete sense.

And, even the large points of view which I shall discuss today are to be meant entirely in this quite concrete sense. One would be reporting what is incorrect if—as is so popular nowadays—one set down what I shall say both today and in the next days as abstract sentences.

Today I intend to speak of certain set of rules.

Whenever through a lecture one sets out upon the task of bringing something near to one's fellow man, a responseful interchange will naturally take place between the person who has something to communicate, something to work for, something to be enthusiastic about, and the persons who listen to him. An interplay of soul-forces occurs. And to this interplay of soul-forces we propose at first to turn our attention.

These soul-forces live, as you know, in thinking, feeling and willing. And never is just a single soul-force in abstract form active by itself. But, into each soul-force the other soul-forces play, so that when we think, there are also feeling and willing always active in our thinking, likewise in our feeling, thinking and willing, and again in willing, thinking and feeling.

But still, one cannot consider the soul life—both by itself and in its responseful interchange between people—save from the point of view of this tending on the one side to thinking, and on the other to willing. And so, in the sense of our task today, we must know the following:

What we think interests nobody else, and whoever believes that his thoughts—insofar as they are thoughts—interest any other person, will not be able to put himself to the task of lecturing. (We intend to speak more precisely about these things.) The willing to which we would like to fire a gathering, or even one other person, this willing that we wish to put into our lecture, this annoys people, this they instinctively reject.

When one approaches people as a lecturer, then one has to do chiefly with the workings of various instincts: The thinking which one kindles in one's self does not interest people, willing annoys them. This, if some one were called upon for this or that act of will, we would find that we had called up, not his willing, but his annoyance. And if we were to sketch our most beautiful and ingenious ideas in a monologue before people, they would walk out. That must be the fundamental guiding line for the lecturer.

I do not say that this is so when we consider a general conversation among people, a gossip session or the like. For I am not speaking here about how these two are to be treated. Rather am I speaking of what should fill our souls, of what should live in us as proper impulse for lecturing, if the lecture is to have a purpose precisely in the direction I now mean. I am speaking of the guiding line one needs to set one's self: Our thoughts do not interest an audience—our will annoys every audience.

Now, we must take a further matter into consideration: When someone lectures, the fact is that he lectures for the most part not only out of his own being, but out of all kinds of situations. For instance, he lectures on some affair that has perhaps for weeks been discussed by, or described to many of the people who will be listening to him. He then naturally meets with quite a different interest than he does if his first sentences touch on something that, until now, had not occupied his hearers in the slightest. When someone lectures here in the Goetheanum, it is naturally something quite different from what it is when one lecturesat a hotel in Kalamazoo. I mean, even setting aside the fact, that in the Goetheanum one is likely to lecture to people who have for some time occupied themselves with the material, have read or heard about it, whereas this is probably not the case in Kalamazoo. I mean the whole surroundings: The fact that one comes to a building such as the Goetheanum makes it possible to turn to the public in quite another manner than is possible when one lectures at a hotel in Kalamazoo. And so there are countless circumstances out of which one lectures which must always be considered.

This however, establishes the necessity, especially in our time, to take one's lead somewhat from what should not be to what should be. Let us take an extreme case. A typical, average professor was supposed to give a lecture. At first he deals with his thoughts about the object, and, if he is a typical, average professor, he also deals with the conviction, that these thoughts which he thinks, are on the whole, the very best in the world on the subject in question. Everything else has at first no interest for him.—He writes these thoughts down.—And of course, when he commits these thoughts to paper, then they become fixed. He then sticks this manuscript into his left side pocket, goes off, unconcerned as to whether it is to the Goetheanum or to the hotel in Kalamazoo, finds a lecturer's desk that is set up in a suitable way, at the right distance for his eyes, lays his manuscript thereon and reads. I do not say that every one does it in this way. But it is a frequent occurrence and a characteristic procedure in our time. And it points to the horror one can have towards lecturing today. It is the type of lecturing for which one should have the greatest aversion.

And, since I have said that our thoughts interest nobody else, and our will annoys everybody, then it seems that it is the feelings upon which lecturing depends,—that an especially significant cultivation of feeling must be basic for lecturing. Hence it becomes of significance, of perhaps remote, yet fundamental significance, that we have acquired this proper aversion for the extreme type of lecture-reading just mentioned.

Once I heard a lecture by the renowned Helmholtz at a rather large meeting that was certainly given in this manner: The manuscript, taken out of the left side pocket and read off. Afterwards a journalist came to me and said: “Why wasn't this lecture printed, a copy slipped into the hand of each one there? And then Helmholtz could have gone about and extended his hand to each one!” The latter would have been more valuable perhaps to the hearers, than the terrible experience of sitting on the hard chairs to which they were condemned in order to have read to them the manuscript, which required more time than it would have taken them to read it themselves. (Most of them would have needed a very long time indeed if they wanted to understand it, but listening for a short time didn't help them at all.)

One must by all means reflect on all these concrete things if one wishes to understand how the art of lecturing can, in all truth and honesty, be striven for.

At the Philosophers' Congress in Bologna the most significant lecture was delivered in the following way: It lay on each chair, three copies, one in each of three languages. One had first to pick them up in order to be able to sit down on the empty chair. And then the lecture was read aloud from the printed copy, requiring somewhat more than an hour. Through such procedure even the most beautiful lecture is no longer a lecture, for understanding gained through reading is something essentially different from the understanding gained through listening. And these things must be considered if one wants to familiarize one's self in a vivid way with such tasks.

Certainly, even a novel can so move us that we shed tears at definite passages. I mean of course, that a good novel can do this only at definite passages, not from the beginning to the end. But what then is really present during reading so that we are carried away by what we read? Whenever we are carried away by what we read, we have to accomplish a certain work that coincides, that is connected very strongly, with the inner side of our humanity. This inner work which we accomplish when we read consists in this, that while we turn our glance to the single letters, we actually carry out what we have learned in the putting together of the letters. Through this activity of looking at the letters, putting them together and thinking about them, we draw forth a meaning. That is a process of receiving which occurs in our ether body and yet strongly engages the physical body in the perceiving.

But all this simply falls away when only listening. This whole activity does not occur when simply listening. Nevertheless, this listening activity is bound up in a definite way with the grasping of a thing. The person is in need of this activity whenever he wishes to grasp a thing. He needs the cooperation of his ether body and in part, even of his physical body. Not only of the sense organ of the ear! Moreover, when listening, he needs a soul life so active that it is not exhausted in the astral body, but brings the ether body to pulsation, and then this ether body also brings the physical body to swing along with it.

That which must take place as activity during reading, must also be developed while listening to a lecture, but—should like to say—in quite another form when listening, because that activity cannot be there in the same way it is for reading. What is called up in reading is transformed feeling, feeling that has been pressed into the ether body and the physical body. This feeling becomes a force. As lecturers we must be in a position to bring up feeling as feeling content, even in the most abstract of lectures.

It is really a fact that our thoughts as such do not interest people, our will impulses annoy everybody, and only our feelings determine the impression, the effect—in a justified sense, of course—of a lecture.

Hence, there arises the most important question. How shall we be able to have something in our lecture which in a sufficiently strong way, will enable the listener to bring forth the needed shade of feeling, the needed permeation with feeling—and yet not press him, lest we hypnotize or suggest.

There cannot be abstract rules by which one learns how to speak with feeling. For, in the person who has hunted in all sorts of manuals for the rules for speaking with feeling, one will notice that his lecturing most surely does not come from his heart, that it stems from quite another place than his heart. And truly, all lectures should come from the heart. Even the most abstract lecture should come from the heart. And that it can! And it is precisely this which we must discuss, how even the most abstract lecture can come from the heart.

We must understand quite clearly what is really stirring in the soul of the listener when he gives us his ear, not perhaps when we tell him something he is eager to hear, but when we expect him to want to listen to our words. Essentially it is indeed always a kind of attack on our fellow men when we fire a lecture at them. And that too is something of which we must be thoroughly aware, that it is an attack on the listeners, when we fire a lecture at them.

Everything which I say—I must ever and again add parenthetically—is to be considered as guide for the lecturer, not as characteristic for social intercourse or the like. Were I to speak in reference to social intercourse, I could naturally not formulate the same sentences. They would be so much foolishness. For, when one speaks concretely, such a sentence as “Our thoughts interest no one” can be either something very clever or very stupid. Everything we say may be foolishness or good sense according to its whole human connection. It depends solely upon the way it is placed into the context. Hence, the lecturer needs quite other things than instructions in the formal art of lecturing.

Thus, it is a matter of recognizing what is really active in the listener. Sympathy and antipathy are active in the listener. These assert themselves more or less unconsciously when we attack the listener with a lecture. Sympathy or antipathy! For our thoughts however, he surely has no sympathy at first. Also not for our will impulses, for that which we, so to speak, want of him, for that to which we want to exhort him.

If we want somehow to approach the art of lecturing, we must have a certain understanding for the listener's sympathy and antipathy toward what we say. Sympathy and antipathy have in reality to do neither with thinking nor with the will, but operate here in the physical world exclusively for the feelings, for what has to do with feeling. A conscious awareness in the listener of sympathy and antipathy has the effect of obstructing the lecturer's approach to him—our awareness of sympathy and antipathy must be of such a kind that it never comes to the consciousness of the listener, especially during the lecture. Working to rouse sympathy and antipathy has the effect of making it seem that we fall over ourselves. Such, approximately, is the effect of a lecture when we want to arouse sympathy and antipathy.

We must have the finest understanding for sympathy and antipathy in the listener. During the lecture however, his sympathy or antipathy should not concern us in the least. All that has an effect upon the sympathy and antipathy, if I may say so, we must bring into the lecture indirectly, beforehand, during the preparation.

Just as little as there can be instructions of an abstract kind for painting or sculpting, just so little can there be rules of an abstract kind for lecturing. But, just as one can stimulate the art of painting, so too it is possible to stimulate the art of lecturing. And it is chiefly a matter of taking in full earnestness the things that can be pointed out in this direction.

***

Guidelines for the preparation of a talk.—The thought content must be thoroughly settled in advance. Verbal formulation of the first and the last sentences. Our thought preparation affects the will; our enthusiasm the thinking of the listeners.

In order to start from an example, let us first take the teacher speaking to children. As far as his speaking is concerned, actually the very least depends upon his genius and wisdom. As to whether we can teach mathematics or geography well, the very, very least will depend upon whether we ourselves are good mathematicians, or good geographers. We can be outstanding geographers, but poor teachers of geography. The intrinsic worth of the teacher, which surely rests in large measure upon his speaking, depends upon what he has previously felt and experienced about the things to be presented, and the kinds of feelings which are again stirred up by the fact that he has a child before him.

Thus it is for example, that Waldorf School pedagogy amounts to knowledge of man, that is of the child—not to a knowledge of the child resulting from abstract psychology, but one that rests upon a fully human comprehension of the child. So far does this comprehension go that through feeling intensified to loving devotion, the teacher manages to experience with the child. Then there results—from this experiencing with the child and from what one has previously felt and experienced in the field in which one has to express something—from all this, there results quite instinctively the manner in which one has to speak and handle the class.

It doesn't serve at all, for instance, in instructing a slow child, to use the wisdom of the world which one has. Wisdom helps one in the case of a dull child, if one acquired the wisdom yesterday and used it in one's preparation. At the moment of instruction of the dull child, one must have the genius to be as slow as the child himself, and just have the presence of mind to remember the way in which one was wise yesterday, during the preparation. One must be able to be slow with the slow child, naughty, at least in feeling, with the naughty child, good with the good child, and so forth. As teacher one must be—I hope that this word will not arouse too great antipathy because it is directed too strongly towards thoughts or will impulses—one must really be a kind of chameleon, if one wishes to instruct rightly.

What many Waldorf teachers have, out of their genius, been able to do to increase discipline has pleased me very much. For example, a teacher is speaking about Jean Paul. The children start writing notes and passing them to each other. This teacher doesn't start reprimanding them; instead, he moves into the situation, and with great patience finds out what it's all about. He then dissolves the threatened disturbance with some instruction on postal affairs. That is more effective than any reminder. The note-writing stops. This result rests naturally upon a concrete grasping of the moment. But of course, one must have the presence of mind. One must know that sympathy and antipathy which one wishes to stir, sit more deeply in the human being than one is accustomed to think.

And so it is extraordinarily important, whenever the teacher has to deal with some chapter in class, that he first of all call up vividly into consciousness during the preparation how he himself approached this chapter when he was the same age as his children are, how he felt then,—not in order to become pedantic, of course, not in order when he treats it on the next day to succeed in feeling again as he once did! No, it is enough when this feeling is brought up during the preparation, when it is experienced in the preparation, and then it is a matter of working on the very next day with the knowledge of man just described.

Thus, also here, in teaching, it is a question of finding within ourselves the possibility of shaping the lecture-material which is part of one's teaching material, out of feeling.

How these things can work we can best become aware of, if we bring also the following before our soul's eye: whenever something of a feeling character is to work into what pulses through our lecture, then naturally we may not speak thoughtlessly, although thoughts do not really interest our listeners, and we may not lecture without will, albeit our will annoys them. We shall very often even want to speak in such a way that what we say goes into the will impulses of the people, that in consequences of our lecture our fellow-men want to do something. But we must not under any circumstances so organize the lecture that we bore the listeners through our thought content and arouse their antipathy through the will impetus we seek to give.

So it is a matter of establishing the thinking for the lecture, completely establishing it, as long as possible before we lecture; that we have beforehand absolutely settled the thought element within ourselves. This has nothing to do with whether we then speak fluently, or whether we speak haltingly. The latter, as we shall see, depends upon quite other circumstances. But what must, to a degree, work unconsciously in the lecture, is connected with our having settled the thought content within ourselves much, much earlier. The thought monologue which should be as lively as possible we must have rehearsed earlier, letting it take form out of the arguments for and against, which we ourselves bring forward during this preparation, anticipating all objections as much as possible.

Through this manner of experiencing our lecture in thoughts beforehand, we take from it the sting it otherwise has for the audience. We are, to a degree, bound to sweeten our lecture by having gone through the sourness of the logical development of the train of thought beforehand,—but, as much as possible in such a way that we do not formulate the lecture word for word. Of course, matters cannot be taken literally,—namely, that we have no idea of how we shall formulate the sentences when we begin to lecture. But the thought content must be settled. To have the verbal formulation ready for the whole lecture is something which can never lead to a really good lecture. For that already comes very near to having written the lecture down, and we need but to imagine that a phonograph instead of us stood there and gave it out automatically. When the lecture is given word for word, from memory, then is the difference between this and a machine that turns it out automatically even smaller than it is between a lecture read from a manuscript and the machine that turns it out automatically. Moreover, if we have formulated a lecture beforehand, so that it is worked out in such a way that it can be spoken by us verbatim, then we are indeed not differentiating ourselves very strongly from a machine by which we have recorded the lecture and then let it be played back. There is not much difference between listening to a lecture that is spoken word for word as it was worked out and reading it oneself,—aside from the fact that in reading one is not continually disturbed by the lecturer, as one is continually when listening to him deliver a lecture that he has memorized.

The thought preparation is experienced in the correct manner when it is carried to the point at which the thoughts have become absolutely part of oneself, and this all well before the lecture. One must be finished with what one would present.

To be sure, there are some exceptions for ordinary lectures which one delivers to an audience until then unknown to one. Whenever, before such an audience, one begins immediately with what one has to a degree worked out meditatively in thoughts, and speaks from the first sentence on under direct inspiration, if I may say so, then one does not do something really good for the listeners. At the beginning of a lecture one must make one's personality somewhat active. At the beginning of a lecture one should not immediately entirely extinguish one's personality, because the vibration of feeling must first be stirred.

Now, it is not necessary to proceed as did, for example, Michael Bernays, Professor of History of German Literature, at one time very famous in certain circles. He once came to Weimar to give a lecture on Goethe's Color Theory, and wanted to form his first sentences in such a way that certainly the feeling of the listeners would be engaged very, very intensively—but, to be sure, it happened quite otherwise than he had intended. He arrived in Weimar several days before the lecture. Weimar is a small city where one can go about among the people, (some of whom will be in the hall), and make propaganda for one's lecture. Those who hear about the lecture directly, tell others about it, and the whole hall is really “tuned up” when one delivers one's lecture. Now Prof. Michael Bernays actually went about in Weimar for several days and said: “Oh, I have not been able to prepare myself for this lecture, my genius will surely prompt me correctly at the right moment.” He was to deliver this lecture in the Recreation Hall in Weimar. It was a hot summer day. The windows had to be opened. And, directly in front of this Recreation Hall there was a poultry yard. Michael Bernays took his place and waited for his genius to begin suggesting something to him. For indeed, all Weimar knew that his genius must come and suggest his lecture to him. And then, at this moment, while Bernays was waiting for his genius, the cock outside began: cock-a-doodle-doo! Now every one knew: Michael Bernays' genius has spoken for him!—Feelings were strongly stirred. To be sure, in a different way from what he wanted. But there was a certain atmosphere in the hall.

I do not recount this in order to tell you a neat anecdote, but because I must call your attention to the following: the body of a lecture must have been so formed that it is well worked through meditatively in thoughts, and later formulated freely,—but the introduction is really there for the purpose of making oneself a bit ridiculous. That inclines the listeners to listen to one more willingly. If one does not make oneself a wee bit, ridiculous—to be sure, so that its not too obvious, so that it flows down only into the unconscious—one is unable to hold the attention in the right way when delivering a single lecture. Of course, it should not be exaggerated, but it will surely work sufficiently in the unconscious.

What one should really have for every lecture is this—that one has verbally formulated the first, second, third, fourth, and at most, the fifth sentences. Then one proceeds to the development of the material that has been worked out in the way I have just indicated. And one should have verbally formulated the closing sentences. For, in winding up a lecture, if one is a genuine lecturer, one should really always have some stage fright, a secret anxiety that one will not find one's last sentence. This stage fright is necessary for the coloring of the lecture; one needs this in order to captivate the hearts of the listeners at the end:—that one is anxious about finding the last sentence. Now, if one is to meet this anxiety in the right way, after one has perspiringly completed one's lecture, let one add this to all the rest of the preparation, that one bear in mind the exact formulation of the last one, two, three, four—at most, five—sentences. Thus, a lecture should really have a frame: The formulation of the first and last sentences. And, in between, the lecture should be free. As mentioned, I give this as a guiding principle.

And now perhaps, many of you will say: yes, but if one is not able to lecture just that way? One need not therefore immediately say that it would be so difficult, that one should not lecture at all. It is indeed quite natural that one can lecture a bit better or a bit worse, just so long as one does not let oneself be deterred from lecturing because of all these requirements: but one should make an effort to fulfill these requirements, at the same time as one makes such guiding principles as we develop here pervade all that he strives to do.

And there is indeed a very good means for becoming at least a bearable lecturer, even if at first one is no lecturer, even the opposite of a lecturer. I can assure you that when the lecturer has made himself ridiculous fifty times, that his lecture will come out right the fifty-first time. Just because he made himself ridiculous fifty times. And he for whom fifty times do not suffice, can undertake to lecture a hundred times. For one day it comes right, if one does not shy away from public exposure. One's last lecture before dying will naturally never be good if one has previously shied away from public exposure. But, at least the last lecture before one's death will be good if one has previously, during life, made oneself ridiculous an x number of times. This is also something about which one should really always think. And one will thus surely, without doubt, train oneself to be a lecturer! To be a lecturer requires only that people listen to one, and that one come not too close to them, so to speak; that one really avoid anything that comes too close to the people.

The manner in which one is accustomed to talk in social life when conversing with other people, that one will not find fitting to use when delivering a lecture in public, or generally speaking, to an audience. At most, one will be able to insert sentences such as one speaks in ordinary life only now and then. It is well to be aware that what one has as formulation of one's speaking in ordinary life, is, as a rule, somewhat too subtle or too blunt for a lecture to an audience. It just does not set quite right. The way in which one formulates one's words in the usual speaking, when addressing another person, varies; it always swings between being somewhat crude and, on the other hand, somewhat untruthful or impolite. Both must be entirely avoided in a lecture delivered to an audience, and, if used, then only in parenthesis, so to speak. Otherwise the listener has the secret feeling: while the lecturer begins to speak as one does in a lecture, suddenly he starts declaiming, or speaking dialogue-wise,—he must intend either to offend us a bit or to flatter us.

We must also bring the will element into the lecture in the right way. And this can only be accomplished by the preparation, but by such preparation as uses one's own enthusiasm in thinking through the material, enthusiasm which to a certain extent lives with the material.

Now consider the following: first one has completed the thought content, made it one's own. The next part of the preparation would be to listen, so to speak, to oneself inwardly lecturing on this thought content. One begins to listen attentively to these thoughts. They need not be formulated verbatim, as I have already said, but one begins to listen to them. It is this which puts the will element into the right position, this listening to oneself. For while we listen to ourselves inwardly, we develop enthusiasm or aversion, sympathy or antipathy at the right places, as these responses follow what we wish to impart. What we prepare in this will-like way also goes into our wills, and appears during our lecturing in tone variation. Whether we speak intensively or more softly, whether we accentuate brightly or darkly, this we do solely as the result of the feeling-through and willing-through of our thought content in the meditative preparation.

All the thought content we must gradually lead over into the forming of a picture of the composition of our lecture. Then will the thinking be embedded in the lecture,—not in the words, but between the words: in the way in which the words are shaped, the sentences are shaped, and the arrangement is shaped. The more we are in a position to think about ‘the how’ of our lecture, the more strongly do we work into the will of the others. What people will accept depends upon what we put into the formulation, into the composition of the lecture.

Were we to come to them and say: “When all is said, every one of you who does not do his utmost in order to realize the Threefold Order tomorrow is a bad fellow”—that would annoy people. However, when we present the sense of the Threefold Order in a lecture that is composed in accordance with the nature of its content, that it is inwardly organized so that it is itself even a kind of intimate 'threefolding', and especially even if it is so fashioned that we ourselves are convinced of the necessity for the Threefold Order, convinced with all our feeling and all our will impulses—then this works upon the people, works upon the will of the people.

What we have done in the way of developing our thoughts, in order to make our lecture into a work of art, this affects the will of the people. What springs from our own will, what we ourselves want, what fills us with enthusiasm, what enraptures us, this affects more the thinking of the listeners, this stimulates them more easily in their thoughts.

Thus it is that a lecturer who is enthusiastic about his subject is easily understood. A lecturer who composes artistically will more easily stir the will of his listeners. But the main principle, the chief guide line must still be this: That we deliver no lecture that is not well prepared.

Yes, but when we are compelled to deliver a lecture on the so-called spur of the moment: when, for example, we are challenged and have to answer immediately; then we certainly cannot turn back in time to the preceding day when we brought the argument to mind, in order to meditate on its counter-argument—that cannot be done! And yet, it can be done! It can be done in just such a moment by being absolutely truthful. Or we are attacked by a person who accosts us in a terribly rude manner, so that we must answer him immediately. Here we have a strong feeling-fact at the outset! Thus, the feeling is already stirred in a corresponding way. Here is a substitute for what we otherwise use in order to experience with enthusiasm what we first represent to ourselves in thought. But then, if we say nothing else in such a moment except that we as whole man can say at each moment when we are attacked in this manner, then we are nevertheless prepared in a similar way in this situation too.

Just in such things it is a question of the unwavering decision to be only, only, only truthful and when the attack is not such that we are challenged to a discussion, then there are present, as a rule, all the conditions for understanding. ( About this I shall speak later.) It is then actually a question not of delivering mere lectures, but of doing something quite different, which will be particularly important for us if we wish to complete this course rightly. For indeed, in order to be active in the sense that I indicated today at the beginning, we shall have not merely to deliver lectures, but every man of us, and of course every woman, will also have to stand his ground in the discussion period, come what may. And about this, much will have to be said, in fact, very much.

Now I beg you above all, to look at what I have said today from the point of view that it indicates perhaps a bit the difficulty of acquiring the art of lecturing. But it is quite especially difficult when it is necessary not only to lecture, but even to have to lecture about lecturing. Just think if one were to paint painting, and sculpture sculpturing!

Thus, the task is not altogether easy. But we shall nevertheless try in some way to complete it within the next days.

When we set out today to speak about Anthroposophy and the Threefold Movement with its various consequences—which indeed arise out of Anthroposophy, and must really be thought of as arising out of it,—then we must first of all hold before our souls that it is difficult to make oneself understood. And, without this feeling—that it is difficult to make oneself understood—we shall hardly be able to succeed as lecturers for anthroposophical Spiritual Science and all that is connected with it, in a way satisfying to ourselves. For if there is to be speaking about Anthroposophy which is appropriate, then this speaking must be entirely different from what one is accustomed to in accordance with the traditions of speaking. One has often fallen into the habit of speaking also about anthroposophical matters in the way one has become used to speaking in the age of materialism; but one is more apt thereby to obstruct the understanding for Anthroposophy, rather than to open up an approach to it.

We shall first of all have to make quite clear to ourselves what the content of the matter is that comes towards us in Anthroposophy and its consequences. And in these lectures I shall deal as I said yesterday, with the practice of lecturing, but only for anthroposophical and related matters, so that what I have to say applies only to these.

We must now make clear to ourselves that primarily it is the feeling for the central issue of the threefold order that must at first be stirred in our present humanity. It must after all be assumed that an audience of today does not begin to know what to do with the concept of the threefold order. Our speaking must slowly lead to the imparting first of a feeling for this threefold order in the audience.

During the time in which materialism has held sway, one has become accustomed to give expression to the things of the outer world through description. In this one had a kind of guidance in the outer world itself. Moreover, objects in the outer world are, I would say, too fixed for one to believe that, in the end, it makes much difference how one speaks about the things of the outer world; one need only give people some guidance on the way for perceiving this outer world. Then, in the end it comes to this: if, let us say, one delivers somewhere a popular lecture with experiments, and thereby demonstrates to people how this or that substance reacts in a retort, then they see how the substance reacts in the retort. And whether one then lectures this way or that way—a bit better, a bit less well, a hit more relevantly, a hit less relevantly—in the end makes no difference. And gradually it has tended to come to the point that such lectures and such talks are attended in order to see the experimenting, and what is spoken is just taken along as a kind of more or less agreeable or disagreeable side noise. One must express these things somewhat radically, just in order to show the exact direction in which civilization is moving in regard to these things.

When it is a matter of what to stimulate in people for doing, for willing, one is of the opinion that one must just “set up ideals”. People would have to accustom themselves to “apprehend ideals”, and thus one gradually glides more and more over into the utopian, when it is a matter of such things as the threefold order of the social organism.

So it has also happened in many an instance that many people who lecture about the threefold idea today absolutely call forth the opinion, through the manner in which they speak, that it is some utopia or other that should be striven for. And, since one is always of the opinion that what should be striven for in most cases cannot be expected to come in less than fifty or a hundred years—or many extend the time even further—so one also allows oneself, quite unconsciously, to approach speaking about things as if they would first ripen in fifty or a hundred years. One glides away from the reality very soon, and then talks about it thus: How will a small shop be set up in the threefold social organism? What will be the relation of the single person to the sewing machine in the threefold social organism?—and so on. Such questions are really put in abundance to any endeavor such as the threefolding of the social organism. As regards such an endeavor, which with all of its roots comes out of reality, one should not at all speak in this utopian fashion. For one should always evoke at least this feeling: the threefold order of the social organism is nothing which can be "made" in the sense that state constitutions can be made in a parliament—of the kind for example, that the Weimar National Assembly was. These are made! But one cannot speak in the same sense of making the threefold social organism.

Just as little can one speak of "organizing" in order to produce the threefold order. That which is an organism, this one does not organize; this grows. It is just in the nature of an organism that one does not have to organize it, that it organizes itself. That which can be organized is no organism. We must approach things from the start with these feelings, otherwise we shall not have the possibility of finding the appropriate expression.

The threefold order is something which indeed simply follows from the natural living together of people. One can falsify this natural living together of people—as has been the case, for example, in recent history—by extending the characteristic features of one member, the states-rights member, to both others. Then these two other members will simply become corrupted because they cannot prosper, just as someone cannot get on well in an unsuitable garment, that is too heavy, or the like.

It is in the natural relation of people that the threefold order of the social organism lives, that the independent spiritual life lives, that the rights or states life, regulated by the people's majority, lives, that the economic life, shaped solely out of itself, also lives. One can put strait jackets on the spiritual life, on the economic life, although one does not need them; but then its own life asserts itself continually nevertheless, and what we then experience outwardly is just this self-assertion. It is hence necessary to show that the threefolding of the social organism is implicit in the very nature of both the human being and the social life.

We see that the spiritual life in Europe was entirely independent and free until the 13th or 14th centuries, when, what was the free, independent spiritual life was first pushed into the universities. In this time you find the founding of the universities, and the universities then in turn slip by and by into the life of state. So that one can say: From about the 13th to the 16th or 17th century, the universities slip into the states-life, and with the universities, also the remaining educational institutions, without people really noticing it. These other institutions simply followed. This we have on the one hand.

On the other hand, until about the same period, we have free economic rule that found its true, middle-European expression in the free economic village communities. As the free spiritual life slipped into the universities, which are localized at first, and which later find shelter in the state, so does that which is the economic organization first receive a certain administration in the “rights” sense, when the cities emerge more and more. Then the cities, in the first place, organize this economic life, while earlier, when the village communities were setting the pace, it had grown freely. And then we see how increasingly, that which was centralized in the cities seeks protection in the larger territories of the states. Thus we see how the tendency of modern times ends in letting the spiritual life on the one hand, the economic life on the other, seek the protection of states which increasingly take on the character of domains constituted according to Roman law. This was actually the development in modern times.

We have reached that point in historical development where things can go no further like this, where a sense and a feeling for free spiritual life must once again be developed. When in a strait jacket, the spirit simply does not advance; because it only apparently advances, but in truth still remains behind—can never celebrate real births, but at most renaissances. It is just the same with the economic life.

Today we simply stand in the age in which we must absolutely reverse the movement which has developed in the civilized world of Europe with its American annex, the age in which the opposite direction must set in. For what has gone on developing for a time must reach a point at which something new must set in. Otherwise one runs into the danger of doing as one would when, with a growing plant, one were to say it should not be allowed to come to fruition, it should grow further, it should keep blooming on and on.—Then it would grow thus: bring forth a flower; then no seed, but again a flower, again a flower, and so on. Therefore it is absolutely necessary to familiarize oneself inwardly with these things, and to develop a feeling for the historical turning point at which we stand today.

But, just as in an organism every detail is necessarily formed as it is, so is everything in the world in which we live and which we help to shape, to be formed as it must be in its place in the sense of the whole. You cannot imagine, if you think realistically, that your ear lobe could be formed the very least bit differently from what it is, in conformity with your whole organism. Were your ear lobe only the least bit differently formed, then you would also have to have quite a different nose, different fingertips, and so forth. And just as the ear lobe is formed in the sense of the whole human being, so must also the lecture in which something flows be given—in the sense of the whole subject—that lecturing which is truly taking on new forms.

Such a lecture cannot be delivered in the manner which one could perhaps learn from the sermon-lecture. For the sermon-lecture as we still have it today, rests on the tradition which really goes back to the old Orient,—on a special attitude which the whole human being in the old Orient had toward speech. This characteristic was continued, so that it lived in a certain free way in Greece, lived in Rome, and shows its last spark most clearly in the particular relationship which the Frenchman has to his language. Not that I want to imply that every Frenchman preaches when he speaks; but a similar relationship, such as had to develop out of the oriental relationship to language still continues to live on in a definite way in the French handling of speech, only entirely in a declining movement.

This element which we can observe here in regard to language came to expression when one still learned speaking from the professors, as one could later, but now in the declining phase—professors who really continued to live on as mummies of ancient times and bore the title, “professor of elocution”. In former times, at almost every university, in every school, also in seminaries and so on there was such a professor of elocution, of rhetoric. The renowned Curtius [Note 1] of Berlin actually still bore the title “professor of elocution” officially. But the whole affair became too dull for him, and he did not lecture on elocution, but only demonstrated himself as a professor of elocution through being sent out by the faculty council on ceremonial occasions, since that was always the task of the professor of elocution. Nevertheless, in this Curtius made it his business to discharge his duties at such ceremonial occasions by paying as little regard as possible to the ancient rules of eloquence. For the rest, it was too dull for him to be a professor of elocution in times in which professors of elocution did not fit in any more, and he lectured on art history, on the history of Greek art. But in the university catalog he was listed as “professor of elocution”. This refers us back to an element that was present everywhere in speech in olden times.

Now, when we consider what is quite especially characteristic in the training of speech for the middle European languages, for German, for example, then indeed everything denoted in the original sense by the word “elocution” has not the least meaning. For something flowed into these languages that is entirely different from that which was peculiar to speaking in the times when elocution had to be taken seriously. In the Greek and Latin languages there is elocution. In the German language elocution is something quite impossible, when one looks inwardly at the essential.

Today, however, we are living definitely in a time of transition. That which was the speech element of the German language cannot continue to be used. Every attempt must be made to come out of this speech element and to come into a different speech element. This also is the task, in a certain sense, to be solved by him who would speak productively about Anthroposophy or the threefold idea. For only when a fairly large number of people are able to speak in this way, will Anthroposophy and the threefold idea be rightly understood in public, even in single lectures. Meanwhile, there are not a few who develop only a pseudo-understanding and pseudo-avowal for these.

If we look back on the special element in regard to speaking which was present in the times out of which the handling of elocution was preserved, we must say: then it was as if language grew out of the human being in quite a naive way, as his fingers grow, as his second teeth grow. From the imitation process speaking resulted, and language with its whole organization. And only after one had language did one come to the use of thinking.

And now it transpired that the human being when speaking to others about any problem had to see that the inner experience, the thought experience, to a certain extent clicked [einschnappte] into the language. The sentence structure was there. It was in a certain way elastic and flexible. And, more inward than the language was the thought element. One experienced the thought element as something more inward than the language, and let it click into the language, so that it fitted into it just as one fits the idea of a statue or the like into marble. It was entirely an artistic treatment of the language. Even the way in which one was meant to speak in prose had something similar to the way in which one was to express oneself in poetry. Rhetoric and elocution had rules which were not at all unlike the rules of poetic expression. (So as not to be misunderstood, I should like to insert here that the development of language does not exclude poetry. What I now say, I say for older arts of expression, and I beg you not to interpret it as if I wanted to assert that there can be no more poetry at all today. We need but treat the language differently in poetry. But that does not belong here; I wanted to insert this only in parenthesis, that I might not be misunderstood.)

And when we now ask: How was one then supposed to speak in the time in which the thought and feeling content clicked into the language? One was supposed to speak beautifully! That was the first task: to speak beautifully. Hence, one can really only learn to speak beautifully today when one immerses oneself in the old way of speaking. There was beautiful speaking. And speaking beautifully is definitely a gift which comes to man from the Orient. It might be said: There was speaking beautifully to the point that one really regarded singing, the singing of language, as the ideal of speaking. Preaching is only a form of beautiful speaking stripped of much of the beautiful speaking. For, wholly beautiful speaking is cultic speaking. When cultic speaking pours itself into a sermon, then much is lost. But still, the sermon is a daughter of the beautiful speaking found in the cult.

The second form which has come into evidence, especially in German and in similar languages, is that in which it is no longer possible to distinguish properly between the word and the grasping of the thought conveyed—the word and the thought experience; the word has become abstract, so that it exempts itself, like a kind of thought. It is the element where the understanding for language itself is stripped off. It can no longer have something click into it, because one feels at the very outset that what is to be clicked in and the word vehicle into which something is to click are one.

For who today is clear, for example in German, when he writes down “Begriff” [concept], that this is the noun form of begreifen [to grasp; to comprehend] be-greifen (greifen with a prefix) is thus das Greifen an etwas ausfuehren [the carrying out of the grasping of something]—that “Begriff” is thus nothing other than the noun form for objective perceiving? The concept “Begriff” was formed at a time when there was still a living perception of the ether body, which grasps things. Therefore one could then truly form the concept of Begriff, because grasping with the physical body is merely an image of grasping with the ether body.

But, in order to hear Begreifen in the word Begriff it is necessary to feel speech as an organism of one's own. In the element of speaking which I am now giving an account of, language and concept always swim through one another. There is not at all that sharp separation which was once present in the Orient, where the language was an organism, was more external, and that which declared itself lived inwardly. What lived inwardly had to click into the linguistic form in speaking; that is, click in so that what lives inwardly is the content, and that into which it clicked was the outer form. And this clicking-in had to happen in the sense of the beautiful, so that one was thus a true speech artist when one wanted to speak.

This is no longer the case when, for example, one has no feeling any more for differentiating between Gehen [to go] and Laufen [to run] in relation to language as such. Gehen: two e's—one walks thither without straining oneself thereby; e is always the feeling expression for the slight participation one has in one's own activity. If there is an au in the word, this participation is enhanced. From running (Laufen) comes panting (Schnaufen) which has the same vowel sound in it. With this one's insides come into tumult. There must be a sound there that intimates this modification of the inner being. But all this is indeed no longer there today; language has become abstract. It is like our onward-flowing thoughts themselves—for the whole middle region, and especially also for the western region of civilization.

It is possible to behold a picture, an imagination in every single word; and one can live in this picture as in something relatively objective. He who faced language in earlier times considered it as something objective into which the subjective was poured. He would as little not have regarded it so, as he would have lost sight of the fact that his coat is something objective, and is not grown together with his body as another skin.

As against this, the second stage of language takes the whole organism of language as another son' skin, whereas formerly language was much more loosely there, I should like to say, like a garment. I am speaking now of the stage of language in which speaking beautifully is no longer taken into first consideration, but rather speaking correctly. In this it is not a question of rhetoric and elocution, but of logic. With this stage, which has come up slowly since Aristotle's time, grammar itself became logical to the point that the logical forms were simply developed out of the grammatical forms—one abstracted the logical from the grammatical. Here all has swum together: thought and word. The sentence is that out of which one evolves the judgment. But the judgment is in truth so laid into the sentence that one no longer experiences it as inherently independent. Correct speaking, this has become the criterion.

Further, we see a new element in speaking arising, only used everywhere at the wrong point—carried over to a quite wrong domain. Beautiful speaking humanity owes to the Orient. Correct speaking lies in the middle region of civilization. And we must look to the West when seeking the third element.

But in the West it arises first of all quite corrupted. How does it arise? Well, in the first place, language has become abstract. That which is the word organism is already almost thought-organism. And this has gradually increased so much in the West, that there it would perhaps even be regarded as facetious to discuss such things. But, in a completely wrong domain, the advance already exists.

***

Humanism and pragmatism. The need for developing a true ethics of speaking.

You see, in America, just in the last third of the 19th century, a philosophical trend called “pragmatism” has appeared. In England it has been called “humanism.” James [Note 2] is its representative in America, Schiller [Note 3] in England. Then there are personalities who have already gone about extending these things somewhat. The merit of extending this concept of humanism in a very beautiful sense is due to Professor MacKenzie [Note 4] who was recently here.

To what do these endeavors lead?—I mean now, American pragmatism and English humanism. They arise from a complete skepticism about cognition: Truth is something that really doesn't exist! When we make two assertions, we actually make them fundamentally in order to have guide-points in life. To speak about an “atom”—one cannot raise any particular ground of truth for it; but it is useful to take the atom theory as a basis in chemistry; thus we set up the atom concept! It is serviceable, it is useful. There is no truth other than that which lives in useful, life-serviceable concepts. “God,” if he exists or not, this is not the question. Truth, that is something or other which is of no concern to us. But it is hard to live pleasantly if one does not set up the concept of God; it is really good to live, if one lives as if there were a God. So, let us set it up, because it's a serviceable, useful concept for life. Whether the earth began according to the Kant-Laplace theory and will end according to the mechanical warmth theory, from the standpoint of truth, no human being knows anything about this—I am now just simply reporting—, but it is useful for our thinking to represent the beginning and end of the earth in this way. This is the pragmatic teaching of James, and also in essence,the humanistic teaching of Schiller. Finally, it is also not known at all whether the human being now, proceeding from the standpoint of truth, really has a soul. That could be discussed to the end of the world, whether there is a soul or not, but it is useful to assume a soul if one wants to comprehend all that the human being carries out in life.

Of course, everything that appears today in our civilization in one place spreads to other places. For such things which arose instinctively in the West, the German had to find something more conceptual, that permits of being more easily seen through conceptually; and from this the “As If” philosophy originated: whether there is an atom or not is not the question; we consider the phenomena in such a way “as if” there was an atom. Whether the good can realize itself or not, cannot be decided; we consider life in such a way “as if” the good could realize itself. One could indeed quarrel to the end of the world about whether or not there is a God: but we consider life in such a way that we act “as if” there were a God. There you have the “As If” philosophy.

One pays little attention to these things because one imagines: there in America James sits with his pupils, there in England Schiller sits with his pupils; there is Vaihinger, who wrote the “As If” philosophy: there are a few owls who live in a kind of cloud-castle, and of what concern is it to other people!

Whoever has the ear for it, however, already hears the “As If” philosophy sounding everywhere today. Almost all human beings talk in the sense of the “As If” philosophy. The philosophers are only quite funny fellows. They always blab out what other people do unconsciously. If one is sufficiently unprejudiced for it, then one only seldom hears a human being today who still uses his words differently, in connection with his heart and with his whole soul, with his whole human being, who speaks differently than as though the matter were as he expresses it. One only does not usually have the ear to hear within the sound and the tone-color of the speaking that this “As If” lives in it,—that fundamentally people over the whole of civilization are seized by this “As If.”

Whereas things usually come to be corrupted at the end, here something shows itself to be corrupted at the beginning, something that in a higher sense must be developed for handling of speech in Anthroposophy, in the threefold order and so on. These things are so earnest, so important, that we really should speak specially about them. For it will be a question of elevating the triviality, “We need concepts because they are useful for life,” this triviality of a materialistic, utilitarian theory, of raising it up to the ethical, and perhaps through the ethical to the religious. For, if we want to work in the sense of Anthroposophy and the threefold order, we have before us the task of learning good speaking, in addition to the beautiful speaking and the correct speaking which we can acquire from history. We must maintain an ear for good speaking.

Until now, I have seen little sign that it has been noticed, when, in the course of my lectures I have called attention to this good speaking—I have done it very frequently. In referring to this good speaking I have always said that it is not only a question today that what is said be correct in the logical-abstract sense, but it is a matter of saying something in a certain connection or omitting it, not saying it in this connection. It is a question of developing a feeling that something should not only be correct, but that it is justified within its connection—that it can be either good in a certain connection or bad in a certain connection. Beyond rhetoric, beyond logic, we must learn a true ethics of speaking. We must know how we may allow ourselves things in a certain connection that would not be at all permitted in another connection.

Here I may now use an example close to hand, that could perhaps have already struck some of you who were present lately at the lectures: I spoke in a certain connection of the fact that, in reality, Goethe was not born at all. I said that Goethe for a long time endeavored to express himself through painting, through drawing, but that nothing came about from it. It then flowed over into his poetic works, and then again in the poetic works, as for example Iphigenia, or especially in Naturliche Tochter [“Daughters of Nature”], we have indeed poetic works not at all in the sentimental sense. People called these poems of Goethe's “marble smooth and marble cold,” because they are almost sculptural, because they are three-dimensional. Goethe had genuine capacities which really did not become human at all; he was actually not born.—You see, in that connection in which I spoke lately, one could quite certainly say it. But imagine, if someone were to represent it as a thesis in itself in the absolute sense! It would be not only illogical, it would be of course quite crazy.

To speak out of an awareness of a life connection is something different from finding the adequate or correct use of a word association for the thought and feeling involved. To let a pronouncement or the like arise at a particular place out of a living relationship, that is what leads over from beauty, from correctness, to the ethos of language—at which one feels, when a sentence is uttered, whether one may or may not say it in the whole context. But now, there is again an inward growing together, not with language, but with speaking. This is what I should like to call good speaking or had speaking; the third form. Aside from beautiful or ugly speaking, aside from correct or incorrect speaking, comes good or bad speaking, in the sense in which I have just presented it.

Today the view is still widespread that there can be sentences which one forms and which can then be spoken on any occasion, because they have absolute validity. In reality, for our life in the present, there are no longer such sentences. Every sentence that is possible in a certain connection, is today impossible in another connection. That means, we have entered upon an epoch of humanity's development in which we need to direct our view to this many-sidedness of living situations.

The Oriental who with his whole thinking lived within a small territory, also the Greek still, who with his spiritual life, with his rights life, with his economic life, lived on a small territory, poured something into his language that appears as a linguistic work of art must appear. How is it though in a work of art? It is such that a single finite object really appears infinite in a certain realm. In this way beauty was even defined, though one-sidedly, by Haeckel, Darwin and others: It is the appearance of the idea in a self-contained picture.—The first thing which I had to oppose in my Vienna lecture on “Goethe as the Father of a New Aesthetics,” was that the beautiful is “the appearance of the idea in outer form.” I showed then that one must mean just the reverse: that the beautiful arises when one gives to form the appearance of the infinite.

And so it is with language, which in a certain way also acts as a limited territory—as a territory which encloses the possible meaning within boundaries. If that which is actually infinite in the inner soul- and spirit-life is to click into this language, it must there come to expression in beautiful form.

In correct speaking the language must be adequate; the sentence must fit the judgment, the concept, the word. The Romans were compelled to this, especially as their territory became ever larger and larger; their language transformed itself from the beautiful into the logical. Hence the custom has been retained, of conveying logic to people precisely in the Latin language. (You have indeed learned logic quite well by it.)

But we are now once again beyond this stage. Now, it is necessary that we learn to experience language with ethos—that, to a certain extent we gain a kind of morality of speaking in our lecturing, while we know that we have in a certain context to allow ourselves something or to deny ourselves something. There, things do not click-in, in the way I described earlier, but here we make use of the word to characterize. All defining ceases; here we use the word to characterize. The word is so handled that one really feels each word as something insufficient, every sentence as something insufficient, and has the urge to characterize that which one wishes to place before humanity from the most varied aspects—to go around the matter to a certain extent, and to characterize it from the most varied aspects.

You see, for free spiritual life—that is to say spiritual life that exists out of its own laws—there is as yet not very much understanding in present-day humanity. For, mostly what is understood by free spiritual life is a structure in which people live, where each one crows his own cock-a-doodle-doo from his own dung heap—excuse the somewhat remarkable picture—and in which the most incredible consonances come about from the crowing. In reality, in free spiritual life, harmony comes about through and through, because the spirit, not the single egoists, lives—because the spirit can really lead its own life over and above the single egoists.

There is, for example,—one must already say these things today—a Waldorf School spirit definitely there for our Waldorf School in Stuttgart that is independent of the body of teachers,—into which the body of teachers grows, and in which it becomes ever more and more clear that possibly the one can be more capable or less capable, but the spirit has a life of its own.

It is an abstraction, which people today still represent to themselves, when they speak of “free spirit.” This is no reality at all. The free spirit is something that really lives among people—one must only let it come into existence; and what works among people—one must only let it come into existence.

What I have said to you today I have also said only so that what we are meant to gain here may proceed from fundamental feelings, from the feeling for the earnestness of the matter. I cannot, of course, suppose that every one will now go right out and, as those in olden times spoke beautifully, in the middle period correctly, now all will speak well! But you may not for this reason object: of what help, then, are all our lectures, if we are not at once able to speak in the sense of good speaking?—It is rather a matter of our really getting the feeling of the earnestness of the situation, which we are thus to live into, so that we know: what is wanted here is something in itself so organically whole, that a necessity of form must gradually express itself even in speech, just as a necessity of form expresses itself in the ear-lobe, such as cannot be otherwise depending on how the whole human being is.

Thus I shall try to bring still closer together what is for us the content of Anthroposophy and the threefold order with the way in which it should be presented to people. And, from the consideration of principles I shall come more and more into the concrete, and to that which should underlie the practice of lecturing.

I have often emphasized that this must be Anthroposophy's manner of presenting things. I have often emphasized that one should not indeed believe that one is able to find the adequate word, the adequate sentence; one can only conduct oneself as does a photographer who, in order to show a tree, takes at least four views.

Thus a conception that lives itself out in an abstract trivial philosophy such as pragmatism or humanism, must be raised up into the realm of the ethical. And then it must first of all live in the ethos of language. We must learn good speaking. That means that we must experience as regards speaking something of all that we otherwise experience in relation to ethics, moral philosophy.

After all, the matter has become quite clear in modern times. In the speaking of theosophists we have an archaism simply conditioned through the language—archaic, namely as regards the materialistic coloration of the last centuries: “physical body”—well, it is thick; “ether body”—it is thinner, more nebulous; “astral body”—once again thinner, but still only thinner; “I”—still thinner. Now, new members of the human being keep on coming up: they become even thinner. At last one no longer knows at all how one can reach this thinness, but in any case, it only becomes ever thinner and thinner. One does not escape the materialism. This is indeed also the hallmark of this theosophical literature. And it is always the hallmark that appears, when these things are to be spoken about, from theoretical speaking, to that which I once experienced within the Theosophical Society in Paris, (I believe it was in 1906). A lady there who was a real rock-solid theosophist, wanted to express how well she liked particular lectures which had been given in the hall in which we were; and she said: “There are such good vibrations here!” And one perceived from her that this was really thought of as something which one might sniff. Thus, the scents of the lectures which were left behind and which one could sniff out somehow, these were really meant.

We must learn to tear language away from adequacy. For it can be adequate only for the material. If we wish to use it for the spiritual, in the sense of the present epoch of development of humanity, then we must free it. Freedom must then come into the handling of language. If one does not take these things abstractly, but livingly, then the first thing into which the philosophy of freedom [spiritual activity] must come is in speaking, in the handling of language. For this is necessary; otherwise the transition will not be found, for example, to the characterization of the free spiritual life.

Notes:

Note 1.Ernst Curtius, 1814–1896, archeologist and historian.

Note 2.William James. 1842–1910, American philosopher.

Note 3.F. C. S. Schiller. 1864–1937. Representative of pragmatism in England which he combined with humanism.

Note 4.S. MacKenzie, born 1860. Professor in Cardiff.

Along with the tasks which one can set oneself in a certain realm as a speaker it will be a question at first of entering in the appropriate way into the material itself which is to be dealt with. There is a twofold entering into the material, in so far as the message about this material is concerned in speaking. The first is to convert to one's own use the material for a lecture so that it can be divided up—so that one is as it were placed in the position of giving the lecture a composition. Without composition a talk cannot really be understood. This or that may appeal to the listener about a lecture which is not composed: but in reality a non-composed lecture will not be assimilated. As far as the preparation is concerned, it must therefore be a matter of realizing: every talk will inevitably be poor as regards its reception by the listeners which has merely originated in one's conceiving one statement after the other, one sentence after the other, and going through them to a certain extent, one after the other, in the preparation. If one is not in the position, at least at some stage of the preparation, of surveying the whole lecture as a totality, then one cannot really count on being understood. Allowing the whole lecture to spring, as it were, from a comprehensive thought, which one subdivides, and letting the composition arise by starting out from such a comprehensive thought comprising the total lecture,—this is the first consideration.

The other is the consulting of all experiences which one has available out of immediate life for the subject of the lecture,—that is, calling to mind as much as possible everything one has experienced first-hand about the matter in question,—and, after one has before one a kind of composition of the lecture, endeavoring to let the experiences flow here or there into this composition.

That will in general be the rough draft in preparing. Thus one has during the preparation the whole of the lecture before one as in a tableau. So exactly does one have this tableau before one, that, as will indeed naturally be the case, one can incorporate the single experiences one remembers in the desired way here or there, as though one had written on paper: a, b, c, d.—There is now an experience one knows belongs under d, another under f, another belongs under a,—so that one is to a certain extent independent of the sequence of the thoughts as they are afterwards to be presented, as regards this collecting of the experiences. Whether such a thing is done by putting it onto paper, or whether it is done by a free process without having recourse to the paper, will determine only that he who is dependent upon the paper will speak worse, and he who is not dependent upon the paper will speak somewhat better. But one can of course by all means do both.

But now it is a matter of fulfilling a third requirement, which is: after one has the whole on the one hand—I never say the ‘skeleton’—and on the other hand the single experiences, one has need of elaborating the ideas which ensue to the point that these things can stand before the soul in the most complete inner satisfaction.

Let us take as an example, that we want to hold a lecture on the threefold order. Here we shall say to ourselves: After an introduction—we shall speak further about this—and before a conclusion—about which we shall also speak—the composition of such a lecture is really given through the subject itself. The unifying thought is given through the subject itself. I say that for this example. If one lives properly, mentally, then this is valid actually for every single case, it is valid equally for everything. But let us take this example near at hand of the threefolding of the social organism, about which we want to speak. There, at the outset, is given that which yields us three members in the treatment of our theme. To deal with, we shall have the nature of the spiritual life, the nature of the juridical-state life, and the nature of the economic life.

Then, certainly, it will be a question of our calling forth in the listeners, by means of a suitable introduction,—about which, as mentioned, we shall speak further—a feeling that it makes sense to speak about these things at all, about a change in these things, in the present. But then it will be a matter of not immediately starting out with explanations of what is to be understood by a free spiritual life, by a juridical-states life founded on equality, by an economic life founded on associations, but rather of having to lead up to these things. And here one will have to lead up through connecting to that which is to hand in the greatest measure as regards the three members of the social organism in the present—what can therefore be observed the most intensively by people of today. Indeed, only by this means will one connect with what is known.

Let us suppose we have an audience, and an audience will be most agreeable and sympathetic which is a mixture of middle-class people, working-class people—in turn with all possible nuances—, and, if there are then of course also a few of the nobility—even Swiss nobility,—it doesn't hurt at all. Let us therefore assume we have such a chequered, jumbled-up audience, made up of all social classes. I stress this for the reason that as a lecturer one should really always sense to whom one has to speak, before one sets about speaking. One ought already to transpose oneself actively into the situation in this way.

Now, what will one have to say to oneself to begin with about that which one can connect with in a present-day audience, as regards the threefold social organism? One will say to oneself: it is extraordinarily difficult in the first place to connect onto concepts of an audience of the bourgeois, because in recent times the bourgeoisie have formed extraordinarily few concepts about social relationships, since they have vegetated thoughtlessly to some extent as regards the social life. It would always make an academic impression, if one wanted to speak about these things today out of the circle of ideas of a middle-class audience. On the other hand, however, one can be clear about the fact that exceptionally distinct concepts exist concerning all three domains of the social organism within the working-class population,—also distinct feelings, and a distinct social volition. And it means that it is nothing short of the sign of our present time, that precisely within the proletariat these qualified concepts are there.

These concepts are to be handled by us, though, with great caution, since we shall very easily call forth the prejudice that we want to be partisan in the proletarian direction. This prejudice we should really combat through the whole manner of our bearing. We shall indeed see that we immediately arouse for ourselves serious misunderstandings if we proceed from proletarian concepts. These misunderstandings have revealed themselves in point of fact constantly in the time when an effect could still be brought about in middle-Europe, from about April 1919 on, for the threefolding of the social organism. A middle-class population hears only that which it, has sensed for decades from the fomenting behavior of the working- class, out of certain concepts. How one views the matter oneself is then hardly comprehended at all.

One must be clear that being active in the world at all in the sense, I should like to say, of the world-order has to be grasped. The world-order is such—you have only to look at the fish in the sea—, that very, very many fish eggs are laid, and only a few become fish. That has to be so. But with this tendency of nature you have also to approach the tasks which are to be solved by you as speakers; even if only very few, and these little stimulated, are to be found to begin with at the first lecture, then actually a maximum is attained as regards what can be attained. It is a matter of things that one stands so within in life, as for instance the threefolding of the social organism, that what can be accomplished by means of lecturing may never be abandoned, but must be taken up and perfected in some way, be it through further lectures, be it in some other way. It can be said: no lecture is really in vain which is given in this sense and to which is joined all that is required.

But one has to be absolutely clear about the fact that one will actually also be completely misunderstood by the proletarian population, if one speaks directly out of that which they think today in the sense of their theories, as these have persisted for decades. One cannot ask oneself the question for instance: How does one do it so as not to be misunderstood?—One must only do it right! But for this reason it cannot be a matter of putting forward the question: Then how does one do it so as not to be misunderstood?—One tells people what they have already thought anyhow! One preaches to them, in some way, Marxism, or some such thing. Then one will, of course, be understood.

But there is nothing of interest in being understood in this way. Otherwise one will indeed very soon have the following experience—concerning this experience one must be quite clear—: if one speaks today to a proletarian gathering so that they can at least understand the terminology—and that must be striven for—, then one will notice particularly in the discussion, that those who discuss have understood nothing. The others one usually doesn't get to know, since they do not participate in the discussions. Those who have understood nothing usually participate after such lectures in the discussions. And with them one will notice something along the following lines.—I have given countless lectures myself on the threefolding of the social organism to, as they are called in Germany, “surplus-value social democrats,” independent “social democrats,” communists and so on.—Now, one will notice: if someone places himself in the discussions and believes himself able to speak then it is usually the case that he answers one as though one had really not spoken at all, but as though someone or other had spoken more or less as one would have spoken as a social-democratic agitator thirty years ago in popular meetings. One feels oneself suddenly quite transformed. One says to oneself roughly the following: Well, can it then be that the misfortune has befallen you, that you were possessed in this moment by old Rebel? [Note 1] That is really how you are confronted! The persons concerned hear even physically nothing else than what they have been used to hearing for decades. Even physically—not merely with the soul—even physically they hear nothing other than what they are long used to. And then they say: Well, the lecturer really told us nothing new!—Since they have, because one was obliged to use the terminology, translated the whole connection of the terminology right-away in the ear—not first in the soul—into that which they have been used to for a long time. And then they talk on and on in the sense of what they have been used to for a long time.

***

Speaking cannot be learned by means of external instructions. Speaking must be learned to a certain extent by means of understanding how to bring to the lecture the thinking which lies behind it, and the experience which lies before it, in a proper relationship.

Now, I have, today tried to show you how the material first has to be dealt with. I have connected with what is known, in order to show you how the material may not be created out of some theory or other, how it must be drawn out of life, how it must be prepared so as to be dealt with in speaking. What I have said today everyone should now actually do in his own fashion as preparation for lecturing. Through such preparation the lecture gains forcefulness. Through thought preparation—preparing the organization of the lecture, as I have said at the beginning of today's remarks: from a thought which is then formed into a composition—, by this means the lecture becomes lucid, so that the listener can also receive it as a unity. What the lecturer brings along as thinking he should not weave into his own thoughts.—Since, if he gives his own thoughts, they are, as I have already said, such that they interest not a single person. Only through use of one's own thinking in organizing the lecture does it become lucid, and through lucidity, comprehensible.

By means of the experiences which the lecturer should gather from everywhere (the worst experiences are still always better than none at all!) the lecture becomes forceful. If, for example, you tell someone what happened to you, for all it matters, as you were going through a village where someone nearly gave you a box on the ear, then it is still always better if you judge life out of such an experience, than if you merely theorize.—Fetch things out of experience, through which the lecture acquires blood, since through thinking it only has nerves. It acquires blood through experience, and through this blood, which comes out of experience, the lecture becomes forceful. Through the composition you speak to the understanding of the listener; through your experience you speak to the heart of the listener. It is this which should be looked upon as a golden rule. Now, we can proceed step by step. Today I wanted more to show first of all in rough outline how the material can be transformed by degrees into what it afterwards has to be in the lecture. Tomorrow, then, we resume again at three o'clock.

Notes:

Note 1.August Bebel, 1840–1913. Founder in 1869 with Wilhelm Liebknecht of the Social-Democratic Party.

Pedantic lecturers upset the listeners' stomachs. Learn lecturing by listening: watch how others do it, good or bad. Reluctance to speak is the virtue, not eagerness to hear one's own voice. A debater turns his opponent's image and word against him. Jokers create too much acidity in the listeners' stomachs. Words precede deeds.

One has to accustom oneself to speak differently on every soil, if one intends to be active as a lecturer ... Thus, a talk is to be formulated differently, depending on whether it is delivered here in Switzerland, in Germany, or whether at this or that time.

One would, of course, have to speak again quite differently in England or in America. What can be done from here, in Europe, in regard to these two countries, can only be a sort of substitute. It is good, for example, if Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage [The Threefold Social Order] is translated, it is good if it is widely distributed; but, as I have said from the beginning, the really proper thing finally would be if the Kernpunkte were written quite differently for America and for England. For both Switzerland and Central Europe, it can be taken quite literally, word for word, the way it stands. But for England and America it would really have to be composed quite differently, because in those countries one addresses people who, first of all, have the opposite attitude of what existed, for instance, in Germany in April of 1919. In Germany the opinion prevailed that something new would have to come, and to begin with it would suffice if one knew what this were. There wasn't the strength to comprehend it, but there was the feeling that what this rational innovation might be, ought to be known. Naturally, in all of England and America not the slightest sense of this exists anywhere. The only concern there is how to secure and save the old. The question is how properly to secure the old. The old values are good! One must not shake the traditional foundations. I am aware, of course, that when anything like this is said, it can be replied: Yes, but there are so many progressive movements in the Western hemisphere!—Still, all these progressive movements, regardless of whether their content is new, are reactionary and conservative in so far as their management is concerned. There, the feeling that things cannot continue the way they have gone until now, must first be called forth.

***

Things must everywhere be sought out in the concrete.

... I would like to show how an elasticity of concepts for these things [rights relationships] has to be acquired—how one has to point out both sides of a question,—and how one must be able to dispose oneself first, in order to have the necessary fluency to speak in front of people.

There is another reason why a lecturer of today must be aware of such things. Most of the time, he is condemned to speak in the evening, when he wants to present something concerning the future. This means that he has to make use of the time when people really prefer to be either in the concert hall or in the theater. Thus, the lecturer must be absolutely clear that he is speaking to an audience that, according to the mood of the hour, would be better off in the concert hall, the theater, or some other place,—but not in fact down there, where it is supposed to listen, while above, a lecturer talks about things vouchsafed for the future. One must he aware of what one is really doing, down to the last detail.

For, what does one in fact do when addressing an audience such as one is mostly condemned to speak in front of nowadays? Quite literally, one upsets the listener's stomach! A serious speech has the peculiarity of adversely affecting the pepsin, of not allowing the stomach juices to take effect. A serious lecture causes stomach acidity. And only if one is oneself in such a mood that one can present a serious talk, at least inwardly, with the necessary humor, can the stomach juices be assisted again. A lecture has to be presented with a certain inner lightness,—with a certain modulation, with a certain enthusiasm; then one aids the stomach juices. Then one neutralizes what one inflicts on the stomach in the time when we normally have to lecture today. The threefold social order is not being served, but rather stomach specialists, when people speak in all gravity, with heavy expressive manner, pedantically, on three-folding. It must be done with a light touch and matter-of-factness or else one does not further the threefold social order but the stomach specialists. It is just that there are no statistics available on the number of people who have to go to stomach specialists after they have listened to pedantic lectures! If there were statistics on these things, one would be astonished at the percentage among patients of stomach specialists who are eager lecture-goers nowadays.

I must call attention to these things, because the time is drawing near when it must be known how the human being actually lives.—How seriousness affects his stomach, how humor affects his stomach juices; how, let us say for example, wine is like a kind of cynic who doesn't take the whole human organism seriously, but plays with it. If the human organism were approached with human concepts rather than with the wishy-washy concepts of today's science, it would be observed all over how every word and every world-relation calls forth an organic, almost chemical effect in the human being.

Knowing such things makes lecturing easier too. Whereas there is otherwise a barrier between speaker and audience, this barrier ceases to exist if it is to some extent perceived how the stomach juices curdle, and eventually become sour in the stomach and impair the stomach walls, in the case of a pedantic talk. Occasionally there is the opportunity of seeing it: though less in lecture-halls of universities,—there, the students protect themselves by not listening!

From all this, you can see how much depends on the mood in lecturing,—how much more important—preparing the atmosphere, having it in hand, is, than to get the lecture ready word for word. He who has prepared himself often for the correct mood need not concern himself with the verbal details to a point where, at a given moment, the latter would make him the upsetter of stomach juices.

Various things—if I may so express it—go to make up a duly equipped speaker. I should like to present them at this particular point because an explanation of “rights concepts” requires much that has to be characterized in this direction. [In another part of this lecture, Rudolf Steiner had already discussed aspects of justice not having to do with the art of lecturing.—Note by translator.] I would like to present this now, before talking tomorrow about the interweaving of the “economic elements” in speaking.

An anthroposophist once brought the well-known philosopher, Max Dessoir (1867–1947)—whom you also perhaps know—along one evening, to the Architektenhaus in Berlin, when I was to hold a lecture there. This one-time friend of Max Dessoir said afterwards, “Oh, that Dessoir didn't respond after all!—I asked him how he had liked the lecture and he replied: ‘Well, you know, I'm a lecturer myself, and anyone who is himself a speaker can't listen properly; he has no opinion on what another lecturer says!’ ”—Now, I did not need to form a judgement about Dessoir after this declaration; I had other opportunities for that, indeed I wouldn't have done so based on this utterance, since I could not know at all whether it was really true, or whether, as usual, Dessoir had lied this time also. But assuming it were true: what would it be a proof of?—That at any rate the one who holds such a view can never become an adequate speaker. A person can never become a good speaker who likes to speak, who likes to hear himself talk, and attaches special importance to his own speaking. A good speaker really always has to endure a certain reluctance when he is to speak. He must clearly feel this reluctance. Above all, he should much prefer listening to another speaker, even the worst, to speaking himself.

I know very well what I say with this statement, and I well realize how difficult it is for some of you to believe me in this. But it is so. Of course, I concede that there are other pleasures in the world than listening to poor speakers. But at all events, speaking oneself ought not to belong to these other greater pleasures. One must even feel a certain urge to hear others; even enjoy listening to others. For it is really through listening that one becomes a speaker, not through love of speaking oneself. A certain fluency is acquired through speaking, but this has to proceed instinctively. What makes one a speaker is actually listening, developing an ear for the distinctive traits of other speakers, even if they are poor ones. Therefore, I shall answer everyone who asks me how best to prepare himself to become a good speaker: he should hear and especially read—I have explained the difference between hearing and reading—he should hear and read the lectures of others! (That can after all be done, since the nuisance prevails of printing lectures.) In this way one acquires a strong feeling of distaste for one's own speaking. And this distaste for one's own speaking is actually what enables one in fact to speak adequately. This is extraordinarily important. And for those people who don't yet manage to view their own speaking with antipathy, it is good at least to retain their stage-fright.—To stand up and lecture without stage-fright and with sympathy for one's own speaking is something that ought to be refrained from, since under all circumstances, the results thus achieved would be negative. It leads to lecturing becoming sclerotic, to ossification, and to capsulated talk, and belongs to the elements that ruin the sermon for people.

I would truly not be speaking about lecturing in the sense of the task of this course if I were to enumerate rules of speaking to you, taken from some old book on rhetoric, or from copied, old rhetorical speeches. Rather, I would like to enjoin upon you, out of living experience, what one should really always have at heart when one wants to affect one's fellow-men by means of lecturing.

Things certainly alter somewhat if one is forced into a debate—if, I should like to say, a certain rights-relationship between person and person arises in the discussion. But in the discussion, through which rights-relationships could be learnt most beautifully, this projecting in of general rights-concepts into the relationship which prevails between two people hardly plays a role today. There, it is really a matter of not being in love with one's own way of thinking and feeling, but rather of feeling averse toward what one would like to say on the topic, and what one actually brings up. This can be done if one understands how to hold back one's own opinion, one's own annoyance or excitability, and can get across into the other person's mind. Then this will be fruitful even in the debate when a statement must be rejected. Of course, one can not simply reiterate what the other person says, but one can appropriate from him what is needed for an effective debate.

A striking example is the following: ( It is retold in the latest issue of Dreigliederung; I experienced it more than twenty years ago.) The delegate Rickert delivered a speech in the German Reichstag, in which he reproached Bismarck for changing his political alignment. He pointed out that Bismarck had gone along with the Liberals for a time, turning afterwards to the Conservatives. He gave an impressive speech, which he summarized in the metaphor, that Bismarck's politics amounted to trimming one's sails to the wind. Now, you can imagine what an effect it has inwardly, in terms of feeling, when such an image is used in a hall of parliament [—the proper German translation for parliament is really Schwatzanstalt.—] Bismarck, however, rose and with a certain air of superiority, to begin with, turned the things he had to say against delegate Rickert. And then he projected himself into the other as he always did in similar cases, and said, “Rickert has reproached me for trimming my sails to the wind. But pursuing politics is somewhat like navigating. I would like to know how one can steer properly if one does not want to adjust to the wind! A real sailor, like a real politician, must obviously adjust according to the wind in steering his course,—unless, possibly, he wants to make wind himself!”

You can see, the image is picked up and used, so that the arrow in fact hits back at the archer. In a debate it is a matter of taking things up, of getting things from the other speaker. Where a frivolous illustration is concerned, the matter is comprehensible. But one will also be able to do it in seriousness; seeking out from the opponent himself what unravels the matter! As a rule it will not be much use merely setting one's own reasons against those of the opponent.

In a debate one should be able to attune oneself as follows: The moment the debate gets going one should be in a position to dispose of everything one has known hitherto, drive it all down into the unconscious, and actually only know what the speaker whom one has to reply to, has just said. Then one should squarely exercise one's talent for setting aright what the speaker has said! Exercise the talent for setting aright! In debate it is a matter of taking up immediately what the speaker says, and not simply pitting against it what one already knew long ago. If that is done, as happens in most debates, the debate actually ends inconsequentially, in fact it comes to nothing. One has to be aware that in a debate one can never refute someone. It can only be demonstrated that a speaker either contradicts himself or reality. One can only go into what he has set forth. And that will be of immense importance if it is made use of as the basic principle for debates or discussions. If a person only wants to say in the debate what he has known before, then certainly it will be of no significance at all when he puts it forward after the speaker.

This once stared me in the face in a particularly instructive way. In Holland I was invited on my last trip also to give a lecture on Anthroposophy before the Philosophical Society of the University of Amsterdam. The chairman there was, naturally, already of a different opinion than I. There was no doubt at all that, if he were to engage in the debate, he would say something quite different than I would. But it was equally clear that what he said would ultimately make no difference as regards my lecture, and that my lecture would have no particular influence on what he would say, based on what he knew anyhow. Hence, I considered he did things quite cleverly. He raised what he had to say not subsequently in the debate, but in advance! What he did add later in the debate to his preliminary words he could equally have presented beforehand, at the start—it would not have changed matters a bit.

One must not cherish any illusions about such things. Above all a lecturer should familiarize himself very, very thoroughly with human relationships. But, if things are to have an effect, one cannot allow oneself any illusions about human relationships. Above all—I should like to tell you this today, since it will provide a certain basis for the next lectures—above all, one should not surrender to illusions about the effectiveness of talks!

Inwardly, I always have to get into a terribly humorous frame of mind when well-meaning contemporaries say again and again: It's not a matter of words, it's a matter of deeds! I have heard it declaimed again and again at the most inopportune points, not only in dialogues, but also from various podiums: Words don't count; actions count! As far as what happens in the world in the way of actions, everything depends on words! For those able to get to the bottom of the matter, no actions take place at all that have not been prepared in advance by someone or other through words.

But you will realize that the preparation is something quite subtle! For, if it is true—and it is true!—that through pedantic, theoretical, abstract, Marxist speaking one actually upsets people's stomach juices—whereby the stomach juices infect the rest of the organism—then outside actions, which very much depend on the stomach juices, are the consequence of such bad speeches. The stomach juices flow into the rest of the organism, when dispersed. On the other hand again, when people only act as jokers, stomach juices are produced incessantly, which really works like vinegar,—and vinegar is a frightful hypochondriac. But people will keep on being entertained, and what flows nowadays in public is a continuous whirl of fun-making. The joking-around of yesterday is still not digested, when the fun-making of today makes its appearance. With that, the digestive juices of yesterday go sour and become like vinegar. The human being will in turn be entertained today. He can make merry. But by the way he takes his place in public life, it is really the hypochondriacal vinegar which operates there. And this hypochondriacal vinegar is then to be met with!

In fact, in saloons it is the Marxist speakers who ruin people's stomachs. And if people then read the Vorwaerts [—apparently a comic paper], then this is the means by which the upset stomach must be put in order again. That is a very real process!

... It must be known how the realm of speaking takes its place within the realm of actions. The untruest utterance—because from false sentimentality (and everything stemming from false sentimentality is untrue!)—the untruest utterance vis-a-vis speaking is: “Der Worte sind genug gewechselt, lasst mich auch endlich Taten sehen!” [“The words you've bandied are sufficient: 'tis deeds that I prefer to see.”—Faust, Prelude on Stage.]

That can certainly stand in a passage of a drama. And where it stands it is even justified. But when it is torn out of context and made out to be a general dictum, then it may be “correct,” but good it is quite certainly not! And we should learn not merely beautiful, not merely correct, but also goodspeaking. Otherwise we lead people into the abyss, and can in any case not confer with them about anything worthy of the future.

Notes:

Note 1.Mainly the second part of a lecture given in Dornach on 14 October 1921. The lecture is the fourth of the Speakers' Course, published in German under the title: Anthroposophie. soziale Oreigliederung und Redekunst. (Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach 1971.) Translated by Maria St. Goar. Revised.

Lyrical speaking for spiritual life; dramatic speaking for rights-relationships; epic speaking for economic conditions. About economic life within the social organism. The formulation of key sentences. Speech exercises.

I have tried to characterize how one can formulate a lecture on the threefold order from out of one thought, and then arrange it in sections. What one can generally say concerning the whole social organism, as well as references to what can occur in the first two realms—namely that of the spiritual life and that of the judicial, the body politic was contained in what I said. [Note 1] You will have understood from that, how preparing oneself for the content of such a lecture, one can proceed.

Now, one can also prepare oneself for the form of delivery by immersing oneself into the thoughts and feelings. We shall perhaps understand each other best if I say that the preparation should be such that we try hard first to sense and then to utter what is related to the spiritual life in a more lyrical language (without, of course, resorting to singing, recitation, or some such thing),—in a lyrical manner of speech, with quiet enthusiasm, so that one demonstrates through the way of delivering the matters that everything one has to say concerning the spiritual life comes from out of oneself. One should by all means call forth the impression that one is enthusiastic about what one envisions for the spiritual part of the social organism. Naturally, it must not be false, mystical, sentimental enthusiasm; a made-up enthusiasm. We achieve the right impression if we prepare ourselves first in imagination, in inner experience—even so far as to modulation—how, approximately, something like that could be said. I say specifically, “how, approximately, something like that could be said,” for the reason that we should never commit ourselves word for word; rather what we prepare is, in a sense, a speech taking its course only in inward thoughts; and we are certainly ready to re-formulate what we finally come out and say.

But when we speak about rights-relationships, we should make the attempt to speak dramatically. That implies: when we lecture about the equality of men, discussing it by means of examples, we should try as much as possible to put ourselves into the other person's position with our thinking. For instance, we should call to mind the image of how a person who seeks work, asserts his right to work in the sense of Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage (the threefold social order). By making it evident that on one hand we are speaking from the other person's position, from out of his assertion of rights, we should then make it evident how through a slight change in the tone of voice we pass on to the topic of how one ought to meet such an assertion out of general humanitarian reasons. So it is dramatic speaking, very strongly modulated, dramatic lecturing, that calls forth the impression in listeners that one could think one's way into the souls of other persons; that is the manner we should employ in speaking about the rights-relationships.

When lecturing on economic conditions, the main point is that we speak directly from experience. If, in the spirit of the threefold social organism, one speaks about economic relationships, one should not permit the belief to arise that there even could be such a thing as a theoretical political economy. Instead, one should limit the main discussion to describing cases taken from the economic life itself; either cases that one repeats, or cases that one construes as to how they should be or could be. But with the latter cases—saying how they should or could be—one must never neglect to speak out of economic experience. Actually, when lecturing on the economic life, one should speak in an epic style. Particularly, when presenting what is written in the Kernpunkte, one should speak as if one had no preconceived ideas at all concerning the economic life, and had no notions that this should be thus and so; instead, one should speak as if one were informed on all and everything by the facts themselves.

One can evoke a certain feeling, for example, that it is correct to permit the transfer of the administration of monetary funds from one who is not involved in it himself anymore, to somebody who once again can participate in it. But one can only speak about something like that if one presents it to people by means of descriptions of what takes place if there are legacies merely due to blood-relationships, or what can take place when such a transfer is occasioned in the way it is described in the Kernpunkte. Only by placing such a matter before people in a living way, as if one were copying reality, can one speak in such a way that the speech truly stands within the economic life. And just in this way, one can make the idea of “associations” [Note 2] comprehensible and plausible. One will make it plausible that an individual person really knows nothing about the economic life; that if he wants to arrive at a judgement as to what must be done in the life of the economy, he is basically completely dependent on communicating with others. A sound economic view can only emerge from groups of people and one is therefore dependent on associations.

Then, one will perhaps meet with comprehension if one calls attention to the fact that much of what exists today actually came out of ancient, instinctive associations. Just consider for a moment how today's abstract market brings things together, whose combination and redistribution to the consumer cannot be surveyed at all. But how has one arrived at this market-relationship in the first place? Basically, from the instinctive association of a number of villages located around a larger township, at a distance that one could travel back and forth on foot in one day, where people exchanged their products. One did not call that an association. One did not coin any word for it, but in reality it was an instinctive association. Those people who here came together for the market were associated with all of those who lived in the surrounding villages. They could count on a set circulation of goods that resulted from experience. Therefore they could regulate production according to consumption in truly alive relationships. There certainly existed such associative conditions in such primitive economies; they just didn't call themselves that.

All this has become impossible to over-see, with the enlargement of the economic territories. In particular, it has become senseless in regard to the world economy. The world economy which has come into being only in the last third of the 19th century, has reduced everything into an abstract realm; that is, it has reduced everything in the economic life to the turn-over of money or its monetary value, until this reduction has proven its own absurdity.

Indeed, when Japan fought a war with China and Japan won the war, one could very simply pay the war reparations by way of the Chinese Minister's handing a check to the Japanese Delegate, which the latter then deposited in a bank in Japan. This is an actual course of events. There were values contained in this check, which is money and has monetary value. It represented values. If you imagine how at that time everything should have been transported from one territory into the other this would have been a difficult process under modern-day conditions. But owing to the manner in which Japan and China were placed within the whole world economy, it could be done this way. However, all this has led itself to a point of absurdity. In the dealings between Germany and France, it has proven itself to be impossible. [Note 3] I am therefore of the opinion that the state of affairs can best be explained out of the economic relationships themselves, and then one can explain the necessity for the associative principle.

Once again, one should have to divide this subject matter regarding the economic life in a certain way, and one would have to pass on to several concluding sentences of which I have already said that they again should be conceived verbatim or at least almost word for word.

So, how will the preparation for a speech appear, in fact? Well, one should try one's best to get into the situation or the subject that the audience is prepared for, by formulating the opening sentences in a way one considers necessary. One will have greater difficulty in the case of completely unprepared listeners; less difficulty, if one addresses a group that one finds already involved in the matter, at least possessing the corresponding feelings concerning the assertions one makes. Then, one will neither write down the rest of the speech nor jot down mere catch-words. Experience shows that neither the verbatim composition nor the mere noting down of catch-words leads to a good speech. The reason for not writing down the speech is because it ties one down and easily causes embarrassment when the memory falters; this is most frequently the case when the speech is written down word for word. Catch-words easily mislead one to formulate the whole preparation too abstractly. On the other hand, if one needs to have such a support, what one should best write down and bring along as notes are a number of correctly formulated sentences that serve as catch-phrases. They do not make the claim that one delivers them in the same way as a part of the speech; instead, they indicate: first, second, third, fourth, and so on; they are extracts, so to speak, so that from one sentence perhaps ten or eight or twelve will result. But one should write such sentences down. One should therefore not write down, “spiritual life conceived as independent”; instead, “the spiritual life can only thrive if it freely works independently out of itself.” (Catch-phrases, with other words.) If you do something like this, you will then have the experience yourself that owing to such catch-phrases, you can in a relatively short time most readily attain to a certain facility of speaking freely, a speaking that only contains the ladder of catch-phrases.

Concerning the conclusion, it is often very good if, in a certain sense, at least gently, one leads back to the beginning; if therefore the end, in a sense, contains something that, as a theme, was also contained in the beginning.

And then, such catch-phrases readily give one the opportunity to really prepare oneself in the way indicated above by having noted these sentences down on one's piece of paper. So, let us say, one ponders the following: what you have to say for the spiritual life must have a sort of lyrical nature within you; what you have to say concerning the rights-relationships must have a kind of dramatic character in your mind; and what concerns the economic life must live in your mind in a narrative, epic form; a quiet, narrative, epic character. Then, the desire, as well as the skill, to word the catch- phrases in the formulation that I have indicated, will indeed begin to arise instinctively. The preparation will result quite instinctively in such a way that the manner in which one speaks merges indeed into what one has to say concerning the subject. For this it is, however, necessary to have brought one's command of language to the level of instinct, so that one indeed experiences the speech-organs the way one would, for instance, feel the hammer, if one wanted to use the hammer for something. That can be achieved, if one practices a little speech-gymnastics.

It's true, isn't it, when one practices gymnastics, those are not movements that are later executed in real life; but they are movements that make one flexible and dextrous. Similarly, one should make the speech-organs pliable and adroit; but making the latter pliable and dextrous is something that must be accomplished so that it goes together with the inner soul life, and so that one learns to be aware of the sound in speaking. In the seminar courses that I held over two years ago in Stuttgart for the Waldorf school teachers, I put together a number of such speech exercises that I now want to pass on to you. They are mostly of a kind that, by their content, does not prevent one from learning to merge oneself purely into the element of speech; they are only designed for practicing speech-gymnastics. If one tries again and again to say these sentences aloud, but in such a way that one always probes: how does one best use his tongue, how does one best use his lips so as to produce this particular sequence of sounds?—then one makes oneself independent of speaking and, instead, places that much more value on mental preparation for lecturing.

I shall now read you a number of such sentences whose content is often senseless, but they are designed to make the speech-organs pliable and fit for public speaking. [Note 4]

Dass er dir log, uns darf es nicht loben.

(That he told lies, 't'is not to be lauded.)

is the easiest one.

Something a bit more complicated:

Nimm nicht Nonnen in nimmermuede Muehlen.

(Take not nuns in never-tired mills.)

One should increasingly try, along with the sequence of sounds, to make the organs of speech pliable; to bend, to hollow, to take possession of them [Note 5]

Another example:

Rate mir mehrere Raetsel nur richtig.

It is naturally not enough to say something like this once, or ten times; but again and again and again, because even if the speech-organs are already pliable, they can become still more so.

An example that I consider to be particularly useful is the following:

Redlich ratsam
Ruestet ruehmlich
Riesig raechend
Ruhig rollend
Reuige Rosse

With this, one has the opportunity to regulate the breath in the pauses, something one has to pay attention to and that can be particularly well done through such an exercise.

In a similar way, not all the letters, nor all the sounds, have the same value for this practicing. You make progress if you take the following, for example:

Protzig preist
Baeder bruenstig
Polternd putzig
Bieder bastelnd
Puder patzend
Bergig bruestend

If you succeed in finding your way into this sequence of sounds, you gain much from it.

When one has done such exercises, then one can also try to do those exercises that cannot but result in bringing a mood into the speaking of the sounds. I have tried to give an example of how the sounds can pour into the mood in the following:

and now it passes more into the sounds, through which, here in particular, the mood in the sound itself is held fast:

You will always discover, when you do these exercises in particular, how you are able, without letting the breath disturb you, to regulate the breathing by simply holding yourself onto the sounds. In recent times, one has thought up all kinds of more or less clever methods for breathing and for all kinds of accompanying aspects of speaking and singing, but actually, all of those are no good, because speech with everything that belongs with it, with the breath, too, should by all means be learned through actual speaking. This implies that one should learn to speak in such a way that, within the boundaries that result from the sound sequence and the word relationships, the breath also regulates itself as a matter of course. In other words, one should only learn breathing during speech—in speaking itself. Therefore, the exercises of speech should be so designed that, in correctly feeling them regarding their sounds, one is obliged—not by the content but by the sounds—to formulate the breath correctly because he experiences the sound correctly.

What the verse below represents, points once again to the content of the mood. It has four lines; these four lines are arranged so that they are an ascent, as it were. Each line causes an expectation, and the fifth line is the conclusion and brings fulfilment. Now one should really make an effort to execute this speech movement that I have just characterized. The verse goes like this:

In den unermesslich weiten Raeumen,
In den endenlosen Zeiten,
In der Menschenseele Tiefen,
In der Weltenoffenbarung:
Suche des grossen Raetsels Loesung.

(In the immeasurably wide realms,
in the never-ending ages,
in the human soul's depths
in the world's revelation:
seek the great riddle's answer.)

There you have the fifth line representing the fulfillment of that escalating expectation that is evoked in the first four lines.

***

Speech exercises and speech gymnastics; the effect of coffee and tea upon the speaker; respect for the audience through proper preparation.

One can also attempt to, well, let me say, bring the mood of the situation into the sounds, into the mode of speaking, the how of speech. And for that I have formulated the following exercise. One should picture a sizable green frog that sits in front of him with its mouth open. In other words, one should imagine that one confronts a giant frog with an open mouth. And now, one should picture what sort of reactions, effects, one can have regarding this frog. There will be humor in the emotion as well as all that should be evoked in the soul in a lively manner. Then, one should address this frog in the following way:

Lalle Lieder lieblich
Lipplicher Laffe
Lappiger lumpiger
Laichiger Lurch

Picture to yourself: that a horse is walking across a field. The content does not matter. Naturally, you must now imagine that horses whistle! Now you express the fact that you have here in the following manner:

Pfiffig pfeifen
Pfaeffische Pferde
Pflegend Pfluege
Pferchend Pfirsiche

and then you vary that by saying it this way:

Pfiffig pfeifen aus Naepfen
Pfaeffische Pferde schluepfend
Pflegend Pfluege huepfend
Pferchend Pfirsiche knuepfend

And then—but please, do learn it by heart, so that you can fluently repeat the one version after the other—there is a third version. Learn all three by heart, and try to say them so fluently that during the speaking of one version you will not be confused by the other. That is what counts. Take as the third form:

Kopfpfiffig pfeifen aus Naepfen
Napfpfaeffische Pferde schluepfend
Wipfend pflegend Pfluege huepfend
Tipfend pferchend Pfirsiche knuepfend

Learn one after the other, so that you can do the three versions by heart, and that one never interferes when you say the other.

Something similar can be done with the following two verses:

Ketzer petzten jetzt klaeglich
Letztlich leicht skeptisch

and now the other version:

Ketzerkraechzer petzten jetzt klaeglich
Letztlich ploetzlich leicht skeptisch

Again, learn it by heart and say one after the other!

One can achieve smooth speech if one practices something like the following:

Nur renn nimmer reuig
Gierig grinsend
Knoten knipsend
Pfaender knuepfend

One has to accustom oneself to say this sound sequence, ‘Nur renn ...’. You will see what you gain for your tongue, your organs of speech, if you do such exercises.

Now, such an exercise that lasts a bit longer, through which this flexibility of speech can be attained—I believe actors have already discovered afterwards that this was the best way to make their speech pliable:

Zuwider zwingen zwar
Zweizweckige Zwacker zu wenig
Zwanzig Zwerge
Die sehnige Krebse
Maher suchend schmausen
Dass schmatzende Schrnachter
Schmiegsam schnellstens
Schnurrig schnalzen

And then: one occasionally requires presence of mind in direct speech. One can acquire it by something like the following:

Klipp plapp plick glick
Klingt Klapperrichtig
Knatternd trappend
Rossegetrippel

Then, for further acquisition of presence of mind in speaking, the following two examples can be placed together:

Schlinge Schlange geschwinde
Gewundene Fundewecken weg

The ‘Wecken weg’ is in there, too, but as a sound-motif, thus:

Gewundene Fundewecken
Geschwinde schlinge Schlange weg

The following example is useful for putting some muscle into speech, so that one is in a position, in speaking, to slap somebody down in a discussion sometimes (something that is quite necessary in speaking!):

Marsch schmachtender
Klappriger Racker
Krackle plappernd linkisch
Kink von vorne fort

Then, for somebody who stutters a little, the following two examples should still be mentioned:

Nimm mir nimmer
Was sich waesserig
Mit Teilen mitteilt

For everyone who stutters, this example is good. When stuttering, one can also say it in the way below:

Nimmer nimm mir
Waesserige Wickel
Was sich schlecht mitteilt
Mit Teilen deiner Rede

The point is, of course, that the person who stutters must make a real effort.

One should by no means believe that what I want to call speech-gymnastics, can or should only be practiced with sentences that are meaningful for the intellect. Because in those sentences that contain sense for the intellect, the attentiveness for the meaning instinctively outweighs anything else too much, so that we do not rely correctly on the sounds, the saying. And it is really necessary that, in a certain sense, we tear speaking loose from ourselves, actually manage to separate it from ourselves. In the same way as one can separate writing from one's self, one can also tear speaking loose from oneself.

There are two ways to write for the human being. One way consists of man's writing egotistically; he has the forms of the letters in his limbs, as it were, and lets them flow out of his limbs. One emphasized such a style of writing for a certain length of time—it is probably still the same today—when one gave lessons in penmanship for those who were to be employed in business offices or people like that. I have, for example, observed at one time how such a lesson in writing was conducted for employees of commercial establishments so that the persons in question had to develop every letter out of a kind of curve. They had to learn swinging motions with the hand; then they had to put these motions down on paper; this way, everything is in the hand, in the limbs; and one is not really present with anything but the hand in writing. Another form of writing is the one that is not egotistical; it is the unselfish style of writing. It consists of not really writing with the hand, as it were, but with the eye; one always looks at it and basically draws the letter. Thus, what is in the formation of the hand is of importance to a lesser degree: one really acts like one does when sketching, where one is not the slave of a handwriting. Instead, after a while, one has difficulty in even writing one's name the same way one has written it just the time before. For most people it is so terribly easy to write their name the way they have always written it. It flows out of their hand. But those persons who place something artistic into the script, they write with the eye. They follow the style of the lines with the eye. And there, the script indeed separates itself from the person. Then—while it is in a certain respect not desirable to practice that—a person can imitate scripts, vary scripts in different ways. I do not say that one should practice that especially, but I mean that it results as an extreme when one paints one's script, as it were. This is the more unselfish writing. Writing out of the limbs, on the other hand, is the more selfish, the egotistic way.

Speech is also selfish, in most people. It simply emerges out of the speech-organs. But you can gradually accustom yourselves to experience your speech in such a way that it seems as if it floated around you, as if the words flew around you. You can really have a sort of experience of your words. Then, speaking separates itself from the person. It becomes objective. Man hears himself speak quite instinctively. In speaking, his head becomes enlarged, as it were, and one feels the weaving of sounds and the words in one's surroundings. One gradually learns to listen to the sounds, the words. And one can achieve that particularly through such exercises. That way, there is in fact not just yelling into a room anymore—by yelling, I do not mean shouting out loud only; one can yell in whispering, too, if one actually speaks only for one's own sake, the way it emerges out of the speech-organs—instead one really lives, in speaking, with space. One feels the resonance in space, as it were. This has become a fumbling mischief in certain speech-theories—theories of speech-teaching or speech-study, if you will—of recent times. One has made people speak with body-resonance, with abdominal resonances, with nasal resonances, and so forth. But all these inner resonances are a vice. A true resonance can only be an experienced one. One experiences such a resonance not by the impact of the sound against the interior of the nose; instead one feels it only in front of the nose, outside. Thus, language in fact attains to abundance. And of course, the language of a speaker should be abundant. A speaker should swallow as little as possible.

Do not believe that this is unimportant for the speaker; it is rather of great significance for the speaker. Whether we present something in a correct way to people depends most certainly on what position we are able to take in regard to speech itself. One doesn't have to go quite so far as a certain actor who was acquainted with me, who never said “Freundrl” [Austrian dialect for “Friend”—note by translator] but always “Freunderl”, because he wanted to place himself into every syllable. He did that to the extreme. But one should develop the instinctive talent not to swallow syllables, syllable-forms, and syllable-formations. One can accomplish that if one tries to find one's way into rhythmic speech in such a way that, placing one's self into the whole sound-modulation, one recites to oneself:

Und es wallet und siedet und brauset und zischt,
Wie wenn Wasser mit Feuer sich mengt ...
(Quote from Schiller's The Diver)

So: it is a matter of placing one's self not only into the sound as such but into the sound-modulation, into this “growing round” and the angularity of sound.

If somebody believes that he could become a speaker without putting any value on this, then he labors under the same misconception as a human soul that has arrived at the point between death and a new birth, when it once again will descend to the earth, and does not want to embody itself because it does not want to enter into the moulding of the stomach, the lungs, the kidney, and so forth. It is really a matter of having to draw on everything that makes a speech complete.

One should at least put some value on the organism of speech and the genius of language as well. One should not forget that valuing the organism of speech, the genius of language, is creative, in the sense of creating imagination. He who cannot occupy himself with language, listening inwardly, will not receive images, will not be the recipient of thoughts; he will remain clumsy in thinking, he will become one who is abstract in speaking, if not a pedant. Particularly, in experiencing the sounds, the imagery in speech-formation, in this itself lies something that entices the thoughts out of our souls that we need to carry before the listeners. In experiencing the word, something creative is implied in regard to the inner organization of the human being. This should never be forgotten. It is extremely important. In all cases, the feeling should pervade us how the word, the sequence of words, the word-formation, the sentence-construction, how these are related to our whole organism. Just as one can figure out a person from the physiognomy, one can even more readily—I don't mean from what he says but from the how of the speech—one can figure out the whole human being from his manner of speech.

But this how of his speech emerges out of the whole human being. And it is by all means a matter of focusing—delicately of course, not by treating ourselves like we were the patient—on the physical body. It is, for example, beneficial for somebody who, through education or perhaps even heredity, is predisposed to speaking pedantically; to try, with stimulating tea that he partakes of every so often, to wean himself from pedantry. As I have said, these things must be done with care. For one person, this tea is right; for another, the other tea is good. Ordinary tea, as I have repeatedly mentioned, is a very good diet for diplomats: diplomats have to be witty, which means having to chat at random about one thing after another, none of which must be pedantic, but instead has to exhibit the ease of switching from one sentence to another. This is why tea is indeed the drink of diplomats. Coffee, on the other hand, makes one logical. This is why, normally not being very logical by nature, reporters write their articles most frequently in coffee-houses. Now, since the advent of the typewriter, matters are a little different, but in earlier days, one could meet whole groups of journalists in coffee-houses, chewing on their pen and drinking coffee so that at last, one thought could align itself with the next one. Therefore, if one discovers that one has too much of what is of the tea-quality, then coffee is something that can have an equalizing effect. But, as was mentioned before, all this is not altogether meant, as a prescription, but pointing in that direction. And if somebody, for example, is predisposed to mix some annoying sound into his speech—let's say if somebody says, “he,” after every third syllable, or something like that—then I advise him to drink some weak senna-leaf-tea twice a week in the evening, and he will see what a beneficial effect that will have.

It is indeed so: since the matters that come to expression in a lecture, in a speech, must come out of the whole person, diet must by no means be overlooked. This is not only the case in an obvious sense. Of course, one can hear by the speech whether it comes from a person who has let endless amounts of beer flow down his gullet, or something like that. This is an obvious case. He who has an ear for speech knows very well whether a given speaker is a tea-drinker or a coffee-drinker, whether he suffers from constipation or its opposite. In speech, everything is expressed with absolute certainty, and all of that has to be taken into consideration. One will gradually develop an instinct for these matters if one becomes sensitive to language in one's surroundings the way I have described it.

However, the various languages lend themselves in different ways, and in varying degrees, to being heard in the surroundings. A language such as the Latin tongue is particularly suitable for the above purpose. The same with the Italian. I mean by this, to be heard objectively by the one who is speaking himself. The English language, for example, is little suited for this, because this language is very similar to the script that flows out of the limbs. The more abstract the languages are, the less suitable they are to be heard inwardly and to become objective. Oh, how in former times the German Nibelungen-song sounded:

Uns ist in alten maeren von heleden lobebaeren, von freude unt hôchgezîten, von küener recken strîten		Wunders vil geseit von grôzer arebeit; von weinen unde klagen, müget ir nu wunder hoeren sagen.
Ez wuohs in Buregonden daz in allen landen Kriemhilt geheizen; Dar umbe muosen degene		ein vil edel magedîn, niht schoeners mohte sîn, diu wart ein schoene wîp, vil Verliesen dën lîp.

That hears itself while one is speaking! Through such things one must learn to experience language. Naturally, languages become abstract in the course of their development. Then one must bring the concrete substance into it from within, permeate it with the obvious. Abstractly placed side by side, what a difference:

Uns ist in alten maeren Uns wird in alten Märchen

wunders vil geseit Wunderbares viel erzählt

and so forth!

But if one becomes accustomed to listening, this can certainly also be brought into the more modern language, and there, much can be done in speech towards the latter's becoming something that has its own genius. But for that, such exercises are required, so that listening in the spirit and speaking out of the spirit fit into one another. And so, I want to repeat the verse one more time:

Erfuellung geht
Durch Hoffnung
Geht durch Sehnen
Durch Wollen
Wollen weht
Im Webenden
Weht im Bebenden
Webend bindend
Im Finden
Findend windend
Kuendend.

Only by placing the sound into various relationships, does one arrive at an experiencing of the sound, the metamorphosis of the sound, and the looking at the word, the seeing of the word.

Then, when something like what I have described today as creating a disposition through catch-sentences, as our inner soul-preparation, is united with what we can in the above way gain out of the language, then it all works toward public speaking.

One more thing is required besides all the others I have already mentioned: responsibility! This implies that one should be aware that one does not have the right to set all of one's ill-mannered speech-habits before an audience. One should learn to feel that for a public appearance one does require education of speech, a going-out of one's self, and plasticity in regard to speech. Responsibility towards speech! It is very comfortable to remain standing and to speak the way one normally does, and to swallow as much as one is used to swallow; to swallow (verschlucken), to squeeze (quetschen), and to bend (biegen) and break (brechen), and to pull (dehnen) at the words just the way it suits one. But one may not remain with this squeezing (Quetschen) and pushing (Druecken) and pulling (Dehnen) and cornering (Ecken) and similar speech-mannerisms. Instead, one must try to come to the aid of one's speaking even in regard to the form. If one supports one's speaking in this manner, one is quite simply also led to the point where one addresses an audience with a certain respect. One approaches public speaking with a certain reserve and speaks to an audience with respect. And this is absolutely necessary. One can accomplish this if, on the one side, one perfects the soul-aspect; and, on the other side, formulates the physical in the way I have demonstrated in the second part of the lecture. Even if one only has to give occasional talks, such matters still play an important part.

Say, for example, that one has to give discussions on the building, the Goetheanum. Since one naturally cannot make a separate preparation for each discussion, one should basically, in that case, properly prepare oneself, the way I have explained it, at least twice a week for the talk in question. One should actually only extemporize, if one practices the preparation, as it were, as a constant exercise.

Then one will also discover how, I should like to say, the outer form unites itself with the substance. And we shall have to speak about this point in particular one more time tomorrow: about the union of the form-technique with the soul-technique.

The course is brief, unfortunately; one can barely get past the introduction. But I would find it irresponsible not to have said what I did say in particular in the course of these lectures.

Notes:

Note 1.The threefold social organism, as depicted by Rudolf Steiner, is composed of three parts: the two mentioned above and the economic realm.

Note 2.(See The Threefold Social Order for details on “Associations.”)

Note 3.Rudolf Steiner refers here to the war-reparations demanded of Germany by France.

Note 4.The speech-exercises are rendered in the original German, since the emphasis is on their sound, primarily; a translation is often useless as well as extremely difficult.

Note 5.In trying to illustrate how one must take hold of one's speech-organs via the exercises. Rudolf Steiner modifies the four words in a manner that is highly original and unusual, and untranslatable as well. But they thus indicate a living working, an active doing. “Gesehmeithgen,” to make pliable; “zu biegen,” to bend; “zu hohlen,” to make hollow; “zu erhabenen,” to have or possess by effort.